I don’t like talking about my father. I came out of the womb a carbon copy of him, and everyone called me “Little Chill.” My mom was my teacher and he was the fun-one-who-never-does-wrong-but-lord-please-don’t-let-him-discipline-us. I don’t blame him for being a rough father when he had an even rougher mother growing up. Oveda. A mother who broke his leg with a table chair as a kid because he got robbed on the train, who beat him and hung him out of a two-story building. 

He didn’t let that stop him from being happy and living. 

He was a loving father for the time I had with him, but deep down it wasn’t always fun around him. I remember learning to spell at a foldable Dora the Explorer table in the room we turned into the “classroom.” My mom always gave us homework during the summer to make sure we were keeping up with the other kids in whatever school we were going to at the time. 

My father tried to take the wheel in teaching me when my mom started working nights, but was stopped quickly when my mom saw the stress on four-year-old Cash. Pulling my tiny braids out from the root and stuffing them under the couch, biting the skin on my hand, crying at the thought of homework time. She didn’t understand why I would react this viciously to a paper with the word cow on it until she sat in on one of our lessons. One singular chair, my workbook, and the Dora the Explorer table in the blankness of our guest room. My mom was holding my younger sister on a small purple futon that doubled as the guest bed, and my father was sitting in his own tiny Dora chair. We went through words that were stronger for me; Dog, Bat, Cat. They both high-fived me and gave me praise for how smart I was. 

“Yay! High five baby! You’re so smart!” 

“Good job, Babygirl!” 

But it was always the word,  Bus. I had a strong lisp that required a lot of speech therapy in elementary school, but until then I was left with saying “Buth” instead of Bus. 

“Buh – Sss” 

“Buh – Thhh” 

I could feel my face getting hot with embarrassment. I started scratching my arm, piercing the skin with my tiny nails. I tried again, and again, and again. My mom telling me to take a deep breath as hot tears ran down my face. I hiccuped and choked over the word while I scratched. 

My father reached his hand across the table and smacked the snot out of me. It echoed around the room until it was only in my mind. The ringing of the silence, the start of tinnitus making it worse. 

Lil Chill can’t do it. 

I grabbed my cheek and tried again, and again, and again.

I reached to the back of my head and started to tug at the new braided style my mom did for the heat, which covered the choppiness of my hair that my grandmother cut with rusty scissors. 

He started yelling at me and my mom put my sister down and yelled in my defense, “Curtis, stop! You see she’s stressed out and needs a break!” 

“She doesn’t need a break! How else is she going to learn?” 

They yelled and I tugged. Tugged and rip the braid out. 

My mom pushed him out of the room and closed the door, and I sat at the Dora the Explorer table with my sleeping sister with the workbook in front of me. I wiped my face and tried to take a breath, but I was so tiny, and the air felt so big. 

I gripped the braid as hard as I could in my tiny hands, wrapped it tightly around my pointer finger and continued…

Some time later they came back into the room. My mom took my sister to put her in her bed, and my dad sat in his Dora chair. 

It squeaked under his weight and he opened his arms for me, tears starting as I placed the ripped braid on my chair and dove into his warm embrace. 

He rubbed the small bald spot, kissed the top of my head, and squeezed, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

He was booted from teaching me, and I’ve learned to take things like that in stride. Life is full of moments where getting smacked is the least of the worries. Whenever I think back, I just see a man learning. I don’t overthink my relationship with him, or my childhood. Despite all of this, something still made me want to be him. He had dimples, and every person in the family loved him. We would go to family parties and a crowd of relatives would cheer when they saw his face, running up to hug him and dap him up. He had the ability to make people smile and want to be around him. 

It made me giddy whenever he told me we were twins, and I, in turn, wanted to be tall with big feet. My dad was five-foot-ten and wore size twelve sneakers. I would flop around in his shoes as he warned, “If you keep wearing my shoes then your feet will grow big as hell. You’ll look like Fred Flintstone.” 

I didn’t care. I wanted to be like him, even if that meant having Flintstone feet or being as tall as Shaquille O’Neal. I didn’t know what to do, who to be, or what I wanted to learn. I was a blank slate, and his interests imprinted on me. He was into computers, so I was into computers. He liked video games, so I liked video games. We were supposed to be a dream team, a duo, the superhero CCs… 

In the backyard of my parents’ first home, in Norfolk, Virginia, we stood out on the porch. I remember the sky was clear and he was talking to me about us. Me and him. We both had on our matching New York Yankee hats, our names embroidered on our respective hats. 

He turned to me and said, “We are like this,” holding his hands in two Cs. He had me do the same—our initials. “Me and you, and no one can take that away from you. Not anyone.” I nodded and giggled and smiled all the same because it was us against the world. 

At his first funeral, I was mourning and saw no one I loved. Not my cousins from New York, nor my aunts who said they’d always be there for me. Not my godfather, or the crazy uncles who were at every party. Instead, I saw the nurses who treated my father, the pastor at the hospital church, and Oveda. At the second one, there was an abundance of people who couldn’t travel for the first one. My mom’s side of the family, some cousins from New Jersey. Friends, and love everywhere. His family was there too, but they kept to the back, segregating in allegiance with Oveda. The same people confused when he died, and about how I became depressed because of it.

“Don’t worry, he’s in a better place…. It’s time for you to step up now, that’s what your father would have wanted…Make sure to take care of your mother and sister!” 

If you give a little girl a hero, and she is just like him in the face, mind, and spirit; and you put the pressure on her as the oldest to take care of her grown mother; and she is expected to take the place of “Big Chill,” she will be confused when she dies along with him.

I was Curtis J Chillious, and then I was nothing. 

It wasn’t until later, when I was older, that my perspective changed. My mom called a meeting between my sister and me. It was one of those conversations where we reminisced. All three of us toed the water of talking about him when we sat down, and finally, my mom spilled and let her tone take over the mood. A melancholic tone similar to Gandhi’s as she tried being philosophical. 

My sister fidgets at what’s to come and I sit and stare at the grooves of our mahogany table. The air vent is directly above me and spraying out cool air to combat the ninety-degree Florida heat. Anxiety rolls off in waves and my thighs stick to the seat as sweat runs down them. I don’t pay attention to what my mom says, only to her tone, until her voice is thick with emotion. 

“Think about how scared he must’ve been. To know he was leaving you girls. To know his time was limited. To have cancer in general. To grow up with Oveda and not know how to properly show love? To be him.” 

My chest tightens and my mind is entirely blank. My father, scared? The big, strong guy who lived tons of lives? The one who survived his childhood? I couldn’t imagine him scared until I sat on the harsh bench and saw him. I saw the Newport News hospital, in bed late at night when he thought we were sleeping behind the curtain. A singular lamp illuminating him. He was crying, sobbing, begging for the lord to take his soul and to take him away from all of the pain and suffering. 

I see him whispering to the lord a secret that only they will share when they meet in person. I see the morning he died. My mom coming up the stairs bloodshot red with tears slipping out slowly. The red duvet in their room when she sits me down. The gentle walk down the steps so as not to disturb him. I see him lying there with the Yankee-fitted hat with our names embroidered on the back. His mouth slightly open like a snore is going to rush out. 

I walk up to him with my mom behind me and she says, “See. It looks like he’s sleeping.” 

I climb on top of him and lay on his chest waiting for him to jump up and tickle me. For him to let out a cough like he had on the nights before. But there is nothing. I move my head up to where his heart is and listen. Surely his strong beat is going to be there… but there is nothing. 

Silence. 

I blink and I’m at the mahogany table. He’s a human. I blink and I feel the leather sticking to my thighs and the slight itch that comes with it. He just a man, but he was my father. The man my mother met, then was in love with. He had fears, worries, PTSD, and a rough life doing his best despite what he was given, creating a loving home in return. 

I blink again and I breathe. My father was human, and that’s all I am too. 

---

About the Author