It was June of 1995 and my mother; someone I never loved, seldom liked and often didn’t get along with; had her mind made up about me going to stay with my father. I say “my” father, but I don’t know if he really is or not, just as I don’t know if my mother is actually my mother. They’re probably my real parents, especially in the case of my mother, but that’s as far as I can go.
At the time, I remembered meeting him once before for what seemed like a very brief period of time. This time the two of them planned for me to stay with him in Ajax, Ontario, for weeks. I don’t remember if it was a few weeks or several, but I know I didn’t want to go. My mother knew it too, but she made me go anyway. That was another reason to dislike her.
Her intentions might have been good, but I don’t care and certainly didn’t at the time. I went willingly in the sense that I wasn’t dragged out of the house, kicking and screaming, but I hated having to stay with a stranger for such a long time. What could I do though? Doing to her what I wanted to do would’ve landed me in a place that’s even worse for even longer.
So I went, driven by her with my grandmother and maybe a brother or sister along for the ride. The one thing to be happy about was that the new Michael Jackson album; History; had just been released. I bought it that day; the day we went to Canada; at a music store before they left to go back to Detroit. I was a big Michael Jackson fan and quite excited about the purchase.
It came with a mock Tabloid. The album itself was a thick plastic case that held two gold CDs and a booklet. I was so excited that I’d started playing it at my father’s friend’s place before we even got to his sister’s house where we’d be staying. The History album was probably the best thing about my stay, which I might’ve actually enjoyed if I wasn’t forced into it.
My father, it turned out, wasn’t around most of the time. He apparently lived there, in an upstairs bedroom, but it seemed he was gone for several days at a time. That was totally fine with me. I didn’t want to be around him anyway. I certainly didn’t want to develop a traditional father-and-son relationship with him. I just wanted to do my time and get it over with.
His sister had two boys; Chad and Troy; who also lived there. They stayed upstairs and each had their own bedroom. Chad was maybe a couple of years younger than me. Troy was maybe a couple of years older. I slept in the basement alone at night, along with their desolate pet rabbit, but that’s also where the three of us spent a lot of our time during the day.
That was especially the case when I first got there as they made an effort to befriend me. They were the type of kids who often had friends over to the house, so I also met a lot of their friends, some of whom were also close to my father’s sister; their mom, I assume. She was nice enough to me and seemed likable, but I didn’t want to develop a relationship with her.
I didn’t want to develop a relationship or get close with anybody. I just wanted to be left alone, which was hard to do in a house full of people. They even had relatives from out of town who visited and spent the night while I was there, including an attractive light-skinned girl Troy jokingly made sure to introduce to me as my “coooousin” so that I wouldn’t hit on her.
We had fun times, but I liked and got along with Chad a lot more. He and I were always friendly. I made him laugh a lot and never had any problems with him. Troy was another story. We connected with hip-hop; it was him who encouraged me to buy Grand Puba’s 2000 CD; but we generally butted heads and annoyed each other with petty arguments.
It never turned into anything serious, but it gradually got worse over time. By the end, when it was about time for me to go back home, I think we’d started to despise each other to the point where it became harder and harder to keep up a friendly front. It was the kind of relationship in which two people constantly insult each other but only half jokingly.
At one point, he and his best friend; a guy he claimed to have a telepathic connection with; had some girls over. They watched Star Trek in the basement while Chad and I stayed out of the way on the first floor. Perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, when the girls left, I made fun of him for watching Star Trek with them instead of having sex.
I wasn’t just being mean though. Every insult was, as far as I was concerned, a justified retaliation for some insult Troy had thrown my way sometimes days earlier. That’s just the kind of relationship we had and Chad would laugh with me. We also laughed watching Heart Of Courage when they showed an old lady hitting an intruder on the head with a frying pan.
My best times there include the ones I spent with Chad and a friend of his. I think his name was Steve. We rode bikes together and even went out for ice cream with (Chad’s) mom one day. Those were rare moments of genuine fun for me. Nightly tinnitus from a possible ear infection was the most depressing. The rest of the time lingered somewhere in the middle.
That middle time included a tall skinny white girl; a friend of theirs who’d come by to hang out with us. Her name might’ve been Kila. One night my father came down to the basement and saw us sitting together on the couch. We were flipping thru a school yearbook. I was picking out the cutest girls. After she left, he teased me about how close we were sitting.
We didn’t talk much. I barely asked him any questions and never even said his name. I never said his sister’s name neither. I might not have said anyone’s name. One day he said something to me about the fact that I didn’t say their names when I was talking to them, which I defended by saying it was unnecessary because it was obvious who I was talking to.
I’d started taking his sister’s radio from the kitchen to play while I fell asleep at night. It was just to block or distract from my tinnitus and I always put it back. One day I saw that she’d left a note on it, saying not to take it anymore. The fact that she left a note instead of telling me to my face is just a metaphor for how disconnected I was from them as an extended family.
I used to eat three or four hot dogs with my beans. She, or the other woman who lived with us for a portion of my visit, made a negative remark about it. I already hated cooking and eating with other people in the kitchen, but I especially hated doing it around them. I tried my best to only eat when they were gone, but sometimes they’d come home during the process.
My stay lasted for weeks. I can’t remember how many, but it introduced me to more family members and friends than I’d like to count; including a knowledgeable DJ who taught me you don’t have to understand the words of a song in order to like it. It concluded after Caribana; an annual festival Troy and his friends hyped as the biggest event of the year.
They told me how fun it would be. They told me about all the fine girls that would be there. It was a group effort to get me to go with them, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to do anything with them. All I wanted to do was go home. Even when Troy came back after partying the night away and dumped a bag full of (girl) phone numbers on the kitchen table, I had no regrets.
The end had come. It was my last day and I remember it clearer than most. I was taking the bus home and my father was going to drive me to the bus station, so we had to leave early when everyone else was still in bed. I didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone, but he made me go upstairs to say it to his sister and whoever the other woman was she slept in the bedroom with.
It was perhaps the most awkward goodbye I ever said. I don’t even remember going all the way into the room, but I didn’t give a damn. I was ready to go; not to see my mother; that bitch; but to be back home. He gave me a hug at the bus station, which I returned half-heartedly, and that was it; the last time I ever saw my father, ever want to and probably ever will.
