The last time I saw my mom before she died was at a Memorial Day family reunion. She had bummed a ride by promising a friend a styrofoam plate heaped full of the fried chicken, potato salad and banana pudding that my aunts had spent two days preparing.
Mama was in a bad way. Her bony body swam in her ill-fitting hand me down clothes.
Still, I grinned when I noticed that she was wearing aviators. She had had a life long love affair with those iconic sunglasses. My smile disappeared when she took them off and propped them in her thin, stringy hair. Her eyes that had once twinkled and danced sunken deep into her skull like a November Jack o’ Lantern.
She scanned around; looking for me, I think. She didn’t spot me and I watched her unnoticed as she made her way to one of the picnic tables. She removed an envelope from her back pocket, lit a cigarette, a new habit, and took a swig from a 20oz Mountain Dew. When she came to the end of the letter she gingerly folded it and stuck it in her back pocket and then placed her head on her forearms.
I took a deep breath and walked over to her.
“Hey mom, what’s up?”
She raised her head slowly. I heard her sniffle and then saw that she was crying.
“Oh hey, baby doll. It’s good to see you. You look good.”
“Thanks. Do you want to go get something to eat?”
“Maybe in a little bit. Did Aunt Margaret make her spaghetti salad?”
“You know she did.”
I walked off, fetched a beer out of a cooler. Drank it too fast, grabbed another.
The next time I saw her, my aunts were handing her heavy aluminum foiled covered plates and telling my mom she “ought to eat something”.
She hugged me, said, “I need to go baby doll. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you, So-So!”
“Love you too, mom. Take care of yourself.”
I slipped a $20 in her pocket.
I watched as a cousin drove her down the winding holler road, never imagining that that was the last time that I would hear her voice or feel her arms wrapped around me.
I would later find out that the letter was from Steve – informing her that he had been denied parole.
Shortly after the reunion, perhaps sensing the end that we had been slowly creeping towards for years was picking up a lot of speed, I sent her a letter, a legal pad, several pens and a stamped-return address envelope. In the letter I asked her to write down her story, our story and send it back to me.
She was still working on it when she died.
The police took the notebook when they came to her beaten down trailer on the side of a muddy southern West Virginian mountainside to investigate her death. I asked for it back. Through a lawyer. “We’re sorry, but that has been misplaced,” they said.
I ache for that notebook like a missing limb. I just want to breathe it in, hoping for a powdery sweet whiff of her “Baby Soft” perfume. I want to take my pointer finger and trace her perfect elementary school teacher penmanship.
Steve’s hand writing, like mine, is a scrawl but his even harder to read after the meat of his left hand smears the ink.
I wanted her, with her fluffy, connected letters.
His stabbing smudges were all I had.
I didn’t want to ask him for anything, not even my own history, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could live without it.
His first responses were fairly general, but they were a start. He was willing. After 35 years and several lifetimes of grief and tragedy, I was ready to at least learn more about my monster, my father.
February 3, 2012
Let’s see, I was fourteen and Starr was sixteen when we met at school. She was talking to another friend of mine. He and I lived next to each other at North Welch.
Starr could drive and she was allowed to see my friend because his family went to the Kingdom Hall too. So, that’s how I started seeing your mom.
We had to sneak around and see each other. My friend was cool about it, anything for Starr. I felt bad for him, but not that bad. Like I said, we had to sneak around, we would meet in the hallways of apartment buildings. I’d go into Welch every Friday to buy a new record. We both loved music so much – all kinds. We would go over towards Linkous Park. There was a holler over there where we would go and smoke pot and drink wine. You have to understand this was the 70’s and a lot of us kids – thats what we did.
Ok, when I was 15 I got sent to a reform school for 9 months. Starr and I would write each other, but we had to use a different address. So this teacher that knew both of us would let us use hers.
When I got home I was 16. I got me a car. It made it so much easier to see each other. That’s how she got pregnant with you. We were in love, Sosha.
When Skomie found out that Starr was pregnant he sent her to Hopewell. I saw you right after you were born. You were a beautiful baby.
Your mom knew I was young and stupid so did what she thought was right, said Nick was your dad. She was just looking out for you.
I know this is shitty. I’m not good at writing. I’m sorry.
February 19, 2012
You know of all the hell that me and Starr went thru, and the hell we put you kids thru was all about the drugs we were addicted to. That was the cause of all the fights, that and not being faithful to each other.
I did my best to not take it out on you kids. I thought as long as I did not hit yall, that I wasn’t abusing yall, but I know that abuse comes in a lot of different clothes. I have always loved you kids more than life, but just loving is not enough, you do have to be responsible.
I cannot begin to tell you the pain of Zack’s passing. I have cussed God or who ever for taking my son. Why didn’t he come back home? Nothing helps this kind of pain. I just don’t know what to do.
P.S. Mainly the fights were because we never had enough money. Blaming each other. Real hard to pay bills when you are strung out. I hope this gives you some kind of insight.
I immediately wrote him back, thanked him. However, this time I decided to ask him specific questions.
He answered them all.
February 28, 2012
My childhood, that’s a start, I guess. Well, my dad, as much as I can remember, was very strict. He was also very sick…black lung, emphysema. He died when I was eight. I remember mom taking it real hard, but who wouldn’t? She had five kids, hardly any money, too proud to ask for help. She fed us, clothed us, and paid for a house on $200 a month. Would take no welfare.
She finally met a man, Bill. He was an alcoholic, very abusive. After he came into our life, it went to hell. I got very wild. Mom kept me from killing the S.O.B. Still to this day, some part of me wishes I had.
In 1975, J.U. and I did a B&E. I went away to the West Virginia Industrial School for Boys. That was a brutal place.
Let’s see, what attracted me to Starr: she had the bluest eyes, a great smile, and she was just hot. We were so drawn to each other. Two kindred souls, I guess.
I had always thought that he was in a bad car wreck when my mom was pregnant with me. However, he told me that he wasn’t.
I wasn’t in a car wreck. I got into a fight with the police, and they beat the hell out of me on Riverside Drive at Welch. They knocked out eight of my teeth, broke my jaw in three places, fractured my skull, ruptured my ear drum, and caused nerve damage on the right side of my face. That was my car accident.
As soon as he was healed up enough, he was thrown in jail. He escaped and fled to Newport News, VA to find work on a commercial fishing boat and to be closer to my mom whom was only an hour or so away in Hopewell. He said that he came to visit mom and me in the hospital. He said that he was pretty sure my gran knew that I was his, but she didn’t let on.
My mom was married twice before she and Steve were married. He had a serious relationship with Sharon, in which he fathered two more children, a girl and a boy.
Your mom and I could not stop seeing each other thru Nick and Tommy.
Sharon and I kept in contact up until she passed. I have no contact with my other kids. I have no place in their lives. I understand how they feel. One of my major regrets.
I remembered living in a trailer in North Carolina for a short period of time. I knew that I hated it, that I was obsessed with a TWA plane crash or hi-jacking and that I would walk to the convenience store everyday for a Cheerwine that I paid for with a one dollar food stamp. There was also a friend of Steve’s – a man with one leg who drove a van. That’s all I had.
I got a job in North Carolina, it didn’t work out. Starr and you were miserable. B.C. was the one legged-man, and yes he drove a van, a stick shift, oddly enough.
He fought the law and the law won.
I’ve been arrested 27 times. I’ve got four different prison numbers; one federal and three state. I have over 17 years of incarceration, and still counting. I’ve been in nine different prisons. You gain a certain amount of respect with time. It’s got a lot to do with how you carry yourself.
I’ll tell you something that you won’t believe, I have seen the worst of humanity – and the best. I’ve seen more acts of clarity and compassion in prison than anywhere else I have ever been. However, most days are real boring.
I exercise. I read a lot. I usually read three different books at a time. I just finished reading “No Country for Old Men.” Great read.
Yep, it was.
I guess you could say I am pretty well read. I know I have a lot of useless information.
Me too, Steve, me too.
When I allowed myself to see him as a human, I understood that he had had joy and pain.
My biggest joy, that’s easy, you kids. I was the first person to hold Angie, that was something. I wished I would have held all of you first.
My biggest regret, there are so many, but my biggest is missing out on so much of yall’s lives.
He was a dope fiend.
I did my first shot of dope when I was 14.
5
I’ve never been able to shake that feeling of warmth, it just totally engulfs you, it whispers to you that everything will be alright.
I have done every drug you can imagine. Alcohol, pot, coke, meth, herion, E, tranquilizers, Valium, Tylox, Benzos, Diludid, Oxycotin, Xanax, Methadone, acid, PCP. The longest I’ve been clean is probably six months. Not long, huh? I always come back to opiates, to that warmth.
I have O.D. twice – methadone and Xanax. I was on life support five days the first time and three the second. I’ve O.D. on coke, but didn’t go to the hospital. The docs said I had a heart attack when I was around 27, but I don’t think that I did. I checked out AMA. It never bothered me any.
I no longer see Steve as a monster. I don’t see him as my dad either.
It will be a long slow process, but as he suggested maybe we can get to know each other as adults.
I sent him a list of my favorite books.
In his next letter he thanked me for the suggestions and that he had gotten hold of a copy of “Beloved” by Toni Morrison.
That book was bad ass.
That is one thing that we can agree on.
The last question that I asked him was did he ever think that he could ever get his life on track, perhaps get to know his grandkids.
He replied, Well, you, the person who I thought hated me most in the world is writing me letters and talking about books. So, crazier things have happened.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
