It wasn’t long before my Aunt Earlean invited me to attend one of Jackson State’s homecoming games with her family. The catch was we would be staying at my dad’s house. I remember struggling with the decision to go or to pass on the opportunity.
I didn’t know how or what to feel at the time. I finally decided to attend and I really enjoyed myself. I must admit, the initial meeting was somewhat awkward. The good news is that there was no crying and screaming and running into the woods.
I remember walking in and hearing my father tell me to come hug his neck. Honestly, there were so many people crammed into his house that weekend that one-on-one time with each other was out of the question.
I do remember him asking me to ride with him to the store. During those moments, he apologized for his absence and owned up to his “mistakes”. It wasn’t long after this trip that I began to spend more time with him and my other siblings.
My father had four children before his one and only marriage. Three children were born during this union, and my baby sister arrived some twenty years later. We spent many weekends during the summer and Christmas vacations getting to know one another. He even ventured as far as renting a fifteen passenger van, rounding up six of the seven children he had at the time and driving to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. My siblings and I formed a close bond and, to this day, we work to maintain this bond so our children will grow up knowing each other.
Things were really good for several years. My father even made the fourteen-hour drive, along with four of my siblings, to attend my high school graduation. Like with any family, the more time I spent with my paternal family, the more the skeletons began to fall out of the closet.
Although my father owned a club, a pawn shop and a liquor store, whispers of his real “occupation” began to emerge. My father had long since shed his “good old country boy” persona and morphed into a fast-talking wheeler and dealer—literally and figuratively.
He became engulfed in a life entrenched in fast money and even faster women. It was truly like he lived two lives. He maintained Gordon—the one he had at home when his children were around and G-Man—the one he had in the streets.
All was well until my father’s lifestyle finally caught up with him in the 1990’s and he had to spend time in the federal penitentiary. Even still, he used his connections to help secure my first job as a ninth-grade English teacher at Callaway High School in Jackson in 1996. I even lived with his girlfriend for the year I worked at this school. I ended up relocating to my hometown after one year there because I really didn’t like teaching high school.
It was during my second year of teaching that the bottom began to fall out of our relationship. After his incarceration, I worked hard to stay connected to my father. We talked on the phone regularly, and I visited him on weekends whenever I could.
One day, out of the blue, I received a call from my biological father. After some small talk, he said, “I’m coming to Memphis so you can take me shopping.” This was a major red flag for me. Why would a man who lived five minutes from a thriving mall that he rarely visited drive three hours north for me to take him shopping?
I responded, “If shopping is what you want to do, I will take you. If you have anything else in mind, leave me out of it.”
My father was a businessman who was willing to take risks—some legitimate, others not so much. He was in a financial bind yet again, which was the reason for the strange call.
The reality of the situation became obvious a few weeks later. I got a call from his live-in girlfriend. She told me to expect a call from an insurance adjuster because their car was stolen. Apparently, they had gone to a grocery store in a seedy part of town about 30 minutes from where I lived and their car was “stolen”. I politely told her to leave me out of it and hung up the phone. I thought stating my position on the issue would excuse me from the whole situation. Well, it didn’t!
My phone began to ring off the hook. I screened every call because I refused to become a part of one of my father’s get-rich-quick schemes. Naively, I believed if I ignored it, it would all just go away. Well, that didn’t happen either!
Imagine being a second-year school teacher conducting your daily English lesson, when your principal shows up at the door and tells you to report to the office immediately. I arrive to find an older gentleman, escorted by a deputy sheriff, who wanted to ask me a few questions about an automobile theft. You guessed it—the insurance adjuster.
Suffice it to say, I stood by my convictions. I answered the man’s questions honestly, but I couldn’t help but think about how disrespected I felt. There was also a level of embarrassment because the family drama that I had managed to compartmentalize had come spilling out for my boss and the entire office staff to see.
How do you tell someone exactly what your position is on an issue and still get pulled into it? After a while, it did just go away because no money was exchanged. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong!
I was bruised to my soul. My biological father and I didn’t reunite until I was sixteen. At this point, I was around twenty-three years old. Because I was sincerely
