“Who’s your father, anyway?”
Kids wanted to know. Not many kids in the neighborhood had fathers at home, but most had memories, at least—knew who their fathers were, what they had looked like, why it was they’d gone away.
My oldest brothers and sister took their father’s lead and enlisted in the military, one at a time. With just the four remaining girls and my mother at home, we seemed complete. We rarely thought about fathers.
Until someone asked.
I became an expert at changing the subject. In school, I made up names for certain branches of the family tree exercise that came with painful regularity each year. I fashioned Father’s Day cards from blue construction paper and thick glue, then tossed them into the trash on the way home from school.
Mostly, I tried to forget fathers altogether.