conceal, don't feel [finalish draft]

Kevin Mayo

ENGL 2000

Ms. Spell

10 April 2014

Conceal, Don’t Feel

It was because of my father that I got better at golf. He was constantly telling me the advantages of knowing the game of golf and explaining why he liked to go out and play with his buddies. I was young, then, and my mother was really good at convincing me that I needed to go play golf with my dad because “he needed this” or “he wasn’t feeling great” or “he would really enjoy it if you went with him.”

After sitting through church doodling on the program while my mother pinched my father to stay awake, my dad would always ask me on the way home: “You want to go play golf with me today?” He always made sure to make eye contact with me in the mirror of the car, where I would shift uncomfortably in the backseat and start reading over my “notes” from church. Sometimes I made up excuses and sometimes I said yes only to take a nap later. Either way, whenever I broke eye contact with him in that small little mirror, he would just smile and shake his head. “No, that’s okay.” He would assure me when I apologized for wanting to play my GameCube instead. My mother would give me a stern look and, after a short conversation at home, I would appear in the basement at 3:15, dressed in a polo, shorts, and a hat that never fit on my head right.

The golf course that we went to was rarely visited by women. We could never convince my mom to come to the course which just meant that my dad and I grew closer. It was mostly old black men getting a cheap round of golf in, either paying the additional money for carts or just bringing along push carts to roll around on the fairways. Whenever I got out of the car in that parking lot, my heart started racing. I think it was confidence. Once I got to a point where it wasn’t embarrassing for my dad to golf with me, I started to visit the course more often. Something about the rubber spikes on the bottom of my shoes and the gravel parking lot turning to smooth concrete when you stepped onto the course made me nervous.

My dad was never far behind me, hovering near my shoulder when I visited the putting green before our round. He watched from the clubhouse while I shanked shag balls into the woods next to the course. When our neighbors showed up, it was showtime. We would flip a tee in the air to decide who would tee off first. It was usually just the four of us, but sometimes another older man would join our group. Once, we had someone join our group who kind of laughed at my presence with the group. After the others had hit their respective shots and displayed their differences in age by the distance of their drives, I was up next.

“Your daughter can use the ladies’ tee, if she wants.” This was before I would recognize my actual identity as a male – but that’s a story for another day.

I remember looking at my dad as I pushed the tee into the ground, between the two blue stones representing the “Seniors” tee. I wondered how he would respond. He grinned and, I swear to you, there was a flash of sunlight on his gold tooth, making his grin infectious for me.

“Just watch.” He gave me a nod.

If you’ve never played golf before, then you don’t know the amount of sweat that piled on my forehead. There were only a handful of people standing around the teebox but the amount of pressure that falls on your shoulders to succeed and hit a golf ball with precision, force, and aim is one of the most terrifying and exhilarating moments to experience. My hands were shaking. I stared down the green shaft of the driver and I closed my eyes. As soon as I had convinced myself I was definitely ready, I took a step back and took a couple more practice swings. What was a hat good for anyway if it couldn’t stop sweat from leaking into my eyes?

I stepped back up to the ball. Etched on the side were my initials: AMM, written in my dad’s thin uppercase handwriting, made jagged from my continual use of this ball. I let out a quick breath and then swung, staring up at the fairway in hopes that I hadn’t fucked this up. The ball soared, landing a great deal past any of the other balls in the fairway and I heard a soft “Wow” behind me. I turned around and pushed my golf club in my bag, grinning the whole time.

“That’s why she doesn’t use the ladies tee.” My father said proudly, pushing his cart past me as we starting trekking down the tee box. I came pretty close to crying that day; my dad seemed really proud that I had done so well.

I remember the first time my father shed tears. 

My parents had picked me up from school just like it was any other day and took the twenty minute drive from work to home with little chatter. I was usually filled with trivial stories and my parents usually chattered about changes to the Birmingham district. 

When we got home, I'm sure I disappeared into my room like usual to read a trashy teen lit novel, my father to the basement to watch sports in the dark and pretend not to fall asleep halfway through, and my mother to their bedroom to read her African-American books, the only kind of books she had.

My mother called me downstairs which I was reluctant to do because I'd just gotten to an emotionally juicy part of my novel and whatever she was interrupting me for could wait (examples include: "there are socks on the floor in your room" and "it's six PM on a Saturday put something else besides pajamas on"). When her call became more insistent, I thundered down the stairs, running my greasy fingers down the mauve walls, nudging the wooden railing with my hip. Childishly making my presence known and that I was obeying her demand, however reluctantly.

I hung a left to the hallway down to my parents' bedroom and leaned into the doorway, rolling my eyes at my stern mother who sat at the edge of the bed. "Yeah?"

"Sit down, honey."

"Why, am I in trouble?"

She smiled sadly at me and I instantly felt this strange pain in my chest. My mother wasn't the greatest at showing sympathy. So in this small moment, seeing her show that look filled with pity, fear, and discomfort, I swallowed hard and felt the corners of my eyes stinging. I didn't know what I would be crying for, just that something serious was about to happen.

"Honey, your Daddy had been feeling very sad today. Honey, Daddy's crying in the basement right now." I was twelve years old, very past the point of calling my father "Daddy" anymore, not that she would notice. What could possibly make my father so upset? He hadn't cried at his father's funeral, he hadn't cried when Mom had a meltdown and ran away to Virginia, he hadn't cried at anything. My dad was a strong man and he was someone I looked up to: someone who didn't have to show all those expressive emotions when he felt them.

I didn't believe her. I wanted to go downstairs but her grip on my arm was too tight. I was eight inches taller than her but all it took was a look for me to sit back down, ears back and tail between my legs. I finally brought up the courage to ask the question. "Why is Dad crying?"

"Honey, he thinks you won't love him anymore."

"What? Why?" It was such a strange answer to that question. I was generally a good kid: I did was I was supposed to, I rebelled where I could, but I mostly followed whatever they said without questioning. I strained to remember if I had something that would indicate otherwise to my dad. 

I really couldn't think of anything. I'd struggled with the relationship with my mother: we fought often about what I should or shouldn't wear, what was acceptable to do in public, how I needed to act when we went to church. My dad was often the only part of my childhood where I could actually be whoever and be accepted as I was. The other place was the internet. Our afternoons at the golf course gradually became a routine for me, not just a chore.  The only thing I really shared with my mother was a love for reading but she was never interested in anything not by black authors so I wondered if she and I were even related. 

"..Honey, he thinks you won't love him anymore because...well. We talked about it and we decided that it was the right time to tell you: You're adopted."

I sat still for a moment, still captivated by the image of my father crying. It was hard to imagine his happy round smile turned anywhere but up. The graying hairs of his beard and moustache poking in his lips as he grinned, his belly shaking with laughter were replaced with tears streaming down his face, making ugly what once held a serious passion for his job. The way his eyes lit up when he made a joke, the way he snickered and sometimes started coughing when he said something that was too funny. It was too strange.

"You guys don't have to have anything to worry about." I moved over and put my hand on my mother's shoulder, giving her a half-hug. "You're the ones who raised me, you're my parents as far as I'm concerned." I heard her sniffle and then give me a little push. "Go talk to your father. Make him feel better, okay?"

I stepped out of the bedroom and pulled open the door to the basement. I looked down the stairs and hesitated. Did I want to see my father in that weakened state? Would I ever see him cry again? I was bringing him good news - that would mean he would stop crying, right?

As I crept down the stairs, I wondered if my presence would surprise him. I wondered if they were testing me. A cruel, sick joke to see if I actually loved them and if I would run away, like I always planned to do when things rarely didn't go my way. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I knew it wasn't a test. The two television facing the couch were blank and soundless. The florescent light over the workbench provided a sickly light onto the concrete which made me wonder if he was down there at all. I flicked the light switch by the bottom of the stairs and I felt a jerk in my chest, like an instinctual knee kick from a hit to the patella.

My father sat on the couch, soft unfamiliar noises coming from him as he held his head in his hands. His ashy elbows balanced on his bare knees and I was struck by how old my parents really were. His bald head had little gray hairs growing on the sides, a sign that my mother was going to cut his hair in the basement later that week. I saw the gold band wrapped around the fourth finger on his left hand, contrasting with the dark, strong skin on the back of his hand. Though he was fifty-six at the time, I always thought that his arms and hands didn't show it.

Finally, I cleared my throat and, sweat appearing on my forehead, I approached him and sat next to him on the couch. We stayed quiet for a moment and then I slowly wrapped my arm over his shoulder. He gave a quiet sob and then began to hastily wipe his eyes, giving a fake smile through blurred vision. 

I don't really remember what he told me. I don't really remember what we talked about. I do remember crying with him. I remember sitting next to him on the couch, trying not to sob pathetically as he asked me “Do you still love us?” It was really hard not to break when he was grinning through his tears and rubbing me on the back.

I assured him, “I love you even more now” and he patted me on the back. He looked like he wanted to cry more, but he also looked less distraught. “Go see if Mom needs help in the kitchen.” I smiled at him, a little sad that our moment was over and turned to go. “Hey.” I turned back around and looked at him as he stood up, motioning at me. “I love you too.”

Our round of golf wasn’t great. I missed about two hundred really easy putts, frustrating me to no ends. I shanked a couple of iron shots and ended up taking a lot of drop balls, jacking my score up. It was starting to get late as we trudged the uphill fairway to finish the eighteenth hole. It was straight out of a movie: a father and child pulling their carts up the fairway as the sun set majestically in the background. He reached over and pat me on the shoulder, smiling at me with those warm dark eyes. “I’m glad you came with me today.”

“Me too,” I wiped at the corners of my eyes, trying to hide my emotion as we approached the green.

“Finish strong, go ahead and sink that putt.”

I did.