“I have a nail appointment.”
She nodded, eyes not leaving mine. “I see. Well you need to cancel. You won’t be getting anything done until you’re off of punishment. You’re grounded.” Ha. Punishment. Was she joking?
“This had to be a joke, right?”
Screwing my face up in confusion at that foreign word, I asked for clarity. “Grounded? How am I grounded and for what?” It probably wasn’t a smart idea to play boo-boo the fool with my mother but I really wanted to know when this side of her started because for as long as I’ve been alive I have never been punished for anything that I’ve done.
“Yes, you are on punishment. We talked to your father and you need to be held responsible for your actions.” My father?
“First of all, she stuck her nasty fingers in my food, and I’m supposed to just sit back and let her disrespect me like that?”
“I don’t care what she did, Krishna. You’re grounded and that’s final.” She held out her hand and I swear I had to swallow my laugh. “Give me your phone. Along with no car and phone, a driver will take you to and from school. It’s not up to me but up to your father when you get…”
This was the second time she mentioned my father and I had to zone out. For my mother to be as beautiful and smart as she is, she’s dumb as a box of rocks when it came to the man she reproduced with. There was no underlying secret that I hated my father. It’s because of him that the disdain that I felt for my mother started to grow.
Sixteen years ago, my mother gave birth to me in Florida and a month after that my father and her came to California to leave me in the care of her brother. Supposedly his lifestyle of a drug lord is too dangerous for them to have a daughter to look after. Supposedly I’m a liability so I have to pretend that my parents are dead, and my uncle is my last living relative.
I have so many cousins and uncles on my father’s side that have no idea that I exist. Instead of spending summers with them, I watch from Myspace and get to know them through their profiles. Looking up one brother revealed the large Kalmin clan and I went digging. One time I became so brave that I emailed one of them. I guess they didn’t believe me when I said that I was their cousin and had to confirm it with my dad. A day later I woke up to him yelling and cussing me out in the flesh. It took for me to almost blow his spot up for him to come see me and when he did, he treated me like scum.
“But this was our relationship.”
They lived their life in Florida, and I lived with my weird uncle. Knowing how my mother is it’s so hard for me to believe that they are related. Though my uncle never treated me less than his own or did weird perverted shit, he was just a weirdo that liked weirdo nerdy shit. For example, every Halloween he gets Star Wars costumes made so we can reenact scenes. Feet and hands together I can’t count how times I’ve been Yoda.
“Here, your father wants to talk to you.” She held out her cellphone and I swear it took everything for me not to smack that brick Nokia out of her hand and stomp on it.
I vowed to never marry a man like my father or be helpless like my mother.
“Yes, Mitch, how can I help you?” I rolled my eyes at my mother’s gasp. She should be used to my antics by now.
“Little girl, I will break my foot so far up your ass.”
“Yeah. Yeah. You actually gotta be here to do that. I’m surprised you didn’t come because we both know that’s the only time you come to visit me; when I’m in trouble. Ma, here’s your husband.”
It happened so fast that I’m not sure I blinked. When I reached my hand out to hand her the phone, she raised her hand up to the angels in heaven and smacked the toothpaste out of my mouth. At first, I thought I was thinking things and had a delusional moment, possibly envisioning my mother slapping me, but the taste of copper filling my mouth told me that she for real hauled off and smacked me.
With her brows bunched and nose flaring, she pointed her finger in my face and went off. “Disrespect your father like that one more time and see what I do to you. Now take…”
I started chuckling with tears brimming my eyes. Licking my lip I winced feeling the split. “I will never apologize for how I feel. Take my keys. Take the car, Ma. Take it all. I really don’t care because guess what? When you leave tomorrow, I’ll be here alone again being raised by someone else. I get in trouble and you take the first flight out to Cali but when I call crying and saying that I want to see you guys I get nothing. Nice. Really nice parenting.”
For a few minutes, we stood there in a stare-off. Glaring. My father still on the line saying nothing, but this is what they brought out of me rebellion.
When I turned sixteen, I spent it at Six-Flags in St. Louis. My parents were supposed to come and celebrate with me. That was the whole point of us going somewhere random and off the grid. They never showed up. By then it had been almost eight months since I saw them both. And now, here was my mother, a month shy of it being a year since I last saw her, and she has the nerve to try and punish me.
“I’ll apologize for being disrespectful but not for how I feel, Mother. Never will I apologize for that.” Turning around, I walked out of the kitchen and down the hall towards the front sitting area. I needed air and luckily, we had a nice wrap around porch with a Sunday swing.
“Krishna, wait.” My mother followed me to the front of the house until I abruptly stopped, making her collide into my back. “Oh, don’t be alarmed. This is my new guard Amell. Amell, this is my baby girl Krishna. Krishna, this is Amell.”
I remember my first doll dream house given to me on Christmas. I had to be eight years old. It was pink with three stories. My father and mother made sure that I had a Barbie car, all the Barbie clothes, and everything else that was needed to make my dream house complete. By Christmas night, I had gotten a beating because I took a permanent marker and colored all of my dolls black. I wasn’t white at all and I wanted my dolls to look like me. In school we learned about Egyptians and I became fascinated. So fascinated that I remember checking out library books and reading up on the historical time period and culture.
Most of the books that I checked out had images of people that looked like me. Brown skin. Dark skin. Then I started my fascination with different tribes in Africa. These were more people that looked like me and had coil hair like me. So, though I wanted the dollhouse, I wanted my Barbie and Ken to mirror me.
My parents thought I was too young then to know what I wanted my ‘Ken’ to look like, but I knew. I knew that he was going to be tall like my daddy and muscled like him too. He was going to have dark eyes that were almost the same color as black onyx stones. Oh, and he had to smell good just like my daddy and weirdo uncle too. The older I got my idea of ‘Ken’ never changed. It seemed the more I hated my father the more I had crushes on guys that were tall, big in stature, but without the dark eyes. I could never find the complete package. Never thought I’d have my dream guy.
But then the heavens opened and here stood this man. Stood this god. Stood this King. He never spoke. Made no effort to open his mouth, only a slight nod of his head as he disregarded me. Unlike him I was fixated on this being. We were at least twelve, maybe sixteen, feet away from each other but his smell, the rich smell of his cologne made my mouth dry.