YOUR FATHER, THE FUGITIVE
By: Dominique Matti
Tags: Father And Daughter, Fatherhood, Short Story

photo by Femi Matti

When your father is a fugitive, it doesn’t matter what he did. He didn’t do it to you. You want him home. Your mother won’t tell you what he’s been running from until you are in middle school, when his picture is in the local newspaper with the words APPREHENDED plastered across his face. You always just assumed he was running from you.

When she tells you that he was a fugitive you make up an outlaw narrative. You tell all your white classmates. They laugh, and so you think they perceive you to be interesting, and edgy, and cool. But you are the butt of their joke. You are a stereotype. Your trauma amuses them. They call someone over and command you to tell them, too.

Hey, so and so, listen to this. You gotta hear this.

When your father is a prisoner, he writes you letters. He calls you princess. He blames the bars for the distance. You believe him and you do not believe him. To you, he feels mostly foreign. Your mother takes you to see him, but he is only allowed two visitors, and you have a brother, and the two of you require adult supervision. You let your brother and your mother go. You cry, alone, in the ugly painted waiting room. The guard watches. She tells you to smile. You can’t. Your trauma amuses her.

When you are back in the car, your brother tells you that your father is wearing a makeshift cast. He tells you that your father broke his hand on someone’s face for stealing his black composition book of rhymes. This makes you feel close to your father. You have a black composition book of rhymes. You want to break your hand on something.

photo by Femi Matti

When your father is released you are fifteen. He moves into your house. You are in your first relationship with an emotionally unavailable boy. You think if you can just get this boy to love you enough, it’ll be better. Your mother tells you the truth about your boyfriend and so you curse and scream at your mother. This goes on for months. One day, you are walking to your friend Tamika’s house. The sky is overcast. You cut through the park. You see your father on a bench, through the fog, smoking a blunt. He is staring at the sky. You don’t approach him.

Your father moves out. Your brother tells you that he couldn’t take the yelling.

Years pass. Your father calls you on your birthday. He comes to your graduation. He is at your courthouse wedding. He invites you to holiday dinners, but you don’t go, you think it will be weird. He lives an hour away from you, with his new wife, and your little brother. One day your mother calls you and she tells you that your father has had a minor stroke. He is in his late 40s. You visit him in the hospital and he seems humbled. You are humbled, too. After, he calls more.

photo by Femi Matti

When you go into labor, your mother calls him and he comes. He is one of the first people your son meets. Your son will call

him Pop Pop. You call him dad, and it feels strange, because you don’t feel you know him very well at all.

But he is your father, and your blood knows him. Years ago, you smoked a joint on a bench and stared at the sky, lost in thought. You thought of the time you saw him on a bench, smoking a blunt. You thought that even if you never met him, you would know he was your father. But when you see him, now, you don’t know what to say. There’s distance and familiarity, there, like bars are still keeping you from closeness. Like one of you is still running. Pushing and pulling. Never at peace.