Samantha Sorenson
Four years ago, my father spontaneously moved across the country. Which was a good thing, for me and my sister anyway. But a few months ago, I found myself thinking of him. I worried that he would show up in his local obit pages, nearly anonymous in the community, and I felt guilty. I feared that he had died alone, and that no one was grieving him. It was in the wake of these fears and this guilt that I tried to find him. And I did. Or rather, I found a Virginia address for some man with my father’s all-too-common name, and since it seemed to have the most potential of the options I had found, I wrote him a letter. I let him know that in the time since he left, I had gotten married, changed my name, moved states, and gotten a dog with my husband. I apologized for the time between us, which bridged more than just the four years since he up and moved.
A month or so later, I received his reply on an orange and teal greeting card. I recognized his handwriting—all caps, evenly spaced, and penned in straight lines. He included a phone number and the invitation to text him instead of sending handwritten letters.
He is alive, and knowing this allowed me to stop picturing him dying alone and begin picturing him in a bar somewhere, beer in hand, eyes ogling a woman down the way. I can’t help
but wonder if he is happy with the life that he has lived. I wonder if he ever feels broken, or has regrets about the doors he never walked through, opportunities he didn’t take, things
he didn’t believe in. More than anything, I wonder if he is lonely—if he ever wishes that things could have worked out differently. I think he would be angry at my pity; I know he would be offended by my forgiveness.
When I close my eyes, I hover against the ceiling and view everything below in snapshot slow motion. The four-year-old version of myself clings to the wrought-iron railing and the
strength of my sister on moss-colored stairs. From my perch, I see the door broken off its hinges and the splintered frame where the knocking turned into beating and the beating turned
into breaking. Isn’t this always the case? I see the top of the door resting cracked against the bottom step, the arc of its descent etched into the wall where my father’s angry force pushed
into our small townhome.
It is strange to think of that door, broken in and down and cracked, but somehow it seems the most peaceful part of the scene that I remember. My mind projects peace where perhaps none existed, as if somehow the door may have been contented with its fallen position, with its brokenness.
Looking away from the door in my memory, I feel the phantom of my sister’s tears on my cheek. I feel her six-year-old arms holding me in place on the stairs. And I see, shifting again
to the ceiling, the horror of the bloody fight below, one well muscled arm wound back to land another blow on our only protection, my uncle’s body beaten against the floor by my father. I
see my uncle’s battered face, his broken nose, his blood pooled on green carpet, turning it black. I watch as my mom, five-foot-three and 120 pounds, ducks under a backswing in the fray to
the corded landline mounted on our kitchen wall—the only phone we needed in 1999. Years later I would learn that my mother’s first instinct was to call her sister, my aunt, and it was my aunt who called the cops, saving both us and her own husband from the violence that had broken out that night.
When I allow myself to remember, these snapshots replay on a loop: wrought-iron safety, broken door, black-stained carpet, my mother dodging, my sister’s tears. Somewhere in thebackground, Mulan plays on the television: “Be a man, With all the force of a great typhoon . . . With all the strength of a raging fire.” And then I hear the sirens.
I asked my father once why he did what he did. I didn’t get a good answer. There wasn’t one to have. And in all honesty, I don’t know what twelve-year-old me wished he would have said, but the truth left me scared and wanting. My mom had divorced him, which I know was in large part for our safety, but “once a Burton, always a Burton,” he said. It took three years for him to break. Three years of stalking us in the shadows, following us through town, and waiting. Waiting for us to
try to move on. Waiting, plotting, and angrily writhing in the betrayal of our having left him at all. We were his possessions: one woman and two girls. Breaking and entering, aggravated assault, child endangerment: his original recorded crimes.
If our uncle had not been there, we would have died, starting with my mother. That was the plan, anyway, the answer he gave me when I asked. In an eerie calmness he told me over the
kitchen counter that he had wanted to take us up Table Mountain and down an old access road he had found during his partying days in high school. It was a place where we wouldn’t be discovered until it was too late. He folded garlic salt into cream cheese and told me he loved me and my sister too much to hurt us, a sentiment I found surprising. In the safety of darkness, he had planned to kill my mother, then himself, and then leave me and my sister to the cold wilderness where he hoped we would also die. As a family. While beating the remaining ingredients of his garlic dip, he said, “If I couldn’t have you, no one else could either, end of story,” and then he let the subject
drop with a nonchalant shrug of his massive shoulders.
In the weeks following, my adolescent mind played imaginary snapshots on a loop. I saw my sister and I clinging to the crumpled, unmoving frame of my mother’s bloody body on the
ground, our shivering frames shrinking, left starving and afraid under moonlit, ghostly trees to die in each other’s embrace. I saw my aunt, my mother’s twin, who somehow was always the one to discover us, but in these snapshots, she was too late. I saw her fall to the ground, her knees buckling under her as she wept over our broken bodies. I saw my father through my aunt’s eyes,
lying there dead on the ground, a coward, a monster, someone broken beyond repair.
Broken means fractured, crushed, destroyed, decimated, smashed, burst, torn, crippled, busted, shattered, ruptured. But can’t it also mean dejected, listless, diminished, bridled, hum-
bled, subdued, disabled, unsteady, unhinged?
I don’t remember how the door of our townhome got fixed after the break-in. I suppose I was too young to understand the roles of landlords and contractors. As an adult I realize that the door was replaced, because it was irreparable. But as a child I supposed it was magically healed—I was convinced that everything can be made new, made whole again, that nothing is too far gone, too broken.
Even though my mother had full custody, when my father got out of prison and was put on probation, my sister and I went back to scheduled visitations and for a long time we spent
every other weekend with him. In the moments of transfer from one parent to the other, it was easy to pretend that this man who so often made us afraid was a dad and not just a father. He would smile, talk about our plans for the weekend—trips to the visitors’ center, trips to the state fair, swimming at the lake, camping, hiking in the national forest. And we would do these
things. I still do these things. But most of the time he would pick us up and we would go to the local Motel 6 and watch inappropriate movies—R-rated, unrated, X-rated—for two days
while eating fast food.
There were times when I thought of him as even less than a father: perhaps a fertilizing means for our existence, a sperm to an egg. When I remember, I watch from the apartment ceiling
as he teaches, “Men can take whatever they want from you,” with the full weight of his adult body holding my sister’s petite frame to the bed. He wanted to make sure we knew our place in
the world. That we knew what would be expected of us, what we could expect. To prove his point, he punched the closet door so hard it fell to the floor. This door, too, must have been re-
placed. He taught us that we ought to be grateful when he punched the walls and doors instead of us—because it showed how much he loved us. And my sister and I were grateful, but
not because we felt loved. We were grateful for the peace that followed every violent outburst—the unspoken promise that as soon as something was broken, we could be alone to gather our-
selves together on the bed and hold on, arms reaching in an embrace that seemed to tether us to the fleeting calm.
My father’s drinking and anger made him a frequent flyer to prison. He started calling it the Country Club, an all-expense paid vacation. His state-issued membership number waited for
him to mess up again. T91474: his alternate identity. But each time he got out he came immediately back for us, like claiming his belongings in a plastic sack upon release, taking careful in-
ventory to be sure he was not being cheated. He made us feel like one-of-a-kind, fruit-of-his-loins collectors’ items. The Burton girls, limited edition. He never tried to kill us again though, and there were even times when I loved him so much that I saw myself becoming a model made after him. I wanted to be like him. Let me explain.
The smell of pond scum makes me think of happy times. I get nostalgic when I see the thin green foam of algae bubbling on a water’s surface, hiding the world of creatures that lurk and
watch from below. He taught me how to fish; I didn’t really like it, but I liked that he was happy when I went with him at four in the morning for the early biters. Early mornings and bass at Big
Daddy’s Pond deep in the reserves were good times. Whenever I got sick of fishing, which happened early and often, I would spend the morning climbing trees, scaling levies, and trying and
failing to catch bullfrogs. When the time was just right, and my toes were covered in slime and mud, right at the brink of dawn, I would sit still, suspended in the leaves, and watch the day
begin. Sunrise is still my favorite time of day. It is when my soul feels most at peace and the world seems calm.
While teaching me how to triple-thread a worm on a hook, he would tell me about his life, which mostly meant boozy nights and the women he took home, reckless fights with his
two older brothers, complaints about everything and all the stupid people in the world. His stories from adulthood mirrored the ones he shared from high school. His whole life seemed like one long, drawn-out stereotype of a football party complete with childish behavior. They were stories of a life without responsibility and with no recognition of consequence. Punishment, it seemed, was still a badge of honor that meant a night was well-spent. For the longest time, nothing seemed to hurt him.
His impenetrable bravado impressed me—I wondered how one might become invincible, unbreakable. I watched his mannerisms when we went out to breakfast after fishing. We smelled
awful, like worm guts and rusted metal, and still he sat up straight, wasn’t afraid to take up space, looked everyone in the eye. When I returned to my mom I tried on this prominent posture, but it never quite fit. Still, I see him in me when I look in the mirror. I see him in the width of my face, the hood of my eyelids. I see him in the fullness of my bottom lip and the way my top lip all but disappears when I smile. Sometimes I see Burton-branded anger and judgment and pride in my eyes and I must look away. I wonder what he sees in his reflection—does he see his father, mother, his brothers? Or does he see us, his daughters, staring back at him in the glass? Sometimes I wonder if he can even bear to look, or if, like me, he sees the resemblance and breaks his focus, looks down and away, ashamed.
My sister and I grew up thinking that you don’t have to say yes but you cannot say no. Especially as a girl. I remember a time when I was ten and he wanted naked pictures of us. He
said it was for proof that we didn’t have any freckles down there. Despite our initial protestations he would not take our word as truth. He lived with his mother because it is hard to qualify for an apartment with so many trips to the Country Club on your background check. And because he didn’t believe us about our lack of freckles, our grandmother took us into the bathroom and inspected us, twice each, but didn’t take the photos he wanted. Today, I have to force myself to the ceiling when I remember. Remember being locked with her behind that wooden door, bent over the side of the yellow tub, staring at the moldy bathmat under my adolescent toes, shorts around my ankles. I remember hearing our father moving around in the next room, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. I remember the putrid scent of our grandmother—like storage-locker yarn
that had soaked up stale cigarettes and mold. My sister held my hand, kept me calm. Looking back this seems like the kind of moment when it would be appropriate for your father to break down the door, to leave a gash in the wall, scoop you up, and take you away.
If it is true that we all contain multitudes, I wonder how many facets of my father I really forgive? It has been a few months since receiving the orange and teal card with his phone number, and just a few weeks ago, my father requested to follow me on Instagram. He must have found me with the name I provided in my letter and yet his request felt like an invasion. How dare he look me up online, I thought. I wonder where I might find evidences of forgiveness in my hypocrisy. I cannot imagine that any exists in this space. What is forgiveness if not an abandonment of grudge? If I resent my father, can I claim forgiveness? Is forgetfulness also a corequisite? Am I capable of this kind of forgiveness? Does this kind of forgiveness require me to let him follow me on Instagram, to follow him back?
Which I do, within hours of receiving his request. Do I feel guilty? Ashamed? Does my forgiveness demand penance? Demand that I allow him to come back to me, to be here, to
know me? Is that not what drove me to writing him a letter in the first place? My guilt over his choices, his aloneness? Guilt over my absence of grief?
I wonder if I will renege my forgiveness if he becomes a more consistent presence in my life. Will I realize that I only forgave my father the fisherman, and not my father the raging alcoholic? What if he has not changed? If I let him back into my life, if we become virtual acquaintances, will I remember the offenses committed against me—will my resentment resurrect? Is remembering a sign that forgiveness is dependent on his continued absence? Perhaps I must be able to picture him alone in the obit pages to feel full forgiveness for him. But that does not feel like true forgiveness.
I imagine true forgiveness as whole—a complete and total fresh slate. But I am not sure that I am capable of this forgiveness, much in the same way that I am not sure anyone can be so broken as to be beyond repair. I feel the burden of forgiveness written tight across my throat like a firm gripping hand. I wonder if this is how my father might feel his brokenness—if this feeling is multigenerational, something passed on, inherited. I wonder whose hand he feels there.
Throughout the years, I cried and begged and stopped going to see him for as long as I could get away with. My mom never forced me; my father gave up all his custody rights dur-
ing his first trip to the Country Club. It was my sister that kept me going back whenever I did.
But in staying away I started to gain my own kind of invincibility. I built up strength and formed beliefs beyond my father’s lessons. My sister, on the other hand, struggled to give up on the hope that he would change. If I could go back in time and warn her, I would. If I could explain to her that he was not her responsibility, I wonder if she would have listened. I wonder if I could have been strong enough to drag her away with me. If I could have forced her to leave him behind. I wish
I would have held her close, let her cry on my cheek as she said goodbye.
But I didn’t, and she couldn’t. Here was a man who taught us what we had to fear, but who also taught us young how to throw a punch, take a punch, spit venom—these were our Burton in-
heritance. He taught us that preservation is a muscle memory.
Sometimes I think my grandmother must have been broken too. And in the same way that I see my father written across my face and my fears, I wonder if he saw her? I wonder if she broke him when he was young the way he broke us, the way he broke so many doors. What must that have been like—how might that change a person? I only lived with him part-time and yet his influence echoes through so much of what I do and who I am. He lived with her for years. Only her. And when she died, he was left with no one but us, two already damaged girls who had established protective distance that couldn’t be bridged.
I think of this when I fight with my husband, reemploying all my Burton-bred preservations. I fight against my gut reactions, the way I want to stand up and take up more space. I tell
my husband to sit down, so neither of us domineers over the other. I monitor our tones and volumes and try to make us both small, calm, peaceful, like a sunrise. My husband follows suit,
and this might be why I fell in love with him in the first place. In no way did he remind me of my father—in addition to his horrible slouching posture, he was meek, reserved, humble, patient. He served me and he listened with empathy, didn’t try to control or manipulate or buy me. My father taught me that a man can take whatever he wants from you, but my husband has shown me that a good man wouldn’t even consider it.
Perhaps my guilt is misplaced. Perhaps being broken is an inherently lonely existence. What might it take to become whole again, to experience repair?
For years I watched my sister wait for my father’s healing to magically happen, as if a contractor could replace all the broken pieces overnight with something more functional. I don’t
think my father believes in a higher power—and maybe that is why punishment still feels like a game, because there are no eternal consequences to his actions, and mortal ones feel menial—like a vacation.
But part of me wonders if my father can’t believe—because then he would have to admit that he needs to be repaired, to be made whole—that he needs my forgiveness the same way
that I feel a need to bestow it. Maybe he is afraid that receiving forgiveness will knock him down, beat him until he breaks, and so he refuses to bend over and submit to something beyond himself. And yet I cannot help but wonder if maybe he thinks he is too far gone, if this is why he would sneer at my forgiveness, because he feels guilty, unworthy.
But I wonder also if his leaving allowed him to leave his own Burton blood behind, to walk through a door he never knew was available to him. Maybe in the four years since he
left us he has made reparations. Maybe when he organizes the lures in his tackle box, leaves his home at four in the morning for the early biters—maybe it’s possible that he feels peace in
the soft slick slime of rocks at the pond, or calm when the sun finally rises.