Recovering memories from six feet under.
In all of my twenty years, not once have I ever seen my mother near alcohol. Whether it was parties, holidays, or any other celebratory events, she’s always politely declined. Which is why I was more than a little surprised (and worried shitless) when she decided to buy herself some white wine the other night and get herself piss drunk. At first she was fine, taking a few test sips here and there while commenting on the lite taste and crisp aroma, then almost minutes later, she somehow managed to down the entire bottle and gradually succumbed to the effects of inebriation. Turns out, my mother’s a giggly drunk. Meaning, getting her to bed was a simple task, but getting her to actually sleep was a whole other challenge. She kept muttering gibberish the way Japanese tourists speak Nihongo (Japanese language) to me expecting me to understand when in actuality, I do not. Then she conked out and I went back to finishing up some night class assignments.
When I finally managed to complete everything, I went to bed. But before I managed to hit the sheets, the stench of booze permeated my senses and before I knew it, I was assaulted by a childhood memory so long forgotten that it was a wonder how just the mere rancidness of my mother’s drunkenness had uncovered it at all. Suddenly, I was no longer in my bed across from my unconscious mother in our tiny, cramped apartment, nor was I staring at the darkened popcorn ceiling as I attempted to find some rest. I was a third-grader, at my paternal grandmother’s house, sitting on one of the miniature couch chairs my father had gotten my cousin and I for Christmas. I was as angry as a young child could be at that tender age, as I faced off against the three adults in the living room: my grandmother who sat on the large three-seat couch, my father who alternated between sitting across from me and standing against the wall, and his then-girlfriend Nani, who stood against the wall directly across from me in a slinky black dress, arms crossed with a smirk etched on her fucking face.
I can’t quite remember all the details as this was a memory that had taken place twelve years ago, but I remember waiting for my father to pick me up and take me home as I waited with my grandmother. And when he showed up with his girlfriend who I had disliked from the moment I met her (this was not simply jealousy on my part, my father had a fondness for filthy Korean bar girls and this woman happened to be one of them but far more vile than anyone I’d met), I snapped. Initially, I think my father was supposed to take me out to the arcade so we could play as we usually did, and somehow she had ended up tagging along with my father and plans were changed. That, as well as the concoction of ill feelings that had stirred within me for the past how many months that they’d been dating, had just began seeping out of me like bile, and I couldn’t stop it. I was yelling and screaming at my father about how much I hated that woman, and how all she ever did was create discord amongst us as well as bleed him dry. But instead of understanding, I received backlash from my grandmother as she ripped me apart with words that could even cut through a naïve youngster as myself, as my father silently stood to the side with Nani rubbing his arm as she played the role of a “victim.” But it wasn’t those words that had broken my spirit, it was the look that was shared between my father and his girlfriend, one that I still can’t quite clearly decipher today, but can only explain as sheer abandonment. Then he stood and moved to the other room as Nani looked me in the eye, knowing she’d won. I lowered my head and stared at the carpet, anger still burning my little broken heart and loneliness creeping up my spine. When my father returned he asked what I wanted to do, so I told him the only thing I could: I wanted to go home. With my head still down and my father promising Nani he’d be back to get her soon, we made our way to his car and started towards home (my home).
It was the queerest drive I ever spent with my father behind the wheel. We neither spoke to each other nor acknowledged one another, the tension within the car so thick you could basically see the mental barriers between us. The radio station Oldies 107.9 who usually accompanied us on our journeys with tunes by Nancy Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Drifters, The Beatles, The Diamonds, Paul Anka, and the like, were unnoticeably absent, the lights along the freeway brighter than stars in the country side as we easily maneuvered through the roads that night. It seemed like hours ‘till we finally pulled up to my mother’s and when we did, we just sat, silently, in the car. My father didn’t take the keys out of the ignition and let the engine run, but his hands slid off the wheel. I didn’t open the passenger door and enter the confines of what became my only safe haven. I don’t know what my father’s reasons were (or if he had any), but I remember not leaving the car because I wanted him to say something to me. Anything, it didn’t matter as long as words were spoken because it would be all right. But as the minutes began to expand, I realized he wasn’t going to say anything, so I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the door, pushed it closed, and walked straight into the garage door and into the house, not once looking back.
For a week, my mother continued to ask me what had happened as her usually exuberant daughter had turned mute overnight. She persisted and persisted but got nothing out of me. Then my father called a week later, and asked my mother to pass me the phone so that he could speak to me. I refused, and after my mother had gotten off the phone, I adamantly told her I no longer wanted to speak to my father. My mother conveyed that message on another one of his calls, and for a year, I had no contact with my father. No phone call, no beeper message, no letter, no visit. It’s what I wanted, and yet I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the relationship between my father and I could no longer be the same.
I replayed that memory until I suffocated from it, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my father had remembered it too when he began apologizing to me at the hospital before his death last year. And I couldn’t help but think that our relationship was always one filled with unspoken words, and lingering vacancies, a raincloud of depression that followed us ceaselessly ‘till we were saturated to the core.
