Dad’s relationship with my brother and sister is quite different from mine. With Terry it is hit-and-miss. Sometimes she seems friendly and sometimes not. She has her own agenda and friends—and she keeps them hidden. She is only a little more than a year younger than me, but it makes all the difference in the world. At times she sits at the table with Dad and me, taking tokes from a joint and watching him make his plans as he studies his playing cards. Consumed with the constant worry of surviving in our neighborhood, Terry doesn’t seem much interested in the stories Dad tells. Some of his adventures catch her attention, but mostly she is relieved that his presence takes the pressure off of Mom’s angry control over her.
She is always on guard, concerned about who will try to fight her next. She is also proud of her strength. One afternoon, while Dad sits playing solitaire at the dining room table, we happen to glance out the window. There looms Terry facing two Cuban girls from the block. Quickly Dad and I stand at the glass to watch and although we can’t hear what they are saying, we can tell it is a confrontation. In an instant, she throws a hard punch that lands right between the eyes of one girl’s face. I race to the front door, swing it open with a bang against the wall, and run to help my sister. I can hear Dad pound on the window yelling for them to knock it off, but when I arrive, it is only in time to see them scramble out from under Terry’s flying punches. Heart pumping and fists balled tight, I barely have time to pick up a rock and throw it after the fleeing girls warning them not to ever come back. I look at my sister, her face and arms red as she tries to catch her breath, and shake my head in disbelief.
“Damn, Terry! How the hell did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, huffing and puffing for air. “I just fucking did it.” I can see the waves of adrenaline wash over her face. Dad quickly appears.
“Niiice,” he says admiringly, rubbing her shoulder. “Now that’s a Schiller for ya. That’s a Schiller. They’ll think twice before trying that again, eh, Ter?”
Terry stands, swollen with pride, and comes down from the rush. She answers with a threat, “They’d better, Dad!” At fourteen she is the toughest girl on the block. That day she is also the proudest.
My brother, Wayne, is never around. He is a typical boy who loves spiders and snakes, exploring, and setting things on fire. (Well, maybe he’s not so typical.) He likes fishing in the local canals and comes home with mud puppies as the “catch of the day.” “You can’t eat those—they don’t have any eyes!” my sister and I shriek as he chases us around the house trying to touch us with their slimy skin.
Wayne doesn’t know what to say to a father who has been gone since he was four. He is eleven now and has only vague memories of Dad. Still believing Mom’s interpretation of things, he is cautious and spends his time getting to know Dad in a shy, subtle way. He pops his head in at the table from time to time watching Dad’s habitual card playing with uncertain interest, but he gets bored easily. He isn’t into smoking pot and doesn’t like seeing me get high. Bothered by Dad’s lack of attention to him, he likes to slip out of sight without a word, get his snake, “Queen,” from his room, sneak back in, and egg her up my leg from under the table.
“Quit it!” I squeal, annoyed at his prank.
“No,” he dares and tries to get Dad to notice his pet snake. He makes a face at me to poke fun of my smoking pot like I’m cool.
“Come on now… let’s not play around,” Dad tells him. “What do you got there?”
Slowly, Wayne pops his head up from under the table and brings Queen into the light. “Let me see. What’s that?” Dad asks, feigning interest. Wayne is thrilled that he has his father’s attention, and he hands him the snake with a big grin.
“It’s a boa constrictor,” Wayne explains excitedly. “And they live around here. They’ll squeeze you to death!”
“Cool. Uh. That’s nice, Wayne.” Dad smiles approvingly.
Wayne beams and dashes from the room to gather the rest of his reptile collection. Dad holds on to Queen awkwardly, and to his dismay Wayne returns to show off all of the slithery friends that he has hidden throughout the house. From that point on my brother spends most of his time catching bigger and creepier pets to display for Dad’s approval, always getting the same dull interest from Dad and relishing every bit of it.
Dad wants to keep everything as even-keeled as possible. He wants out of his marriage with Mom and figures that the less he says, the better off he is. Although he trusts me with bits and pieces of his past, and feels pretty good that I am his one captive audience, he still seems nervous that I might go to Mom with his secrets. He knows how hard it is for her to accept the divorce. She believes they should stay together, at least for us children, but now that the split up is inevitable, all she can do is hide her feelings of failure and try to seem friendly. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy, even though it looks like she will take the blame anyway. Dad knows this too.
The divorce process, once the terms are agreed on, takes about six weeks. In the days after initially filing the papers, Mom and Dad sit down with us children. “We have something serious we need to talk to you about,” my father announces.
The three of us line up in front of the couch, silent and not making eye contact.
“Well, you know that your mom and I are divorcing, right?”
“Uh-huh,” we mumble.
“Well, the thing is… Well, um, you kids are going to have to choose which one of us you want to go with, uh, as your guardian,” he explains clumsily.
Wow! I haven’t thought of that. I haven’t thought at all that I would have any say in the direction of my life. Dad is definitely cool. He is mellow and doesn’t like to fight. He has traveled all over Asia and has been on great adventures. He understands how I feel and likes the things I do. He is teaching me new things about faraway and exotic lands, and I want to see the beautiful places he talks about. He lets me make my own decisions, and just as my mother suspects, he looks like a good guy to me. I never blame him for leaving us and not coming back. Instead, I believe his stories of being unjustly thrown in a Thai jail and am impressed with his survival of the ordeal. I am in awe of all the things he has done and look up to him with the unconditional love of a daughter.
It doesn’t take me long to pick Dad. It doesn’t take long for my sister to pick Dad too. My mother’s heart sinks. The look in her eyes is that of deep hurt and pain, but her face quickly changes to an angered mask. I don’t understand her reaction. She will be happy to not have us as a burden anymore, I say to myself, and with Dad’s help, I chalk up her attitude to her bad-tempered personality.
“Vell,” she snaps, “vat about you, Vayne?”
“I… uh… I.” My brother’s head hangs down. He is obviously uncomfortable with the spotlight. “I… don’t know,” he answers in a barely audible voice. He sounds small and confused. He wants to connect with his dad, the other man in the family, but at the same time, embarrassingly, he is still young enough to want his mom. As tough as we all think we are, he is only eleven years old. I feel bad for him. I can see it is tearing him apart, and I want to hug him and convince him to come with us.
“Vell, who do you pick, Vayne?” Mom insists, “Me or your fater?”
His face turns red. Backed into an emotional corner he quickly responds, “You, Mom, you!” A flood of tears streams down his face, and he bursts down the hallway to his room. The door slams shut behind him, shaking the decorative plates that hang from the paneled walls. Dad cringes, slips his hands into his pockets, and turns away to glance out of the dining room window while Mom puffs up her small frame, looking strangely triumphant. She gives my sister and I each an icy stare, turns on her heel, and storms out of the house. Bam! She slams the door louder than my young brother’s earlier attempt, enough to make the cement walls quake, and wordlessly declares herself the unsuccessful winner of our family’s pain.