He wasn’t that hard to find either, which surprised me. I wondered why mom had never gone after him for child support. Because God knows we sure could have used the money.
When I pressed her, she said he wasn’t a good guy, and she thought our lives would be better without him.
She said a lot more than that, but she was a half a fifth into her vodka and truth be told I wasn’t entirely sure she even remembered telling me the next day. It didn’t all add up, but just the glimmer of hope that I could find my father was like fairy dust to me.
My whole life, all I’ve wanted was what I saw the other kids at school had. Normal. Quiet. I wanted the gingerbread house painted three colors with a wraparound porch and a mother who was there when you got home from school, wearing an apron and holding a plate of fresh baked cookies.
I swore, when I grew up, my life would be different. No alcohol. I mean ever. Absolutely no drugs. No violence of any kind. I saw it all growing up with my mom, her boyfriends, her friends…I hated that life. I won’t go back to that no matter what.
Not ever.
After she surrendered, we lost our subsidized apartment, and I had to go somewhere, so Detroit was where I went. I’d been working since I was sixteen and had saved a few thousand dollars for emergencies because mom was always having emergencies like getting evicted or needing bail money.
When I got to Detroit and stepped off the bus just in time to see a Chihuahua run out into traffic. Instinct just took over, and I chased after the bundle of fur, cars, and trucks screeching to a halt around me as I swept him up off the road and gave him a stern telling off.
That Chihuahua just happened to belong to Beth who came running over, practically breaking her ankles on her Jimmy Choo’s and crying thinking her baby almost got squashed in the middle of Woodward Ave.
It turned out, she’s a big-time real estate broker. She took me to lunch to thank me, which was great because I was starving. We hit it off, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Nice to have a friend first day you move to town.
Which was kind of lucky for me, I guess, because when I told her a bit about my situation, she helped me find a job right away with the county, driving the senior citizen bus. I’d gotten my commercial driver’s license back in Oklahoma when I was working for a nursing care center driving their bus. I love working with seniors.
The supervisor of the senior services with Wayne County was an acquaintance of Beth’s, and he also worked things around so I could rent an apartment in a senior subsidized building. I wasn’t sure how he was able to get around the age restriction, but I was desperate and happy to have a roof over my head.
Even though my rent is cheap, I’m still paying off mom’s attorney fees which has left me in the red each month. I managed to keep up my rent for the first three months, but I’m behind. I’ve looked for a second job, but the only things I’ve been able to find for evenings are bar jobs, and I just can’t stomach that.
I’ll keep looking. I don’t want Beth to know because she was so helpful getting me settled, I’ll find something. I hate letting people down.
But living there, I love older folks. They’re more fun than a lot of people my age, and they are safe. Quiet and that’s what makes me feel comfortable. It was luck things fell into place the first couple of weeks I came to town. I was due for some good luck.
Then, my first day driving the bus at work, guess who is at one of our stops helping his neighbor get on the bus to go to the senior center?
Geo Klement.
The strange thing is, I had his name but had no idea what he looked like. He walked out of the small bungalow, rolling a wheelchair for a gray-haired woman who was dressed all in red and he caught my eye. He was wearing a gray t-shirt and faded jeans. Nothing extraordinary. Well, he was enormous though. The woman in the chair looked almost like a toy next to him.
Oh God, but he has this swagger. I’ve never used that word before until him, but Jesus did he have it.
He had an easy way about him but with a dangerous feeling. And I felt things no daughter should feel for her father. Only, at that moment, I didn’t know he was my father.
His size was nearly freakish, bordering on monster. I actually saw other people walking by move out of his way with a wary glance as though he might attack at any moment.