In My Father's House

I was at a convenience store a few years ago when the man in front of me finished his purchases and began to walk out. I stepped up to the counter and realized he had forgotten his cigarettes,Marlboros in the red package. I turned to call out to the departing man, but my voice got stuck in my throat as I stared at those cigarettes. I was flooded by memory.

We lived in Guymon, Oklahoma, my mother, brother, and I. My parents divorced when I was a year old, and we lived with my granparents and saw my father, a newspaper journalist and aspiring writer, once or twice a year. He lived in Amarillo, Texas, a mere three hour drive from Guymon, but in 1966 society hadn't yet realized the necessity of including both parents in a child's life. For two weeks every summer, my older brother and I were deposited at the door of my father's house. We shared space, during that time, with a stepmother, stepbrother, and three stepsisters. Although we both felt a little disloyal to our mother, we enjoyed the family atmosphere of the house in Texas. We relished the time, small as it was, that we were able to spend with the mysterious stranger we called "father.

I was only five years old in 1971, but I had already heard and processed many of the stories about the marriage between my parents. I knew it had been stormy and the fights had been plentiful. I knew my daddy drank this stuff my mother's family called "so-forth," and it made my daddy "a different man." He also smoked cigarettes. I don't think I ever remember seeing him without a cigarette between his fingers. He smoked the Marlboros in the red pack. I thought the cigarettes were stinky, but my grandfather smoked, too, so I was used to the habit and pretty much ignored it.

Another reason I loved to visit my father's house was my stepsister, Carrie. She was a teenager, the second oldest of the four stepsiblings, and I thought she was the neatest person I ever knew. She was nice to me, unlike her sister, Rose. Rose was cold and loved to "punish" me when our parents weren't around. She would say things like, "He's your father, why do we have to suffer?" Carrie never said a mean word to me. She was fun and hearty, making up games with me, and she talked to me like I was a person instead of just a little kid. She told me juicy tidbits about her friends and boyfriends, and she shared her hopes and dreams with me as we lay in her room, in the dark, on sultry summer nights. She was as loud and boistrous as me, only older. I wanted to be just like Carrie when I grew up. The other children in the house were closer in age to my brother and me, and sometimes Laurie, the next in line, was nice, and sometimes she wasn't. Geno, the boy and the youngest, was a little whiny for my taste.

One hot morning that summer, I felt tension in the house and had no idea why. Carrie never got along very well with her mother or my father, I was aware of that. She was a free spirit, the last of the flower children, and my father and stepmother did not approve. They were always yelling at her. I tried to tune them out, because after all, I was only five years old. I couldn't do anything to help her, although I desperately wanted to shout, "leave her alone!" But I never did. On that particular morning, Laurie, Geno, Freddie, and I were hustled out the door by my stepmother. "Stay out until I tell you to come back," she directed tersely, and she slammed the screen door in our faces. I was bewildered and more than a little indignant.

"Why should we have to stay outside," I fumed. "It's hot out here. What's going on?" Laurie ran off, pretending not to hear me, but Geno looked at me with wisdom on his small face.

"Don't go back in there," he advised soberly, "just do what they say and you'll be fine." He ran off with Freddie, my obedient older brother. I sniffed at their departing backs. I wanted to know what was going on inside that house, and I was no pansy like those two cowards. I was going to march right back in and demand to be brought in on the secret, which I knew had something to do with Carrie.

I held the screen door so it wouldn't make a noise when is shut. I heard some muffled yelling and felt my first twinge of unease. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this, I thought, but my curiosity got the better of me and caused me to tiptoe into the living room, stopping when I reached the hallway that led to the bedrooms. I could hear yelling pretty well, now, but I still couldn't make out the words. I dropped to my knees and crawled to the room at the end of the hall, Carrie's room. Words were now distinguishable, but they made no sense to me. "Where are they," I heard my stepmother intone, "just tell us where they are." I was thoroughly rattled, now, fear slicing through my compact body, and I wished I'd never begun this trek. Somehow, though, I was too powerless to turn back. I made it to the doorjamb outside Carrie's room and carefully peered around the corner. What I saw was stamped into my brain with unshakeable force.

Carrie, my beloved Carrie, was standing, heaving, crying a gutteral cry while my father stood in front of her, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a belt clutched in his right hand. My stepmother was standing behind my father, her hands folded in front of her, and she stood calmly while my father raised the belt and hit Carrie. It struck her on the left arm and she cried out, her face streaking with fresh tears as she backed up in a futile effort to get away. Why would my father wield a belt against a defenseless person? I began to shudder. He hit her again and the belt cracked again, causing me to wince. My brain was buzzing with disbelief. What terrible thing had Carrie done to deserve this torture? I was shaking all over, still trying to hold myself up on my hands. I tried to discern the words of the adults in that room, but the words had to get past the buzzing in my brain. I finally heard the words "pack of cigarettes," and I sat back in horror. All this torture was happening over a measly pack of cigarettes?! I leaned forward to look inside again, staring at my stepmother, mentally berating her, because I knew with a childish certainty that my mother would never let my father do something like this to me, no matter what they thought I took. I wanted to stand up and be noticed by them, thinking that maybe they'd stop hitting Carrie if they knew I could see them. I tried to stand, but I couldn't. I was afraid of them. What if they started hitting me, too? The chance was good that they wouldn't, but I couldn't take that chance. I turned and crawled back down the hall feeling like a failure, just another person who'd failed Carrie. I hated myself as I stood and walked quietly out the door.

I sat on the porch for a long time, until Freddie and Geno returned. I looked at Geno accusingly. "you knew what was going on in there, didn't you?" He stared at me mutely and pushed the screen door.

"We can go in now. They're done."

I lost something that day. I wasn't aware of it for a long time. I still adored my father, I couldn't seem to help it, but for some reason I felt as bad for adoring him as I did when I couldn't stand up for Carrie. I knew, with a stark clarity, that if my mother hadn't divorced my father, Carrie would have been me. My mother saved me. My stepmother did not save Carrie.

She finally ran away from that house in Amarillo and lived with her own father for a few years. She married an abuser. Does my father ever feel a sense of guilt about that? Probably not, but I do. I can't look at a pack of Marlboro cigarrettes without thinking about my favorite stepsister and how, in my childish innocence, I failed to save her from one beating, at least. A beating that should have been mine.