stran·ger
'strānjər/
noun
noun: stranger; plural noun: strangers
A person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar: “don’t talk to strangers.”
A person who does not know, or is not known in, a particular place or community: “I’m a stranger in these parts.”
– Google.com
Top Five Ways to Know if Your Father is a Stranger:
In 1999, I had a coming-out party on my father’s doorstep. But I wasn’t announcing any shade of the sexual spectrum I’d traipse through in later years, I was announcing paternity: I’m here. I’m your daughter. Now want me.
From the passenger seat of my college boyfriend’s car, I pointed to the door of my old home as we debated whether the door’s decoration—a wicker broom with dried flowers—suggested a woman lived there instead of my dad.
It hadn’t occurred to me that a woman lived there in addition.
Many things hadn’t occurred to me on that day in March, like the idiocy of asking a man who actively demonstrated that I was a priority to take me to one who hadn’t spoken to me in ten years.
If I’d had an Ovaltine Orphan Annie decoder ring, the secret message would have been “B-I-T-C-H-P-L-E-A-S-E.”
The long sidewalk in front of the row houses, the same sidewalk I’d ridden up and down and up and down on my Big Wheel, then on my pink banana seat bike, seemed smaller. In the passenger’s side mirror, one small front-yard reminded me of my first fight: a scuffle with a neighbor playmate named Jane, a tomboy stringy-haired white girl. We battled over made-up rules gone wretchedly wrong. I suspected the real problem was that she only had GI Joes and did not want to abide by the Barbie code of fabulosity and glamour. In her game, GI Joe jumped from top-secret locations and attacked the couple in the Corvette. Finally, I stood up for Barbie, and we pushed and shoved and went around in circles as we held tightly onto each other’s light jackets. Eventually her mom noticed and called her inside. With a sore thumb, I collected white Ken and Barbie and their shiny maroon car and walked down the sidewalk. As I went into the house, I pretended nothing was wrong, afraid of what my mother would say if she found out I’d got into a fight.
Now, as I sat in a real maroon coupe, I was still afraid of what she would say when she learned I came to the home of our old arch-nemesis, the man who stormed out of our lives in 1991 after an argument over money.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kevin blinked slowly. His brown eyes caught dashes of sunlight, which made them appear a few shades lighter. I could have just continued my Where’s Waldo? search from the passenger side of other vehicles as I’d done for ten years before, peering into every brown 1987 Camry that we passed.
“That’s Daddy,” an eleven-year-old me yelled from the backseat of my aunt’s boxy gray Astro van. The day was sunny, that type of sunshine that makes you feel like you can be anything, do anything.
His tall, lanky frame jumped out of the brown Toyota Camry and trotted into the corner store across from the Lacey Factory on Barnum Avenue.
He was probably getting cigarettes. The blue and white striped boxes usually sat on the center console of the brown Camry. I often picked the box up when he left me in the car. I liked the way it felt. Weightless. Slick. I flipped open the cover. Orange and white sticks in a neat line. I put the pack to my nose. They smelled nasty but good. I pulled one out and put it in my mouth. Cottony. Soft. I thought I would break it if I pressed my lips together too hard. The cigarette rested at a weird angle, kind of like a baby being held by someone afraid they’re doing it wrong (usually me). I replaced it and put the pack down.
“Daddy?! He don’t act like he’s your damn daddy,” said my drill team leading aunt who doled out love like she was leading two straight lines of brown and tan girls in purple and orange uniforms down Main Street. ABOUT FACE: I LOVE YOU. TEN-HUT: STAY SAFE. Unmoved by my nostalgia, she said, “That jackass.”
I decided not to mention the little girl, maybe my age, in the backseat.
He emerged from the store just as quickly, jumped back in the car, and drove off. Soon, the brown Camry was out of sight. No amount of sun could light the darkness into which it faded.
When I wasn’t searching from a vehicle, I ran into him as we lived our separate lives.
In high school, I took part in the morning ritual my mother forbade—a walk with classmates to the corner store to buy sloppy egg and cheese sandwiches on poppy seed hard rolls wrapped in aluminum foil to eat in the cafeteria before the bell rang, and Cheez Doodles, Doritos, and Jolly Ranchers to stuff in our monogrammed sweater pockets and Eastbay backpacks. Among several other students in pale yellow, blue, or pink Oxford shirts, I stood in a jumbled line, holding a few bags of chips when my father walked in and stood a few feet to my left, slightly in front of me. He had on a black jacket and a black visor. He looked annoyed and in a hurry, as did most adults who came in. He glanced to his right and his left, then behind him and met my wide-eyed stare. Would he recognize me? Was this really him? What would he say? He looked at me for a moment and looked away. He bought a pack of Newport cigarettes. Back in the cafeteria, waiting for the bell to ring, I wrote a poem: “You looked at me / You looked away / I wondered what you would not say / I closed my eyes and turned my head / Every second I did dread.” That night, my mom was unsympathetic: I had no business at the store.
I did, however, have business at McDonald’s. I trekked twenty minutes to the Barnum Avenue store to work part-time as a cashier. One day I as I took orders at the drive-thru window in the back of the building (where I couldn’t make jokes with teeny-bopper co-workers or slip extra orders of fries in the bags of cute guys ordering super-sized meals), a brown Camry pulled up.
My heart somersaulted into the deep-end of my stomach.
He opened his door and stammered his order. “Uh, uh, lemme get a Big Mac meal.”
Fate and fries had brought us together. Deciding my stupid purple visor hid my face, I pushed the hat up off my forehead a little so he could recognize me. I leaned further out the window, pretending that I couldn’t hear. I knew once he saw it was me, he’d say hi or stop and talk.
“How many meals do you want?” I asked, stalling. “Two? Three?”
“Just two,” he said.
“Do you want the super-size?”
“No, no just regular,” he snapped.
I punched in the order slowly with one eye on the register and the other on my dad.
“That’s it,” he said, when I was too slow with the total.
A dead little girl bellowed from her grave.
Daddy! She was six.
Daddy! She was 10.
Daddy! She was 14.
It’s me. Don’t you see? It’s your daughter.
Daddy? Daddy come back.
As his taillights disappeared around the building, I wasn’t positive it was him. My daddy wouldn’t have driven away.
Though he’d driven away then, I didn’t want Kevin to pull off now.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
I opened the door to the coupe and climbed out of the car. As I walked down the sidewalk, a vision of me on a bicycle with training wheels whizzed past. At the door, I opened the white steel screen and knocked. After a few minutes, a bald-headed black man with high cheekbones cracked it and peered through the slot.
“Yeah?” he said, narrowing the door opening.
I’d been expecting the lean-faced ’fro-wearing man with a neat black beard and mustache who carted me to Bradlees department store on the weekends. My short five-year-old legs did triple-time to keep up as he pulled me along through the parking lot. Bradlees smelled like fresh pretzels and new clothes. He’d buy me a long bag of popcorn from the snack shop in the front of the store. A couple Christmases, he drove me and my mom to Toys “R” Us in Milford so I could pick out a cart full of presents they then hid from me. At East Washington Park, I sat on the court sidelines with my mother while my father played basketball. He came over to me occasionally and ruffled my hair like I was an eager puppy. We lived with him for only two years during my childhood, but that was enough time for me to marvel over the basketball and baseball trophies on the mantle and brag to the kids at school.
One birthday, he and my mother gave me Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends. In big sprawling script with red ink, he signed it: “To Keysha, Fome Dad, I love you.” In my room later that night, I remember crossing out the “e” and squeezing in a squiggly “r” between the “f” and the “o”. My blue-ink corrections made the misspelled word look worse. I got that scary stomach feeling. I didn’t know which made me feel worse: his spelling error or my correction.
At my mother’s urging, we all started going to services at a Baptist church in Stratford where my father “got baptized”. They brought him down, in a white robe, into the baptismal pool, which was really an over-sized bathtub behind the altar. My granny walked me to the edge of the pulpit to watch. The brown ministers in their long foreboding black robes with white crosses on the breasts dunked my dad under the water and held him there a moment. They raised him up, sputtering and choking, but he fell back into the pool. Water splashed; his limbs flailed.
“Grab his arm,” yelled one minister. “Get his leg!”
“The Holy Ghost got ‘em. Let the Holy Ghost have ‘em!” one deacon bellowed from the side of the pool. The ministers gave up trying to save Daddy, and raised their hands towards God. The church clapped, gave up offerings of “Yes, Lawds” and “Thank Ya Jesus”. Finally they righted him, still choking on his new life. I wondered why the Holy Ghost would want to do that to my daddy.
That man I remembered as Daddy did not look like this one at all.
“Does Jimmy live here?” I asked, slipping in the name of his cousin who lived a few minutes away, buying time to do a mental age progression.
“No, no Jimmy lives here.”
For a moment, I doubted it was him, a self-preservation method since the situation pointed to one of two conclusions: he didn’t recognize me or he was pretending he didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
I continued my query. “And no Johnny lives here?”
“No. No Johnny lives here,” he said.
“Isn’t that your cousin?”
“Yeah. What’s that got to do with me?” He raised his voice. His eyes narrowed and I peered at him, then past him into the house. He started to close the door.
As we gave each other the stank eye, stoop edition, shame and resentment replaced my confusion. My best friend also had an MIA dad, but hers had been gone since she was born. She wouldn’t spit on his grave if it was on fire, soon as he would do her the pleasure of getting in it. But instead of adopting her sistas-are-doing-it-for-themselves attitude, I was doing my best Oliver Twist: Sir, may I please have some love?
“Paul!” I shouted and he froze. “Is that your name?”
“Yeah, that’s my name. Who are you? I don’t know you.”
Daddy come back!
Are you sure you want to do this?
That jackass.
“I guess I don’t know you either.”
As I walked back to Kevin’s car, I decided that my party flopped. The only invited guest didn’t want to come.
After driving off from my dad’s house, Kevin decided he was hungry, while the only thing I wanted was to give my father a piece of my mind.
“Take me back,” I said.
“Why?” he said.
“I just need to cuss him out. I need to tell him about himself.”
Minutes of pleading and whining wore Kevin down and soon we were back on Tate Street. As we approached the house, a little blue car pulled out and made a U-turn. In the driver’s side, I saw my dad.
“That’s him. Stop the car.”
Kevin pulled on the shoulder, and before the car stopped, I’d opened my door. I stood between the door jamb and locked my eyes on the car. The blue car slowed and the window rolled down. A brown-skinned woman with a hard jawline sat in the passenger’s seat as he leaned his head down by her chest to peer through the passenger window. She kept her head straight—like the move of someone trying to pretend she’s invisible.
“Keysha? Keysha? That you?”
I nodded.
“Keysha, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—I thought it was—I was—I didn’t know it was you.” He wrung his hands. “I thought maybe it was you. I didn’t know. When I closed the door, I said, ‘Paul that’s got to be your daughter.’ There was something ‘bout your eyes. I went over and I looked at your baby picture on the wall and said that has got to be Keysha. Something said, ‘Paul that was your daughter.’ Let me park the car.”
After we’d all parked, my father walked toward us.
“Man, I can’t believe it’s you. How did you find me? Well you know where I lived. You lived here too remember? I’m glad you came. Man I’m so surprised. Things back then got messed up. It was your mom; your mom didn’t want me to see you.”
“She never did said that,” I countered.
“Yeah, well, I dunno, things were messed up then. I know your momma. She a good person,” said Paul. “Things happen, man. I’m sorry they did. But you’re here now. I’m happy you’re here. Who’s this? Your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, that’s Kevin.”
“Hey Kevin. I’m Paul, Keysha’s father.” As if we hadn’t just painstakingly established that fact. Paul sauntered over to Kevin and extended his hand but Kevin’s arms remained at his side. I was simultaneously shocked, turned on, proud, and offended. I’d never imagined a gentle, non-confrontational person like Kevin making such a bold “Fuck You” statement. Yet there he was, my first boyfriend, standing up for me and all kids everywhere who’d gotten screwed over by a parent. As if to say: you may be back around, but you’re going to have to earn my respect and everything else that goes with it.
Maybe this says something about one’s sense of self-worth, an understanding of how one should be treated, a belief that one should not settle for less. That one deserves to be treated with love consistently.
Finally, Kevin unlocked his arms and shook Paul’s hand.
“It’s all good man,” my dad said, in what I believed was an attempt to diffuse the semi-snub before inviting us into the house. Kevin deferred the decision to me with a shrug.
“Well, we can stay for a few minutes,” I said. “Kevin has to go to work.”
Not only was I taking to strangers, I was apparently going into their houses. If there was a milk carton for people missing common sense, my face would have been on it.
By this time, the mysterious Hershey-colored lady had vanished into the house. Years later, I’d wonder where they were going—an errand that got interrupted by a collision of the past and the present. Is this anything like the Big Bang? An explosion of fast-moving molecules that results in the creation of a shapeless mass that takes form over eons. Eventually, it’s something viable, but not now. Now it’s just deep water and darkness.
The home sported the same layout it had when I lived there: a couch spanned the far wall, facing the front door. A bar that served as my make-believe bartending workspace as I shuffled ice between empty glasses. A mirror hung in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen, just where it was when I lived there. If you were looking into the mirror from the right spot in either room, you could see into the other. That’s how I got caught sticking my middle finger up at my mom as I stomped away from the kitchen, banished to my room.
Kevin and I sat on the couch. I silently marveled at the tragedy of it all: the first time my boyfriend met my father was the first time I, as a young adult, met my father.
Now standing in front of the mirror, my dad pointed to a picture hanging above it. My baby picture. About nine months old, I was wearing a fluffy pink and white dress with my head turned to the side, focused on something to the left of the shot.
“I came over to this picture, and I looked in your eyes and I knew it was you,” he said. “We took this picture down at Sears. Your momma and I took you to get your picture taken and you wouldn’t stop crying. Your momma tried to hold you. The photographer tried everything. Then they said, ‘Keysha, look at your father.’ You looked right at me and stopped crying. See, I had it up all these years, man. I can’t believe you’re here. Your picture been up here ever since.”
Baby-me was suspended in a state of looking at, looking for, looking towards, her father. Is it telling that this became my existence? Where is he? Where is Daddy? Oh. There he is. Everything’s okay.
And there he was now, talking. I slipped between consciousness and confusion. He offered us food, assuring us we should eat because we were home—we were family. He invited us back before we’d even left while he continued to guide the conversation in what I would learn was his rambling habitual haphazard manner: “How is your mom? Why did you come to find me? Does she know you’re here? And your grandmother? Dead? Oh, man. I’m sorry to hear, she was as a good lady. A good lady man. I had three sisters die in three years and my brother died, you remember, your Uncle Ronny, he died too. He had the AIDS. I was messed up man. That’s my twin brother—I had 13 brothers and sisters—you remember your Uncle Derrick? ‘Member my sister Annette, you know Ann, we went to visit her and your cousin Erica in New York City. What about your Uncle Harry? He alright? And Charlene? How she? You okay? I’m sorry for the past, I can’t change the past but it’s a new day. You a nice young lady. Kevin, he nice too. A nice young man. That’s good. Do you guys like the decoration I put on the door? I just try to keep the place looking nice. Can I call you? I’m glad you came. Now that you back in my life, I’m gonna keep in contact with you. You in school? You always were a smart girl. I know you smart cuz you my daughter, you a Whitaker.”
When we left, I gave my father my cell phone number, but with the start of his late-night drunken-dialing apologies and profuse proclamations of paternal love, I’d be near regretting it. They were all words I’d dreamed of hearing but I hadn’t imagined how foreign they’d actually sound, hadn’t anticipated what it really meant to rekindle an estranged relationship, at times it seemed like filling the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon measure. There is no ending to such a task, just time and hope and the wind blowing all your efforts away. In the 17 years since, I’d found more questions than I had answers; the one that puzzled me the most I’d never know the answer to: What if I hadn’t shown up on his doorstep? What if we remained that way, close enough to touch but still unknown to each other? Afraid to speak. Unfamiliar. Not family. Strangers.