Dinner and Family

I pulled up to my father’s house and began preparing myself. Slow breaths, flexing the fingers and spinning my wrists. Each and every joint needed to be loose for this and my mind would have to be prepared to flow. I did the best impression of quick meditation that I could think of. Pulling from movies, books and a relaxation tape Rebecca’s mother had gifted her.

The last time I had come down and visited it had been with Rebecca. An introduction was long overdue and she was anxious to meet my father. I had spent years telling stories from my youth to either prepare or discourage her from the trip but we had made it. I remember her smiling and kissing me then springing from the car and looking back to see if I was coming along.

Maybe it was revenge for meeting her parents a year before and dodging the reciprocal visit. Maybe she was genuinely happy to meet one of the being who had sired me. Maybe she was just easing my obvious and overwhelming dread.

She held my hand on the way to the door. I knocked loudly and made peace with God. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me, her eye lashes swishing softly, and whispered that everything would be okay. I smiled and turned my attention back to the door but I held the image of her face in my mind.

The visit went over like spoiled milk. It had seemed pleasant enough at first glance, words and compliments exchanged with little depth or motive. Then things turned sour. Nothing visible but you could smell it in the air.

My father’s girlfriend attended the evening and spoke whenever the room would fall silent. Rebecca sat next to me and held my hand. She spoke softly and respectfully, most of the questions were handled with concise statements that didn’t lead to anything. My father and I sat silent. I sat mutely following the spacing between the tiles and he watched the conversation between his woman and mine as though it were a polite tennis match.

By the end of the peace talks and everyone had run out of polite statements and small talk questions we descended into eating. With food there is a loosening of boundries with my family so it took three forkfuls to draw the first question from my father.

“So what do your parents do?”

Dishes clattered with the impact of knives and forks. Dull thuds rumbled through the table with the removal and replacement of cups. There was no long silence between his question and the answer but each of us felt the passage of time.

Rebecca wiped her mouth and replaced her napkin in her lap. Residual manners from her mother but they did not go unnoticed. Each pair of eyes followed the fold of paper from lap to lip and back to lap.

“My mother is in mortgages and my father’s an English teacher.”

A sliver of meat hung from my father’s fork and he grunted, “Uh huh, and where did they meet?” He placed the chunk between his teeth and chewed slowly savoring and waiting to swallow.

“I think the story goes that they met through a mutual friend, dated and married.”

“Still married?” He spoke while still chewing.

“No.”

We ate for a few minutes without another word. Rebecca was concentrating on her food. I pushed against her leg with my foot and threw her a smile. At that my father piped back in.

“Are both your parents brown skinned or is one of them…” He let the phrase hang. Each bone in my body had locked in place.

Rebecca responded to this question the same way she had when asked what her major was in school, “My father is black and my mother white.”

My teeth clenched and I waited.

“You must take a lot after your mother, your skin is so light.” My father’s girlfriend swung in trying to suffocate the embers that had begun to glow around the table.

I had not been raised to harbor ill thoughts about color or religion, nor had Rebecca. When we met I had thought her a beautiful creature, her tan brown skin and dark obsidian hair. Never before had a girl of color caught my eyes but she had taken my breath with them. I knew that my family would have its issues, most were polite and said nothing. My happiness was enough to quell their misgivings. My father raised me to be open minded but quietly I imagine he tried to instill a reluctance to date openly.

So there we sat at the table, my father, his woman and I plus my token mulatto girlfriend.

“I didn’t know my son liked dark skinned girls.” My father said.

It took a great deal of force to keep my tone steady and to drop the knife in my hand. “I didn’t know we were discussing my tastes.”

He regarded me for a moment and didn’t speak further. The volatility of the discussion subsided and dinner ended soon after with some tension left unresolved.

My father and I ended up in a room talking very sternly to one another while the women sat in the living room awkwardly waiting for the groans of a distant argument to subside.

When we left I had never felt angrier. Rebecca grabbed my thigh as I drove. She had been strong throughout the whole evening and been respectful. I couldn’t ask for a better person to have come home with me. At a red light I kissed her and apologized. She pulled me back and kissed me again. She whispered that it was over now. My response was to smile back weakly but I couldn’t get to where she was. The disapproval from people on the streets was one thing but I hadn’t expected so much from my family.

Since then I hadn’t spoken much with my old man. He’d been too stubborn and I had been too upset over the whole thing.

Now I sat in his driveway about to see him and I didn’t know what to expect.

I walked up to the door and knocked. The face of Rebecca smiling floated into my mind.

He answered the door in his reading glasses. Something about the width of his eyes seemed wild. His hair had thinned more and he’d cut it recently. It hung in mass at his temples and behind his head but allowed a hazy view of his scalp from above. His skin was also a little baggier than I had last seen and more yellow. He did not look well.

“Sidney, come in.”