My Failures As A Father: Chapter 4

CUSTODY

It’s mid-morning on a Saturday. You’ve been in the shower for 15 minutes which means you’re only halfway through. Snoh Aalegra is in a Situationship and you’re working through Get Rich or Die Trying. When those songs end and you step out of the bathroom, our morning begins.

I know you’ll be asking what’s for breakfast and you know my answer will be pancakes. I see your eyes roll but that smile says different. 

“No cinnamon, though.” I agree, even though I know I’ll be sneaking some in as soon as you head to your room. 

This is our life. You, my only child, even though you’re not an only child. Two siblings on your mom’s side means you are an older sister. But my having full custody changed that. Since that fight in your schoolyard, you’ve been a sister by title only.

You know what fight I’m talking about. In your school’s parking lot two weeks before your eighth grade graduation. Your mother grabbing my shirt collar. Me clutching your hand while she yelled and screamed and called me names with groups of parents and students and teachers crowding around to watch your mother and me expose our years of failures.

You cried for us to stop.

You never let go of my hand.

I needed that moment to end.

“Take her,” I said to your mother with her hand still grabbing on my collar. “Just take her.”

I still remembered the look on your face when I said those words. Your mother and I were months into a custody battle by then. The uncertainty was like being held under water gasping for air. When I said those words, you bowed your head and cried in a way you weren’t before. You thought I had given up.

That happened on a Monday. It wasn’t my week to pick you up so I shouldn’t have even been at your school. But I showed up because you asked me to. You wanted me there and so there I was, sitting in my car parked beside the Dollar Store, turning the pages of a Pauline Gedge novel with the windows down.

Your mom pulled up shortly after. When the school bell rang, I saw a text come through from you. 

“Are you outside?” 

“Yes, but so is your mom,” I texted back. “Just go with her so there’s no problem. Call me when you get to her house.” 

Just then, I saw you standing in front of the school door. The way you cringed your eyebrows, I could tell you didn’t agree with my text. Your mother saw you, too, and hustled over to usher you into her car. But she was being too forceful, shoving you because you were hesitant. I tried to ignore it, told myself to stay in my car and not cause a scene. But when you finally got to her car door and she tried pushing you inside, I couldn’t stand it. 

I leaped out of my car and ran up to her. A crowd had already gathered by then and that’s when you grabbed my hand. This is how the fight commenced in earnest. 

I’m not proud of any of this, but I also know this needed to happen. It was fated to happen. When you were ten, sitting in my mom’s living room the day you were supposed to go back to your mom, you wouldn’t stop crying. 

“I wanna stay here,” you repeated through hiccuped slurs. “I don’t wanna go with Mommy.” Your grandmother tried her best to calm you down. All three of us were sitting on the couch, you in the middle lying on my lap. This was part of our routine. We didn’t have a set schedule back then of when you stayed with your mother compared to when you stayed with me. Things were much more sporadic and I’m sure the unpredictability made it harder on you. 

When I say this was part of our routine, I mean you fussing every time we had to take you back to your mother’s. On this particular occasion, you couldn’t be consoled. So while you were still crying, I sat you up and made you a promise. 

“By the time you get to high school, we’ll be living together. Just you and me.” 

Your grandmother looked at me and shook her head and mouthed something like “don’t say that.” But you looked at me with hope. You wiped the tears from your eyes and stopped crying. 

“You promise, Daddy?” 

“I promise.” 

That moment stayed with me, so even when I was sitting in my car outside of your school after battling it out with your mother, my shirt torn and wrinkled and the crowd peeking at me as they dispersed, I kept that faith. I drove to your grandmother’s house thinking of whether or not to tell her the truth. She would be worried, too worried, and as involved as she was in your life, I felt like this was my problem, not hers. As soon as she saw my shirt, though, and asked me what happened, I told her everything. 

We were in the kitchen sitting on bar stools over the island. My mom didn’t say anything, choosing instead to shake her head in disbelief. Before I got through the full story, her house phone rang. 

“It’s Kathy” she said. “What do you want to do?” 

Run. Run away and not deal with this anymore.

I don’t know what to do.

I’m tired of this fighting.

I’m tired of this months long custody battle.

When will all of this be over.

All of those thoughts filtered in and out of my head before I finally answered the phone.

“Yes, Kathy?” 

Your mother’s voice was almost calm. The aggression and volatility she displayed just a while earlier seemed to have evaporated. 

“I thought about this,” she said. “Krystasia is the only kid in my house with your last name. She should be with you. Come pick her up now.” 

I didn’t say anything at first. I was waiting for her to say more. Waiting for some kind of punch line or threat to follow what felt like your mother conceding. 

“I’m not gonna fight you anymore. You can have custody.”

On the drive down to your mother’s place, my mind felt like a Tetris game. I tried to think of all the ways to make this make sense. I tried flipping the pieces of our life, your mother’s and mine, so they somehow fit into a story that led us to this moment.

The ride was short, and I pulled up into the complex and messaged your mother to let her know I was there. 

You both walked outside, which never happens. Either I come to the door to grab you or your mother sends you out on your own. When I saw her walking beside you, saying words I still never asked you to tell me, everything felt final. You both walked up to the passenger side of the car and the only thing I did hear your mother say was, “You won’t see anyone in this family again.” 

I didn’t believe her, of course. Even when she didn’t show up to your graduation a couple of weeks later. Even when we went back to court a month after that and she handed me your passport and birth certificate. The lawyer pulled me aside before we went in with your mother and told me he was confused. 

“She said that you’re a great father and that your daughter should be with you. Am I missing something?” 

I didn’t explain any of the details of the past month. All I did was shrug and tell him I had no idea why she changed her mind. 

When your mother and I were in the lawyer's office together, we worked out the terms of my custody. That was the first time I remember thinking that maybe she was serious. Maybe you wouldn’t ever see her side of the family again. So when I signed those papers, a moment I had waited on for months, maybe years, the overwhelming emotion I felt was guilt. 

That may be strange for you to hear. That on the day I kept my promise, a promise I made years earlier that it would just be you and me by the time you were in high school, the emotion that overwhelmed me wasn’t joy or satisfaction. There was some feeling of relief, but it wasn’t a time for celebration. Instead, I spent the drive back to my mom’s house reflecting. I finally had full custody (it took another month for a judge to confirm this). This was what I wanted, right? What we wanted? Why couldn’t I accept what was surely a victory? The most important victory of my life. 

The problem is that that “victory” fractured our family. And yes, I know we were already broken. That any hope of your mother and I mending our relationship had shattered long before the judge made that ruling. But a lot of the guilt that bubbled inside of me was because I felt like I had failed. I should’ve been able to keep our family together. And I don’t mean physically together living under the same roof, eating dinner at the dining room table passing plates of festival and jerked chicken to each other. I mean I should’ve kept us accountable.

Sometimes I wonder what your life would’ve been if your mother and I said, “This is what’s best for us, this is what’s best for our daughter?” As much as we fought, as much we said things to each other that felt impossible to take back, we both loved you enough to fight for you. We both made sacrifices to raise you. Both of our lives centred around your every breath and even if that weight felt heavy, which it did a lot, we never let it break us. At least I never felt that way. 

I knew what it meant to be raised in a family where the parents weren’t connected. As much as I wanted it to be just you and me, Krystasia, a big part of me craved a fully functioning family where both parents were present. It was a dream. I say that because I don’t even know what that feels like in real life. The only taste I had of what my version of a family should be started when you were still in your mother’s womb and lasted until I climbed onto that Greyhound. Nothing was ever the same after that.