Youtube Daddy

[Written in memory of my daddy. There's a YouTube video link of this conversation to watch after reading this at the bottom of this post/chapter] <3

“I think I ought to run away from home,” my father jokingly says as we sit on his couch across from the TV stand he's had since I was a little girl. The stand is a light pine color, sectioned into three parts. On the right sits the TV, and on the left top shelf there’s an old radio player with CDs and tapes around it. The bottom shelf holds a pile of papers and other insignificant items. The silver radio player has two detachable square speaker boxes, but I’ve never seen them separated.

“Where you gon’ go? What do you have in mind?” I ask.

I’m looking at this video, thinking of the multiple phases I went through with my eyebrows. They’re pencil-thin and have no real arch. I had them waxed this way and hadn’t learned the magic of an eyebrow pencil yet. My friend Dorishia asked me why I didn’t use one to fill them in. I tried it and told her I didn’t like the way it looked. Years later, I admitted that I used a #2 pencil because I didn’t know there was such a thing as an eyebrow pencil. It’s the little things that I still find funny. My father didn’t teach me anything about makeup, and he never had women stay over. My next phase was thick, very dark, Cleopatra-shaped eyebrows. My brother hated them, but I didn’t know why. My eyelids are painted a shimmery purple from some multistep palette I bought from Walmart. I haven’t learned the beauty of false lashes yet, so I’m wearing “Falsies” mascara by Maybelline.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll run away to Chicago,” my father responds.

My father is from Egypt, Mississippi—a place that no longer exists—but moved to Chicago when he was around 18. I’m sure he told me why once, but I don’t remember anymore. He used to tell me stories about his life in Mississippi, like the time someone axed a water fountain down in front of him when he drank from it. Another time, he said he walked into a small grocery store and the owner tried to shoot him but couldn’t find his shotgun in time. He told these stories like they were normal. My father never offered to take me to Mississippi, and he never talked about any kinfolk still living there. Most of our people migrated during the Great Migration, like many others from the South.

“What we gon’ do in Chicago?” I ask, laughing in my signature high-pitched giggle.

“Move in with your momma,” he says, chewing his gum. His voice lacks inflection, which I didn’t know was needed to signal sarcasm. I turn my phone vertically and rest it on his shoulder as I continue to record. I’m wearing a green and black jacket from Rue 21 with a pearl and silver chain necklace. I’m probably wearing Vans or Ed Hardys with skinny jeans.

“You like my momma?”

“I said move in with her.”

My father intentionally skips over the word “like” to emphasize that he would’ve said that if he meant it. He’s funny and very charismatic. He’s never met a stranger and is well liked. He chuckles and smiles often. He has perfectly straight teeth that have yellowed from decades of cigarette smoking. My father will later die from lung cancer. I don’t know that yet as I look at the black plastic ashtray sitting on the coffee table with a half-smoked cigarette resting on the edge.

“She’s got a three-and-a-half bedroom… She just moved… She balling.” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said “she just moved” in my lifetime. My mother stays in one place for maybe one to three years. She pays rent at first and then somehow stops, managing to prolong evictions. I went through that process twice during the two years I lived with her in 8th and 9th grade.

“That’s alright, that’s enough room for me. Who else stay with her?” my father asks.

My mother has had a variety of people stay with her, all for her benefit—boyfriends who paid her rent, adult children who needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks or months (and paid her rent), her sister’s kids (she received money from the state). I know because I was there—four girls in one bedroom on bunk beds. She also received my social security check monthly since my dad was retired.

“Just her.”

Black Chicagoans tend to leave the ‘r’ sound out of words. We also speak African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as Ebonics. It has its own grammatical structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary, influenced by African languages and Creole. Our Black English is spoken similarly across the U.S., even among people who have never met. AAVE is often labeled as “ghetto,” and Chicagoans tend to drop the ‘r’ sound on top of that—“just huh (her).” That’s just how we talk.

“Where that loser at?” he asks, referring to my mom’s longtime boyfriend. I liked Smitty. My mother met him when I was in my late teens and dated him off and on until he passed when I was 27.

“He ain’t there no mo.”

“Maybe I’ll call her up,” he says, probably on the flip phone he kept forever, refusing to upgrade with the times. He has no intention of calling Freda. I’m happy in this moment, just recording because I love being with my father. I chew my gum obnoxiously, smiling into the camera as I end the video.

I miss my daddy. I didn’t know this would be one of the last videos I’d have of him.

Click here for the video!