I can see him now as I walk into the dining room from the kitchen. He is right where he always starts his days, at the dining room table. No one ever bothers to sit on the first chair directly to the right anymore. I can find him every morning at the large rough oak table doing the same mundane activity, rolling his cigarettes. Now that he doesn’t live at home anymore, there is no reason for him to do anything else. He rolls one after another until he has a stack almost as tall as my little ten year-old hands. Those should get him through the afternoon and if he goes slow, maybe even until dessert that night. I could tell he was calculating the same thoughts as I was by the look on his face.
He calls me over with the words, “Hey there, my little girl, wanna come help daddy? I’ll teach you how to roll one,” and for the hundredth time in my life he shows me how to roll a cigarette.
This is one of the last things we did in peace together before the day I left him for good.
Kyle Jay Mathews was a horrible man, but he was a horrible man that I loved a whole awful lot. How can a child not love her father? It didn’t matter that he made my mom cry all the time, or that he would he would go missing for days on end leaving it my mom’s responsibility, and mine, to go drag him out of whatever hell hole he had fallen into. I loved that man. Now that I’m older I know that he was an abusive drug addict who couldn’t hold a job, but at the time everything was so confusing to me, and all I knew was that no matter what happened he had to come back home, and the fights had to stop because that was the only option. I was dumb, and I couldn’t see all of his faults. I knew they were there, but all I allowed myself to think about were the family vacations, toys, and intense joy I felt when everything was going right. That was the deal when living in my household. When times were bad, they were really bad, but when the fights stopped and the dust cleared everything was perfect like nothing had ever happened in the first place. Against my will, I got dragged along on my parents’ emotional roller coaster.
That February day when Kyle was kicked out by my mother was not like any other day I have ever experienced. I can’t say much about it because after my mother came home to a ranting and pacing Kyle, she whisked my brother and me off to a neighbor’s house, while she returned home to deal with him. When I came back that night he wasn’t there, but remnants of him were everywhere. A cereal bowl had been used as his personal ashtray, and empty beer bottles lay scattered randomly around the house. Streams of tears rolled silently down my mother’s face while she cleaned up his mess.
I was laying in bed with my distraught mother when Kyle wandered drunk into the guest bedroom around one in the morning. My two year-old brother, Jake, quickly abandoned us for his daddy. That next morning Jake woke up alone. Kyle’s bags were packed and he was out of the house. He was gone forever. I thought that was going to be the hardest day of my life, but in reality it wasn’t. In fact, it doesn’t even make the top five. The day that does, actually started a year later.
That day started like any other random Sunday. Kyle was leaving me at my aunt’s house (where we both currently resided on the weekends), so he could go out and watch MMA fighting at some bar. He was only supposed to be gone for a couple of hours. At least, that’s what he told me. Pretty soon it was eleven o’clock and he still hadn’t come home. The mother hen in me couldn’t stop worrying. I kept calling him in hope he would answer, but he didn’t.
I probably called him fifty times saying, then crying, and then finally screaming the same words, “Why won’t you just come home? I miss you and love you. Please, please just come home tonight. I’m scared and no one knows where you are. Call me back. Goodbye daddy, I love you.”
This was just like all of those other times he had disappeared. I was bawling and could feel myself being ripped from the inside out with anxiety. I cried myself to sleep that night with worry that he would never come home because this time he didn’t have my mom to go and save him.
I was wrong; he did come home. When I woke up he was sprawled out on the couch. I could tell he had come home and just laid his body on the nearest surface by the door. I don’t remember much from that early morning. It was just like any other. It was only after he woke up that things turned ugly. The next events happened so fast, that I could barely comprehend them. One moment I was watching a movie, and the next I hear Kyle, Tim, and Darren (my uncles) all outside screaming at one another. Kyle was throwing punches and was threatening to take my brother and I and leave. I wanted to see what was going on, but before I could really see anything I was rushed away by my aunt. She locked us in the bedroom we shared, and shoved me in the closet. The lock had just clicked when Kyle started beating on the door. He was screaming that he wanted inside the room so he could come take me. I panicked and didn’t know what to do. My best coping mechanism was to close my eyes and curl up in a ball on the dirty closet floor. It felt like I was in that position for a very long time.
It could have been ten minutes, but it could have been an hour before I finally got up from my secluded hiding spot. I refused to leave before my Aunt Josie had told me that she was sure my mother was coming to get me and that it was safe now. I exited the bedroom to an eerily silent house. My Jake was right outside the door on the floor watching The Muppets, while Kyle stared at the tv from the couch with red-rimmed distant eyes. I realized that during the entire incident I had totally forgotten about my brother, and being his big sister; it was my job to protect him. I was too overwhelmed with my own terror to think about anyone else at that point, even my own brother. It was just another thing I had failed to do that day.
As my mother, grandparents, and cops turned the corner ten minutes later to approach the house Kyle took me in his arms on the couch. Tears were gathering in his eyes and he spoke very fast and hushed into my ear.
He kept repeating, “I’m so sorry I let this happen, baby girl. Don’t let anyone tell you I don’t love you! Don’t you ever dare let anyone convince you that you aren’t mine or that I don’t love you. You are all I will ever think about. You are mine; don’t forget it!”
After he muttered those words in my ears he let go of me. I was confused then, but I understand them perfectly now. He was letting go of me forever, not just for that day.
A lot happened because of that day, but none of it really matters now. The bottom line is that Kyle left me when he was kicked out, and then a little more than a year later I left him at a small tan house on the outskirts of town. That afternoon I found out that Kyle wasn’t my real father, and that my “real” dad left when he found out my mom was two months pregnant with me. Kyle might not be my biological father, but he was the man that I called daddy for ten years, and something like that doesn’t just go away. I haven’t seen a Mathews in six years, and I never plan to again. Even though I still love my aunt and uncles for protecting me and caring for me all of those years, I can not bring myself to revisit them or my past.
As for Kyle, I saw his face for the first time about a year ago. It was a big step for me. I used to have panic attacks every other Sunday when Jake got dropped off, but now I’m getting better. I’m still nervous, but just last month I opened our front door and looked him in the eye. It had been six years since his warm brown eyes met my cold blue ones. He could barely look at me, and I wonder if it’s because he remembers when we used to roll cigarettes together at the dining room table. Or maybe it’s because he remembers all the ways he hurt me, and all of the things he said. I hope it’s the latter, but I will never know for sure.