The Truth About Daddy

My father has two other children with his second wife, their names are Akyl and Jamillah. They are both athletes, he goes to all their games, takes smiling pictures with them, he even threw Jamillah a formal sweet 16 ball last year, she has pictures of it on Facebook, her father dressed in a tuxedo, dancing with her in her floor length, silk gown and tiara, a look of joy and mutual admiration in both their eyes. Her father seemed perfectly lovely, even civilized. Looking at the pictures I was so happy for her to have a doting father who tells her how beautiful she is, who goes to all her volleyball games, who cooks for her and knows her every want and need. Jamillah is a daddy’s girl.  

My father on the other hand, was a monster.  The memory of his brutality still keeps me awake at nights and if I do sleep he still haunts my dreams. My father is 73, I am 46 and Jamillah is 16.  I have never met her in person, we became facebook friends just over 2 yrs ago.  I knew about her but was never interested in her until I saw her picture and saw our resemblance.  Wow, I had a little sister out there… what if she needed me?  What if anything had she been told about me?  Did she even know that I existed and that I was old enough to be her mother?  I waited on pins and needles for a week until she friended me back and then immediately I sent her an inbox message “This is kind of awkward, but do you know who I am?” Her short reply read “Of course, your my sister.”  That was it, no questions about where I had been all her life, she seemed totally cool.  But I wasn’t cool by any stretch… the memories had started flooding in.

In the summer of 1989 when I was 22, I left Central Florida and moved back to New York with my father, his girlfriend and my younger sister.  I hadn’t lived with my father since I was 9 or 10 years old and wasn’t sure what to expect.  Shortly after moving in my father and sister fell out and she moved, then there were three, me, daddy and Sessing.  My father revealed to me that they were expecting a baby and would be getting married.  

Shortly after the birth of their beautiful baby boy, Akyl, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with my father, giving him the third degree.  “Why did you beat my mother…?”  Breathing out a huge sigh, he answered “I never BEAT your mother per se… we used to fight. You know your mother was the only woman I have been with who wouldn’t leave me alone when I asked her to…”  It was my turn to sigh in frustration at this outright lie.  “Daddy… she was the only one  you were married to and had a family with.  And I know what I saw, I was there, you used to beat her, right in front of us.”  At this point he was staring daggers at me, the blood was pounding in his temples and his breath was ragged.  I thought, wow, he’s really hurt and indignant and I’m not impressed, for the first time in my life I literally had him right where I wanted him.  Finally, pointing a shaking index finger at me he spat out “I don’t know what you people want from me… but I wish you people would leave me alone… I have a family now!” The ticking of the clock on the wall sounded like booming heartbeat. I walked upstairs and started packing my things.

If Akyl and Jamillah ever ask me why I stayed away all this time, I have no idea if I will tell them that it was their loving, long suffering father who had vanquished me into the shadows, maybe that’s not a burden they need to share.  My little sister Jamillah is tall and beautiful, she wears braces and designer clothes, she’s greatly admired by her peers and seems happy and confident.  At that age I was filled with self-hate with hardly had any friends and wondered every day why my father didn’t care if I lived or died, I needed braces too but my mom couldn’t afford them with 4 kids to feed and a house and car to maintain all on her own.  Worst of all memories of the violent beatings he used to give my mom have always prevented me from sleeping.

I ask myself if that brief interrogation I gave him could have shamed him into to be better with them than he was with us?  Probably not… but I won’t ever find out.  My father is incapable of introducing me to their father.