Jalondra Davis, Daddy Page 2
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For as far back as I can remember, there has been something wrong. We are not anything like the Cosbys, the Winslows. Daddy blows bubbles on my stomach like Cliff Huxtable did on Rudy’s sometimes, but he doesn’t always come home. He and Mommy don’t talk like that, all smoothness and playful laughter. There is no slow, affectionate choreography on the foyer’s cool, clean hardwood floors. There are late night trips to fetch Daddy from Uncle Greg’s dookey green house on Main and 111th, where hard-living looking men and women drink from large brown bottles and laugh too loudly in the grassless front yard. I sit on my knees in the backseat and cry with my face pressed against the window, knowing my crying is part of the script, that my confused and snotty face is a special effect to accompany my mother’s torrent of cussing and accusations. This is so Daddy will come home, so he will give us money for groceries, for the kind of cereal I like, so he will sit in his sagging recliner and watch TV while I play tickle monster with his stinky feet.
Words and images I didn’t understand but somehow understood became a part of my consciousness before I was ten. I am just learning their actual meanings now:
The rumbling in the hallway while a girl from school and I played Barbies, after my mother ran in breathlessly and told us to lock the door.
