It’s 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and Grandmama is waking me up. She’s telling me that my daddies are hungry. She’s telling me that if I’m going to insist on keeping all these strays in her house then I have to be the one to take care of them. I get out of bed, brush my teeth, and head downstairs. Grandmama goes into the bathroom once I get out. Momma opens the door to her bedroom, looks at me, and then closes it.
When I get to the kitchen Rasta Daddy is already at the table, knife and fork in hand, like the kid in the commercial for Hamburger Helper. Rasta Daddy has to eat his breakfast first because the smell of bacon makes him sick. I make him an omelet with mushrooms, spinach, and onions. He takes a bite and then moves his fork around his plate warily.
“Ain’t you ever heard of seasonings boy?” He asks. Rasta Daddy has dreadlocks down past his shoulders. He likes meditation, cooking shows, and letting me beat him at checkers. Rasta Daddy is not allowed in the kitchen while Grandmama is cooking.
After Rasta Daddy finishes eating I get started on Preacher Daddy’s breakfast. Preacher Daddy eats bacon and scrambled eggs every morning. He used to want toast too but now he says he’s watching his weight. I ask him why he doesn’t just eat eggs.
“It ain’t breakfast without bacon son,” Preacher Daddy says.
White Daddy is at the table too. White Daddy says that he can get by on Frosted Flakes but if Preacher Daddy is having scrambled eggs with bacon, he’ll take his sunny-side up with hash browns. Rasta Daddy and Preacher Daddy are the only ones who are really particular about their breakfast. The rest of the daddies will just eat whatever.
Grandmama comes down the steps, shakes her head, and walks right through to the living room. The daddies aren’t allowed in the living room. She latches the waist-high daddy fence behind her. You wouldn’t think that something that short would keep them out but it does. They don’t even think to step over it.
Grandmama goes into the living room to roll pennies and call up her friend Josephine to talk about what happened on their stories this week. One Saturday, the day after Luke and Laura tried to get remarried but Elena Cassadine crashed the wedding, Grandmama stayed in the living room until it was dark out. Nothing big happened this week though, aside from Carly Corinthos waking up out of her coma with amnesia, so I make sure to set aside enough eggs for Grandmama to use. She won’t eat until all the daddies have left the kitchen.
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The first daddy I brought home was walking a bike up and down Front Street offering to teach kids how to ride it. Grandmama had sent me to the store for buttermilk and Palmolive. I wasn’t in any kind of rush so I took the long way back. That daddy had a green-and-white girls’ bike with pink tassels shimmering off the handlebars. Three different kids had turned him down, the last one, a girl with black Nikes and an overbite, crossed the street to get away from him.
I felt bad so I let him teach me to ride it even though I already knew how. Afterwards he followed me home. Grandmama made me tie him up to the pecan tree in the front yard because we didn’t have any way of knowing where he’d been even though you could tell from his footed sunflower pajamas that he was an inside daddy. He whimpered and scratched at the window all night. Grandmama made me put up some flyers and a week later a teenage girl with purple bangs and black boots came to claim him with her mom.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman told Grandmama, “Annabelle always forgets to lock the front gate.”
Annabelle just shrugged.
“Come on, Eric,” the woman said to the daddy.
He looked from me to Annabelle and back again. She must not have played with him all that much. I asked Grandmama why that girl even had a daddy if she wasn’t going to treat him right. Grandmama said that some folks were just like that. They didn’t appreciate what all good they had.
The next day we went to the shelter and got Big Daddy. The shelter is right off Mains Ave. between the Home Depot and the chicken wing restaurant that Grandmama says isn’t the kind of place for a respectable young man to be seen walking out of.
The shelter is shaped like a big red barn and inside there’s big screens, and recliners, and meat smokers, and anything else a daddy might want. As soon as we walked in, a gray-haired daddy with a limp, wearing an argyle sweater vest, tie, and an all-white pair of K-Swiss, circled Grandmama, gave her a sniff and told her that she smelled like the woman he lived next door to as a boy who always invited him into her living room for peanut brittle and goat milk. That Old Daddy leaned in to try to kiss her but before he could, Grandmama pulled a rolled-up newspaper out the brown leather bag she calls Big Ben and smacked him on the nose. She told him that he was barking up the wrong tree. He backed up with a whimper, reached into the pocket of his pleated slacks, pulled out a handful of butterscotch candy, and threw it at my feet. Grandmama wouldn’t let me pick it up though. She doesn’t like it when I take candy from strange daddies.
I wanted to bring Old Daddy home but Grandmama said he was Bad Daddy, which didn’t make any sense to me because he had such a bad limp and the only thing that could make a daddy bad is leaving. A Bad Daddy is a daddy you can’t trust long enough to let off the leash, which, as I told Grandmama when I was begging her to bring home Old Daddy, we probably wouldn’t even need. I was mad at first, but then, at the back of the shelter under a sign that said “Won’t Work,” I spotted Big Daddy.
Most folks who adopt daddies have to go and come back to the shelter a lot because so many of the daddies are kid shy and won’t really say anything until they know for sure you want to take them home but not Big Daddy. Big Daddy was laid out on the couch eating a ham and mayonnaise sandwich on Wonder Bread talking back to a Lifetime movie about a woman who found out her husband had a second family. When I walked over, he moved aside so I could sit and started to tell me what all the woman in the movie had done wrong. Big Daddy is my favorite daddy because he never leaves the couch so I don’t have to worry about him running off and getting killed like Real Daddy.
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Real Daddy was an engineer for the Army. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He liked orange soda, the smell of broccoli cooking, and jogging in the park. He died defending our freedom. Momma says he was a hero, a real hero. Grandmama says that he was a damn fool and don’t I ever even think of joining up.
There is a picture of Real Daddy wedged into the top right corner of my dresser mirror. In it he’s wearing a uniform. I look from his face to mine. I try to make my face like his face but where he is square, I am round. Where he is hard, I am soft.
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White Daddy likes to cut the grass every Saturday after breakfast. But the grass doesn’t grow that fast so I have to take the blade off and put it back on every other week. White Daddy likes to get up early, put on a suit, and stand by the door with his briefcase. I let him out, even though I know that he doesn’t have anywhere to go. White Daddy used to trade stocks but now he doesn’t know what to do ever since his brokerage firm went under. I found him downtown going through a dumpster behind an Arby’s. Some daddy catchers were trying to take him to the shelter but I told them that he was my daddy. They looked from him to me and back like they didn’t believe me but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. White Daddy likes yogurt, tanning, and cooking rare meats over open flames. Every time he makes a pass by the window on the lawnmower he looks in and waves. I wave back.
Preacher Daddy usually spends Saturday morning writing his sermons and shadowboxing. He has a front tooth missing and whenever I ask him how he lost it he says that Jesus knocked it out while they were sparing.
“Your arms are too short son,” he says punching the air, dodging imaginary fists. “They just too short to box with God.” Grandmama says we need to get Preacher Daddy a gold tooth so that he won’t whistle so much when he talks. Preacher Daddy is the only daddy Grandmama can stand. She says all the other daddies are “shiftless.” He followed Grandmama and me home after church one Sunday after Grandmama baked him a peach cobbler. Preacher Daddy likes saving souls, pork, and watching the college women’s softball championship.
I don’t know what Rasta Daddy does on Saturdays. By the time I’ve finished cooking the other daddies’ breakfast he’s usually gotten Momma or Grandmama to let him out.
Big Daddy spends his Saturdays on the couch watching Law and Order: SVU. I think something about Detective Benson reminds him of his first wife. He usually falls asleep after breakfast. I wake him up after about an hour so that he will sleep through the night. Every time I do this, he claims that he wasn’t asleep.
“I’m just resting his eyes, son,” he says. “Just resting my eyes.”
“Are you done with that plate?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “You can take it.”
Big Daddy claims to have a job that allows him to work remotely but nobody ever sees him doing anything on his laptop besides playing hearts. Big Daddy likes surround sound, Monday Night Football, and giving unsolicited advice about relationships.
“You got to love with both hands son,” he says flipping through the channels with the remote. “Otherwise there ain’t no point in loving at all.”
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After I finish washing the dishes from breakfast, I make sandwiches for lunch. I wrap the tuna sandwiches in aluminum foil and put them in the fridge. I wrap the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in parchment paper and place them under the cake plate. Each daddy knows where to find the kind of sandwich he likes best.
Between lunch and dinner, I try to talk to each daddy one-on-one. I let them give me advice and tell me stories. Each daddy has five or six stories he likes to repeat. I pretend not to have heard them already. If I say I’ve already heard the story before they get pouty and pretend to read the newspaper.
Preacher Daddy’s favorite story to tell is the one about how he found God and gave up women.
“Looking at me now you wouldn’t know it,” he always starts out. “But I used to be a powerful womanizing sinner. The Devil’s minions were all over me, hugging, and kissing, and touching, and rubbing on me, before God called to me and told me to preach his word. ”
Whenever Momma comes down the steps in anything other than her Adidas sweatpants he yells, “Get the behind me, Satan!” One night, Momma woke up to Preacher Daddy standing over her with a Bible and a bottle of Fiji water. As soon as she opened her eyes, he emptied it on her in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The next day she went to the store and came back with the daddy fences. Grandmama tells me that before Real Daddy died Momma liked to cook Moroccan food and dress nice and help people in need but after Real Daddy died something in her broke and now she likes the way whiskey tastes.
I tried to make some shakshuka once but I used Prego instead of regular crushed tomatoes and nobody would eat it but Rasta Daddy.
Rasta Daddy’s stories are all about how hard everything was back in his day.
“When I was your age and I wanna know something,” he pauses, makes sure that my eyes are on his. “I walk five miles to the local library and I learn it! And this was before they started making them shoes so damn comfortable.” He says this looking down at his green-and-yellow Clarks. Rasta Daddy loves his Clarks.
Big Daddy’s stories are all about how he lost his ex-wife. “Laverne was a good woman,” he says. “A real good woman.” Ms. Laverne actually lives just down the street. I saw her with a new daddy at the grocery store once. He had on a really tight shirt and when he reached for the cereal you could see the muscles in his arms grow and shrink. I didn’t tell Big Daddy though because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
White Daddy doesn’t like to tell stories. Instead, he lectures me about grilling.
“It’s all about the fat cap,” he says. “When you’re cooking brisket always salt the fat cap or the meat won’t have any flavor. You may as well be eating chuck roast.”
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By late afternoon, all the daddies have tired themselves out in one way or another. I bring them all into the den to watch a movie. This Saturday we’re watching Bad Boys II. Most daddies won’t pay attention if it’s not an action movie except for Rasta Daddy. Rasta Daddy prefers romantic comedies but he won’t watch them in front of the other daddies. Some daddies lay on their stomachs with their heads propped up in their palms, their feet kicking in the air. Other daddies sit straight up with their legs crossed.
Will Smith is shooting at someone while Martin Lawrence is yelling about how they’re getting too old for this shit. A little while later, I hear the daddy fence clank. Grandmama’s in the kitchen but I stay where I am because if I get up the daddies might follow. Once I smell Grandmama’s lasagna though, I get up to go help her set the table. I tell all the daddies to stay and watch Bad Boys II. Rasta Daddy is the only one who looks at me, the rest of their eyes are glued to the TV. When I start cutting up the lasagna, Momma comes down the steps, pours a glass of whiskey, and walks back up the stairs. I call the daddies into the kitchen to eat.
Rasta Daddy likes to take his lasagna apart and eat it one layer at time saving the cheese on top for last. White Daddy likes for his lasagna to cool and congeal so he can cut it into nice and even square pieces but mostly I think he waits for Preacher Daddy to finish because Preacher Daddy talks when he eats and sometimes his food falls out, especially when it’s something saucy, which the lasagna always is. Big Daddy doesn’t like for people to watch him eat his lasagna so he waits for everyone else to finish before he starts.
After all the daddies are fed, I unpause the movie. By the time the police chief threatens to take Will Smith off the case for being so reckless, all the daddies have dozed off. I turn off the television and cover all the daddies with a blanket except Big Daddy who runs too hot to sleep under one. Some of them are lying on their backs; others are lying on their stomachs. All of them are snoring. I lock all the doors, walk up the steps, and latch the daddy fence at the top behind me. I change into my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas and lie down. Their snoring is too loud for me to even consider sleep so instead I look up at the ceiling and wonder what kind of daddy I’ll be. I close my eyes and try to see myself cutting the grass, or grilling, or writing up a sermon to preach. I can see all the daddies I know doing these things but no matter how hard I look I can’t see me.
I hear the door to my bedroom squeak open. It’s Momma. My eyes are closed but I know it’s her because she walks without picking up her feet. I don’t look because I know that if I do, she’ll leave. She comes in, kicks off her house shoes, and gets into bed next to me. She wraps her arms around me and it’s almost enough. It’s almost enough for me to stop wondering and sleep.