Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  The bad stuff, I say. Sleepy Boy stuff.

  It’s OJ, says my father. Made of oranges, pulpy, sweet, full of vitamin C. He dips his fingers in his glass, flicks some of the juice in my face. See?

  I know better. I know we won’t make it to the music store or share our chicken and rice. I know we will never walk along the shoreline; we won’t bring home shells.

  My father screams at the television. Irene screams with him. Go, Go, Go, Baby, Go!

  I take the half-drunk glass out of his hand and chug the bitter down. It stings my throat, makes my eyes well. I take it down like it’s medicine. I cough.

  My father finally looks at me, forgets the screen. He stabs his Merit into the amber ashtray. He says, What’d you do that for?, shaking me by the shoulders.

  Shirley Temple didn’t come, I say. I was thirsty.

  We look directly into each other’s eyes, and I think, for the first time, we understand one another. My face is on fire, but I try to keep my mouth steady, stern.

  Let’s go, he says, pulling me off the stool by my armpits.

  At home, he locks himself in the bathroom. He doesn’t even watch the rest of the game. I tell my mother he got sick at the restaurant. I tell her it must have been something that we ate.

  VIII.

  We spend every Memorial Day weekend in the Florida Keys for my father’s birthday. I’m twenty-six, and this will be our last year here. Today, on his sixty-eighth birthday, my father is depressed. His emphysema is making his body work too hard to breathe, causing his muscles to shrivel. His body is fragile, all bulging bones, rust-colored scabs, bandages.

  He doesn’t want to go fishing this year. He doesn’t want to go on his boat. He cannot eat seafood for fear of his feet ballooning in a deep-purple gout. He only talks about death and money. He sleeps in the shade all the time, skips meals. He’s barely my father anymore.

  I’m not strong enough, he says, to reel in. I’m an old man but I’m no Santiago.

  I take him to the swimming pool instead. The two of us dip our legs in the water, sit on the lip of the pool. When I think of my father, I think of my heart breaking in stages. A dull pain, then piercing. Electric. Still, somehow, gradual. The way his legs look in this swimming pool today—that’s the first stage of my grief. Even the blue bloat of water doesn’t make them look any stronger, or more capable, than a child’s.

  One thing I’d change, he says, is that I never did teach my daughter to swim.

  IX.

  I am twenty-one, and David and I have broken up for good this time, for real, I promise, swear it, no take backs. In Vegas, I help my father work the shoe booth in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This’ll take your mind off that asshole, he says, but I excuse myself to cry in the convention center bathroom at least once an hour.

  On the final day of the show, when it closes at six P.M., my father hands me a wad of cash. Go out tonight, he says. Treat yourself to a date. Give yourself a time.

  My cousin Tanya rides in the cab with me.

  Why do you need a babysitter? she says.

  I just don’t want to be alone.

  Why has nobody gotten that yet?

  I ask the cab driver to take us to the best of the best. The women. He knows what I mean. Tanya smokes a Marlboro out the window, says, You’re crazy, you know.

  The doormen at the Spearmint Rhino are not used to women. They want to know where our men are, who’s paying. The bouncer scoots us into a small room near the entrance. You sisters? Cousins. Asian Act? Cousins. You coming to take our business? You women are always Take Take Take Take, and I shake my head, I say, No, I say, I am here for the women I am here for the show. We’re sending security near you, he says, to watch you because if you Solicit our fucking Men if you Take them if you are here for our Men there is going to be a Problem do you understand?

  We are not here for your men.

  We are here for the women.

  A security guard leads us to two seats in the front row. We order vodka and orange juice, on the rocks. Clank our glasses. Green lights dart across the stage, the walls.

  Is this what you want? asks Tanya, because you are so fucking funny you know you are so fucking weird how are we related you are so fucking funny this is so gay, you know that?

  Pick one, says Tanya. Pick a girl. I know you want to.

  I can’t choose. Instead, I pull my father’s wad from the pocket of my purse. I lean back in my chair, bend my pointer finger to say, Come here, Come. The women—they grind on my lap and say, You’re cute which man are you with, and I say, Tell me about you, what’s your real name, who are you? I want them to tell the truth, but I want to give them a story.

  How much?

  This much, I say, shaking my father’s cash. I make bills disappear in my left hand and reappear in my right. Oh you got tricks, they say, and I nod.

  The next morning, my father asks me for change.

  I gave you more than I’d meant to, he says. All that money.

  I gave it to the women, I say.

  Have I taught you nothing? he says. Women. Those kinds of women. Don’t ever look them in the eyes.

  X.

  I am twenty-six, visiting my father in Boca. Tonight, he wants us to join his childhood friends for dinner. We used to party together, he says. Me, your mom, and The Couple. They’re my wildest friends; the greatest.

  At dinner, over oysters, The Couple asks me about a boyfriend. Is he handsome? Is he Jewish? Is his mother still alive? Does he eat meat?

  A girlfriend, I say. Hannah.

  Oh.

  But you’re pretty, says The Couple.

  You’ve done so much for yourself. So much going your way.

  I’m in love. That’s all I ever did.

  No children for you then, says The Couple. No child should be fatherless. No man will ever love a fatherless girl. She won’t know how to treat him right. How to rub a man’s feet.

  In the car ride home, my father apologizes on behalf of The Couple, his oldest friends.

  No friends of mine, he says. Not anymore. Out.

  Why? I ask. Don’t you feel the same about her?

  If anyone is ever going to make my daughter cry, he says, It’d ought to be me.

  XI.

  I’m twenty-seven when it happens: my mother clasps my father’s gold-chain necklace around his wrist wrappings—the necklace my grandfather once gave him. The chain feels cold to the touch, heavy, like a fistful of snow. When the doctor removes the tubes from his trach, my mother and I lift the blanket all the way up to his chin, pulling his arms out and over it. With his new shave, no snakes of plastic, he looks honorable, handsome even. Like he’s been napping all this time. I hold the seashell of his hand, and my brothers, mother, and I plead with him, Let go. You’re safe. We watch the colors—lips parting indigo, the rush of grays and blues through the square patches of visible skin, red eyelids of a pigeon. And then it happens. It happens as quiet as that. The doctor, a flash in the eye. A nod. That.

  My brothers clear the room, and I hold my father’s body like a child, like he needs me, wrapping his slumped arms around my shoulders. Here and here and here you are, mine, you were something that was mine. My mother unclasps the necklace.

  XII.

  In grief, I try to become my father. My own body is not enough. I am too small for my sadness. I wear my father’s striped T-shirts, his socks, even his underwear, rolled up at the yellowed elastic. I scrub my gums with his toothbrush. Spit blood. I take shots off his inhaler and wait for the rush of life. I even watch action films—karate movies, explosions, skull splatters in Italian restaurants—and replay the most violent parts.

  My mother charges his cell phone every night. She uses it to call me sometimes, and swears this is a mistake. Whenever his name appears on my screen, I am hopeful. He could be on the other line this time; he could be getting through.

  Hi, Daddy, I say.

  I’m sorry, she says, hanging up.

  Ghosts are better th
an nothing. Ghosts move. They want things. To haunt each other, then, is a way for my mother and I to keep him. He is more than a voice in the walls, a Ouija board movement, an iridescent cloud in the dark; he can exist here, inside us, through possession. We do our best to play the roles. Our own bodies are not big enough.

  Falling in love with someone, I think, is at least like that.

  XIII.

  I’m seventeen, unpacking in my dorm room in New York City. I’ve moved here to be closer to my dad. I want to walk his streets, eat his favorite pastrami, try on a new relationship with him.

  Well, he says, let’s start with a movie. Ten thirty tomorrow morning?

  Ten thirty? I ask. On a Saturday?

  Better seats this way, he says.

  Okay, it’s a date.

  My father is thirty minutes early to the movie. I am ten minutes early, and he tells me I am late. I’m gonna teach you two things about life, he says. You better listen, he says.

  1. Early is On Time.

  2. Always be early.

  We share popcorn, wedge it between our cushions. We watch Little Miss Sunshine. I keep my legs propped up on my seat, bend them until they’re numb. People in Florida have told me rats run around the theater floors here, gnawing on your shoelaces, your leftover snacks. My father shakes his legs incessantly, taps his loafers. He chews and clicks his teeth in loud smacks. I tell him to keep it down, and he elbows me, reminds me that there’s nobody else in the theater. In the dark, with the light on his face, he looks the happiest he’s ever looked. His face is relaxed, his mouth slightly open in awe. He gives my hand three quick squeezes.

  I walk him home after the movie. Years from now, this is the part I will miss most. It’s never about the movies themselves—I don’t even remember them—it’s about the credits rolling, our eyes adjusting to the world outside, his leather jacket leaning against the ticket booth, the walk. We pick up drooping slices of pizza and let the oil run down our chins as we make our way to Second Avenue. Soon, so soon, my father will not be able to use his legs like this. He’ll take a car to meet me those few blocks away, and then to go home. But right now he does, he makes it, and I do, too. We make our Saturday morning movie for nine more years. We are always on time.

  PART III

  TELL THE WOMEN I’M LONELY

  KULEANA

  The past is never where you think you left it.

  —Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

  WINTER, 2016

  PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  What we do is burn things. A Chinese New Year family tradition since before I was born—we write lists of burdens, toxins, enemies, vices, we place the strips of paper in a bowl, and we burn them. We watch our words shrivel and dissolve like a slug under salt. We burn things for luck. We burn things to move on. We burn things just to watch them burn.

  I am writing my lists today. It is the year of the monkey. When I get the call from my mother, it’s snowing. The whole world is the thin color of skim milk.

  Hello?

  A siren whines out behind her voice. A scream.

  The house, she says. It’s gone.

  What house? What do you mean?

  I lit the candle, says my mother. The one by his urn. For the New Year.

  The flame caught the drapes, she says, or the match caught the basket. I don’t know.

  I am standing in the center of a parking lot. I am wearing red, for luck. It’s the new year, after all. I force myself to remember the facts: I am standing in a parking lot in New Hampshire. I am alive. My mother is alive. My father is dead. My mother is in Florida. She is right here, on the phone. Something has happened.

  What’s happened? I say.

  Grandma Mei Mei and I are fine, she says. Just burned some hair. It’s just hair.

  That’s good, I say.

  But the house, she says. It’s gone. I need you to understand that.

  Later that day, I begin a mental catalog of everything in that house. Boxes of photographs, yellowed horse ribbons, diaries, magic kits, dried-up nail polishes. My homecoming crown. My stuffed tiger, Tia. My mother’s wedding dress. My father’s leather loafers. His couch—my father’s couch. His sports jackets, his backscratchers, his Yankees cap, that couch. My father. My mother’s Hawaiian blanket, her crystal bonsai trees, her childhood jeans. The Spot on the floor—The Spot will be gone. This brings me some relief. I will never have to see The Spot again.

  I tell my mother to get on a plane. Come meet me here, I say. No fires here.

  Okay, she says. I have nowhere else to go.

  That night, I prop wood in a pyramid in my fireplace. I stuff papers underneath—old manuscripts, receipts, napkins—before grinding the match. I watch the flames flick purple, then gold.

  Home, I write on my Chinese New Year list. I circle it three times. Wad it up and toss it.

  SPRING, 1971

  KAILUA, OAHU, HAWAI‘I

  I’m not here.

  My mother, Lokelani, is the oldest of four children. She’s a good girl, eleven years old, punahele of the family, hiapo, the tiniest frame. Her sister Tao, my Auntie T, is one year younger than my mother, a stocky little thing, and the two sisters don’t like each other much—not yet. My mother is the favorite—bright in the eyes, she works hard in school—and little Tao steals her jeans to hem them several inches so that they hit my mother above the ankle; she’s jealous of her older sister. The two of them tend to two younger brothers, Makoa and Kai, but brothers are not a part of this story. Not yet, anyway. First, I want to tell you a story about sisters.

  The children live on Puolo Street in Kailua, Oahu. They wear bathing suits beneath their clothing to school—Enchanted Lakes Elementary—no shoes, never. They learn to hula with the proper bend at the knees. They roast pigs with their tūtū and toss hunks of meat into the mouths of volcanoes—an offering to Pele, the fire goddess. The only house on the block with a pool and a slide, a boat out back, the children swing on banyan vines and play Gilligan’s Island in the red fizz of late afternoons, throwing the rocks from their yard at the neighbor’s fence.

  They perform their own Hawaiian Partridge Family songs at night. Scraped knees, matching floral prints; they harmonize. Their parents applaud them, proud, beautiful, this family act, the American dream.

  Sure, there are fights. Whose idea was it to wax their father’s boat? Whose idea was it to push so hard, to use the wrong kind of wax, that white putty that clouded the boat a permanent pink? A Pepto-Bismol pink, my mother thinks, she is obsessed with the thought—It was Tao’s fault—and so she feeds the chalky tablets to her younger sister—It’s candy, good for you!—until the whole bottle is empty, until Tao’s stomach must be pumped.

  When the children scream at one another, they are hung in burlap potato sacks from the mango trees in the yard. Their skin matches the color of the sacks, and the snaggly fabric tears at their armpits. Their whole bodies itch. The siblings swing there until the sun comes up, until they make good on what they’ve done.

  Or, let’s move to the father. My grandfather, Al, who bought what he has named the Frustration Release paddle, a sleek leather body to it, a rope on the end. The children line up outside the bathroom door, oldest to youngest, waiting for their turn. Al sits on the toilet seat, pulls each of them over his lap, thwacking them until they understand. My mother apologizes right away, she is the punahele, after all, she is always let go, but her sister will not cry, will not budge, will not be sorry, not ever, I don’t even feel it, and so the boys rarely ever get their turn.

  In one of my earliest memories of my grandfather, he is about to drive me and my cousins, Tao’s children—Teagan and Tanya—to dinner in Plantation, Florida. We’re in matching sunflower dresses; it’s the weekend of his birthday. I like it when we match like this, because people are less likely to point me out as the child who does not fit with these two beautiful girls—the cousin, not a sister. My grandfather slams the car door once we’re all buckled in, but Tanya’s hand is not
inside the car yet, not all the way, and her finger crunches in the aluminum jaw of it. She screams out, Please! Help!, her face a raisin, tears and spit and a pitch so high it vibrates the air inside, but my grandfather does not move, there is no release, his face is stern outside the car window, his silver ponytail shining. Embrace your pain, he says, and stop crying. Teagan and I hold her other hand. By now, we are almost crying, too. Calm down, we say, or think—I can’t be sure now—keep it together. Tanya tugs in her lip. Gasps for deeper breaths. She steadies her face, somehow, she does, before my grandfather opens the door.

  But Tanya’s mother, Tao, doesn’t give her father what he wants. She is different, here in the bathroom in 1971, just a child, I don’t even feel it, the paddle coming down harder. My mother waits outside the door, listening, the burn beneath her own pants, the warmer spots; she touches the places where she will bruise. She’s on a plane in her mind, my mother, a flight attendant, getting off this rock in the ocean, so far from this bathroom, the line of light beneath this door, Tao’s voice screaming, I still don’t feel it!

  FALL, 2015

  ATLANTIC BEACH, NEW YORK

  Before my father’s funeral, in my parents’ bedroom on the beach, I ask my mother about that old mannequin, Uncle Nuke. I am blow-drying a pair of blue suede shoes to help the leather stretch, to fit my feet into them, when I ask her how she ever got rid of him. Where. She can’t remember, not now.

  I wish I could talk to him again, I tell my mother. We pull our funeral dresses over our heads—white and silk. She places a purple lei of orchids over my shoulders, kisses me on each cheek, and I do the same for her. I think we look too young for this.

  Should we order some pizza for after the service? she asks. How many people are staying over?

  Did you take him to a dump? I want to know.

  Are your brothers staying over?

  I wish I could know what Uncle Nuke remembers.

  Why? she says. Is today really the day for this?

  If I were giving the eulogy, I would say, “My family began with a mannequin.”