The Fruits of Freedom

“Your father loved you, Alice. He truly did. Don’t you understand that?” My mother exclaimed, rather suddenly and with a hint of frustration. I never understood why she continued to try to mend the wreckage of his life that he left behind for us to clean up. Hadn’t she had enough? Shouldn’t she be celebrating? Her face reflected a twinge of madness within, her eyes wide like an owl watching the horrors of the forest at night. Her hair was almost as frayed at the ends as her spirit was, leaving me with an uneasy feeling of pity within my stomach. I promised myself that I wouldn’t empathize with her or argue over this. Not today. However, for my younger sister Adele’s sake, I pushed back.

“He most certainly had no love for us. The only thing he loved was alcohol and since I am neither alcohol nor old enough to purchase it for him, Adele and I were only obstacles that prevented him from what he truly wanted. A life where he could drink himself into the nothingness that he was.” I winced at the anger in my words. Regardless of my upbringing and childhood trauma, I knew that my mother did not deserve this hatred projected onto her. Especially as we were on our way to the gaudy funeral service she spent our whole savings planning.

Adele was only ten and much smarter than we gave her credit for. I think we wanted to believe that she was still innocent enough to be shielded from the nightmare turned tragedy that was our life. Regardless of what we wanted for her, she knew more than we felt comfortable admitting. “Alice!” My mother hissed, snapping her head in my direction. “How dare you speak about your dad like that! Is that how you want Adele to remember him?”

I wanted nothing more than to burst her big, ridiculous bubble right there at that very moment. For some reason, however, I felt a deep sadness for her embarrassing denial. Having an abusive, alcoholic father was one challenge, but having a mother so far away from the truth of reality was a layer to that challenge that really brought out the worst in me. I looked at Adele and found her big doe eyes staring up at me, somehow both asking me for truth and showing me her own at the same time. I was 17 and struggling to be the mature adult figure for her while still maintaining my own child-like wonder. Although, after living through the life I had up to that point, I wondered if there was even any left.

The service was a bust. The only people to show up were us three, a few of the local drunks that my father drank with, and a couple of reluctant neighbors who knew my dad before his drinking got really bad. My mom told stories and sang some of his favorite songs, we lowered him into his incredibly expensive cemetery plot that my mother insisted on buying, and I reflected on how undeserving he was of each and every teardrop that hit the freshly manicured grass below us. If you can call that a funeral then I suppose that is what it was. For me, however, it was an internal celebration. As ridiculous as my life was at that moment, it was far better than feeling the fear of hearing his footsteps marching down the hall, heavy and with anger. Far more tolerable than his face only inches from mine, screaming and shooting bullets of alcoholic breath and spittle onto my skin.

I shivered at the sensory memories that were rising all too quickly to the surface. Adele must’ve seen me shift as my mind wandered through dark memories of the past. She grabbed my sweaty hand and held it with such gentleness in her tiny little palm. She placed her other hand atop mine and looked at me, speaking a million words with her eyes, just as she always does so amazingly. I felt a sudden calmness swell over me like a warm, soft blanket shielding me from the elements. I swear she was my guardian angel even though I spent the last ten years feeling like I had to constantly be hers.

The funeral service was finally over. It began pouring rain as we were walking back to the car. The smell of wet ground and finely chopped grass wafted across the cemetery as we stepped back onto the pavement. Finally, the cleansing I have been waiting for nearly my entire life. My father wasn’t always a drunk but he was always selfish and harmful to those around him.

He only began drinking heavily after his forced retirement from the local police department when I was eleven and Adele was four, but he struggled with anger and abusive behavior ever since he returned from deployment when I was five. That’s when he joined the police department until there was an incident where he shot and killed an unarmed woman. She had argued with him, questioning his authority and egging him on before wiggling loose and attempting to run into an alleyway. His partner had gone after the other suspect, chasing him down the street in an entirely opposite direction. He would have never told anyone this but I found his case file at home one day and read it all, front to back. He told the court psychologist that he saw red and his hand moved to his holster like a reflex he wasn’t in control of. He told the psychologist that he fired with the intention to kill her.

A suspect was all that she was, and not even for a violent crime. She and her mate were suspected of robbing a local gas station with what would later be revealed to be a BB gun. He killed her because she hit a button in him that day that as he attempted to bring her in for questioning. She tested his authority and mocked him, sending his fragile ego into a dark spiral of rage and the need to overpower and dominate. That’s exactly what he did.

How he was able to avoid criminal charges or prosecution is a whole other issue. You see, my father was a Marine Veteran. He went through a lot to get out, including many violent and combative missions and even a brief period of war imprisonment. When he was made Lieutenant at our local police department, the men that were both below and above him in rank honored and kissed up to his military history and his battle wounds. None of them were able to see the most lethal wound of them all, though.

He had power issues. He was a POW for over two months, held captive by the opposing forces of a war he cared nothing about. His mind and emotions became permanently deranged yet no one questioned his decision to stay domestic and join the local police force. No one except me, too young to truly understand what was going on but old enough to know that the man who left us to join the Marines when I was two was definitely not the man who returned home.

So he became a highly respected police officer, worked and manipulated his way to Lieutenant, and killed an unarmed woman who deserved her day in court. This was the man that my mother was near hysterics over me not mourning. This was the man that my mother believed was not responsible for anything that happened to him. Perhaps she is right, perhaps he isn’t responsible for the horrible things that happened to him. However, he is responsible for the decision to not heal and move forward. He is responsible for the choice to harm instead of love. He is responsible for the abuse he gave to me instead of releasing it from within himself. He is a coward who left a 17-year-old girl with a curse to break. A cycle to end. For myself and for Adele, and maybe for my mother, I will be stronger than he ever was. I will end the abuse.

The next morning I awoke to feel that a new day has dawned for my family and me. My mother was still grieving heavily and I decided to leave her be. After all, we were safe now and I no longer needed to protect her. Right now, I just needed to have compassion for her and for her experience, even though I was ultimately unable to understand it from my perspective. She did know him before both myself and violence did, as far as I know, so perhaps he was a decent man before the world seemed to turn on him. Or perhaps she was just equally as deranged then as she is now.

In either case, Adele was already awake and staring longingly out the large windows at the front of our house. I already knew what she was staring at. The pear tree our father had planted in the front yard when he and my mother bought the house. They were coasting off money from his parents. My mother was pregnant with me, about 7 months, and he hadn’t enlisted yet. Their plan was to build a family first. My mother was young and starry-eyed, holding a world full of dreams in her little heart. She wanted nothing more than a house full of babies and a never-ending bowl full of fresh pears. They have always been her favorite.

He planted that adolescent tree for her as a gift for when he enlisted in the future. It was just after I was born and he was already plotting his escape. Although she would convince him to stay for a couple of years, he knew he would be gone for a while and wanted to make sure the tree was big enough and produced pears for her so that she would never go without a sweet fruit to sink her teeth into while he was overseas.

I suppose that tree was a metaphor for the feelings he once had. Whether he planted it for selfish reasons or not, he knew how much a pear tree meant to my mother. Whether he expected it to be the thing that took his place or did it out of the supposed kindness of his heart, we shall never know. What I can tell you is this: that pear tree was always there for us. It never left us to serve some uprooted mission in a different part of the world. It never hurt us or blamed us for its own misery. It never yelled at us or told us we were worthless. It never ceased to give to us the love and nourishment we deserved. Most importantly, though, it was still here. It survived him. So had we.

No matter the twisted, convoluted ways my mother worshipped him or how much I ache from the empty place within that once held belief in the man I was told to look up to, he gave us that tree. He planted it for us. Maybe he knew that he wasn’t deserving of us or our love. Maybe he knew we would need sweetness in our life as he slowly sucked the joy from our bodies with his rage and consumption. In some bizarre way, the only way he showed love for us was by planting this tree. Perhaps that is the capacity at which he was able to love. Is that why Adele sat there watching it with such care and rawness? I walked over to her and placed my hands on her shoulders, watching what she was watching from just above and behind her. I let my chin rest lightly on top of her head and for the sake of Adele and peace within myself, I finally said, “He really did love us.”