The Dad I Missed
by Wayne McCray
Mississippi, USA
I, like other people, enjoy eating, sleeping, and waking up to music. Mostly, it's hip-hop, jazz, rock, or soul. Such vibrancies trigger my creative side. And I like that. I like that a lot. Now this morning, for whatever reason, Mark Morrison sent my mind into an alchemy of blackness. Into a place so dark I couldn't see myself let alone what's all around.
And, although it's pitch black, my feet were firmly planted. So I debated whether to stay put or move about blindly. Reason soon supplanted faith and I began walking and calling out. At some point, I expected an echo but none came. When suddenly a door cracked open and light radiated. It in itself drew my curiosity, so I approached it and entered. After enduring a different blindness, my vision adjusted. I soon found myself standing in the kitchen of my old home on Kostner Avenue. The television was on broadcasting retrospectives while one of the stars worked the stove.
It was my dad. And he told me to close the door and sit down. At the table, before me sat my favorite dish. A large bowl of freshly made oven-baked shrimp macaroni and cheese. Moments later, he sat beside me then picked-up the remote to channel surf. Each 70's show differed, but I and him were seen in all of them. And we sat there feeding ourselves and talking about what was being shown and our roles within them.
"Am I dead?" I finally asked.
"No," he replied. "Should you be?"
Next thing I knew all my perceptions returned. My eyelids fluttered. I threw back the bedcovers and quickly sat up. Wow! I thought. Like, what the fuck was that? As I two-hand wiped my face. Thinking, where had I gone? And, at that moment, Return of the Mack faded into 400 Degrees. Still perplexed, I knew, I had had it with music for the time being. So I told Siri to shut up.
So I sat there musing. First off, I hadn't gotten over lying there paralyzed. My dream only cherried it. Either way, I leapt up, determined; thinking, mom could resolve this but she's nowhere to be found. So I made a beeline to where I should've begun. And like right, there she sat between two tall cedar trees, kicking her legs sprightfully, propelling herself higher and higher.
The homemade tree swing creaked under the force of her swaying. "Ma? Ma!" I ululated, letting my presence known. "Ma! Stop for a second." But she wouldn't. So I stood there, arms folded, frustrated, observing her rocking back and forth. Finally, I got fed up and blurted out her lengthy genealogical name. All five of them. Her head spun. Then I said what bothered me: "Do you miss MacArthur?"
A bunch of oscillatory remarks followed: "I hadn't thought about it. Not like that. Besides, he's dead and gone. So why burn his ears? Let's leave him be?"
"I know but I dreamt about him," I said. "Talked actually. It was really weird."
Suddenly, my admission caused her to slide her feet across the dewy grass to gradually bring the swing to a halt. Our eyes locked, I guess to see if I was all there, before she fully told it: "Okay, fine! If I had to describe him, the word vanity would do it. He had to look good regardless. MacArthur couldn't stand silver hair. It was either shaved or dyed.
"What made him like that? No doubt, it being he's an exotic-looking and lanky nigger from Bude, Mississippi likely had something to do with it. Plus, he knew how he was looked at daily. So he put that privilege to use. He got over more times than he didn't, but in the end he was treated like the rest.
"Now when his mother died things got complicated. What he looked like didn't mean shit. Because, a lot of black folk in those days barely owned themselves. Even the shack he grew up in belonged to the farmer his mama worked for. Land too. Now this farmer wanted him to stay. Saying, that he could live there like his mom had and work for him.
"But MacArthur knew himself, that that smart-mouth of his would've been misperceived and gotten him tossed into a muddy river, displayed as fruit, or put behind Parchment bars. And, him being already farcical to hard labor, being bossed, and talked over, he understood working for that farmer had no upside whatsoever. He wasn't his mama but her only son.
"Two days later, he took what he could and at high moon snuck out of town. He hitched a ride with a family already going up North. Back then, lots of black folk stole themselves in an attempt to find a better difference of liberty and identity. It wasn't an easy thing for him to do, to leave his birthplace, his past, his mom. But he, like others, felt their future withering.
"Another thing. MacArthur loved saying: Chicago raised him. It provided him a peculiar disposition which made him smarter than most. And let him tell it. He had done and seen so much stuff, it turned him into an experienced but necessary somebody.
"It's funny now when I remember it. On how he became that necessary somebody. See, MacArthur used to be a doorman at the Palmer House. One late night, in a dark alley not far from his job, he overheard an old man crying out for help but ignored him. Chalking it up to city life. But as his wails ricocheted off the buildings, he couldn't stand it any longer. So he interceded by rescuing him from a mugger who readied to send him to his grave.
"Now that old man he saved was a Jewish jeweler. MacArthur only found that out when he later showed up at his job to introduce himself. The merchant gave him a Jaeger LeCoutre watch. Along with a membership to the Playboy Mansion as gratitude for saving his life. The old man wouldn't accept any refusals by MacArthur. And besides, in that town it'd've been rude to do so. So he gladly accepted the gifts and went. While there he met all kinds of candy-colored women, famous and infamous big shots, and the downtown crowd.
"He felt at ease in all that pleasure and found his calling there too, realizing how profitable an upscale parlor could be for servicing poor folk. He knew most men often let their other heads do all the thinking and he'd profit off their idiocy. Pussy was like money. They had to have it. And from that day forward, that bright-skinned nigger went from being a doorman to a nickel slick owner of brothels. All thanks to a jeweler.
She looked skyward, then wiped her wet face.
"But he gave it all up. When? No idea. Why? He never told that. And, truth be told, I wouldn't've cared. Now, if I was being honest, I believed it had to do with his chosen profession and he'd done something so god-awful it forever woke him up and kept him awake. It shone in his eyes. Even the world saw him differently.
"Sadly, those hazel eyes became impersonal and lost their gleam when he suffered his stroke. And like that, that lovable man who used to cook, have fun jarring lightning bugs on summer midnights, frolicking at the park, air-firing his handguns on special days, skating up and down the block as if it's a roller rink, or playing double-dutch with the kids who played outside his dry cleaner was gone.
"What remained was broken. The man I knew had atrophied, inside and out. It also made caring for him hard. I couldn't handle it all: Attend Nursing school, run his business, do housework, and look after one hard-headed son. So I had to put him into a nursing home...Look! Just know that he was a very decent man, just full of himself, and I hadn't met another like him. Now go somewhere and leave me alone, I'm done talking."
I thanked her for her candor. Then, a friendly hug and push were given.
I returned to my bedroom. Instead of laying down, I chose to flop into my deep leather heirloom of a lounge chair to reflect on what I'd learned. "Hey Siri, play Ice Cube: Who's The Mack." As the song played, I shut my eyes then focused on the breaks in the music. Remembrances soon flashed: Nursing home visits; being a latchkey child; problems I shouldn't've caused or fixed. Late night television, perusing piles of Playboy, Penthouse, and Oui magazines, having friends over, and running the dim lit streets of K-Town.
What fun and crazy times?
And to do it all in one of the most deviant of criminal cities. Because, Chicago was overpopulated by an absurd diversity of crooked cops, bigots, hypocrites, thieves, hustlers, pimps, pushers, and gangsters. But, by looking and listening to these unseemly folk, of those who lived in this landscape, I gained a better understanding of how the innocent got abused, of why bad people did evil, and what forced others to comply. Life had ultimately accelerated.
No doubt, I had an up-close view of my city courtesy of MacArthur. He believed that 'The School of Knock-Knock' had by far more anthropological value than watching any idiot box, so wherever he went I was beside him. And, how right he was? I learnt a great deal. It's an American education on deconstruction I hadn't regretted nor forgotten. It'd provided more lessons and observations on what not to become and offered better perspectives on what people covet than any media.
Perhaps that's why I missed him so along with his brilliance.
Soon I felt a forehead kiss. And as I opened my eyes, I saw the phantom of him waving goodbye as he dissipated into the dusty sunbeams. The song I'd dedicated to him was still playing. I sat forward, smiling, and confessed my debt to a dad I really missed. That I loved him. I soon rose up and reached for my empty bowl left on the end table. "Hey Siri, play that last Juvenile song," then I headed for the kitchen to have some leftover oven-baked shrimp macaroni and cheese for breakfast.
Wayne McCray
Wayne McCray was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1965, and grew up in Chicago until 1984. He attended Southern University A and M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mr. McCray has always had a passion for absurd stories of ordinary people, particularly those spoken within his family, in how they interpreted and handled an irrational world. He currently lives in Itta Bena, Mississippi, enjoying country life, with his adopted pitbull terrier Beaux. Pay for the Cornmeal was first published by Wingless Dreamer in its short story anthology, Overcoming Fear.
Header Image by Alex Iby