The Absent Daughter

By Billy Keefe

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Yesterday I learned that my paternal Grandfather, my last remaining grandparent, had passed away. I have considered many times when back in my home town pulling up to the house, letting myself in the back door like I did as a youth and meandering past the remnants of his dissolved antique glass trade with a camcorder or camera. I thought of asking him questions about his life, about the ship he commanded in the Navy during World War II, of his seven wives and as many children. But then I always thought better of it. I felt no great connection with the man who had produced the unfortunate side of my family history. The side riddled with depression, dashed dreams, drug addiction, suicides, anti-social tendencies, misanthropes and violence.

But still, I think I would have liked to know more about myself and where I come from. So, when meandering through the rural hillsides of Western New York, I would drive by, and turn my head sharply behind me as I passed, but never go back into that house where so much heart brake had lived.

Still, the front door reminds me of the day I stopped walking in unannounced. My step grandmother sat on a chair, naked from the waist down, just returned from the hospital. A blood-filled catheter ran down her leg into a bag and she was injecting herself with a shot of morphine. Her vagina looked like a knife wound and the bandage was half off, and half taped to her left leg. She shouted at me to never go into a stranger's house without knocking, and then screamed for help like a hyena or an insane crow, then in a shrill and panicked voice told me to "get out you little brat" over and over until I backed out of the door, shocked and embarrassed and a whole of eleven years old, and ran. I don't know if she recognized me. Maybe she did. I never felt welcome there again.

The prospect of walking into the room where I had oral sex with my uncle at the age of four, or the room where I was told all of my teeth were going to rot out because I accidentally had borrowed a toothbrush from someone else. Or the basement where I was kept one Thanksgiving when I had shingles and a fever just in case anyone in the house had not had chicken pox in their youth.

Is it odd that I feel fondly about the wood shop I found there. Where I spent the afternoon pounding nails into scrap wood, where I built a crummy, splintered house and hid my doll in it?

Is it fair to them that I stay away because I fear hearing my dad yell at me in the same booming voice he yelled at my mother almost 30 years ago? Or that I fear he will say the same things about me or my partner that he said about his brother when he found out he was gay 20 years ago?

Is it fair to them that I don't want to look into the casket and see my grandfather's hands? He lost his fingers on one side in a lawn mower accident. His son, The Pedophile, at about 10 years of age combed the yard for the pieces and put them in a paper bag to take to the hospital. My grandfather described to me once, when I was about five, in detail how they had used the parts to sew him back up, but that they didn't know what parts had come from what fingers and he was all a mess of nails from one finger surgically attached to short, thick stubs of other fingers.

Is it fair to them that I am never there?

The funeral is this weekend. My half-sister (The Ad Exec), my partner (The Activist) and I are driving up for the services. It will be the first time I have seen my father (The Misanthrope) in at least 5 years or my uncle (The Coke Addict), my other uncle (The Pedophile), my other other uncle (The Thief) and their twin sisters who were kidnapped as children but that they reconnected with as adults since I was about thirteen. I am worried they will say something to my partner that will make her feel as unwelcome as I felt all those years ago. I don't quite know how to tell her what we are getting into and that my dad and his brothers are likely to be stoned and that people will likely shun her for being black and queer and mostly for being with me (The Absent Daughter).

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Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on March 5, 2008 at 1:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

It usually hurts to read your more personal pieces, Billy, but you write them so damned well I can't help myself. Beautiful work, as always. I laughed, I gagged, I kind of related.

Posted by cutny (anonymous) on March 5, 2008 at 8:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Damn...hard times, but you are strong and they cannot hurt you anymore. Also...F*ck them if they can't accept you for who you are, as you have clearly accepted them. Be well and good luck

Posted by agrabass (anonymous) on March 6, 2008 at 12:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Can't describe how your words just made me feel. Honored that you trust us (your readers) enough to express yourself in such a raw way.
It's sick, its wrong, and it is your reality, but what you write and who you is the farthest thing from sick and wrong.
You have risen above, and that is amazing!
Good Luck on your trip "home".

Posted by billy (Billy Keefe) on March 6, 2008 at 8:56 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Hey y'll, thanks for the positive comments. I give the credit for my life turning out alright (so far) to my mom. She went through a lot to leave my dad when we were infants and to send me and my sister to a nice school on a single mom's salary. We only had to go to my grandparent's house about three times a year (Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving). I think my grandfather himself was an ok guy, he suffered from severe depression, which cast a shadow over his home and made it hard to talk to him. He seemed to really like me and my sister and I know that if he had a better sense of how we were treated by his his wife and kids he would have done something about it. My dad, on the other hand, should have known better than to keep insisting we spend the day or stay overnight there. I remember many a Christmas evening pretending to have gotten sick from eating too much at their church potluck just so that I could go home and be with my mom.

Posted by alm77 (anonymous) on March 7, 2008 at 8:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)

On things like this, I suck at saying stuff, so *hugs*. That's all I got.

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on March 7, 2008 at 8:39 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Posted by beatle919 (Marcy McGuffie) on March 7, 2008 at 2:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Bless you, sweetie. Like Alm, I suck at saying stuff -but, I offer you a virtual hug and tons of good vibes.

Posted by ladylaw (Terry Bush) on March 7, 2008 at 5:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Thanks for such beautiful words about hard things. Sorry for your loss, now and then. Hope you became a better person in spite (or because of) the harms done you. You are a gifted writer and should know that. For what it is worth, I had a "funny uncle" (or two) myself, but was lucky enough to be older when he made the move - and was stongly repelled. I think that when people share such information with others, it can really help - them and their listeners. We learn that pain is universal, we all go thru bad things (of differnt kinds); however, surviving to become a healthy balanced person is still possible. You have survived and even thrive from time to time. Way to go! Don't let the B*****s win; turn their poison into something positive (you became you, and isn't that a good thing in the end?). They took some of your joy back then. Now you have the last laugh when you know joy, despite the dark they did. The bigger the stumbling block, the bigger the building block it can become.

The Absent Daughter

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