My parents started dating when my mother was a freshman. They got married when my mother was 19 and my father 22. My father sports a black eye in their wedding pictures because he got into a fist fight during his bachelor party. It was an auspicious beginning. As a child, I don't remember a time when they were together (apparently they separated when I was under a year old), so I never went through the anger that some kids go through, the anguish over the fact that they should really, truly be together. One of my earliest memories, the only one of my father, is of his back descending down the stairs of our second-floor apartment. I know that it seems way too trite, that image, but it is honest and true. For a long time, I thought it was the last time I saw him, but I know now that it wasn't.
At some point, before my memory, he stopped coming for visitations, stopped sending Christmas and birthday presents. It was as though an announcer had popped in and said "The role of Weetabix's father will now be played by the Stepfather." From that point forward, I began to gain weight, growing from a five-year-old with a puppy tummy to a seven-year-old with breast buds to a 10-year-old who was forced to wear old-lady clothes because Garanimals didn't make them in my size, all the while harboring a horrible secret that my own father, who lived just across town with a new wife and his stepdaughter, didn't want to have anything to do with me. He was simply not discussed, like a terrible secret, a permanent shame. During quiet times, I would sometimes ask why he didn't want to see me and my mother would say that one time, I came home from a visit and said that I never wanted to visit him again and then, when he came to pick me up, she had told him that I didn't want to see him, so he went away and never came back. That was the worst part. Knowing that it was my fault and not knowing why.
During fights, when my younger half-sister needed a killing blow, she would hiss "Well, at least MY dad loves me!" because after that, I could punch her a million times and it didn't matter--she won the fight. She could always win. I would retreat into my bedroom with the phone book and flip to our shared last name, the name I had only when I went to the doctor, and look at his address, reading it with my lips moving, afraid to say it out loud. Eventually, the oils from my fingers would smudge his name until it became hazy, a bunch of gray, imagined words that I could unlock if only I could figure out the correct incantation.
Years later, so many years, I was on the phone with my grandmother and, unexpectedly, she told me about a time when I was three or four years old: I was at her house and he was supposed to pick me up for the weekend. I was so excited and happy, she said, telling everyone that I was going to spend the weekend with my real dad. I was dancing and singing and giggling. She packed up my little weekend bag and when he finally arrived (hours late, she liked to add), I could barely contain myself, especially when he told my grandmother about the big plans for the weekend--the circus, the park, an itinerary worthy of a little kid's wildest dreams.
Three hours later, she heard a car honking in front of the house. She opened the front door and there I stood, my face absent of color, my teddy bear dragging by a paw. My father, seeing her open the door, drove away. I told her that I never, ever wanted to go with him again. Then I went into her bathroom, closed the door, sat on the floor, and proceeded to bang my head against the wall. Pound. Pound. Pound. She reported that it was the scariest thing she ever saw, the fact that I didn't cry, I didn't smile, I didn't frown, I just sat there on the floor and wouldn't respond but periodically smacked my head against the wall harder than any kid's skull should rightfully be hit.
My grandmother said that later, much later, she was able to draw out that he had brought me to see his own father but I didn't want to be hugged by this man I hadn't seen since I was a baby. And then I made the critical mistake of talking about my stepfather and referring to him as "Daddy."
I don't remember this incident at all. Psychologists call the mechanism suppression. However, I do remember actively trying to avoid calling my stepfather "Dad" for years to come, only using the word when absolutely necessary and then feeling guilt when I did. I also remember banging my head other times, many times. I would become overwhelmed by something and the only thing that would make me feel better was banging my head against a wall, feeling the blossom of pain coming from the spot where my head hit the plaster, and then the dull thud echo inside my skull. Eventually, a throb would overtake all thought and I would have the sensation of being disembodied, a set of eyes peering out from nothingness. My mother was concerned that I would eventually pound a flat spot into my skull until a doctor assured her that I wouldn't willingly do any serious, permanent harm to myself (This was in the '70s, before doctors knew about things like secret cutting) and eventually I replaced the headbanging with something else to dull my feelings. Food.
This is not to say that fatherless daughters automatically ache and fill their void with food. I know people with eating disorders or body image problems who have amazingly supportive fathers. My sense of parental abandonment isn't the only root cause in the mystery of my body issues, and like the story of my father, I am reluctant to talk about them because I really don't care to become the poster girl for childhood trauma. The guilt and abandonment certainly aren't the only smoking guns, but are definitely the first ones.
When I met Esteban, I marveled at his parents. They were still married and so...normal. They weren't crazy. They were genuinely interested in his life and, eventually, mine as well. In fact, I've often told Esteban that the universe abhors a vacuum, so when the whole Dad thing didn't work out for me, it threw Ward Cleaver at me for a father-in-law. He has gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to drive me to the airport. He has rescued me at the side of the road.
I had some wary attempts at reconciliation with the man whose genetic code is responsible for my hair color, my paleness, my DD cups (his sisters are similarly beleaguered), but the first time, when I was 21, he again brought up the fact that I called my stepfather "Dad," and then when I was 26, he sent me a typed letter stating how offended he was when he heard that I had mentioned his wedding-day black eye to a relative. The letter didn't have a signature, only his first name, typed out. When I received the letter, I stared at the name, running my fingers over the slight embossing the keys had made as they struck the paper, and remembered again the sight of his form retreating down the apartment stairs, the sound of his work boots against the hardwood and then the sound of the door opening and closing. I decided that I was done begging him to be interested in me. I decided that instead of feeling abandoned, I was going to abandon him.
The week of our wedding, I asked my soon-to-be-in-laws if it would be okay if I could call them "Mom" and "Dad" and they both exhaled, saying that they were really hoping that I would. This May, I finally finished my master's degree. The ceremony was 130 miles away and at the awful hour of 9 a.m. on a Sunday, requiring that we drive down the night before. I sent graduation announcements to everyone in my family, but my in-laws, along with my sister and my husband, were the only people who wanted to attend. After the ceremony, we went back to the college to pose for pictures, and when I stood with them, their son snapping a picture, it occurred to me that it should be weird, but then Dad squeezed my shoulder and smiled and told me that he was proud, so proud of me. And it didn't feel weird at all.
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