The Reinvention of Cake

Ray

By

Berry Michel

“How you going to be a writer and not write anything.” Sounds like something my father, Ray, would say even though he never said it. My relationship with my father was complicated. You see I literally hated that man growing up. He was a womanizer, a gambler, a hustler, abuser, drug addict. The list goes on. But he taught me things about life and how to approach it that have navigated my way for some time.

My father was a complex character. Even though he had no formal education and couldn’t read or write, people still looked to him for leadership in the small community that I grew up in. The man had this personality and charisma that drew people to him. He was a clown and could surely bring any room he was sitting in to laughter. He was also known for helping people when they needed it. That’s one of the reasons people came to him. I sometimes wished he had that same care for me as he had for strangers when I was growing up. I needed him, but he was not the traditional caring father type. His ability to provide a roof over our heads and food was his way of showing love whether it was an obligation or not.

He did provide for us. I will give him that. Whether it was through his legit job as a garbage truck driver or through one of his side hustles. There would be times that he would gamble away his entire paycheck and we wouldn’t know where our next meal would be coming from and then there were times when he would throw piles of money on the kitchen table from his illegal poker winnings. It was always good until it wasn’t with my father. Just the type of ambiguity that would make any child uncomfortable.

When I was 18 years old still living at home after graduating high school, there was one night when my father got into one of those unpredictable moods of his. He was arguing with my mother and then things got heated to the point that my father took the back of his hand and struck my mother to the face knocking her to the ground. I knew that my mother had been through this type of abuse before, but he had never done it so blatantly in front of me.

As my mother started to pick herself up off the ground, I became so angry that I was ready to go to war with this man. I began to curse and yell at him and started to move toward him. My niece was also at the house that night and she got in between me and my father to try to calm things down. My father was cursing back, and he went into his bedroom to get his handgun. But it didn’t matter to me at this point. I was so angry I was ready to die if I had to. Even with that gun in his hand I wasn’t afraid anymore and I had lost what little respect I had left for my father. Eventually, my niece got me to calm down and to leave the house. Even though I went in protest still cursing at the top of my lungs. Luckily my niece was there to diffuse the situation before someone got seriously hurt. Things had changed that day. My father knew I no longer feared him and even more importantly, I knew that I didn’t fear him. From that day forward, I stopped being afraid of anyone of anything. Sometimes standing up for what’s right is worth dying for.