On a cold, rainy January afternoon this past year, my father was in the car with me. My child in the back. We are driving to fetch a new dishwasher. A present to me from the man who calls himself, “Daddy.”
Son is eating M&M’s, a treat from the store, and playing with my phone. The conversation turns to the past. I thank my dad for the dishwasher. How it’s nice to see him and it’s so hard at the same time. I went through a lot of shit, and he left me there.
My father gets defensive. Starts to defend his actions and cross-examine my motives as a child. I had none. He was my Dad and he left. Period. He continues,
“Well, did your brother ever penetrate you? I mean, kids sometimes fool around, it doesn’t make it abuse.”
I am furious. And panicking. I try not to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill us all on the spot.
I growl in a low voice the truth. And to not talk about this here. My God.
What I don’t say is,
How. Dare. You.
He later coos to me about how I had only “crawled into Daddy’s lap and told him, he would’ve taken care of it.”
That creeped me out.
Months pass.
After he ignored my repeated requests for help with the kids during Hank’s recovery, I told him I was sick of the part-time father. To think of the context of the abuse, the abandonment, the lack of truthful communication… And what that must mean to me. His response, “You have lost all of your other family! And yet you still bite the one hand that feeds you! I will not stand for your impertinence.”
You want to talk impertinence?
Let’s talk about what I have learned:
My father is a predator.
He preyed on his little sister.
This is something my mother was told, years before I was born, when my brother was a baby. This was something my paternal grandmother knew about. Let’s not forget that victim, my aunt, who also went on to allow us unchecked in that family. She let her daughter be victimized by the step-father, as well.
My father is a child molester.
And this is why.
All of my unanswered questions have been solved.
And I have never been so ashamed of my family.
Where does it all bottom out? Where does the pain start?
I don’t know.
But I do have a road map from here.
And I do know where my children and I are going.
We are as good as gone.
