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Just
Like My Daddy PAGE
THREE: I thought my cries for help that night had not been heard. I was wrong. We were evicted from our apartment within a week for "excessive noise disturbance." We found a new apartment, and my mom and I went into hiding. A few weeks later I began my senior year of high school with trepidation and fear. Would I be safe at night? Would I go to college? Over the years, I re-established communication with my father. He never apologized and never admitted responsibility for his actions, but I didn't hold it against him. I felt it better to have a relationship with him than hold a grudge. I moved to Ohio and I no longer had to be afraid of him since he lived so far away. The distance helped us develop a new relationship through correspondence and sporadic visits. Occasionally, I would receive late night calls from drunken women who would interpret for him. "Kambri, I love you. I miss you, Kambri." I wrote him about my escapades, foreign travels and aversion to being tied down. "You are just like your daddy," he'd write back. Our shared sense of adventure and exploration led me to the British Virgin Islands in June 2002. I was hosting an exclusive party for Jose Cuervo contest winners on the privately owned, five-acre island dubbed "The Cuervo Nation." For me, it was just another paying gig masquerading as an outrageous and elite event. That is, until I received a late night phone call. My father's girlfriend was in the hospital and might not survive. Dad had stabbed her five times and slashed her throat so severely she was nearly decapitated. The police had broken into their apartment and found him straddling her -- the same way I had found him on top of my mother that August night 15 years earlier. His girlfriend lived, but this time there were consequences he could not escape. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections with a possibility for parole in ten years. We still write to each other. He sends me drawings, asserts his innocence and gives me fatherly advice in his deaf-speak: "Remember don't take any dopes and heaving drinkers." (Translation: Don't take dope or drink heavily.) I buy him writing supplies, subscriptions to periodicals and deposit money into his inmate trust fund so he can purchase strawberry ice cream, toiletries and other treats. "I'm exciting to have some money from you. Don't worry it. I will pay you back when I'm free world!! Oh boy I can't wait to buy toothpaste and deordant [sic]." I research various things for him on the internet -- the history of HIV/AIDS, ADA laws for the Deaf, who Prometheus and Atlas were and whatever other whimsical queries strike him -- send him postcards and photos, and tell him about my life as a producer in New York City. In the same way he was destined to fail, I could have, too, and no one would have blamed me. I used to dwell on how much better my life could have been, if only. Mourning for my past seemed to drop away that August night in 2003. In one of those moments while I listened to Governor Richards thanking me, I suddenly felt an intoxicating sense of relief. It dawned on me in that instant how far I have come. The realization was intense, dizzying, overwhelming and took me by surprise. There, in the midst of all the celebrities, paparazzi and silly indulgence, I felt for the first time that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to be "just like my daddy."
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Domestic
violence laws were much different then -- it was at least five years
before Nicole Brown Simpson's murder would change the laws in favor
of victims of spousal abuse. When the police arrived, my father
was in a calm state and seated at our kitchen table, so the police
simply sent him on his way. Minutes later he returned with a vengeance.
He busted the front door off its hinges and ripped my phone out
of the wall. I made a quick escape and called 911 using another
phone. The police arrested him for trespassing, but a day later
he was free to continue his harassment.
