Love Will Keep Us Together

None of this had occurred to me until after the divorce, until I guesstimated the length of their marriage and put it next to my younger half-brother’s age. Twenty years. It then dawned on me that my mother’s first marriage to my biological father was three years long. I was three at the time of that divorce.

I know that I’m not the reason my mother and father got together. They met in a park. I had nothing to do with it. I’m not the reason they got divorced either. He was a liar and abusive. He would run out for weeks and come with no explanations or apologies. I think I’m just the reason they got married.

This one, this entry, it is not catharsis. It is not part of the healing process that can be writing. I’m not hurt, I’m fine. I’m just disappointed. I don’t bring this up because I want someone to feel sorry for me, or for us. I’m not reaching out. I’m making a point.

In ways I may be the reason she and my stepfather got together in the first place. I don’t care how modern times were or are, a single mother who wants everything for her child is looking for a father. They met in high school years and years prior. I don’t think they kept in touch, but just ran into each other. Mama and I were couch surfing. He put us up for a while, which turned into twenty years.

When you come out of a bad relationship you tend to go for the opposite-type person on next go ‘round. This is called the overcorrection and it can put you in as much danger, if not more, than what you meant to avert.

My stepfather owned his home, kept a steady job (he’s had the same job for as long as I’ve known him), and he was quite content with his station in life. He never yelled, he never laid a hand on her or me. Then mama got pregnant. I may have been the reason they tried dating but my brother was the reason they got married.

Two things you should know: My mama isn’t one to just roll over and accept whatever as her lot in life. In moments of extreme displeasure I’ve seen her silence a restaurant full of people, staff included. I’ve seen her put fear in the hearts of two criminals even as they were safely locked away from her behind bars. Mama could be a force of righteousness; you’d do well not to come between her and her cubs, you’d do very well, indeed, to never tell her she’s wrong when you damn well know that’s not true. I’m just saying. The second thing is this. My stepfather was not a bad man to her or I, just the wrong man. Nothing is no one’s fault. This isn’t the Lifetime Channel. It’s more complicated than that.

My stepfather was content where he was, right where he was. He never came with us to the movies, or to museums and libraries; plays and orchestras. Mama’s world, or rather the world she wanted for her boys, was huge. That’s a good thing. My stepfather’s world was smaller, pragmatic, based on stability more than ambition or desire. This is not a bad thing. Mama was raised poor; my stepfather was raised dirt poor. For what he had he considered himself successful. He has every right to. I’ve seen his family, and were it not for he I couldn’t imagine a decent person to spring from such a trashy, ignorant well.

Just as my father was no man for my mama, my stepfather was no husband to her; not for the goer that she was. I remember they kissed once. The only time they went out on “dates” was on Valentine’s Day. Even then it was just dinner, in town, then home, then TV. Count it, folks. Two decades of marriage equals twenty dates. Put it this way, next month you and your boyfriend or girlfriend go out to dinner every night from the 1st to the 20th, then never again for twenty years. Oh, and your only aloud to kiss once. Oh, and you can only have sex a handful of times at the beginning. Do this and we’ll talk. They kept separate bedrooms for most of mine and my brother’s lives. She said it was because he snored too loud. This wasn’t far fetched. He snored like giants of old. But then you think about it, mama could sleep through tornados.

He was no father to me. This is fine. It really is. I was old enough to know that I didn’t have one. And from what I understood when you don’t have a daddy then you don’t have a daddy. You can’t just sprinkle magic dust on someone and poof they gave birth to you, poof you now share blood and blood bonds. He was good to me, though. We liked each other and we still do.

I bring this up only to comment more on the marriage. He was, and is a father to my brother. He took him to baseball games, basketball games. He taught him home repair, car repair. I still can’t drive stick; I’m a 27 year old man. To my mother’s dismay he always looked at my brother as his and I hers. Like towels or bathrobes.

It was in this time I began to bully my brother. To be frank it was outright physical abuse. I remember throwing him down stairs. I remember picking him up by his throat. I poured boiling water on his back. Everyone thought I hated him. Mama thought I was jealous and acting out. You know, because maybe I wanted a father; you know, because of the towel thing.

This isn’t confession. I’m going somewhere.

I regret the abuse. I didn’t hate him, I loved him. I wasn’t jealous. It had never even crossed my mind. What I was was fat and dark skinned. What was crossing my mind was that at school and in the neighborhood everyone was calling me Taco, The Fat Mexican. I was getting chased through woods on bicycles. I was getting rolled down hills. I was getting my ass beat by boys much older and bigger than I could hope to overcome. What was really going on was that I began snapping at the only thing smaller than me, which was my baby brother who I loved and did not hate. This is important.

Do this. Tally up her time with my father and the couple years of wondering around trying to find a home for herself and her son. Add that to her time with my stepfather. It’s over twenty-five years of a man present, right there, but no love in sight. Not the kind we’re talking about. Not the kind with embrace, passion or quirkiness. Not the kind that teaches you to forgive your partner’s differences. Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century.

I know it’s not his fault, but if it weren’t for my brother you could knock twenty years off that passionless sentence. Take me out of the picture and she gets the whole shebang back: youth, life, and a better chance at a real lover who dispenses real love. I’m just speculating, I know. I say this because the idea, the chance to knock off some of those years had come and gone.

Here’s the hard part. Here’s the point.

Since ultimately my mother did divorce my stepfather, my brother’s father, couldn’t she have come to this conclusion much sooner? I mean she is intelligent; she’s not one to roll over and accept whatever as her lot. The answer: yes. Thirteen years sooner, actually. We went out for dinner in Roswell one Saturday. It’s a couple towns away from where we live. It was just her and me. On the way she took the long route, the scenic route through neighborhoods and apartment complexes. I was twelve. We ate and she kept asking if I liked it around there. Sure, I said. She said maybe we could find an apartment. I felt something was up. “All four of us in an apartment?” I asked. “No.” She said. “Just me, you and [my brother].” Despite all implications of this dialogue she was, for lack of a better word, enthused. She was cautious to be sure, but enthused. All I could think of was my brother who I loved and did not hate. “What about [my brother]?” Was all I said in response.

She knew what I meant. He had it great, better than any of us. He was seven and had his mama, and his daddy who both loved him very much. He had me. He had us all under one roof, in the same home. It would have killed him and that would have killed me. In that moment at some restaurant in Roswell, GA. I only thought of his little heart. I could not bear it to burst as I, and mama, knew it would and eventually did. Her eyes glossed a bit, and her shoulders fell. She looked at me, picked them back up, and smiled. “It was just a thought.” She said.

We went home, picked up my little brother; Saturday was movie day. I think we saw “Wildcats” with Goldie Hawn. My brother asked his father if he wanted to come with. My stepfather said no, of course, but he told him to have a good time. Mama bought us candy and cokes. Thirteen more years.

My point is this: love can lock as much as it can embrace; punish as much as please. It is as much the nail in your foot as the light of your life. There is no blues song for this. There is no reality show depicting this kind of family as predominant as it is. Love, the idea—the feeling, is protean and ungraspable. We sit alone or with some new lover and think to ourselves or each other, dreamy eyed, of all great notions we’ll embark on in the name of love. But in the end you can’t imagine what all you’ll have done for it, by it, because of it. And, furthermore, what it will have done to you. I don’t mean to preach. I’m just saying.