Cleaning out My Closet

It is July of 1998, and I am in Cicero, Illinois, spending the summer with my father and sister. Cicero is a south suburb of Chicago with a staggering urban poor population. People from surrounding areas drive through it with their windows rolled up, doors locked. My father lives in a small one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a twelve-unit building occupied largely by people we never see. He has lived in this apartment for only six months, but already been through two attempted robberies. Both times he scared the would-be burglar off by yelling that he had a gun, which is true. He sleeps with a loaded .22 under his pillow.

The entire apartment is floored in dark brown squares of linoleum. It�s incredibly ugly and impossible to keep clean. We sweep nearly every day, but I still won�t walk barefoot in the apartment. White socks are soiled within minutes of putting them on. The stove is at least forty years old, made by General Motors. We cannot use the oven: all food comes out raw or burnt, never in between. The showerhead in the bathroom is too low, so I have to squat to wash my hair. The water pressure is weak, so this takes several minutes. I have to take breaks from squatting when my legs get tired. The poor pressure affects the toilet as well. Each time I use it, I have to flush at least two or three times. Sometimes it does not work at all. Our landlord is evasive and my father doesn�t want him here anyway. The lease is for one person, not three. We fix things ourselves or they do not get fixed at all.

Ours is one of two last names on the mailboxes that I am able to pronounce. The other belongs to an elderly man named George. George lives off a small pension, and fills his days by sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of the building. He watches cars go by and talks to passers-by. I never see him move, except when the mail arrives. He loves mail. He used to have a friend here, another older gentleman who lived next door to him. But that man shot himself in the head just weeks before I arrived in this town, so now George sits alone. He says hello to me any time he sees me come or go. He calls me "young lady" and tells me I have a pretty smile. His smile is empty: no teeth and no dentures.

My father works for a company that makes high-end arrowheads for hunters. He is in quality control, and has pulled a few strings to get summer jobs in the production area for my sister and I. All day long we sit with women much older than ourselves, staring down at bits of metal that we shape into killing mechanisms. I have a crush on another college student who is working in the shipping department for the summer. He is shy, but we flirt at lunch. Near the end of the summer, we will go on a few dates together, but I don�t know that yet. His mother is my supervisor. She wears coral toenail polish and turquoise stretch pants. Her name is Lily.

My father has never had a strong work ethic, but he must have a job. He was forced into early retirement when his government job was eliminated three years earlier. He receives retirement money, but it�s not enough to support him or his drinking habit, which is massive. He seems to hold a grudge against the company where we work, if only because he would rather not be there, but has to be. My sister and I ride to work together each day in her car. He rides separately, if at all. We are never sure what lies we are supposed to tell his supervisor when we are asked where our father is that day.

My sister and I hate to be home. We avoid it by going shopping nearly every day after work. I had hoped to save money this summer for school, but have long since abandoned that idea. I make just above minimum wage, and spend most of it on keeping myself occupied and fed. I tell my mother almost none of this. I talk to her rarely. My father requires us to screen all calls by allowing the answering machine to pick up first, and my mother does not want to leave a message. He does not want me to talk to her anyway. He claims to hate her, and bitterly resents her new husband: a man named Bill, with whom I am very close. Months from now, when I am home again, I will cry to Bill and tell him I wish he were my real father. He will cry too, and tell me that in some way, he is. But now, it is a hot, humid summer and I am isolated and alone. Eighteen years old with an eight o�clock curfew. I read a lot, and keep a notebook that I lock in my suitcase when I am not writing in it.

One night the three of us are sitting in the living room. My father and sister are watching TV, and I am on the couch, my legs curled beneath me, notebook in my lap. It is late evening; my father is already drunk. He asks to see what I am writing, and I refuse to show him. He demands to know. He is paranoid, and thinks I am writing about him. He does not realize that proximity breeds contempt. This summer, we are so tightly confined that even my bones hate him. My feelings are so strong that it is impossible for me to write about him. He is never mentioned anywhere.

"I want to see," he yells, his face turning red from the anger or alcohol, or both. "I�m your father; I have the right to see."

I don't have to show him anything. He barely exists anymore.

He is furious. "You live under my roof. I deserve to know what goes on here."

I remind him that he has me under such scrutiny that he already knows everything I do. He can�t demand to know what I think as well. "That would be unconstitutional," I say, half-joking. "And if that�s what being under your roof requires, I�ll fly home tomorrow." This is my trump card. I am not afraid to use it, or to follow through on it.

He hates me. Maybe he always has. He looks at me and sees my mother, who does not love him anymore. Has not loved him for years. He sees her packing up her things and leaving, creating a life for herself that will never again include him. A life that is better, by all accounts, than the one that they shared. He sees his own life, which slipped, slowly at first, and then faster, into the barren place where he is now. He has disappointed everyone, including himself. He is 52 years old and no one respects him. He is a drunk living in a horrible apartment in the ghetto. I have turned on him. He is filled with enough anger and sadness to render him wordless, panicked.

"I bet you would let Bill see!" he finally yells, flinging the remote control against the wall of the living room, shattering the plastic back of the remote and gouging a chunk out of the plastered wall. He makes a grand gesture with his arm, swinging it across the coffee table, knocking everything onto the floor. His freshly opened Bud Light falls onto the brown linoleum, foaming and pooling. He is pouting, storming into the bathroom -� the only room with a lock.

I fall back into the couch, letting out a long, tired sigh and trying to make myself empty. My sister, glassy-eyed with tears that will start pouring in the next couple of minutes, tries to clean up. "Why did you do that?" she asks me, placing a towel over the puddle of beer. "Why can�t you just leave him alone?"

"He needs to know he doesn�t own us."

He stays in the bathroom for hours. Fearing he has slit his wrists, which he often threatens to do, my sister stands outside the bathroom, her ear pressed against the door, listening for sounds of life. Finally, we go to sleep in one of the two double beds in the bedroom we share with my father. The next morning we wake up and find him in the kitchen, brewing coffee with a smile on his face. The floor has been mopped and the remote control has been pieced back together and secured with electrical tape. He never mentions the night before. I never apologize. I am not sorry.

Two years later, he will give that TV to my sister, who will immediately get a new remote control She will keep the old one hidden in the drawer of her coffee table. She will hate to look at it.