What Father?

I had a good day at school today. Not like the mostly crappy days at my other school. I was worried about high school, but it’s turned out really well. I’ve got a lot more friends. People are just a lot more open and kind here. I don’t know why. It’s a bigger town, maybe that has something to do with it.

There aren’t many people from my elementary school at this high school, most have chosen to go elsewhere. Doesn’t make much sense to me, since this school has a really good reputation for the level of its student performances in core subjects according to the yearly evaluation posted by the province.

Anyway, that’s their choice, and I’m glad I don’t have to see many of those miserable faces around. It’s cool here, people pass you in the hallways and they say ‘hi!’. Doesn’t matter if you’re in grade 9 and they’re in grade 10 or 11. They’re nice, really nice. Not that there aren’t people who aren’t, there always are. But they’re not the guys I hang out with.

I handed in my English assignment. I sent the rough draft to a few of my friends by email, for them to kind of edit. My mom and my grandma had already done some editing. But as part of the assignment you’re supposed to circulate it to a few other students to get their opinion. My very best friend liked it, and she made a few suggestions that were good. But I didn’t change anything other than a few spelling errors. Meredith, my best friend, said the story made her feel sad. My mom and my grandma cried over the story. That’s good, I suppose, since you’re supposed to move people through your creative fiction.

It’s a really short story. About a girl who is 17, who has had cancer, leukemia, for seven years. It has interrupted her life in so many ways, all those hospital procedures, doctors’ visits, and she has missed a lot of school. But she is a determined person, insistent on getting on with her life. When she and her mother are given the final diagnosis and everything is really hopeless, she’s given three more months to live, she decides she’ll use those months well. That’s what the story is about. And her mother’s grief over her loss.

I’m hoping to get a really good mark. My mom says I’m sure to.

She and my grandma were puzzled last month when I was so angry about the marks I got on my report card from the first semester. They kept saying that the mid-70s and -80s are good marks, that they’d have been delirious to get anything like that when they were students. Not good enough for me, though, I want marks in the high -80s and -90s. At least. So I can get into the university of my choice. There’s a lot of competition for university entry, and I want to be right up there.

I was given an excellent mark on today’s science test, so that was good. And in gym we played a really terrific game of basketball, the entire 90 minutes’ worth. I don’t remember when I laughed so much. I never realized, actually, how much fun it was. I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed it, we all did. Everything, just everything went right. Even our gym teacher was pleased. Big deal, I know, but it made me feel great. Mostly because I hate gym.

And then Ms. Martin had to go and spoil it all. The next gym session will be in the health classroom. Our assignment is to write a brief essay about our families. We’re supposed to present those essays, and actually read them out loud to the class.

I never speak about my family, it’s no one else’s business. It’s private. I don’t discuss private things with anyone. And I resent this stupid teacher giving us this idiotic assignment that is an intrusion into my privacy. What gives her the right?

Everyone I know has a father. Even the ones whose parents are separated or divorced. Those kids see their dads all the time. I know, they talk about their dads sometimes. I had a text message from Clarice on the week-end, complaining - joking, really - about her father stealing her popcorn while they were watching television together.

The last time I saw my father was when I was 7. I hardly remember it. It was a chance encounter when I was with my mom, shopping at one of the big city malls. Someone bumped into her, and it was my father. I would never have known. I was hiding behind my mom, while she spoke to him. Not for very long. It wasn’t a very friendly conversation, more like the kind you’d have with an acquaintance, an almost-complete stranger. But that’s all right because that’s what he is to me. I heard him say to her “that’s her, is it?” And that was the extent of it. My mom didn’t even tell me to get out from behind her, so she could properly introduce me.

I was about two years old when my mom told my father it was time to split. I hardly remember him; now that‘s strange. Mostly I was with my grandparents. They looked after me while my mom was out working. Until I was nine, and then mom moved us. Far enough away so it’s hard for my grandparents to come over often, to visit with us.

Do I remember anything about my dad? Hardly anything. I know he’s bigger than my mom, and he has really dark hair. The rest? Zip. Do I want to remember anything about him? Why should I? what kind of a father is he, anyway? He’s my biological father, big deal. He’s no kind of father. He has no interest in me. He has never given my mom a dime to look after me. That was part of their agreement, that in exchange for his not having to pay her anything for my upkeep, he was to keep his distance. When my mom makes a break, it’s a complete one.

Look, they weren’t ever strangers to one another, exactly. They met when she was 15, he was 16, at school. I was born when my mom was 35. Two years later it was splitsville. Not that they ever had a great relationship. According to my grandma, they were always quarrelling and she could never understand, she said, why they continued with one another. But they did. My mom is a strong-willed person, and she was determined to change my father, to make him over, my grandma said. Make him over into what, I say?

Obviously, if he was worth being with to begin with, he shouldn’t have needed any ‘making over’.

He’s my father, my biological father, but he’s a stranger. And I detest the very thought of him. I suppose I have other grandparents, another set I have no memory nor knowledge of. What about them? Were they ever interested in me? Did they ever speak to their son about their granddaughter?

It’s like as far as they’re all concerned I don’t exist. If I don’t exist for them, well they don’t exist for me.

But it isn’t fair.

If I were at all interested, if I had ever been interested, I had lots of opportunity to look at photographs of my father. There aren’t any at home, but my grandma has all kinds of framed family photos hanging on the walls, cluttering furniture tops. And there are group pictures or pictures with just my mom and my father. If I ever wanted to look at them. I never did. I knew they were there, but I never, ever looked at them. Who cares?

For a while I had a dad. For seven years my mom lived with someone else. And she told me he was now my dad. I liked having a dad. He was nice and he was my dad, and he cared about me. He had a kid of his own who came to live with us on week-ends, and he was all right. We had some fun together, me and his son. That was until I turned 9, and then my mom decided it was time to split again. I miss him, because he truly was my dad, the only one I’ve ever had. But he’s no different than my father. My mom moved us and we never saw him again. You’d think he’d want to see me, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d think wrong. Because as far as I know he never did. Because he never tried. Maybe my mom wouldn’t have wanted him to.

No one asked my opinion.

Guess I’m just the expendable, disposable baggage of other peoples’ lives. Or the failures of their lives.

So what kind of essay would I write using that material? It’s depressing and nasty. I feel bad about it. I feel cheated. No one ever asked me if that’s what I wanted.

So I’m not okay with that assignment. It stinks. It’s an imposition, an unfair and intrusive one. I don’t know how I can respond to it.

Did I mention how much I dislike this teacher? Well, I do. But she’s incidental to my life, a temporary nuisance.

It’s my father whom I hate. The very thought of him makes my flesh creep. To think I had the luck to have a father who wouldn’t care about his child. That’s a truly abhorrent aberration. And I happen to have been picked to be the victim by some quirk of fate.

I’m not even sure how I feel about my mother. She’s responsible too, isn’t she? How could she not have thought about me herself, about how I’d feel about not having a father?

Maybe I should write a story about it after all.

Look - not one spelling error.