Christal Brown - The Muck and the Mire

 

So, my father was loud. He was loving, but he was also distant. He was a mystery. He could put all the curse words in one sentence, even when he wasn't mad. [audience laughter] He loved to make people happy, but he also didn't mind pissing them off. I have this collection of memories, these stories that I told, that I was told, these stories that I overheard, maybe in my imagination I made some of them up, but it's who he is for me. 

 

I know that he was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in a little swamp. I know that he loved to play football. I know that he loved to play football so much that he foregoed a college scholarship to go into the army, because they guaranteed he could play football. I know that he was an athlete through and through. 

 

He joined the army. He was stationed in various places. I know one of those places was Greensboro, North Carolina, where one night, he and his buddies went to a party, and he wrote a girl, a pretty girl, a note on toilet paper and she ended up marrying him. [audience laughter] My mother. I know that they traveled. He was stationed in many places. They lived in Germany for a little while right before he was deployed to Vietnam. 

 

But I know that his athletic spirit was always there, even in that military training. And that he followed behind the men in his platoon so closely that when the guy in front of him stepped on a landmine and lost his life, he lost both of his legs. Then football was no longer an option. He and my mother moved back to a little town where she was from called Kinston, North Carolina. They had two kids, a boy, then eight years later, a girl. That's me. 

 

My brother didn't fulfill my father's athletic vision of life. He really didn't like to get dirty. [audience laughter] And so, then, somehow, in a snafu of a carpool, I found myself sitting in my friend's ballet class when I was supposed to be at a piano lesson, and that's how my athletic career began. 

 

I started dancing when I was nine. Tap, ballet, jazz, acrobatics, modern pointe. And I tried to convince my father, those 10 years that I was an athlete too. I invited him to all the recitals. He came to one. He left at the intermission. Couldn't figure out when it was time to clap, why all the people were dressed alike, when was a good time to yell. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I wanted his attention. I wanted to prove to him that I was just as strong and just as athletic as he was, or that at least I had heard he was. So, in high school, I started running track. And so, I translated those hurdles into grand jetes. I was running, and he loved it. He did not miss one track meet. He was so loud that I remember distinctly at a home meet, when the PA system went out, they asked him to announce all the events. [audience laughter] 

 

He would lean over the railing right where the track would meet, and I'd be in a starting block and he'd be like, “All right, let's go, girl.” And then, he'd say to my opponents, “Hey, you in lane three, can you beat my daughter?” [audience laughter] And instead of being encouraged, I was mortified. I took off running just to escape the embarrassing moments. Most of the time, I would win. But one day, I came up out of a starting block, and I pulled a muscle in my back and that ended my track career. So, I went back to the studio and kept on dancing. 

 

By that time, I had earned enough collateral to ask him to do something for me. So, being a little girl from the south, there are these things called cotillions. So, you get a sponsor, you raise this money, and your family presents their daughter to society and you have to dance with your daddy. So, I asked. He grunted, “Hmm.” My mother asked, he fanned her away. Every father in the neighborhood came by to encourage him and tell him how important it was to dance with me for the cotillion. He listened and then quickly turned the conversation to the sports scores of the previous night. 

 

Finally, he relented. He came to at least three of the rehearsals. And in the rehearsals, we would saunter back and forth. He would figure out his spacing and then go back to his seat and grumble. But I distinctly remember him having a hesitation, maybe because he spent a lot of his time in his wheelchair at home, and he put his prosthetic legs on just to run errands or to be out in public or to yell at track meets or football games. But that was in his overalls, where he felt like he could stumble and the left swagger of the gimp in his prosthetics didn't matter to anyone. 

 

But at that community college gymnasium, he was going to have to stand in front of a little girl who he may not have paid that much attention to before, and in front of hundreds of people who were watching and waiting for the beauty or maybe for his mistakes. We stepped out onto the floor. Me in my big white dress, crystals, sparkles, nails done, hair done, big, long white gloves. He stepped out in his tuxedo, already foreign. He grabbed my hand and we started to dance. 

 

He was sweating bullets. He was so afraid that he would do the wrong move or embarrass me or him. So, I kept whispering in his ear, “One, two, three. One, two, three.” He followed me, and I held onto him and our hearts connected and all that space that had been between us evaporated. I think for that moment, I saw the guy that my mom fell in love with that night at that party. I saw someone I had never seen before, but it was still my dad. 

 

After the cotillion, things went back to normal. He watched his football. I went to my dance classes. He took me to that swamp one day where he grew up, that's how I know it's real. I'm not making that part up. It was a long, arduous truck ride. Pickup truck, two radio stations, me and a guy, my dad, who doesn't talk. [audience laughter] We pulled up on this dirt road. And at the back of the dirt road in the middle of this swamp was a little shack and a woman came out. She was my grandmother. Maybe I had met her before, but I didn't remember. He left me there with my grandmother for 48 hours with the strict warning of, “Do not go in the backyard. There are alligators there.” [audience laughter] I'm pretty sure he was lying. He didn't want my grandmother to have to chase me around and he wanted to go to the dog races. 

 

So, I stayed there for 48 hours, and I explored every nook and cranny of that little shack. I didn't find any distinctive clues about who he was or anything like that. But I got the feeling that being confined by those four walls is what made running on that football field for him so amazing. Same thing that I feel when I step on stages like this and I get to dance for audiences like you. All over the world, I get to step on stage and feel that same adrenaline that he felt. I get to be immortal for at least 15 minutes. 

 

I think about him often and how our athletic hearts may be won, even though we just didn't see eye to eye. My father died before I graduated from college. He never saw my professional dance career, even though he said I got my dancing talents from him. [audience laughter] He'll never be able to give me away when I finally do get married, but I have the memory of me and him in that big white dress. 

 

Five years or so ago, I was blessed to have a son. He was born 11 days shy of my father's birthday and three weeks earlier than his due date. He's surprisingly athletic. He moves to the beat of his own drum. He seems to be an old soul and he's a mystery too. But I love them both. I think that as I listen to him and the small stories that are becoming a part of his life and remembering the big stories that I think give me clues about my father, I think I learned to know both of them at the same time.