Momma went to Texas/summer of 1982

Momma went to Texas before I started the 12th grade with the girls, Jimmy and I had to stay in grandma and grandpa’s trailer because momma was leaving daddy again. Momma went with Mama Tana “Grandma”, Tia Dalia, my cousins Joe, Jaime and the girls in grandpa’s turquoise colored Pontiac. They would drive down to Texas, and momma didn’t want us anywhere near daddy.

I was working for the Summer Youth Employment as an English teacher’s assistant for English as Second Language for Hmong immigrants, and Jimmy was working somewhere else, he was 14.

We both stayed with our grandpa and our cousin Sandy who was a Jehovah’s Witness, I stayed with her in Grandma’s room, and Jimmy stayed on the sofa in the tiny living room. She would preach to me after I would get home. I was exhausted after having to take two city buses.

One afternoon I took the city bus back to 1422 to pick up a notebook for my writing I had forgotten to take and I found daddy in the back yard feeding Missy’s rabbits in the hutch he had made for them.

“Daddy, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Why not, I live here.” He said trying to be amusing.

I was so glad to see him, but I didn’t show it. Momma was adamant about starting over.

“Why don’t you and Jimmy come home and stay with me.”

I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I was 17 years old I gave into my daddy’s warm smile and his promises of things being better. Jimmy and I came back home to 1422, the numbers daddy had splashed across the house, the familiar shutters in the bedroom windows, the palm tree that had grown inside the brick enclosure, the front lawn where daddy used to water with the “manguera” (water hose) when I was riding my bike around the block.

“If you come back, your mom will have to come back.” That’s what daddy said with those soulful brown eyes, like he was really sorry this time. Every time he messed up he would spill into momma’s lap like a little boy begging for her forgiveness but momma tired of the whole act. She didn’t believe him anymore. Momma and daddy were two enemy combatants living in the same house. If daddy got mad he would strand momma around town, just drive off without her. Or, she would just get out of the car, slam the door and walk off daddy would back the car until she would get in.

Once daddy pretended to be hit by the car, when momma tried to drive off he got in front of the car, the police came, and daddy began to tremble on the ground.

“Does he have epilepsy?” the police asked.

“No, he’s faking it”, momma would say dispassionately.

Daddy pretended to have a gun once, and threatened to shoot himself. I hugged daddy hard. He would speed on the Jensen road to Sanger to scare us.

Daddy used to break glasses in the middle of the night, if momma slept in our room. He would do that until she would go back to their bedroom. I always thought there was something very wrong with daddy. He used to bang his head against the walls of his and momma’s bedroom whenever he became frustrated.

The girls would be screaming terrified, all hell would break loose I bit daddy’s back once when he didn’t have his tee-shirt on, trying to save momma. We were under siege. This is what I came back to.

Jimmy and I moved back in. It was wonderful at first. I would watch Hogan’s Heroes in the living room with daddy in the evenings. I loved Colonel Klink. We were a family again this is where I belonged in my old bedroom with my poster of Wings, with Paul McCartney in the middle. My Beatles posters and my paper dolls I kept under the canopy bed. It would work out this time, it had to. Daddy was re-modeling the house, so he asked for our pay checks to help with the expenses. We both eagerly handed them over. It was a small price to pay to have the family together again.

Daddy took me to K-mart so I could buy Mo-Mo the Who’s album, “The Kids are Alright,” the album with the Who wrapped in the British flag sleeping. But when I finished paying daddy was on a pay phone. I felt like such a fool. It was at that precise moment of spying daddy out of the corner of my eye, that I knew this wasn’t going to work out I knew he lied to me. I began to walk home, daddy followed me in the car, but I didn’t get in.

Still, I don’t know why I stayed I guess I was too far into daddy’s intricate spider web, to extricate myself. When momma came back from Texas with the girls I told her I wasn’t going back with her, neither was Jimmy. I forced momma to come back with her tail between her legs, and I was sorry about that.

Momma deserved better.