Excerpt from Memoire: What Barbie Wanted
by DP
For three weeks before school let out for the summer, I would come home to find mother
with the bedroom windows open. The breeze coming in only made the musky aroma of sweat
stronger as it flowed through the messy bed sheets. For a woman who prided herself on vanity
and tried to be as put together as Marilyn Monroe, she appeared to have unraveled from the time
I left for school each morning to the time I arrived back home by 2:15 p.m. Her golden locks
which she routinely made sure were prim and proper each day, just as she made sure mine were,
had all fallen down. Her Jackie Kennedy-esque dresses that she wore Monday through Friday
were nowhere to be seen. Instead she was stripped down to her satin slip.
“Oh, darling. Why don’t you listen? After you get home from school, you go to
the kitchen and eat the snacks Mamie’s made for you.”
Almost every day for those few weeks, she would tell me that, and almost every time that
she did, I did the opposite. A part of my nine-year-old self wanted to catch her doing
something... anything. I just couldn’t put my finger on what. She was hardly ever around
anymore to spend quality time with me. When I didn't catch her in her bedroom, she would
usually be on her way out to the high-end social clubs that anybody who was somebody at the
time would hang out in. She would ask Mamie to stay a little longer because she’d be late
getting home. Mother would poke her lip out and clasp her hands together and say,
“Just stay with her until 8:30, would you? You know I’ll make it up to you.”
“Now you know it ain’t no problem Mrs. Campbell,” Mamie would always
respond. “You just gon ahead about your business and me and Miss Barbara will have us a
good ol time.”
Mother would then get down on her knees and speak to me in her most often-
used mendacious tone and plead.
“Barbie, please don’t be mad at mommy. I’ll be back in time to read you a night story.
How about Snow White or the one about that pitiful cracked egg?”
After she had satisfied her own conscience, Mother never stuck around to hear if I was
mad or not. She would just flip down her cat-style black framed sunglasses, grab her purse,
and wait for Mamie to open the door so she could brisk out unscathed from whatever she was
afraid of me saying.
And just like that, it was summertime. Daddy was finally back from his
overseas business trip, and together, him and Mother were acting so peculiar. It was almost
like Mother was allergic to Daddy. Whenever he’d walk into a room, she’d find an excuse to
leave, and whenever she was in a room, Daddy would find an excuse to be there. I had had
enough of the strangeness and decided to occupy my time with the neighborhood girls. I
calculatedly stayed over longer than our playdates were set up for, and their mothers always
ended up insisting I join them for dinner, which I eagerly accepted. This went on until Daddy
decided to let Mamie go on vacation for the summertime. He began to tell Mother and I how
he wanted us all to spend time together as a family. He often reminisced on how I would
usually be so eager to share my thoughts with him, but little did he know his absence left me
exhausted of drawing pictures that he wouldn’t be able to take notice of until he arrived back
from his business trips, and the stories about my falling out with my Girl Scout friends,
Patricia and Sally, had become old news. It seems that Daddy was of no use to me when he
was available. I was more concerned with wanting Mommy to see me as she had before her
distant and anomalous behavior ate her up.
Day after day, Daddy planned what was supposed to be fun outings for the three of us,
but Mommy ignored Daddy even more than she did me and he strayed from my attention just as
much. Daddy started spending more time in his office, drinking from a short round glass that
held, what looked to me at the time, strongly brewed tea that smelled like the chemicals that the
dentist used to sterilize their utensils. His handsome face was always perspiring, and the whites
of his dark eyes were red by most mornings. I figured all of the cigarette smoke had something to
do with it. One evening, I arrived back home from spending the weekend at my friend Cindy’s
house to find Daddy and Mommy yelling at each other and throwing everything from lamp
shades to picture frames. I snuck past the front door and lurked in the hallway to hear their
argument.
“What’s it matter to you anyways, Joseph? You think you can just pop back in every
few months and expect things to be the same?”
“No, what I expect is for my wife not to be screwing around on me in the very
expensive home that I pay for.”
“Ohhh, please do remind me of all the things you pay for because I was just starting to
forget.”
Daddy had taken her bait and started to rattle off almost everything we had in the house.
He named every brand of shoes and clothes Mommy bought for us with his money, the brand of
appliances she had just gotten installed in the kitchen, the exotic trips that they had taken since
before I was born, the inground pool that Mommy wanted, and so on and so forth until I got fed
up with their bickering and slipped out to the backyard just as I had slipped in from the front
door. After more summer nights that reflected that one, Mother moved out from our Lake
Buena Vista home to live with Aunt Carolyn and her husband and kids in Orlando, in order to
“help them out,” she claimed.
“Oh, Barbie,” she had said to me, “Your aunt needs help with your cousins, and I need
the company. Won’t you come along?”
But I didn’t know any kids in Orlando that weren’t my toddler cousins. My friends were
in Lake Buena Vista and so was our home that I didn’t get much comfort out of and I had
decided to end my indifferent attitude towards Daddy. Although I had been longing to regain my
Mother’s affection, her haste to leave and convince me to come with her had just the opposite
effect on me. Just when I began to wave a white flag in Daddy’s favor, he grew to be more and
more needy of my attention. His overcompensation led our visits to Frenchie’s ice
cream parlor to increase so much so that I, a child who loved nothing more than their loaded
sprinkle banana boat sundae, told my Father a tale that I had a consistent tummy ailment that
was being caused by the milk in the ice cream. That summer he took me everywhere but where I
wanted to be and said everything to me that I didn’t care to hear. On the eve of the Fourth of
July, we drove to a putt-putt place in my favorite car of his. The new 68’, baby blue, Cadillac
Deville convertible. Each time before he swung his club, he’d hesitate and look out to the course
and asked me random questions like what I thought about us living in India or Paris and who I
would choose to live with if he and Mother were to be apart for good. After we finished the
course that sunny Florida day, he continued as we sat on a bench under a shady umbrella.
“Barb, what’s something that you want more than anything? What’s something that
you’ve never had but want that would make your dreams come true?”
“A season pass to Disney World like Emily and Cindy have,” I said, with a huge grin on
my face.
His chest enlarged as if he was about to let out the most exasperated sigh, but he opted
for silence instead before breaking with,
“Your eyes are just as blue as your Mother’s, and your mind is just as dense as hers,
too.”
I winced at his words that I didn’t understand the meaning of, but by the dark look on
his face and the shaky timber of his voice, I knew that it couldn’t have meant anything good,
and I could tell that he regretted them as soon as they escaped his lips. He put on a toothy
strained smile, ruffled his hand through my hair, and planted a kiss on my forehead.
“You are still young, princess. You’ll grow out of it like most whippersnappers do.”
By the end of that week, Daddy had gotten me a season pass to Disney World. His
giddiness when he pulled the tickets from behind his back and handed them to me almost
matched mine. I admired the laminated green, orange, and blue ticket and after thanking him I
ran outside to show all of my friends that I too was in the Disney World “in club.” I asked
Daddy if he could drop me off at Aunt Carolyn’s so I could show my Mother the pass. He
instead proposed we pick her up and surprise her with a picnic in the park that he said they
always used to go to when they first met. We left home at 1:00 p.m. and arrived in Orlando at
exactly 1:23 p.m. I knocked three times on Aunt Carolyn’s black and gold trimmed front door
while Daddy stood a few steps behind me with a picnic basket. No one answered, but music and
loud sounds that we hadn’t noticed before escaped from the backyard along with the smells of
grilled meats and homemade cherry pie. I ran while Daddy walked to the white picket fence that
encased the backyard. As soon as I opened the gate, I spotted Mother holding cousin Abigail by
the pool, and I ran to her excitedly. She embraced me with the same enthusiasm. She told me
that my Aunt and Uncle had woken up in a festive mood and decided to fire up the grill to make
the uncooked leftovers from the 4th and invite over the neighbors. She said that she was just
about to send for me once her pies started to brown in the oven. Uncle Bobby and Aunt Carolyn
walked over to us and kept oohing and awing about how I was so pretty and how they wished I
would have come along with my Mother when she moved in with them. Father walked over to
us and greeted my aunt and uncle.
“Bobby, Carolyn, it’s good to see you. We would have been here sooner if we knew
it was happening,” Daddy said, halfway joking.
“Ahh, we were going to call you, but you know how it is when the neighbors come
over,” Uncle Bobby said.
“Well we appreciate you dropping little Barbie off. That’s one last thing we have to do
today,” said Aunt Carolyn with a disgusted look on her face.
Aunt Carolyn and Daddy eyed each other for a few seconds until uncle Bobby took
cousin Abigail from Mother, grabbed Aunt Carolyn’s hand, cleared his throat, and disturbed
the tension.
“Come on honey, lets introduce Joseph to our other guest and let your sister and
Barbie catch up.”
Aunt Carolyn ignored her husband and walked off in the opposite direction, but Daddy
followed Uncle Bobby and cousin Abigail, leaving Mommy and I by the pool. I recall we sat on
the pool chairs and got lost in frivolous conversation. I told her about my season pass to Disney
World; she told me about how she had got us a matching set of polka dotted dresses from a new
boutique that had just opened up around the corner. We went on and on until Daddy made his
way over to us again. He sat on the pool chair that I was on and started talking to Mommy while
she fumbled around in her purse in search of a lighter. Daddy reached into his breast pocket for
his and then lit her cigarette from her mouth. He talked to her about the weather and inquired
about what she had been doing to keep herself busy while occasionally glancing at me as if to tell
me to get up and play, while Mother, on the other hand, stared me down as if to say “please
don’t move.”
My attention was drawn away from my parents once the record player started playing
my favorite song, “Higher and Higher,” from my favorite Negro singer, Jackie Wilson. I got up
to dance to it and then danced with the guests for three more songs after that, and by the end of
the last song, both of my parents were dancing too and had a look on their faces that I hadn’t
seen from either of them in a long time. The adults ate at the tables that were spread out on the
lawn while the few children there, including myself, sat down on blankets in the grass laughing
and chomping away at our food. By 6 p.m. that evening, most of my aunt and uncle’s guests had
left already, and Daddy was ready to leave and asked Mother if she wanted to come home with
us. She told him that she should stay and help clean up but insisted she would be by the house
the following week to check up on things. Father and I headed back to the Cadillac but didn’t
get as far as the backyard gate when Mother called out testily,
“Joseph, dear. Could you spare to let Barbara stay for a few days with her mother?”
“With what clothes, Linda?”
“Don’t be silly, with all of the shops around here of course I’ve shopped for her.”
“That’s about all you’ve done for her,” Daddy grunted and mumbled under his breath.
He then dropped to one knee and spoke to me in condescending words that didn’t match
his pleading facial features.
“It’s your call, Barb. Not sure who here will have time to drive you to Disney, but it
is your choice.”
I looked back and forth at both of them before deciding whether or not I should choose
between what I wanted to do or what both of them wanted me to do. Daddy had been a
nuisance in my eyes since he had returned from his latest trip, for reasons I still can’t pinpoint
to this day. Mother had been distant but she seemed to have been present that day and I could
tell she genuinely wanted me there and I wanted to be with her. Besides, I couldn’t hold her not
being there against her when it was usually Daddy the one off somewhere.
“I guess I should stay here with Mommy for a while.”
My father, still bent on one knee, grasped me by my waist and flashed me a look of
disappointment. He then followed up with a nod in the direction of my mother and was
swiftly on his feet and out of the backyard.
For the remainder of July, Mother and I helped Aunt Carolyn with her children, shopped
for back to school clothes for me, went on spa trips, and ate at a different restaurant for either
breakfast, lunch, or supper, each day. Father called at least three times a week, but Mother
handled the calls because he always rang us up when I was in the midst of hanging out with the
Orlando neighborhood girls, and I just could not be bothered to be pulled away. One bright
afternoon, Mother took me to the beach to meet a friend of hers. She said his name was
Marshall, he and her had been friends since junior high, and he had wanted to meet me for a
while. My mother had once told me that part of the reason she fell in love with my father is
because he resembled Marlon Brando, and she loved men who looked like movie stars.
Well if my father looked like Marlon Brando, Marshall looked like Robert Redford. Tall,
blonde, and handsome. He was humorous, kind, looked at my mother as if she was a star, and
she looked at him the same way. They sat side-by-side, digging their feet into the sand. Marshall
had brought his ukulele with him, and he made up silly songs for Mother and I on the spot. I
wandered off to the shoreline to let them catch up, and I hunted for seashells to bring back with
me. When I was content with my shell pickings, I joined them again, and Marshall handed me a
fancy glass with a slushed strawberry drink inside of it, topped with a miniature umbrella.
Mother had a blue drink, and Marshall had a white one, and at his request, we all clinked glasses
as he made a toast to new beginnings. When we returned to Aunt Carolyn’s that evening, she
told me that my father requested that I call him immediately because there was a pressing matter
that he had to iron out with me. Curious as to what could be so important, I called him back and
he answered before the end of the first ring.
“For somebody whose only want in the world is a season pass to Disney World, you sure
have a hell of a way of showing it, Barb.”
“Daddy, Mommy hasn’t had time to—”
“Mommy? I bought the pass for you. I expect to be the one taking you to fucking
Disney.”
Mother heard his irate yelling through the phone and grabbed the phone away from
me, yelling at him before her mouth even reached the receiver.
“God forbid she spend some time with her mother you bastard. How dare you talk to
my-.”
I ran out of the house before I could hear any more of the screams and ran down the
street until my aunt’s house was out of view, tears burning my cheeks.
A few days passed, and Mother informed me that I had to go home to spend time with
my Father because his job had requested that he be at his next assignment by Tuesday. She
promised she’d be back home by the time he left. By noon. Uncle Bobby had dropped me off at
home and Daddy was already outside waiting in the car that I absolutely hated—the red Jaguar
XJ6. When it was hot, and it was always hot, the leather seats stuck to my skin and to move my
legs in any way was to have them pulled away from the seat like velcro. I hopped in the back
seat and ignored my father’s strained greeting. His breath reeked of the smell that reminded me
of the chemicals that dentists used for their utensils and he kept starting and stopping his slurred
sentences. I was not in the mood for Disney World, and the look of discontentment on my face
made sure he knew it. I wanted to be anywhere but there with him. He stared at me with glazed
eyes through his rearview mirror for what seemed like endless minutes, and then he finally broke
his eyes away and I saw him look past the middle console to glance at something shiny wrapped
in a handkerchief in the passenger seat. He then turned back to the rearview and looked at me.
“Do you love me?”
Sighing dramatically with my arms folded I replied, “Sure, Daddy.”
His voice broke as he said to me, “Say it. Tell me you love me, Barbie.”
I rolled my eyes in disgust. I wanted nothing more than to escape from him and that car.
My eyes welled with tears as I whispered,
“I don’t want to go.”
Daddy then stared off into the distance and told me that he had a few errands to run and
that I should go in the house and ring my mother for her to send someone to get me. I jumped
out of the backseat and burst through the front door, headed toward the first telephone I could
find. I heard daddy’s car make a loud backfiring noise. I contemplated hastily that it would be
quicker for him to drop me off at Aunt Carolyn’s on his way to run errands rather than to wait for
someone to come and pick me back up. I darted out of the front door to catch up with Daddy’s
Jag, but it was still parked in the driveway, so I opened up the door and quickly hopped in the
back seat. Daddy was still sitting in the driver's seat but his head was dripping all over the
windshield and all over the backseat and all over the ceiling of the car. Instead of screaming or
crying out for help, I just remember harping on the most insignificant details. I noticed how my
legs weren’t sticking to the back seat anymore; in fact, the blood underneath them made them
slosh around quite easily. Daddy no longer resembled the handsome Marlon Brando, but instead
he was what was left of Humpty Dumpty after he’d fallen off of the wall. A season pass to
Disney wasn’t my strongest desire anymore. In that moment I knew exactly what I really
wanted...but it was too late to tell Daddy.
with the bedroom windows open. The breeze coming in only made the musky aroma of sweat
stronger as it flowed through the messy bed sheets. For a woman who prided herself on vanity
and tried to be as put together as Marilyn Monroe, she appeared to have unraveled from the time
I left for school each morning to the time I arrived back home by 2:15 p.m. Her golden locks
which she routinely made sure were prim and proper each day, just as she made sure mine were,
had all fallen down. Her Jackie Kennedy-esque dresses that she wore Monday through Friday
were nowhere to be seen. Instead she was stripped down to her satin slip.
“Oh, darling. Why don’t you listen? After you get home from school, you go to
the kitchen and eat the snacks Mamie’s made for you.”
Almost every day for those few weeks, she would tell me that, and almost every time that
she did, I did the opposite. A part of my nine-year-old self wanted to catch her doing
something... anything. I just couldn’t put my finger on what. She was hardly ever around
anymore to spend quality time with me. When I didn't catch her in her bedroom, she would
usually be on her way out to the high-end social clubs that anybody who was somebody at the
time would hang out in. She would ask Mamie to stay a little longer because she’d be late
getting home. Mother would poke her lip out and clasp her hands together and say,
“Just stay with her until 8:30, would you? You know I’ll make it up to you.”
“Now you know it ain’t no problem Mrs. Campbell,” Mamie would always
respond. “You just gon ahead about your business and me and Miss Barbara will have us a
good ol time.”
Mother would then get down on her knees and speak to me in her most often-
used mendacious tone and plead.
“Barbie, please don’t be mad at mommy. I’ll be back in time to read you a night story.
How about Snow White or the one about that pitiful cracked egg?”
After she had satisfied her own conscience, Mother never stuck around to hear if I was
mad or not. She would just flip down her cat-style black framed sunglasses, grab her purse,
and wait for Mamie to open the door so she could brisk out unscathed from whatever she was
afraid of me saying.
And just like that, it was summertime. Daddy was finally back from his
overseas business trip, and together, him and Mother were acting so peculiar. It was almost
like Mother was allergic to Daddy. Whenever he’d walk into a room, she’d find an excuse to
leave, and whenever she was in a room, Daddy would find an excuse to be there. I had had
enough of the strangeness and decided to occupy my time with the neighborhood girls. I
calculatedly stayed over longer than our playdates were set up for, and their mothers always
ended up insisting I join them for dinner, which I eagerly accepted. This went on until Daddy
decided to let Mamie go on vacation for the summertime. He began to tell Mother and I how
he wanted us all to spend time together as a family. He often reminisced on how I would
usually be so eager to share my thoughts with him, but little did he know his absence left me
exhausted of drawing pictures that he wouldn’t be able to take notice of until he arrived back
from his business trips, and the stories about my falling out with my Girl Scout friends,
Patricia and Sally, had become old news. It seems that Daddy was of no use to me when he
was available. I was more concerned with wanting Mommy to see me as she had before her
distant and anomalous behavior ate her up.
Day after day, Daddy planned what was supposed to be fun outings for the three of us,
but Mommy ignored Daddy even more than she did me and he strayed from my attention just as
much. Daddy started spending more time in his office, drinking from a short round glass that
held, what looked to me at the time, strongly brewed tea that smelled like the chemicals that the
dentist used to sterilize their utensils. His handsome face was always perspiring, and the whites
of his dark eyes were red by most mornings. I figured all of the cigarette smoke had something to
do with it. One evening, I arrived back home from spending the weekend at my friend Cindy’s
house to find Daddy and Mommy yelling at each other and throwing everything from lamp
shades to picture frames. I snuck past the front door and lurked in the hallway to hear their
argument.
“What’s it matter to you anyways, Joseph? You think you can just pop back in every
few months and expect things to be the same?”
“No, what I expect is for my wife not to be screwing around on me in the very
expensive home that I pay for.”
“Ohhh, please do remind me of all the things you pay for because I was just starting to
forget.”
Daddy had taken her bait and started to rattle off almost everything we had in the house.
He named every brand of shoes and clothes Mommy bought for us with his money, the brand of
appliances she had just gotten installed in the kitchen, the exotic trips that they had taken since
before I was born, the inground pool that Mommy wanted, and so on and so forth until I got fed
up with their bickering and slipped out to the backyard just as I had slipped in from the front
door. After more summer nights that reflected that one, Mother moved out from our Lake
Buena Vista home to live with Aunt Carolyn and her husband and kids in Orlando, in order to
“help them out,” she claimed.
“Oh, Barbie,” she had said to me, “Your aunt needs help with your cousins, and I need
the company. Won’t you come along?”
But I didn’t know any kids in Orlando that weren’t my toddler cousins. My friends were
in Lake Buena Vista and so was our home that I didn’t get much comfort out of and I had
decided to end my indifferent attitude towards Daddy. Although I had been longing to regain my
Mother’s affection, her haste to leave and convince me to come with her had just the opposite
effect on me. Just when I began to wave a white flag in Daddy’s favor, he grew to be more and
more needy of my attention. His overcompensation led our visits to Frenchie’s ice
cream parlor to increase so much so that I, a child who loved nothing more than their loaded
sprinkle banana boat sundae, told my Father a tale that I had a consistent tummy ailment that
was being caused by the milk in the ice cream. That summer he took me everywhere but where I
wanted to be and said everything to me that I didn’t care to hear. On the eve of the Fourth of
July, we drove to a putt-putt place in my favorite car of his. The new 68’, baby blue, Cadillac
Deville convertible. Each time before he swung his club, he’d hesitate and look out to the course
and asked me random questions like what I thought about us living in India or Paris and who I
would choose to live with if he and Mother were to be apart for good. After we finished the
course that sunny Florida day, he continued as we sat on a bench under a shady umbrella.
“Barb, what’s something that you want more than anything? What’s something that
you’ve never had but want that would make your dreams come true?”
“A season pass to Disney World like Emily and Cindy have,” I said, with a huge grin on
my face.
His chest enlarged as if he was about to let out the most exasperated sigh, but he opted
for silence instead before breaking with,
“Your eyes are just as blue as your Mother’s, and your mind is just as dense as hers,
too.”
I winced at his words that I didn’t understand the meaning of, but by the dark look on
his face and the shaky timber of his voice, I knew that it couldn’t have meant anything good,
and I could tell that he regretted them as soon as they escaped his lips. He put on a toothy
strained smile, ruffled his hand through my hair, and planted a kiss on my forehead.
“You are still young, princess. You’ll grow out of it like most whippersnappers do.”
By the end of that week, Daddy had gotten me a season pass to Disney World. His
giddiness when he pulled the tickets from behind his back and handed them to me almost
matched mine. I admired the laminated green, orange, and blue ticket and after thanking him I
ran outside to show all of my friends that I too was in the Disney World “in club.” I asked
Daddy if he could drop me off at Aunt Carolyn’s so I could show my Mother the pass. He
instead proposed we pick her up and surprise her with a picnic in the park that he said they
always used to go to when they first met. We left home at 1:00 p.m. and arrived in Orlando at
exactly 1:23 p.m. I knocked three times on Aunt Carolyn’s black and gold trimmed front door
while Daddy stood a few steps behind me with a picnic basket. No one answered, but music and
loud sounds that we hadn’t noticed before escaped from the backyard along with the smells of
grilled meats and homemade cherry pie. I ran while Daddy walked to the white picket fence that
encased the backyard. As soon as I opened the gate, I spotted Mother holding cousin Abigail by
the pool, and I ran to her excitedly. She embraced me with the same enthusiasm. She told me
that my Aunt and Uncle had woken up in a festive mood and decided to fire up the grill to make
the uncooked leftovers from the 4th and invite over the neighbors. She said that she was just
about to send for me once her pies started to brown in the oven. Uncle Bobby and Aunt Carolyn
walked over to us and kept oohing and awing about how I was so pretty and how they wished I
would have come along with my Mother when she moved in with them. Father walked over to
us and greeted my aunt and uncle.
“Bobby, Carolyn, it’s good to see you. We would have been here sooner if we knew
it was happening,” Daddy said, halfway joking.
“Ahh, we were going to call you, but you know how it is when the neighbors come
over,” Uncle Bobby said.
“Well we appreciate you dropping little Barbie off. That’s one last thing we have to do
today,” said Aunt Carolyn with a disgusted look on her face.
Aunt Carolyn and Daddy eyed each other for a few seconds until uncle Bobby took
cousin Abigail from Mother, grabbed Aunt Carolyn’s hand, cleared his throat, and disturbed
the tension.
“Come on honey, lets introduce Joseph to our other guest and let your sister and
Barbie catch up.”
Aunt Carolyn ignored her husband and walked off in the opposite direction, but Daddy
followed Uncle Bobby and cousin Abigail, leaving Mommy and I by the pool. I recall we sat on
the pool chairs and got lost in frivolous conversation. I told her about my season pass to Disney
World; she told me about how she had got us a matching set of polka dotted dresses from a new
boutique that had just opened up around the corner. We went on and on until Daddy made his
way over to us again. He sat on the pool chair that I was on and started talking to Mommy while
she fumbled around in her purse in search of a lighter. Daddy reached into his breast pocket for
his and then lit her cigarette from her mouth. He talked to her about the weather and inquired
about what she had been doing to keep herself busy while occasionally glancing at me as if to tell
me to get up and play, while Mother, on the other hand, stared me down as if to say “please
don’t move.”
My attention was drawn away from my parents once the record player started playing
my favorite song, “Higher and Higher,” from my favorite Negro singer, Jackie Wilson. I got up
to dance to it and then danced with the guests for three more songs after that, and by the end of
the last song, both of my parents were dancing too and had a look on their faces that I hadn’t
seen from either of them in a long time. The adults ate at the tables that were spread out on the
lawn while the few children there, including myself, sat down on blankets in the grass laughing
and chomping away at our food. By 6 p.m. that evening, most of my aunt and uncle’s guests had
left already, and Daddy was ready to leave and asked Mother if she wanted to come home with
us. She told him that she should stay and help clean up but insisted she would be by the house
the following week to check up on things. Father and I headed back to the Cadillac but didn’t
get as far as the backyard gate when Mother called out testily,
“Joseph, dear. Could you spare to let Barbara stay for a few days with her mother?”
“With what clothes, Linda?”
“Don’t be silly, with all of the shops around here of course I’ve shopped for her.”
“That’s about all you’ve done for her,” Daddy grunted and mumbled under his breath.
He then dropped to one knee and spoke to me in condescending words that didn’t match
his pleading facial features.
“It’s your call, Barb. Not sure who here will have time to drive you to Disney, but it
is your choice.”
I looked back and forth at both of them before deciding whether or not I should choose
between what I wanted to do or what both of them wanted me to do. Daddy had been a
nuisance in my eyes since he had returned from his latest trip, for reasons I still can’t pinpoint
to this day. Mother had been distant but she seemed to have been present that day and I could
tell she genuinely wanted me there and I wanted to be with her. Besides, I couldn’t hold her not
being there against her when it was usually Daddy the one off somewhere.
“I guess I should stay here with Mommy for a while.”
My father, still bent on one knee, grasped me by my waist and flashed me a look of
disappointment. He then followed up with a nod in the direction of my mother and was
swiftly on his feet and out of the backyard.
For the remainder of July, Mother and I helped Aunt Carolyn with her children, shopped
for back to school clothes for me, went on spa trips, and ate at a different restaurant for either
breakfast, lunch, or supper, each day. Father called at least three times a week, but Mother
handled the calls because he always rang us up when I was in the midst of hanging out with the
Orlando neighborhood girls, and I just could not be bothered to be pulled away. One bright
afternoon, Mother took me to the beach to meet a friend of hers. She said his name was
Marshall, he and her had been friends since junior high, and he had wanted to meet me for a
while. My mother had once told me that part of the reason she fell in love with my father is
because he resembled Marlon Brando, and she loved men who looked like movie stars.
Well if my father looked like Marlon Brando, Marshall looked like Robert Redford. Tall,
blonde, and handsome. He was humorous, kind, looked at my mother as if she was a star, and
she looked at him the same way. They sat side-by-side, digging their feet into the sand. Marshall
had brought his ukulele with him, and he made up silly songs for Mother and I on the spot. I
wandered off to the shoreline to let them catch up, and I hunted for seashells to bring back with
me. When I was content with my shell pickings, I joined them again, and Marshall handed me a
fancy glass with a slushed strawberry drink inside of it, topped with a miniature umbrella.
Mother had a blue drink, and Marshall had a white one, and at his request, we all clinked glasses
as he made a toast to new beginnings. When we returned to Aunt Carolyn’s that evening, she
told me that my father requested that I call him immediately because there was a pressing matter
that he had to iron out with me. Curious as to what could be so important, I called him back and
he answered before the end of the first ring.
“For somebody whose only want in the world is a season pass to Disney World, you sure
have a hell of a way of showing it, Barb.”
“Daddy, Mommy hasn’t had time to—”
“Mommy? I bought the pass for you. I expect to be the one taking you to fucking
Disney.”
Mother heard his irate yelling through the phone and grabbed the phone away from
me, yelling at him before her mouth even reached the receiver.
“God forbid she spend some time with her mother you bastard. How dare you talk to
my-.”
I ran out of the house before I could hear any more of the screams and ran down the
street until my aunt’s house was out of view, tears burning my cheeks.
A few days passed, and Mother informed me that I had to go home to spend time with
my Father because his job had requested that he be at his next assignment by Tuesday. She
promised she’d be back home by the time he left. By noon. Uncle Bobby had dropped me off at
home and Daddy was already outside waiting in the car that I absolutely hated—the red Jaguar
XJ6. When it was hot, and it was always hot, the leather seats stuck to my skin and to move my
legs in any way was to have them pulled away from the seat like velcro. I hopped in the back
seat and ignored my father’s strained greeting. His breath reeked of the smell that reminded me
of the chemicals that dentists used for their utensils and he kept starting and stopping his slurred
sentences. I was not in the mood for Disney World, and the look of discontentment on my face
made sure he knew it. I wanted to be anywhere but there with him. He stared at me with glazed
eyes through his rearview mirror for what seemed like endless minutes, and then he finally broke
his eyes away and I saw him look past the middle console to glance at something shiny wrapped
in a handkerchief in the passenger seat. He then turned back to the rearview and looked at me.
“Do you love me?”
Sighing dramatically with my arms folded I replied, “Sure, Daddy.”
His voice broke as he said to me, “Say it. Tell me you love me, Barbie.”
I rolled my eyes in disgust. I wanted nothing more than to escape from him and that car.
My eyes welled with tears as I whispered,
“I don’t want to go.”
Daddy then stared off into the distance and told me that he had a few errands to run and
that I should go in the house and ring my mother for her to send someone to get me. I jumped
out of the backseat and burst through the front door, headed toward the first telephone I could
find. I heard daddy’s car make a loud backfiring noise. I contemplated hastily that it would be
quicker for him to drop me off at Aunt Carolyn’s on his way to run errands rather than to wait for
someone to come and pick me back up. I darted out of the front door to catch up with Daddy’s
Jag, but it was still parked in the driveway, so I opened up the door and quickly hopped in the
back seat. Daddy was still sitting in the driver's seat but his head was dripping all over the
windshield and all over the backseat and all over the ceiling of the car. Instead of screaming or
crying out for help, I just remember harping on the most insignificant details. I noticed how my
legs weren’t sticking to the back seat anymore; in fact, the blood underneath them made them
slosh around quite easily. Daddy no longer resembled the handsome Marlon Brando, but instead
he was what was left of Humpty Dumpty after he’d fallen off of the wall. A season pass to
Disney wasn’t my strongest desire anymore. In that moment I knew exactly what I really
wanted...but it was too late to tell Daddy.