Daddy's Other Little Girl, Part Three

Most teenagers have a hobby. Some play sports. Some smoke pot. Me? My hobby was searching every crack and crevice of both my mother's and grandparent's houses for evidence of my father.

Since I was a latch-key kid, I had ample time every day after school at my mom's house. I went through every drawer. I opened up every box. I looked through chests in the attic. I spent hours, day, weeks of my life doing this, and I never found anything.

My grandparents were usually home when I was foraging, so this limited me to the upstairs floor of the house. My grandmother is Queen of the Pack Rats, so the search took some time. One Saturday afternoon, though, I hit the jackpot. I found a photo album.

There were pictures from their wedding day. My father in a powder-blue suit, long, blond wavy hair everywhere and a mustache. My mother in a pale yellow dress, long straight brown hair parted down the middle. I remember thinking that my mother should have looked happier. That I hoped I'd look happier on my wedding day. At that age, it didn't occur to me that I might not ever have a wedding day, or even want one. I thought it was just something you did, like getting a job or going to church.

The rest of the album was pictures of the two of them in the house we lived in before I was old enough to form any memories of it. I studied his face, looking for signs of my face in it. I ran downstairs to get the handheld mirror from the bathroom so I could compare. I had his blond hair. My hazel eyes were my mother's, but their shape and placement was his. I had his nose and mouth. Her chin. His ears. It was like putting a puzzle together.

For the next year, every trip to my grandparent's house included that photo album. I'd sit upstairs and look at the same pages, over and over, memorizing his face, my face, and looking for things I'd never noticed before. One day I'd notice my mother was barefoot in her wedding pictures. One day I'd notice my father had a cut on his forehead. Some days I'd notice they looked happy. Other days I'd see something in my mom's face that made me think she felt trapped. I was always searching for their history, so much so that over time I started to make it up.

One day, my mom and I went over to my grandparent's house for dinner. While the ziti baked, I announced I was going upstairs to play the Summer Olympics game on the Commodore 64. I booted up the computer, then sat cross-legged on the floor, photo album in my lap. Only this time, it was empty. Just page after page of those little black corner-holders, holding nothing. I was devastated. For a moment, I even wondered if I'd made the whole thing up, if maybe there never were any photos. But I hadn't, and there were. Only now they were gone.

I sat there, staring at the empty book until my grandmother called me downstairs for dinner. I spent the meal looking for clues on everyone's faces – my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather. I saw nothing. Who did it? Was it a group effort? Did they know I'd been looking at the album, or did someone just come across it and decide to hide the pictures on the off-chance I'd find it? Could someone in my fucking family maybe address the fact that I'd had a father once?

I never asked anyone about that photo album, but I still wonder about it.



Part one

Part two