My favourite part about my stepdad Frank was his job in a meat processing factory, as I could say “my stepdad’s a boner”. Nobody seemed to find it as funny as I did though, probably ’cause I’d forget to tell them what his actual job was.
He smelled bad, all the time. His feet stank when he’d take his boots off, and the stench of his work was always on him. You ever try to get a hug from a man who smells like raw meat? Not great, not a lot of warmth to find there.
The worst smell was in his big white van. It felt chilly getting into it — not physically cold, but a mental discomfort where you feel like you’re not in the place you want to be, but all you can do is wait for it to be over and hope it doesn’t happen again so soon.
The family car, a maroon Space Cruiser, felt much more homely. An 8-seater with enough space in the boot to carry the dogs around, my seat was at the back, on the left. I liked it because of the huge storage compartment it had, great for holding sweets and my magazines. I hated how loud the speaker was though, right next to me. I was behind my youngest brother Bob, and next to James, a year younger than me. In front of him was Emma. I remember how she’d sit in her car seat, stiffening herself up and stretching her legs out, which pissed mum right off. No idea why, for either of them, but as with most things Emma would do, it just became another reason to be angry with my sister, a contagious sense of perpetual frustration with her, starting in mum and eventually spreading throughout all of us. James was always the first to absorb it, the fist she made with her words.
Frank would occasionally bring home cardboard boxes, wide as my arms, filled with leftover meat. Seeing one of them on the kitchen side meant that, later than evening, I’d spend several minutes chewing on a single piece of beef, the red wine sauce delicious but gone long before the meat could be swallowed. Back then we were always sat at the dinner table, before James and I had separate bedrooms and mum moved her room to downstairs, replacing the dining room. We’d have big puzzles in there, my favourites were the 3D ones that had foam pieces, I always liked putting things together. I loved when Emma would get playsets I could set up for her, Mum would tease me for it, but that’s normal, isn’t it?
There wasn’t much I actually liked about Frank, though it didn’t really matter how I felt. He wasn’t for me. I tried to connect with him, I even tried calling him Dad, but he wasn’t someone you could find comfort in.
He had this weird thing where me and James would be lying down after bedtime, up in our room, and Frank would come upstairs and say “right, put it up now”. He’d say he heard us banging about, but we never were. I don’t know if he was hearing things or what, he wasn’t a very sensory person. I never figured that one out, only he seemed to hear it. That’s how it seemed, anyway.
Overall he was just a very dull person. He wasn’t particularly intelligent, he’s the one who taught me that a person’s mind could be empty, when Mum would ask him what he was thinking about, and he’d honestly say “nothing”.
The only interesting thing about him was that he used to practise martial arts, and was apparently very good at it. For a while we’d have training sessions, kind of a fitness thing, performing elegant moves and learning about how you could sap the chi from someone’s body just by looking at them in a certain way.
I think that’s why she liked him, for the idea of what he could be. A kind of defender.
Once, there was an argument with a man from up the road, mum had started on him after seeing how he was talking to his partner. He was known on our street as someone you don’t talk to. Nasty kids too, one of them would later abuse a child on our road, very young. The child got shunned, can you imagine that? You come out and tell the truth, and people hate you for it.
Mum told Frank he had to sort it out, after the man shouted right back at her, so up the road Frank went, knocked on this guy’s door. He’s trying to tell him off when the man goes back inside a moment, comes back out again looking ready for a fight, a sense about him like he knew he’d win. Frank clocked it, backed down. Never lived it down after that, he was weak in her eyes now. Better to get stabbed than to admit defeat when defending her honour.
We’re driving along and mum sees this bully from my school, Devon. He’s pissed her off over something he’s said to one of my girlfriends. She parks the car, gets out, starts on him too, shouting at him. He hits her, she goes down. She’s always told us, over and over again, how she could win any fight, now she’s on the floor. Emma starts screaming, crying, someone just hit her mummy. Me and James start up, he’s in the front seat and gets out first, I grab the Swiss army knife from my coat pocket, pull out the blade, something I carry with me every day since I got stomped at school. Next thing I know the police are in our house, asking how Devon’s face got cut. I tell them it’s probably from my gothic ring, a long piece of finger jewellery, they ask for it, I give it to them. I’m not a liar, but that one came quick as a flash. I don’t know if they believed me. Didn’t see them again.
That was a defining moment to our mum. For the rest of my life with her, I’d be told, “James got out first”. Doesn’t matter that I was ready to kill someone, that’s not what she’d decided had happened.
But to be honest, it wasn’t a big deal. Just another reason to hate me, like we did Emma. Another thing to add to the list.
Frank had this thing, DFS, “Dorky Frank Syndrome”. He’d go into DFS mode, waving his arms about for a bit, making silly noises, being weird, like we were. That was his attempt to fit into it all, I think, to have something wrong with him, like we all did. He was completely out of place among us, with all our disorders and disabilities, the house in a constant manic state, especially after Emma was born.
He had two other kids, they were both really grown up to me, that age when you’re in the paper shop and someone tells you to “give the money to the man”. I remember both from Callington Road, the boy, I heard later, apparently stole some of mum’s underwear. The girl, she was lovely, very warm. We never saw them after we moved, never heard about them either.
I’m at Frank’s house, it’s Emma’s birthday. I haven’t seen her in a long time, haven’t seen him in years. There’s a little boy there, someone else’s kid, and Frank’s all over him, infatuated. I think it’s weird how much he’s ignoring Emma, but she doesn’t seem phased.
There’s still a glimmer of recognition in her that it’s not normal — this situation, her dad no closer to her than he is to me — but it’s almost faded now, that idea that she deserves to be treated like a person.
It would be years before Emma would know how it really feels to be someone’s daughter, and to be able to talk proudly about her proper dad, after my uncle adopted her. Long after she escaped my mum, and long after Frank disowned her, like he did his other kids, after an ultimatum from his partner, choose Emma or me.
What does that do to you, to be so unwanted? Who can you be when you’re shown, again and again, that you’re not worth anything? Your formative years stolen from you, replaced with an endless list of reasons why you deserve to be ignored, shunned, and hated. What does that leave you with?