The Summer Daze

Chapter 1

            I thought about the conversation I'd had with my mama as the bus merged onto I-95. She didn't understand why I wanted to spend the summer in Virginia with my dad, so I broke it down to her in a way that wouldn't come off as disrespectful to the years she spent raising me by herself. There was no way I was gonna go off to college without getting to know my dad better. I would be turning eighteen in a few weeks and that meant I'd officially be a man. In my mind, I couldn't become a man unless I knew the man I came from. I knew who my dad was but most of what I knew about him was through my mama's interpretation of him, and I could tell it wasn't an accurate interpretation.

            I was the product of an affair between a newly married man named Rashad Lowry and a single woman named Tracee Miller who met each other at an Erykah Badu—she was a new artist at the time—concert in Baltimore sometime in October 1997. My mama returned to Philadelphia after that weekend and didn't learn she was pregnant until two months later. My dad had gone to the Erykah Badu concert alone because his wife didn't feel well. It turned out that she was pregnant. I know it's crazy, but it's the truth. My mama had me nine months later in Philadelphia, a month after my half-brother Tavian was born.

            "Your daddy ran out on us, Dorian," my mama would lie. "Oh...uh...he decided to marry some other woman."

            Her lies were so transparent that I began to laugh at them the older I got. I didn't finally start learning the truth until some man showed up to our house one late night begging to see me when I was ten years old. Mama threatened to call the police but the man wouldn't leave until he saw me. He then handed her an envelope and after looking inside, she called me downstairs. I will never forget the look in his eyes when he first saw me. He seemed so happy. He hugged me and told me he loved me. He talked to me for like an hour and then left. I was confused until my mama told me that he was my father. Every Friday she'd hurry to the mailbox and smile when a specific envelope was inside. Instead of getting our clothes from K-Mart, she started shopping at the mall. Meanwhile, I talked to my dad over the phone and he'd come to visit every now and then.

            I found myself thinking about my childhood more and more as I rode the Greyhound from Philly to Morrison Heights, Virginia. Those days seemed so long ago. Now at age seventeen, going on eighteen, I saw my father in myself whenever I looked in the mirror. I had his light skin tone, narrow nose, tall and slim frame and deep voice. My half-brother Tavian only got the deep voice trait because he looked absolutely nothing like me or our dad. We also had a baby sister, my half-sister and Tavian's full sister, named Tiara who was only two years old. I was a little anxious because I'd only seen Tiara once when she was a little baby and I knew she wouldn't know me. I was more anxious about seeing my dad again for the first time in a while. Would it be awkward? Would he be happy to see me? By the time the bus got to the Morrison Heights bus station, I was a nervous wreck.

            "There he is, pop," I heard a familiar voice say the moment I stepped off the bus.

            I looked up to see Tavian and our dad walking towards me. They both had big smiles on their faces and I decided to force a smile on my own face. To be honest, I didn't know how to feel. I'd been struggling with my feelings—about the whole my dad having another family thing—ever since I learned he had another family. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as they approached me.

            "I knew you'd have my height gene," said dad with a laugh. "How tall are you? In the six-three, six-four range?"

            "Yeah, I'm six-four," I answered.

            "Hot damn! Come here, boy." He held his arms out and naturally I hugged him as if I were still the little kid I was when we first met. "I missed you, Dorian."