Secrets On Lake Drive (26 page)

I didn’t want to do it, but I forced myself
to open the door. I know this sounds harsh, but I did not even want
to say hi to her. Saying hi would acknowledge her, and I didn’t
want her to think I accepted her as a mother – the person who was
supposed to love and protect me no matter what. Hardly. She loved
her career more than she ever loved me and my father.

“What is it?” I asked, knowing it must have
been something important if she actually came to see me.

“Monica, I just thought you should know your
father is in the hospital and they don’t think he’s going to make
it.”

Suddenly, my beef with my mother was out the
window…for the moment. My heart dropped to my ankles.
My dad is
dying.
It took a minute for it to soak in.

“Where is he?”

“We’re at St. Josephs, right there on
51
^st
and Burleigh.” She was very disturbed. I guess even
though they were divorced, she still loved him. “Come by and see
him. The doctors are not talking days…more like hours.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

I slipped into a pair of jogging pants, a
grey hoodie, and some snow boots. After pulling my hair into a
ponytail, I jumped in my car.

I arrived at the hospital in less than ten
minutes and just barely found a spot in the jam-packed parking
garage. My mother met me in the lobby and I followed her up to the
room. When she opened the door, my fifty-six year old father was
lying there in bed with tubes running everywhere. He must have been
sleep because his eyes were closed tight and he wasn’t moving.

My mother proceeded to say, “The doctor said
the cancer has spread to his lungs.”

“Cancer? What cancer?”

“Monica, your father found out he had cancer
four years ago.”

“And no one bothered to tell me!”

I had no clue my father had cancer. And she
was up in the room, acting like she cared. That wasn’t my mom’s
style at all. All she cared about was herself. She had to have been
the worst mother on the planet. As a matter of fact, she was so
selfish it should’ve been her first name, Selfish Smith.

Back in the day, I remember how she used to
buy all those expensive fur coats, jewelry, and weave. Even though
she had a nice head of healthy hair, she owned more weave than the
local African hair-braiding salon. She had plenty of shoes…sandals,
pumps, mules, espadrilles, wedges, boots. She could very well have
opened a boutique with all the merchandise she had. Thinking about
that reminds me of when I was in junior high. I needed some new
shoes and she bought the cheapest pair she could find. They were
some plain white tennis shoes that didn’t last longer than a month.
And when they started to get holes in them, she took her sweet time
buying me another pair.

Then there were the times when I would ride
the bus home and wait on the porch for a few hours until she got
home. Mom wouldn’t give me a key to the house. She said she didn’t
want me messing up her furniture and inviting boys over while she
wasn’t there. In the winter, our next door neighbor, Ms. Hattie,
would let me in her house when she saw me shivering on the
doorsteps. Ms. Hattie would always give me something to eat. If I
was having trouble with my homework, she helped me with that, too.
Mom never helped me with my homework. She said if I were paying
attention in class, I wouldn’t need to bug her all the time. I kept
in touch with Ms. Hattie after high school and while I was in
college. I would bring her food, give her money, and send her
flowers every now and then. Sadly, she died a few years ago. And
even though she’s gone, I will never forget all the nice things she
did for me.

Standing in my father’s room nervously
twiddling my thumbs, I could not believe this was it. I hadn’t
spoken to my father in a while, and now he’s in a hospital bed
knocking at death’s door. A part of me felt guilty for not being
sad, but keeping it real, my relationship with my father was no
better than the one I had with my mother. He was never there for
me. All he did was kept a roof over my head, and he could sometimes
barely afford to do that thanks to my mother’s overspending. She’d
rather buy clothes than pay a light bill. My father let her do
anything she wanted, and she treated him like she was superior. If
she did love him, she sure didn’t show it by her actions.

My father couldn’t stand her, hence the
back-to-back business trips. He wanted to be as far away from her
as possible, even if that meant neglecting me. And that’s what he
did. My father was not active in my life. Besides the once-a-year
trip to the lakefront, he never took me anywhere – no Bucks games,
no Brewers games, no Packer games, no festivals. Nothing. He never
showed me how to ride a bike, never took me skating, camping or
fishing. All I got to see from him was his back going out the door
as he tried to get away from Selfish Smith.

That’s why I’m not sad. Just because the man gave me
some genetic material doesn’t mean I’m born into this world loving
him automatically. How can you love someone you don’t know?

With all those thoughts racing through my
mind, I didn’t want to be there. And though my initial reaction
when I heard the news was jumping in my car and speeding down the
street to get to the hospital to see my dying father, I knew it was
time for me to make my exit. He had made his exit from my life a
long time ago.

I walked out of the room, not saying a word
to my mom, who I’ll call Deborah at the moment because she’s not
worthy to be called my mother. Deborah followed me, yelling at me
in the hallway.

“Monica Ann, where are you going?”

“I’m going home.”

“Your father is in the hospital. He’s in
here dying and you’re going home?”

That stopped me in my tracks, but what was I
supposed to do? Just sit there and watch him die? Or better yet,
hold his hand while he passes away?

I wasn’t feeling it. But Mom, I mean
Deborah, wanted to make me feel guilty.

“I never had a father,” I told her. “That
man in there was never around for me, which is mostly your
fault.”

“It’s not about all that, Monica. It’s a
matter of respect.”

A matter of respect?
This coming from
the same woman who admitted that she should’ve never had me. She
was really starting to tick me off.

“Respect? I’ll show my respect by showing up
at the funeral.”

Those were some cold words I said, but I had
to give it to her like that. There was no need for Deborah to play
mommy
now. I’m a grown woman and nobody was going to tell me
what to do. Not her, not anyone else. I couldn’t help it that my
father, AKA sperm donor, was dying. If the doctors couldn’t do
anything to save him, then I definitely could not. So, I went on
back to the crib.

A few hours later, he died. Deborah left a
voicemail on my cell. I saw her number, but I wasn’t up to talking
to her. I had to tell Keisha, though. She answered on the first
ring.

“Wassup, Monica.”

She seemed to be in a good mood, and I was
about to wreck her good day. I didn’t want to tell her, but she
would’ve been better off hearing it from me than reading it in the
obituaries.

“Hey, Keisha. I have a bit of bad news.”

“What…what is it?”

“My father died.”

“Oh my. I’m so sorry to hear that, Monica.
When?”

“A lil’ while ago at St. Joe’s.”

“Are you okay?”

She was hitting me up with continuous
questions.

“I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“He had some terminal cancer or something.
I’m not sure.”

“How do you feel, though?”

“I’m fine, Keisha, really. I don’t feel
anything actually.”

“Guess that’s what happens when your father
was never there for you, huh?”

“Guess so. But anyway, I’m not going to keep
you. I just wanted to tell you that.”

“Well, if you need anything, don’t hesitate
to call me. I’m always here, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Thanks, Keisha.”

After I hung up with Keisha, I got in my
bed, lost myself in the comforter, and went to sleep. I didn’t feel
like doing much else.

I woke up around eight at night. I slept for
a long time and there was no point in getting up since I had to be
at work bright and early the next morning. The thought alone was
enough to keep me in bed. I wasn’t going to take any bereavement
time. There was no need to. I had nothing to grieve.

Lying there gave me time to think about my father,
how much I didn’t know him and how much our situation was similar
to my nonexistent relationship with Eric. Eric didn’t know who I
was and I’m his mother. Would he have the same hate for me that I
have for my father? The more I thought about it, the more I began
to feel like a hypocrite. In a way, I was following in my father’s
footsteps, but only my disconnection with Eric wasn’t deliberate.
My father and Deborah made me give him up for adoption. I had no
control over that. Back then, they barked the orders and I obeyed
like an innocent little schoolgirl.

Not anymore, though. No one was going to
tell me how to run my life. Whatever I felt like doing was what I
was going to do. And I had to find my son so I could start to
develop a relationship with him.

Chapter 26 -
The Funeral

Saturday, the day of the funeral, I was
standing in an unknown funeral home listening to someone I didn’t
know say a few words about my father. I doubt if this man even knew
who my father was, but you couldn’t tell by the heartfelt speech he
gave about him. The entire ceremony brought nothing but gloom,
people crying, dressed in all black, wearing dark shades on the
overcast day. It looked like the swelled clouds were going to burst
any minute and drop more snow as if we needed some more. I hated
funerals. I probably wouldn’t go to my own funeral if I wasn’t the
guest of honor.

A few more words were said at the grave site
and he was on his way, six feet into the earth. Sad. Deborah was
hollering and weeping, making a scene as if she loved the man. When
they were together, she didn’t pay him any attention. I just shook
my head. Deborah should’ve pursued a career in acting, because she
was putting on a show. Or maybe her show was so people could see
that she cared…just in case my father forgot to take her off of his
life insurance policy as a beneficiary. After all, she was all
about the money.

Anyway, it was a done deal. The funeral was
over and my father was laid to rest. I turned around and walked
away from his grave, wrapped in a long black coat and wearing a
pair of dark shades. When I turned, I saw Sean and his family near
the back of the crowd.
What is he doing here
, was my initial
reaction. Come to think about it, I should not have been surprised
to see him there. Sean had sent a bouquet of flowers to my
apartment earlier in the week with a card attached that read,
“Sorry for your loss. If there’s anything I can do, let me
know.”

Still, I didn’t expect to see him and his
family at my father’s funeral. He stood waiting for me, I assumed,
wearing a navy blue trench coat and black leather gloves. He didn’t
have on a hat, but in my opinion, he should have considering the
temperature was hovering around thirty degrees. I guess he didn’t
want to mess up his hair.

He began walking towards me as I tried to
speed walk to my car.

“Hi.” He stopped me in my tracks.

“Hi,” I replied, but I wasn’t up for
talking. I was just ready for this ordeal to be over and done
with.

“It was a nice ceremony.”

“Ah…yeah, it was.” I stayed professional. I
didn’t want him to feel any connection with me and I didn’t want to
feel anything for him. So, I took a step away to go about my
business.

 “I just wanted to mention to you that
if you need to talk, I’m here.”

 That was a bad offer for two reasons.
One, Sean actually loved his father. They had maintained a good
relationship before his father passed away. And since my father
died of cancer, too, there was no way I would discuss it with him
and bring back those sad memories of his father’s passing. And two,
I was still a little salty about him kicking me out and saying
those horrible things to me like he didn’t care about me. He wasn’t
about to get back into my good graces by showing up at my father’s
funeral and sending flowers.

“Okay, thanks, and thanks for coming.” I
appreciated his concern, but I was not going to call him. I don’t
care how sincere he came across at the moment.

He gave me a light pat on my back, then
walked away. As soon as he did, a guy that I’ve never seen before
approached me. I had no clue who he was, and when I saw him walking
my way, I just assumed he was going to walk right pass me. Instead,
he walked right up to me and asked, “Are you Monica Smith?”

Who wants to know
, I thought to
myself. I didn’t know him, but somehow, he sure knew who I was.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Kevin Smith,” he said, extending his
gloved hand to me. Though he had introduced himself, I still was in
the dark about who he was. We had the same last name, so I knew he
was some relation to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t know a lot of my
family. Mom wouldn’t let me hang around any of my kinfolk,
especially on my father’s side of the family. She said she didn’t
want their crazy behavior to taint my innocent mind.

Anyway, as I stood there trying to associate
the name Kevin with my past, he continued his introduction, saying,
“I’m your brother.”

I was as still as a statue when I heard
that. 
Is this guy playing with me or what?
He did kinda
look like me, though, but I’m no fool. I needed some proof. He
whipped out his driver’s license, and sure enough, his last name
was Smith.

“Henry was my father, too.”