I reflect on my deviant adolescence and early adulthood, and I wonder what life would have been like for my family if I hadn’t been so lucky. I tested the reach of my ancestors’ protective arms. I am humbled, I can’t believe I survived. Already drunk at 13, I was fearless, audacious, feisty to a point unimaginable in my sober states. I found new ways to give luck the middle finger. Bottomless drinking. Drunk driving. Innocent recklessness. It was as if I were playing tag with death. I resented my family, especially my Papa, and I escaped in drunkenness just as he did. Go figure. I learned from the best.
Our families and relatives were big drinkers. Mama drank regularly with us inside her. We all had a predilection to alcohol. We never lacked lessons on drunkenness from Papa, and it became our refuge. I don’t remember much of my childhood, but his drunken episodes linger with foul clarity.
Our life was full of pretense. A good-looking family, we appeared happy. A shallow extravagance filled the void created by the absence of affection and integrity. A sleek, black Mercedes. A racehorse that never raced. A thousand dollars cash under my pillow for my birthday. Colossal losses at casinos. Our extravagance was borrowed. Our pretense shouted that everything was just alright. It was consistently shattered along with the glasses and ochawan, the cordless phones and remote controls, even my Mama’s ribs. And my childhood. But the pretense was as resilient as any other habit. It would be right back in place the next morning, though more fragile and less convincing to me every time it reset. I learned to feel disgust.
Back to my initial question…if I had run out of luck earlier in life, I wonder how my family would have reacted. If I was dead, would they be more reflective? When I was a premature baby with a high risk of retardation or blindness, did they pray? If I had fallen on the other side of chance, retarded or blind, how would they have treated me? With love? Remorse? Shame? Would they have embraced compassion, or would I have been too heavy a burden to carry? I began life with slim chances at survival or normalcy, and here I am now. Just lucky, I guess.
I haven’t received a single phone call from my parents since I moved to the States 13 years ago. Not on my birthday. Not at the New Year. Not even when my Obachan passed away. Never. I could be dead, sick, or in danger and they wouldn’t know it for months. There must be meaning in this. We exist without each other, except for our brief, annual visits. Without the extravagance, the pretense, nothing is left to fill that familiar void for me. This distanced silence accentuates their vanity. They ignore the problem and replace the feelings with luxurious gifts. That’s the solution they’ve cultivated and carefully preserved. I don’t want another Gucci bag, I just want them to call me.
I write to them. I write about them. I continue to write and there’s no response. Nothing.
