Dad

By Leigh Malaihollo

My Dad died earlier this year. He was only 64 and I hadn’t seen him for 29 years. He died watching cricket on the TV, in his favourite chair, in his sister’s house. He was living with her and her husband in Johannesburg. I found out via Facebook. Another one of his 6 sisters had messaged me to say she was so sorry about Dad and what a shock it was to everyone. I asked her what was happening, “I don’t know anything” were my exact words, but already my heart was smashing into pieces. She replied almost instantly saying that Charlie, her younger brother, my Dad, had passed away the day before, on January 11th 2019. She was so sorry, she said, she thought my mum had told me. I was eating celebratory birthday pancakes with my son, who had woken up and turned 4 that very morning, January 12th 2019. “Shit” I blurted out. “Dad’s dead!”. I leapt up and strode into the middle of the room, but quickly realised I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I was plunged into the depths of a new feeling that heralded the next stage of my life. The stage of grief. 

I had to leave the room, to deal with this. I didn’t want to scare my children and I didn’t want to ruin the birthday pancakes. Just moments before receiving the news, I had declared that we should always, from now on, have pancakes on a birthday morning. A new family tradition. It’s the sort of quiet celebration I would have loved as a child. My family weren’t big on sweet rituals. My husband Frydo physically guided me into a bedroom to figure out what to do next. “Call your mum, you need to speak to her” is what I think he said. With shaky hands I called my Mum. It struck me then…My Aunt Francis had thought my mum had already told me. Mum knew and she hadn’t told me. A wave of fury crashed through my state of shock as I waited for her to pick up. “Mum is dad dead? If you have kept this from me I will never fucking forgive you” The words tumbled out clumsily and landed heavily and there was no hello to ease her in. A part of me expected her to tell me off for swearing. But she didn’t.  My words were now desperate and tear stained. She was calm and measured, but not exactly cold. I asked her what had happened but she said she wasn’t sure yet. “He’d been seen in pubs lately, looking very thin and unwell. He may have been drinking too much” I noted the negative implication of her words, the not so subtle suggestion that he probably drank himself to death, the recklessness of that. I sobbed down the phone and I hated myself for relying on my mum to comfort me in that moment. She didn’t, she just stayed quite silent for a while, listening to me cry. I felt Frydo holding me and this stopped me from floating out of my body completely in this mad moment. Everything in my son’s bedroom looked different all of a sudden. Tainted. I had more questions than answers. 

When the initial chaos died down and my sobs receded, Mum explained that she had decided not to tell me until after my son’s birthday party. The party. I was hosting it in a couple of hours. My older brother was coming from London to celebrate it with us. Mum had told him about the death, and he was going to break the news to me and my younger sister Christy once the guests had dispersed & the last balloon had burst. She wanted us all to be together when we found out. Even in that moment of pure emotion, I understood her reasoning. And yet, here I was, shocked to my core with only 2 hours to process this trauma before a bunch of hyped 3 years olds descended upon us for what was billed as “An old skool rave up with added sugar”. Once again, family secrets had created a catastrophic jolt in my life. I was too sad to argue with her though. That would come later. There was no question that the show must go on, the party must take place.  But two things had to happen before that. Frydo’s family had to arrive and I had to decide whether or not to tell my younger sister Christy what had happened. She was at that moment making her way to our house, birthday card & present in hand, blissfully unaware of the madness, the sadness awaiting her.

Christy had become close to Dad in recent years. This surprised everyone, annoyed some. She was so very young when we said goodbye to him & his new family in Africa and moved to England with Mum. She had very few childhood memories of him, and those she did have were not warm and fuzzy. But decades after our emigration & separation, she had travelled back to Africa for work and they had agreed, through the power of Facebook, to meet up. I couldn’t help feeling anxious about this reunion. What if he was cold and uncaring, or worse still…Uninterested? The latter was the spectre that I feared the most. His lack of interest in us. For decades, I had carved out a solid image of him as a man who thought we were silly and annoying little kids. The bad things my mum said about him chipped away at me.  He had, after all, chosen another family, 3 other kids, over us. He finally left us for good after a number of affairs, a divorce, a reconciliation, a second wedding and a final divorce. My sister was born when I was 3 and he exited the scene shortly after her. I saw him, and his new family, every weekend after that. I remember him as a distant figure even then. Always in the background, watching the racing or Rugby on TV, occasionally making burgers for us and taking us to church on a Sunday. I was always scared of him. He was incredibly tall with a permanent, natural sneer on his top lip, a feature not uncommon in white South African men. Perhaps it’s the accent or sense of entitlement. He was so relaxed he was nonchalant and I thought he was embarrassed of me. I was the only kid in my class who couldn’t swim, so he gave me swimming lessons for my 9th birthday with an ex-Olympic coach called Lulu. Lulu made me dive into her pool with massive rubber bands tied around my knees. To me, the little dreamer with 3 imaginary friends and her head in the clouds, this was the worst present I would never have wished for. He became the hockey coach at my school, where my stepsister was also a pupil. He put us both on the school team, even though I struggled to keep up with her & the other girls. How I would secretly dread weekend matches against other schools. South African school kids spend more time on the pitch, in the pool & on the track than they do in classrooms. I hated every minute of it, being forced to be present in my body. I felt as though Dad wanted to mould me into a different person, a better, sportier girl that he could be proud of. But I just kept failing him. Mum said he didn’t hesitate to sign us away. She had to seek his written permission to move us to England. He signed immediately, without a second thought, she had told me, with hate in her voice, making sure I knew exactly how little he cared about us. I was 10 at the time. We said goodbye to him on a cold, clear winter’s evening under vast African skies. The moon was full and brilliant that night. 

At the beginning of our new life in the ancestral motherland, there were dutiful phone calls & cards, for Christmases & birthdays. So cliched. I wrote letters to him, big and bold writing, annotated with childish diagrams, all about how brilliant England was because they had children’s TV on 2 channels. 

And everything was in English and I bought a purple bum bag at our village fair and there was a ride called the waltzer that spins you around and goes faster when you scream and we had fudge tart for pudding at school sometimes and my best friends were called Rebecca and Bryony and our teacher Mrs Cruise said we were “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” but we weren’t sure who was which but I was probably the good and I was on the school hockey team with all of the older girls because it turns out a crap South African hockey player makes a great English hockey player and we had won a trophy and on and desperately on I babbled. News that was so important to me at the time, and so important to me that he knew about it all. Because I wanted him to see me as a success, as popular, to be proud of me. I thought a purple bum bag would cut it. But he never did send letters back. I stopped writing too, after a while. And then the festive calls dried up, and the cards too. 

And time marched on.

I went to High School, became an awkward teenage girl who struggled to impress anyone at school. Who sought refuge at home but found none. I clashed with my mentally ill mother and dated a drug dealer called Nigel. I went to raves in the woods and took mushrooms and pills and fell for all the bad boys. I was bullied by Leighton Jones and I lost my virginity to Nigel and I clashed harder with my mum who was becoming more and more unstable. I became academic and achieved grades I never thought I could. I went to University. I performed in plays and made films and wrote about French movies. 

And all of this he knew nothing about. 

I was still a 10 year old loser in his mind. I gave up.  “If my Dad died today, I wouldn’t care” I would tell my shocked middle-class Uni friends. I convinced myself of this new truth. I wore it like a badge of honour. And then he called me. A glimmer of hope on a landline in my disgusting student digs, on a very rainy Sunday. My housemate had just that morning been told that her mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer. So the mood was sad and low when my other housemate Kelly answered the house phone. “Leigh, it’s your Dad” I thought it was some sort of joke. But there he was, at the end of the line. Reaching out to me on a sad day. I sat on the filthy carpet on our stairs and spoke to him for over an hour. It was so easy and genuine. He was interested, in me. I didn’t know why he called or if he would call again, but I didn’t care. I treasured the moment, kept it going as long as I could. And then, he was gone again. The moment had flashed as bright and as fast as lightening. There would be no more phone calls.

I got on with my life once again. I graduated, I moved to Japan, I experienced true loneliness and cured myself with Kabuki theatre and karaoke. I moved to a small Greek town with terrible roads and salty tap water. I came home to England and got a job, and another job, then another. I danced every Friday night and slept every Saturday day. I lost my mind in London and found it in a mental health unit and Dad knew nothing of any of it. I had found him on Facebook years before and in a moment of despair I had sent him a message, short but hopeful. And there had been no reply. I wasn’t sure if I had found the right Charles. The profile picture was of a sandy beach at dusk, a tall figure walking alone in the far distance. Was it him, choosing not to answer me? I hoped I had got it wrong. I gave up. 

I gave birth to a beautiful little boy. And when I looked at him, I wondered how it had come to be that my parents did not attend my wedding or come to see their Grandson. I felt bitter and sorry for myself. My sister announced that she was meeting Dad, and I waited on the other side of the world, cautious and exhausted. She came back from Africa full of enthusiasm for a new relationship with a Dad she had instantly clicked with. The verdict was in: He was everything mum wasn’t. He was fun, he had tattoos, he was adventurous and liked to party. He was us. And he was sorry he hadn’t replied to me. He had a new, much younger girlfriend who didn’t know about us yet and he wasn’t ready to tell her. He wasn’t ready to talk to me yet, but he would send me a message. His secret daughter. I held civilised Facebook conversations with him. I sent him pictures of his grandson. Slowly, we built an online relationship that never delved too deep. How could I tell him everything that had I had done for the last 25 years? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. The years rolled on and we messaged light, friendly messages now and again. Christy went back to Africa and spent time with him. Met his girlfriend and friends. He grew marijuana and went to clubs. He was a good cook and played guitar. He promised to send my son one of his guitars but it never arrived. He managed young bands and wanted to start a business making cocktails with diamonds in them. He had a trendy haircut and girls liked him. He told me I could do anything I wanted to, that he believed in me. I had never heard those words from anyone before and I decided to believe in them. I was starting to like him and understand him. He told Christy that he was devastated when Mum took us away, he had pleaded with her not to do it. But she was adamant, and he had signed the paper. I felt years of anger melt into regret and loss. He told me my son was special, just like I was. And he would save up to come and visit us, walk along the beach with us. 

Christy let out a howl when I told her he had died. I couldn’t keep this from her knowing how betrayed I felt when Mum hadn’t told me. I saw her break in front of me and held onto her to stop her from physically falling apart. A few months later, she flew to Africa to scatter his ashes with cousins and aunts that looked spookily like us, but we had not had a chance to know them. They told her Dad had been ill for sometime, but hadn’t told anyone. He had shunned medical intervention, turning to CBD oil and his beloved marijuana. He had not died an alcoholic, and I was relieved that mum was wrong.  She returned with Dads guitars and I saw my son hold them in awe. He had never met Grandpa Charlie, but he was loved by him. She had brought me Dad’s favourite coffee cup and his scarf, and I couldn’t bear to hold them in my hands for too long. Then, with shaking hands and watery blue eyes, she handed me the letters. All of the letters I had written him as a lost, desperate child. I couldn’t catch my breath. In that moment, years of unspoken, silent love washed over me. Amongst the childish scrawls, a newspaper clipping. I saw a small, 10 year old loser, smiling in her hockey uniform, proud to finally win a trophy and show her Dad how good she was. And he did see it. And he treasured it. For 30 years. Until the day he died.