![\"dear-father\"](\"http:\/\/theangryblackwoman.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/icons\/nisishawl.jpg\")
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Today is Father’s Day.\u00a0 So I called my mother.<\/p>\n
My mother mostly raised\u00a0me and my two\u00a0younger sisters\u00a0by herself.\u00a0 Dad divorced us when I was eight years old.\u00a0 He moved to a town\u00a0half an hour\u00a0away, and I rarely saw him, despite promised weekend visits.\u00a0 The Friend of the Court assessed him $35 a week child support.\u00a0 He didn’t pay it.<\/p>\n
My mother had a few boyfriends, but up till I\u00a0went to high school at the age of 15,\u00a0none of them seemed interested in marrying her and instantly acquiring three daughters.\u00a0 So she supported us on her own.\u00a0 At one point she held two jobs and went to school.\u00a0 I don’t know how.<\/p>\n
My mother had risen through the ranks of the Michigan Employment Security Commission, from part-time switchboard operator to Executive Vice President, before she married my stepfather.\u00a0 He wasn’t worthy of her, and he knew it, and he beat her.<\/p>\n
But that’s another story, and besides, he’s dead.\u00a0 Long ago.<\/p>\n
We’re talking about today.\u00a0 Father’s Day.\u00a0 I called my mom.<\/p>\n
My dad answered\u00a0her phone.<\/p>\n
My dad was visiting my mom.\u00a0 Dad’s on his fourth wife now, a school teacher exactly my age who was out of the state today, taking care of a crisis in her family, so Dad was visiting his.\u00a0 My mom saw my number on her cell and handed him the phone.\u00a0 She has always done her best to facilitate relations between Dad and us girls.\u00a0 Probably why she never sued him for child support.<\/p>\n
“Hi, Dad,” I said.\u00a0 “Hope you’re having a good day.\u00a0 I love you.”\u00a0 (Translation: “If you like.\u00a0 I’ve been cornholed.” Yes, years have passed since Dad fell off the worthy-of-my-anger list.\u00a0 Smile and nod, smile and nod.\u00a0 Less effort that way.)<\/p>\n
I’ve seen pictures of my dad as a teenager that I thought were of me.\u00a0 I go by “Nisi,” but the name I was born with was “Denise.”\u00a0 My dad’s name is Dennis.\u00a0 My name was his, feminized, and before the divorce I was Daddy’s girl.\u00a0 Afterwards, well….<\/p>\n
I did write him a poem.\u00a0 Like to hear it?\u00a0 Here it go:<\/p>\n
Dear Father<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m supposed to hold a job? \u00a0I’m supposed to report and record my impulsions Wrote that back in 1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thing is, I know I’m not the only woman in the world with an absent father.\u00a0 My housemate, for one.\u00a0 Holla if you another.<\/p>\n My father’s father left him<\/strong> when he<\/strong> was quite young, see.\u00a0 I figure that’s part of how he became as hopeless at loving me as he is.\u00a0 My father’s father, Vandeleur, moved to Ohio from Michigan and passed as white.\u00a0 Broken, broken, our lineage is a broken thing, like a thin and brittle\u00a0stick.<\/p>\n Can anger be sad?\u00a0 Can anger be dry?\u00a0 Can anger be charcoal?\u00a0 Can it burn twice?<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0I’m supposed to tie my body
\n\u00a0to your iron clock,
\ndragged round by the axe-hands,
\n\u00a0cutting me off in pieces,
\nminute by minute?<\/p>\n
\nfor your
\n\u00a0leisured appraisal?
\nI write one word a day.
\nGuns.\u00a0 Color.\u00a0 Voodoo.
\n\u00a0Yippee-yi-yo-ti-yay!<\/p>\nAnd now a word from our sponsor…<\/h4>\n
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