Sometimes, I’d indulge myself.
I’d close my eyes and imagine him coming for me. And when he came, my father was elegant. I ignored the lying salesman part of my mother’s stories, and instead made him loving and rich. Filthy rich. And handsome as a TV actor, with spice in his voice and a sleek black car that would glide down our dead end and steal me away on nights I tossed and turned and could not sleep.
A fantasy.
He was the endless possibility that came with questions unanswered, space left unfurnished.
All of our fathers were fantasies. We’d use the one or two known facts as rough sketches, subtract what we didn’t like, and color in the details that best suited us. We’d create the man we most wanted, the man we most needed.
Rachel needed an Indian chief. She’d push her cheeks into a fat scowl, force Asiatic eyes into a heavy ghetto stare, and serve out a helping of indignation when other kids asked if she was adopted or Chinese or something.
“Chi-neeese? I don’t know what you’re talking about. My father’s an Indian. He’s as big as a tree and plays drums in a band.” If the kids who’d gathered were suitably impressed or at least listening, she’d continue.
“And he’s a chief, the leader of the whole tribe. I’m an Indian and so is he, and I ain’t adopted.”
Then those kids would see that her eyes were not just brown slants, but bits of earth on fire; her hair not a plain black wrapper, but a flag of fine silk. Once she’d set them straight, Rachel’s skin dropped its yellow tinge altogether. Once she’d had her say, my sister was gold.
But she was just acting. She didn’t know her father. Rachel had been only a baby when we’d packed the Buick and made our way from the motel room back to the city. She had no recollection of our reservation days and wouldn’t have known a Seneca from a Turk. It was just the line she used to explain.
We each had our lines. Sensible but soggy sentences used to respond to the inevitable questions about how and why none of us looked even remotely alike. The lines were often repeated and intended to hide our shame. Shame that our faces didn’t neatly match. Shame that our very existence was evidence of our mother’s numerous sexual transactions. Shame that, despite so many daddies, we’d somehow ended up with none.