“I don’t care,” I said.
Gwen stood up. “I asked you nicely. I tried to talk to you like an adult. You have forced me to tel you this. Listen here, young lady. When you go home, look at the marriage license. Look at it careful y. Dana, your sister, the one who you think you hate so much, she changed it with a bal point pen. I didn’t marry your father one year after you were born. He married me when you were three days old, stil in the hospital, stil in the incubator.
Dana changed the date because she didn’t want to hurt your little feelings. How about that?”
“That’s not true,” I said.
She shook her head.
“You are such a liar,” I said.
“No,” Gwen said. “The devil is a lie, just like your Daddy.”
She led me to the door, as though I was just a normal guest. I squinted across the room at a photo of my mother preparing Grandma Bunny for the grave. I was stunned to see it there, as though we were part of her family. Gwen fol owed my eyes and looked into my astonished face. “It was a gift.”
SINCE I WAS the one who cal ed my father and told him to come to the house, it would have made sense for me to unlock the door and let him in.
Maybe I would have been more cooperative if he had rung the door like a guest, instead of trying to use his key like he stil lived here, like everything was okay, like my mother was his only wife and I was his only daughter. His key slid in the lock but wouldn’t turn. I stood on the other side of the door and let him try three times until it dawned on him that the locks had been changed. My mother had done it on the first day, before she turned into a sodden mess, when she was stil singing “I Wil Survive.” Before she started wishing he would come home.
When he rang the bel , I opened the wood door, undid the bolt, but I left the glass door locked. He wore his dress uniform, clutching his hat under his arm. If the outfit was red, he would have looked like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Ch-chaurisse,” he said. “Thank you for cal ing me. Is your Mama al right?”
“How can she be al right?” I said.
“None of us is al right,” he said. “This has been hard on everybody.”
“Daddy,” I said, “how could you do this to us?”
“Open the d-d-door.”
My mother was asleep on the couch, dead from Tylenol PM. I didn’t think she would wake up, but I kept my voice low. “Explain it to me.”
“Don’t make me talk through the door.” My father was so close to the glass that I could make out his chapped lips. I took a smal step away; it wasn’t much of a move, but he saw it.
“That’s how it is, Chaurisse?” he said. “You are afraid of your father? Your mama being mad at me, I can see. What I did was a sin against her.
Look at me and see I’ve been laid low. But I never did you nothing, Chaurisse. I’m stil your daddy, nothing can change that.”
“You did do me something,” I said.
“What have I done you?” he said, like he real y wanted to know.
It was hard to explain this thing I felt. It wasn’t like daughters are supposed to expect some sort of exclusive relationship from their fathers, but what he had with Dana was an infidelity. “We didn’t even know you,” I said.
“You know me, Chaurisse. How can you say you don’t know me. When have you ever needed a daddy and I wasn’t there? Half of your friends don’t even have a daddy. Tel me if I’m lying.”
He wasn’t.
“Now open the door, Buttercup. Don’t leave me standing out here in the street. You said your mama wanted to talk to me.”
“No, I said I wanted you to talk to her. She didn’t tel me to cal you.”
“I want to talk to her, too. I’ve talked to your mama every day of my life since I was sixteen years old. Two weeks away from her liked to kil me.”
“What about two weeks away from me?” I said. “You talk to me every day, too.”
“Oh, Buttercup,” he said, “Don’t be like that. Of course I miss you.”
“Do you love me?” I asked him.
“Of c-c-ourse, I love you. Your uncle Raleigh loves you, too.”
“But do you love me better?”
“Better than your Mama? What kind of question is that?”
“No,” I said. “Do you love me better than Dana?”
Now, it was his turn to back away from the glass. “What’s the p-p-point of asking that?”
I didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. I needed to ask him when exactly he had taken Gwendolyn Yarboro to be his “lawful y wedded wife.” Had he real y done it when I was in the hospital, underweight, and stuck through with al those tubes? I’d snuck into my mother’s drawer and looked at the marriage license, but I wasn’t quite sure. If Gwen was tel ing the truth, I had a problem because I could never tel my mother and I didn’t want to join the party of people who loved my mother and lied to her.
