my father’s arms. She walked, pulling Champ behind her, hand massaging the knotted muscles beating in her back. She walked, no intention of looking back. She had said all she had to say. So, she walked, snow crackling against ice, listening for the crunch of my father’s feet behind. She stopped and listened. No crunch, just a crackle. If she could have looked into her own eyes, she would have said, “He is behind you. Even he would not do that.” But the eyes, in her case, couldn’t stop the mind. She turned her head, praying it would not be. She turned her body, still listening for the crunch of two feet. A bundle, still, me, in overstuffed coat, socks on hands, sat in the snow, and there bobbed a retreating figure, crooked almost, vanishing in the haze.
It had been weeks since my father had seen his wife and children, one year since he’d placed me in the snow. That morning, with the stale taste of vodka coating his teeth, he decided it was time to go home. He swiped his tongue against the inside of his mouth. Clumps of morning mouth-lint stuck to his gums. He contemplated cleaning himself before his visit, but he was the daddy and the husband, so we would take him as he was. He might have reconsidered if he had realized alcohol divided time, which meant what he thought were weeks had actually been months and wives weren’t wives once husbands stopped coming home.
He was not drunk, but he wished he were. Better to mute Momma cutting her eyes at him when he walked in the door. The last time they spoke, they argued. He couldn’t remember what the argument was about, but he knew it had been a good one. Could’ve been about his drinking, his women, or his disappearing. The matter didn’t matter. Her words all sounded the same when libations had lubricated passage. He made his way to the door of the small house on Victory Boulevard, where he believed his wife and children were waiting for him. He didn’t even think to knock on the door. He was a father and husband after all. He turned the knob expecting it to welcome his entry, but his turn met resistance. The ball wiggled loosely in his hand as if avoiding his touch.
He paused, in that moment realizing how much space was between him and the home he used to have. His heart free fell into his stomach, where it remained, as he stood eye to eye with the marble-eyed man who answered the door.
Momma exhaled when she saw him. Hip pressed against the arm of the chair, she steadied herself for a punch, a slice, a “Motherfucker, I wish you would.” But none of those came. There was just silence ping-ponging between them. Momma looked at her husband or what was once her husband. Half of himself, body so drained by vodka and anything that burned going down, she couldn’t remember what she once loved about him. His brown skin had grown gray, like a thunderstorm had wrapped itself around him. He looked taller, but only because his frame was wearing skin as if it were a hand-me-down. His clothes hung, sliding off of his arms. His pants sagged around the thick of his thighs as if they were pulling themselves down.
The man moved away from the door. My father walked in. He pressed his shoulders back, puffed his chest to add inches to his stature. Carl had been known to rumble with men twice his size when he was drunk, but he was not drunk enough to buck, so he turned to Momma.
“Where are my kids?” he asked.
This question sounded awkward even to him. He had not gone there for his kids. He’d gone there for his family, but his family wasn’t his family anymore because his woman wasn’t his woman. So, he called for the thing that was still his, that which another man couldn’t slip himself into, yet. Momma tilted her head to the closed bedroom door. He followed her gesture.
With eyes trained on the door, he felt his throat closing. So many things he wished in that walk across the living room, that he had a drink, that he hadn’t taken that first damning drink, that he’d never touched her with anything but affection, that he’d gotten to know those three kids in that room, the ones he had decided to say goodbye to.
“If you want to see your daddy, look in the mirror.” This Momma said whenever I asked why I was lighter than everybody else and why my eyes were caramel drops and hers, my brothers’, and sister’s were Milk Duds. This she said when I asked, “Who do I look like, if I don’t look like you?”
I never found answers in the face looking back at me from the mirror. Yet, I ventured, time and time again, into that bathroom, with the tub scrubbed so ferociously it shined, to the place where Pine Sol was the breath of porcelain fixtures. I gawked in the mirror, stretching and scrunching my face, holding my lids open with my fingers, examining the specks of chocolate in my eyes. I never found him there. I covered my mole, the one set between my lip and nose, large, obtrusive, like a raisin in an oatmeal cookie. I did not find him there either. I sometimes pulled back my hair, turned my chin to the right, squeezed one eye closed, in an attempt to piece together my father. Still, all I saw was me.
Then I turned from that mirror to the father in my mind, the one who’d said, “See you later” right before my second birthday. In that version of him, my father had a hairline that swooped across the top of his head like a fat check mark. His skin was fair, like mine, and clear, too smooth for a man’s man. This might have prompted others to try him, but for his eyes, which could punch holes through faces with one glance. My father was not a big man, not a tall man, but the way that he walked, long, like he knew people were watching, added six inches to his stature. His gait was lengthy, hurried because he had places to go, people to see—namely me. And when he moved, his arms propelled him forward as if they were oars and life, his boat, cutting through seas constantly working to toss him over. In my mind, my father had never been capsized. He was not somewhere clamoring for air, every second drowning. My father had just drifted away because arms weren’t meant to be oars nor life, a boat, but he was finding his way back to me. This I knew because Momma told me that is what fathers do.
When I was twelve, I decided I would no longer search for my father in the bathroom mirror. He was in the world somewhere, which meant he could be found. I started in my small city of Portsmouth, Virginia, where the only limits were my two feet and the will to walk. First, I walked the streets, from my own projects, Lincoln Park, to the projects of Ida Barbour, Swanson Homes, and South Side. That search led me straight up Deep Creek Boulevard, with a left on Scott, another left down Elm, and back around to Prentis Park. During those expeditions, I traveled a perfect square, ending where I began, but I did not know that then. I just walked the road in front of me, with no destination in mind, hopeful my daddy would find me, just as I was trying to find him.
After months of walking, I grew physically and mentally tired of that strategy. My next step had to be more guided, purpose driven. Then I turned to Momma’s stories, the ones which dropped seeds into the garden of my imagination. He had an uncle, Uncle Benny, whose house Momma pointed out each time we visited my Aunt Vonne in Prentis Park. The small house sat quietly on the corner of Peach Street. It was a ranch with deep, emerald grass sparkling from the foundation to the curb. When we walked past, the windows were never open, neither was the front door. It looked as if the house were a time capsule waiting for someone to open it.
Each time, Momma pointed, “This is where your Uncle Benny lives. He’s your Grandma Mary’s brother.”
I wanted to ask if we could stop there, if I might ask him where my daddy was, but by the way Momma picked up speed and kept her face forward as she pointed at Uncle Benny’s home, I knew the answer would be “No.”
When I walked alone, I did not have to ask if I could stop. I didn’t need permission to go where directions to my father might be housed. One humid Saturday, I walked that perfect square, but I wasn’t staring into the windows of cars. I wasn’t looking to recognize faces whizzing by. I focused on my future with my daddy, something I believed Uncle Benny could give me.
I prayed the
