Daddy--

Last night, in the back of the cab, after speaking to the man I am dating about my father's illness, he noted that I am seem very angry at my parents. I felt bad. I think I know what he sees. An ungrateful, attractive, well-educated middle class Jewish girl who is complaining about nothing. How do I explain to someone I've only known a month how much I have hated my dying father in the past?

Tonight, while I lay in bed trying to sleep, my mind races as I continue to wonder what I can say to him. I can barely explain it to people I've known for years and I still struggle to even explain it to my therapist. It's bizarre. In general, I cannot remember most of the incidents or the details, but instead, I have a powerful visceral memory of that time in my life. I remember feeling his absence, both physical and emotional. I remember the tension of the times when he was home. I remember nightly arguments between him and my mother--but aside from money or dinner being ready, I can no longer recall the subject matter.

I remember him flipping the dinner table over and telling us to all go fuck ourselves, and I remember him throwing a dish full of food in the garbage. I remember him locking my brother in the garage once, and outside once, late at night in the cold. My brother had to have a neighbor call our house to let him in.

I remember one day when my father chased my brother to his room, and beat him with his whole forearm and fist while my brother cowered between his bed and the woodpanelled wall.

I remember never being able to reach him, I remember him not listening to me when I desperately I tried to reason with him. I remember it making me feel powerless and crazy.

I remember him telling me I looked like a prostitute when I wore bright lipstick.

I remember him taking all of my ankh jewelry, back when that whole Egyptian thing was in, and threatening to throw them out the window when we were on vacation. I remember him trying to force-feed me meat.

I remember loving and admiring my mother unconditionally and wishing we'd leave him. I remember asking her why she didn't and her pathetic reply "because no one else will ever love me."

The two worst memories I have, in ascending order, are one summer night in during my high school years when I wanted to go out with a friend, and a horrible fall day while I was working on a science project.

The first incident, on a rare occasion of socialization, my friend had invited me to join her and her friends at some chain restaurant near a mall, and I was dressed in the short tight skirt and stockings, big gold earrings and crinkly hair that were so popular at the time. My father caught sight of me about five minutes before my friend arrived and forbade me from leaving the house. He chastized me for being dressed that way to go "a bar" to hang out with a bunch of "niggers." I tried to run out of the house to meet my friend at her car, but there was a terrible moment of
struggle--he never hit me--which has created a sick craving I have to this day--but roughly restrained me against the cold screen door. My father, while not a large man, is extremely, scarily strong. I will never forget the feeling of his one hand around both of my wrists and not being able to move. For some reason, I also have some memory that he said the word nigger and my friends heard, but that may not be true. I do know that he yelled at them and told them to leave, and I felt so completely defeated and humiliated. I remember crying like I'd never cried before and crouching in the dirt on the side of the steps thinking, what doesn't kill me will make me stronger, and that my experiences have to be used for good because, if not, the pain of going through them served no purpose.

The worst scenario I remember in even less detail, all I can really remember was my father helping me with the lettering on my science project about alternatives to animal dissection in the basement my sophomore year. Much as today, asking him for help rarely ends up being helpful at all. Everything must be done according to his terms and conditions, and if I deter from them, he yells and insults me. I always end up hurt and feeling sorry that I'd ever asked. On that particular day, likely because of the time constraint of the project being due the next day, he was extremely agitated. I don't remember what triggered it exactly, but at some point he began yelling at my brother, and we somehow ended up upstairs with my
brother barricading himself in the bathroom. My father was yelling and pounding on the door while my mother and I stood there panicking. My father may have said he'd "kill that asshole" or something along those lines, but honestly, I don't remember. He continued yelling and pounding, and my mother was begging him to stop and leave my brother alone, and when he wouldn't my mother went into their bedroom and tried to open the bottom drawer of the nightstand where he kept one of his guns. Although I had hated him so much for so long and maybe even had some of my own ideations of killing him, I knew that I could not let whatever was about to happen happen. I twisted and pried my mother's arm from the drawer. The only other thing I remember from that day was going to the hospital, and that I'd sprained my own mother's wrist and that she is told me not to tell the triage people how it really happened.

I also remember calling my friend perfect, beautiful and "normal" friend Karen later that day because I needed someone to talk to but she really didn't listen or didn't care. From that moment on, I've always felt like I could never tell anyone about my family and that and no one would ever be willing to even try to understand.

Tonight, while remembering these things, and the sometime wish for people who know me to "get it," my heart started to pound. It felt like someone was pulling on and twisting the organ in their fist. I started to cry but then stopped myself because I felt like if I really let go, I will never be able to stop.

I always feel like, aside from those memories, there is nothing so terrible that he said or did, but I do remember sometimes feeling like someday, someone would be talking to the newspapers about our family after my father killed all of us and stuffed us in the washing machine or something, and say, "but they seemed like such a nice family!"

The anger, though mostly focused on my father, is also about the side effects of his cruelty and unhappiness. From my mother, to my brother, to me--the scapegoat, who, although I escaped the brunt of his physical anger, received the trickledown vicious taunts and humiliation from my brother, who used to tell me he wished I'd get raped and once, laughingly with a friend, spit all over me--and the indifference of my mother who could of done something but did not...When I think about those nights, compounded with my social and intellectual isolation, and the daily barrage of prejudice and hate from my black schoolmates, and teachers, and community--which I was barely strong enough to deflect--I feel sorry for that little girl, but in a distant way, as though she were seperate from me, and yet it still feels too difficult to bear.

Sometimes I feel like I should be proud of what I've been through, and how strong I seem I've become. But it's hard when no one knows but me and thinks I've had it so easy and they have no idea why I feel like I started from less than zero.

Oh, also--it's only in allusion to Ms. Plath that I named this post "Daddy." I was never allowed to call him that, not even Dad. Only his name.