Page 39 of After Him, There Was You
“Eva, are you kidding me? I’m telling you Daddy was in an accident and we are rushing to the hospital and you’re saying, ohthank God it’s not serious. You can’t be for real right now. I know you and Daddy have a strained relationship, but he’s still our Daddy.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “Everett Monroe is our Daddy, and unfortunately, I can’t change that. I’ll say a prayer for him and stop by in the morning. Let me know if you need anything.”
Beating me to the punch, Alexa ended the call, and her abruptness had me staring at a blank screen.
“Is everything okay?” Zeke asked, pulling my attention away from replaying the conversation in my head and turning me to face him.
“Yeah, everything is fine.”
“So, who called you?”
“It wasn’t about anything important.”
“Somebody called you after midnight, it has to be important,” he reasoned, walking backwards in the direction of his bed, pulling me with him, and onto his lap.
“It was my little sister, Alexa, calling.”
“And what did she say?” he queried, and I felt as if he was knowingly leading me down a trail I had no intentions of voyaging.
“She said that our dad was in an accident, and they were rushing to meet him at the hospital.”
“Okay,” he stated, pausing, sitting in a moment of silence, and I could tell he was engaged in an internal battle, going back and forth, trying to decide the right words to say in the unknown moment where we were charting unknown territory.
Zeke and I had known each other since high school, but we only knew each other on the superficial front, and while we had no problem sexually testing each other’s limits, emotional walls were something completely different.
“Why aren’t you rushing to meet them at the hospital?”
“My daddy and I aren’t exactly on the same page in life, and honestly, our relationship isn’t the best. It never has been.” I confessed, staring at nothing in particular as I thought about possibly losing the man who made up half of my genetic makeup.
At the thought of having to bury him, I didn’t feel a single tear forming, and that in itself hurt me. People assumed just because my daddy was physically present in the home while I was growing up, it made me better off, when in all honesty his presence was nothing but traumatizing to me.
Growing up, the only thing I could count on my daddy for was to show up to my school functions reeking of alcohol while verbally abusing any and everyone who asked him about showing up to a school obviously inebriated.
I could also count on him to be unemployed.
Oh, I dare not forget how I could count on him to act like my sisters and I didn’t exist. Truthfully, it was mainly Janet and I who got the worst of him, while Alexa somehow got the bits and pieces of him that were laced in small morsels of decency. He was still a drunk, but he managed to stay sober enough to be the loudest and proudest dad clapping at all her ballet recitals and choir concerts.
“What’s the deal with the relationship the two of you have?”
“I guess you could say I resent him for the way he treated my mama while I was growing up. He never kept a job. He stayed with a pack of beer in his hand. On top of all of that, he verbally abused my mama in front of us, and after he broke her down enough, he turned the emotional abuse from her to us.”
“You gotta heal from that, Eva. You need to heal before you don’t have the opportunity to get the closure you need.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why isn’t it that simple?” he questioned in response, not letting it go like I wanted him to. “To me, it sounds like you’re making excuses.”
“Zeke, it’s complicated.”
“Only because you want it to be complicated. My dad died while my mom was pregnant with me, and if I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with him, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you never had the opportunity to meet your dad.”
“And I didn’t know you weren’t on good terms with yours. We’re learning each other on a deeper level,” he articulated, shrugging his shoulders before placing a gentle kiss on mine. “I’m going to let you in on something I learned a long time ago. Before our parents were our parents, they were them.”
“Of course, they were them,” I responded, looking at him upside his head because I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to say.
“I’m saying that before your dad was your dad, he was just a man. More than likely he was a man who dealt with his own fair share of trauma and pain. Unfortunately, most people don’t work through their own mess before they have kids, a lot of people unpack their baggage in the midst of raising their children. For instance, I didn’t realize how not having a father in my life affected me until Chasity was born,” he admitted, shaking his head, wearing a faint smile as if he was going down memory lane. “There I was with a tiny ass baby in my hand and not a clue how to show her how much I loved her. I knew how to go out and provide for her because to me it was common sense. I knew what everybody was telling me, as far as to make sure she never wants for anything and to make sure she knows I’m always there, but I didn’t have a play by play on how to do that, especially the last part. I’m not making excuses for your dad, but just consider that before he was your dad, he was a man.”
