Part Two Memoirs Of A Young Woman (rough)

It seems to me that the people back home in California take the opportunity to celebrate every holiday. The weather is usually nice, sunny, warm, and if you’re lucky there will be a cool breeze flowing in from the Santa Anna winds. So it was easy to call some friends, set up the grill and fill up the coolers with ice and cold drinks. I can’t remember a holiday we didn’t celebrate, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth Of July…we did them all. Even the holidays dedicated to other cultures like Cinco De  Mayo and Hanukah. Living in such a melting pot of a state it is hard to get by without having interracial friends. So when they came over for our Fourth of July party, we’d head to their place for their Fiestas.

The next memory I have is at a Memorial Day barbeque my mom and dad had at our small apartment. I was the only kid there. My mom’s friends didn’t have any kids so I always found myself bored with my own company and wanting to sit in with the adults.

The living room and kitchen are connected by a small dining room. At the back of the kitchen is a door that leads to a back patio. The women congregated in the dining room and living room and the men on the back patio by the grill. My mom’s brother had came that night. I remember because I was so happy to see him. He was a big, scary man. Dressed in leather and chains. His arms covered in decorative art. He had rode in on his motorcycle with some of his buddies for our party. They were a rough bunch and my father wanted to be like them. Tough and fearless. My mom had done her best to keep me away from the back patio for reasons I couldn’t understand.

Maybe she didn’t want her toddler daughter in the midst of such ruthless men, brother or no brother. She often tells me of how inferior my father felt to his brother in law. It never failed that when my uncle was visiting my father would fill his body with alcoholic toxins and work up the nerve to prove his manhood to my uncle; he wanted to fight.

“No brother. I will not fight you, you’re drunk and don’t mean what you say,” my uncle would insist.

“I can take you! Let’s go! I am not afraid of you!” my father would shout. My uncle would probably shake his head, put his hand up and back away from my father.

 I am not sure what caused my father to act in such a way. When sober he and my uncle got a long like brothers. I think my father was a weak man in spirit. He was one of a triplet and his own mother had pawned him off to his grandmother. He was born with a hole in his heart and his parents couldn’t be bothered with him. My father in a sense, was a runt in his family. Many times his own mother and father beat him, his father would hold shot guns to his head. Perhaps by fighting my uncle he could prove he wasn’t a runt. Maybe by acting the way he had seen his own father act and treat his family, he thought he was proving himself to be a real man. His parents were “simple” drunks too.

His mother was a bartender, a tough old woman. She had many kids by several different husbands and boyfriends. She drank a lot, swore a lot, and beat her kids a lot. She had a few favorites I hear, but my father wasn’t one of them. Earlier in their marriage my mom would get calls from the neighbor ,after my grandmother and grandfather divorced and he moved in with us, and they’d ask my mother politely if she would come get her father in law from the gutter. In his drunken state he had failed to make it through the front door. Looking back I see my father as a sad man just looking for his own way into manhood.

I am sure the reason my mom kept me from the patio was for the very reason I mentioned above. She wanted to keep me from seeing my father in his drunken state, and away from my uncle’s friends (who weren’t as soft around the edges as he was.)

At some point she wasn’t looking and I took the opportunity to run through the living room, into the dining room and around the corner into the narrow shot gun kitchen. I stopped, looked at the back door and saw all the big men through a large square window on the door. I turned the handle and opened and the shouting flooded the kitchen, my ears, my head and it got louder. Just as my mom had realized what had happened I stepped down into the patio and walked amongst them. All I can remember is shouting, a lot of shouting coming from these men and their booming voices.

The next scene that I have is my mom carrying me out of the apartment and across the way to a neighbors apartment.

“Keep her in here and lock the door! Do not let him in!” she demanded of them.

Outside the door I hear more yelling. This time it isn’t between the men, but between my mother and my father. I imagine after I stepped onto the patio and whenever whatever happened the party died down and people left. Not wanting to be a part of the ugly scene or the destruction of a family.

“I want to see my daughter!” I can hear him scream. “Hanna! Come out here! Daddy wants to see you.”

“No! You can’t see her. Not like this. Not now. Not now! Just go, leave! Just leave us alone!” my mother pleaded.

At some point she enters the apartment where I am sitting by the door and after she shuts it and locks it again, my father begins to beat on the door. I can hear him begging me to come out there to him. I’m crying pretty hard because I want to see my Daddy and my mom won’t let me.

After some time it gets quiet. Deathly quiet. Too quiet. My mom is sitting away from me now, conversing to the neighbor, but stealing glances to look at me. I don’t think I made any sounds, the tears had stopped for a while. I open the front door and look outside to see if he’s still there, but all that’s lying in front of the door are his glasses.

I see him walking down the sidewalk between the two apartments and I bolt from the building after him.

“Daddy! Daddy!” I hear myself shouting. “Daddy come back!”

He turns around slowly and falls to his knees and begins to sob. When he opens his arms out to me I run into them with all the force my little body can muster and hug him as tight as I can. <

/p>

“I love you Hanna, baby I love you so much…” he says between his tears.

Then he was gone.

I am not sure what happened the moment I stepped onto the patio. My mom told me years later that my father had said some very mean, horrible things to me, things no father should ever say to his child. That was it for her. She took the drugs, the drinking, the lying, the cheating just so I’d have my father. He spoiled it for he and I that night though when he said the terrible things he said. She refuses to tell me even know what the words were. They must have been pretty bad for me to block them out and her afraid to break my heart even know with what was said.

He was so broken looking when he fell to his knees and opened his arms out to me. Even in his state of mind he knew it was over for his little family. He had tragically ruined it because he couldn’t tear himself away from his own past. He couldn’t become a different man.

 

I don’t think he was always a terrible father to me. I have scenes in my head where I can see him putting me on his lap and letting me steer the car as we got close to our house. Other times I can see me sitting in front of him on the floor while he braided my hair. My mom has this old film of him dancing with me. He didn’t like to be on camera so he held me in front of his face, but every now and then you can get a glimpse of it as he twirls around with me. There is no sound to this film, but you can tell I was happy to be in his arms, and he was happy to have me there.

It’s like one of those sad, silent movies. It’s hard to watch so I just keep it put away.

For a long time I held on to the broken glasses he left behind that night my mom kicked him out. But over the years and the many moves, they’ve been lost too.