You’ve Always Been Your Daddy’s Girl, Nothing’s Gonna Change That Now

 Thinking hard on that tattoo tonight. Something to turn hurt into something beautiful. Thinking hard on that possum tattoo tonight. The one I was told not to get with a wrinkled nose because I guess they're ugly. I can't imagine that's what Daddy was thinking when he called me that. The story goes like this:

I was tiny. Apparently just old enough to smile. My Daddy would lay me on his lap, baby feet to his hips. He was that tall. And y'all, I was a nine pound, thirteen ounce baby at birth, so I was not a little thing even then. He would talk to me and I would grin. And I would grin so hard, I'd wrinkle my nose. Like a possum. So that's what I was.

I went to a bar on my twenty-first birthday, about the time I was taking myself so seriously I forgot how to laugh. No wonder people thought I was arrogant and stuck up. I think they still do. I hate that. I'm not really either of those. Anyhow, someone yells across a bar with loud music "Possum, is that you?" I didn't die. I wanted to crawl under a high top, but I didn't. A distant cousin whom I had not seen in many years. There are still people who don't know my name. I used to hate that. I wish more folks would call me Possum now. Seems like one of the last things I have. 

So I've wanted that tattoo for a long ass time. It's a little better than a tramp stamp that says "Daddy" and perhaps denotes fewer of that range of issues. I feel guilty. I have three older sisters. None of them got the father I did. I can say it was alcohol or Vietnam or not knowing how to be a father because he had a shitty drunk one that literally... okay, I guess that's gonna go down the blog here. But really "the bottle don't make you do the thing, it just lets you." 

The story goes that when I was three or so, I crawled into his lap and asked him when he was going to stop drinking beer. And he did. He stopped that day and never drank again. I had a conversation recently that discussed that idea that something external to yourself, that someone can help you change. I always said that no addict changes for someone. You have to change that for yourself. But now, after knowing a few, I believe that on those hard days, someone else can help your resolve.

I remember a blue Oldsmobile. I remember it was a fastback. Not a word I knew then. I guess like this one.

I don't think it was that shiny. He let me ride up front. I couldn't have been two or three. I have this weird assortment of early memories. That car was one. Turns out he had a love for a fast blue car. Never thought about that until now. Mama always says it was ugly. I didn't remember that and now looking at the pictures, it wasn't. She doesn't like a Stingray either. Says it looks like a cockroach.

Well, he would let me ride up front, and what I now assume must have been Sundays, he'd drive out to the end of the driveway, down a little and stop. He'd amble off into the trees on the left side of the road and come back with a case of 40oz Budweiser bottles. I thought beer came from a tree stump. Turns out, Dale, owner of the local, would drop a case there on Sundays. He couldn't go a day. My memory says 6 40s. God, the internet tells me they come in a dozen. The man was 6'3" and weighed about a buck seventy five. That cannot be right. But that's what Mama said too. He never did eat much. And he was rail thin for as long as I remember. Broad in the shoulder and narrow at the hip, but none of that bullshit anterior tilt that men get. Straight and strong and brown, always in a white button down.

I barely  remember him smelling like  pig shit. A drunk who worked on a pork farm. Pig shit stinks. God, it stinks. I'll never forget it. I won't forget the way Thunderdome always made me remember that smell so vividly. 

After he sobered up, he went back to painting. He traded the Olds for a blue Dakota truck to hold the ladders. And he smelled like latex and oil instead of pig shit. I remember him cleaning his paint brushes. He'd use pink shampoo for the latex and gasoline for the oil. He'd come in the house and sit out on the screened porch. I'd bring him a huge glass of iced tea. Huge. I'd sit in the floor and unlace hit boots. Hook eyelets I learned from a young age. No other man I'd ever sit at his feet and unlace and take off his boots. I might do it for a man who loved me that hard. I would do.

Story goes, my parents met in a trailer park in Cedartown, Georgia. Mama said she found Daddy face-down on a bed, passed out drunk. She always said he was just so skinny. And she kept her distance for a long time. She didn't want to mix with a drunk. She had a track record for fucked up men. She said Daddy was so gentle with my older brother for a long time.

My older sister and brother's dad is a monster. I don't use that kind of word lightly. He always looked at me in a way I knew was wrong. Called me "Little Becky" and said I looked just like my mama. And he looked at me. A child. He apparently beat hell out of her. Many times. He dumped her in Knoxville, Tennessee, heavily pregnant with my sister, after breaking her ribs, in December. In her own car. That fucker. I'd still like to kill his sawed-off ass with my bare hands for what he did to my mother. For what he did to my brother. For what he did to my sister's notion of men. Fucking. Kill. Him.

So Mama waited. And Daddy waited. His first wife had kicked his drunk ass to the curb. She's like me. She takes no shit. My two older sisters are hers. A little blonde. A real beauty in her time. Fire. Pure fire. I adore her. My mother was always so jealous of her. My mother was always jealous of anyone with a uterus and my father's attention. She told me at his funeral that she'd always been jealous of me because of how he loved me. And goddamn, he loved me. A wise and quiet and funny man. And I worshipped him. I was never far from him. I can't forget him hipshot like he'd stand.

See if you can spot the  Possum. There is his brother. Chester. Such a kind and quiet man. I loved him so. Died of emphysema when I was 12. 

I guess the ugly story. God, I hate this story. 

They say my grandfather Roy was so tall he had to duck his head to come in a doorway. My grandmother was tall too. I saw a photo once. She was tall and dark. No one would call her a great beauty. Horsey. Dark, slightly wavy hair, severe. My grandmother died a few months after my father was born. She was 33, some kind of lung disease. It really fucked up my dad's dad. He started drinking. All those kids. A bunch. Six, I think? So he started drinking, but remarried. Can't raise a family without a woman. 

So grandpa Roy took Chester out hunting on Christmas Eve. They came in and Chester put the loaded rifle up on the mantle. Roy came in drunk and took down the rifle, in my mind to clean and put it up. He didn't know it was loaded and booze and guns go so well together. He accidentally shot one of the boys, Clark. Of course a shotgun blast to a child's body killed him. The police came and hauled Roy away. They put him in a cell and he sobered up. I guess they gave him a razor to shave for his arraignment. He cut his throat and bled out in the cell. Daddy never did like Christmas. And then years later, Chester died on Christmas Eve. I like to hope that guilt had nothing to do with it. But that's probably not true. Daddy never did like Christmas. I guess that's a little genetic. Fuck Bing Crosby.