My earliest memory of him was at Toy’s R Us. We were in the aisle and he was asking me what toy I wanted. He said I can choose anything I want. I was mad at him though, I can’t even remember why but it was something he had done the day before. I told him I didn’t want anything from him, my brother left with a brand new Star Wars ship and I left empty handed, satisfied that I could hold out even though I had seen the “My Child” I had wanted so bad and wanted to get. I felt like I had control, like he wanted to buy something to smooth things over with us and by me refusing I didn’t let him win this round.
Then my memory flashes, we are at Johnson’s Farm in the soda aisle. He picks up one of the store brands of clear soda to get for my mom who sent us to the store, I yell at him and tell him the soda she likes is 7-Up. I felt offended he didn’t remember and try to pass of the generic version. A flash again and we are running down the street, my mom is crying and yelling for us so we know where she is at. It is dark and we run into the park. We hide; the three of us huddled in the cold. We hear him looking for us and we are scared. We don’t know what he is going to do and we are scared because we don’t know what he is capable of. I just wish it would stop.
Now that I think over and piece together these memories it is like a jig-saw where the picture is clear but for some reasons the pieces do not fit.
During my adolescence the person I remember is the one who couldn’t ever get it right. In my mind he didn’t care enough to remember, he didn’t care enough to instead of buying our forgiveness, stopping the abuse, of being a father instead of someone whose presence brought misery.
He was 19 when my mom first got pregnant with my brother. They were high school sweet hearts. He came from a broken home and she came from a family who came to the United States from Mexico.
My mother’s parents came here with only the clothes on their backs and seven young children to care for. My mother was the youngest at two years old. It was a house of men, where even though the testosterone was in abundance nothing happened without my grandmother’s approval.
They went from living in their car, to renting a room, to living in the housing projects to owning their own home. The American Dream of all the people left in Mexico where having a roof over your head sometimes meant a cardboard box as a roof. They were hard workers in the truest sense, working together as a unit to get what they needed.
My dad came from parents born here. His mother lived in Texas and moved to California, his father was from San Diego. The pairing was always volatile; my dad after his angry outburst would cry remembering his father’s abuse which happened in front of all the family. I think he wanted us to sympathize with him but it would make me angrier about what he did to us.
All the kids loved my father; to them he was great- larger than life. He was the neighborhood cool guy. He would play with them in the playground. He would cut my cousins hair, give them twenty dollars just because. He was someone they were all able to talk to and feel special and important when their parents wouldn’t. I used to wish the man they knew was my father, and not the man who was subject to paranoid spells and who beat us. I would wonder how he fooled everyone so well. Would they still look at him the same if they knew he beat my brother so badly his skin broke and blood poured out?
Would they want to grow up and be like a man who when his kids were getting out of the car he put his foot on the gas while one leg was about to touch the ground?
My brother adored him and always wanted his love, his acceptance, but I prided myself for not being fooled.
He died when I was nine years old, I felt nothing. My emotions had already grown cold many years before that. My childhood that never really began never had a chance.
Then my memory flashes, we are at Johnson’s Farm in the soda aisle. He picks up one of the store brands of clear soda to get for my mom who sent us to the store, I yell at him and tell him the soda she likes is 7-Up. I felt offended he didn’t remember and try to pass of the generic version. A flash again and we are running down the street, my mom is crying and yelling for us so we know where she is at. It is dark and we run into the park. We hide; the three of us huddled in the cold. We hear him looking for us and we are scared. We don’t know what he is going to do and we are scared because we don’t know what he is capable of. I just wish it would stop.
Now that I think over and piece together these memories it is like a jig-saw where the picture is clear but for some reasons the pieces do not fit.
During my adolescence the person I remember is the one who couldn’t ever get it right. In my mind he didn’t care enough to remember, he didn’t care enough to instead of buying our forgiveness, stopping the abuse, of being a father instead of someone whose presence brought misery.
He was 19 when my mom first got pregnant with my brother. They were high school sweet hearts. He came from a broken home and she came from a family who came to the United States from Mexico.
My mother’s parents came here with only the clothes on their backs and seven young children to care for. My mother was the youngest at two years old. It was a house of men, where even though the testosterone was in abundance nothing happened without my grandmother’s approval.
They went from living in their car, to renting a room, to living in the housing projects to owning their own home. The American Dream of all the people left in Mexico where having a roof over your head sometimes meant a cardboard box as a roof. They were hard workers in the truest sense, working together as a unit to get what they needed.
My dad came from parents born here. His mother lived in Texas and moved to California, his father was from San Diego. The pairing was always volatile; my dad after his angry outburst would cry remembering his father’s abuse which happened in front of all the family. I think he wanted us to sympathize with him but it would make me angrier about what he did to us.
All the kids loved my father; to them he was great- larger than life. He was the neighborhood cool guy. He would play with them in the playground. He would cut my cousins hair, give them twenty dollars just because. He was someone they were all able to talk to and feel special and important when their parents wouldn’t. I used to wish the man they knew was my father, and not the man who was subject to paranoid spells and who beat us. I would wonder how he fooled everyone so well. Would they still look at him the same if they knew he beat my brother so badly his skin broke and blood poured out?
Would they want to grow up and be like a man who when his kids were getting out of the car he put his foot on the gas while one leg was about to touch the ground?
My brother adored him and always wanted his love, his acceptance, but I prided myself for not being fooled.
He died when I was nine years old, I felt nothing. My emotions had already grown cold many years before that. My childhood that never really began never had a chance.