The Daughters of Bad Men

my mother was the daughter
of a bad man
she was five years old
and thought
everybody's fathers were drunk
all the time
and everybody's mothers
never left the house
and sported black eyes
for New Years Eve

my grandmother stood over him
the night he hit her so hard
she thought she would die
with a big kitchen knife in her hand
and in the starlight considered
the merits of slitting his throat
(a story relayed to me many decades later
during one of our long conversations)
the next morning she pushed him
out the door
locked it behind her
and never let him back in

I, too, in keeping with family tradition
am the daughter of a bad man
and I'm glad to say I never knew him
blonde haired demon
I am told
schizophrenic drug in the mainline
too much of the bad stuff
where my mother met him
outside the government building
when she was tenderly fifteen
living on the streets
and sleeping under a hot air vent
by the laundromat

my aunt uncomfortable with him sleeping in the house
frightening the hell out of my grandmother
when he came crawling through the window
after a day spent in the hospital
having slashed his wrists with broken glass
my mother, a mother twice by the time she was eighteen
and my father, the bad man, carousing with hookers
so she shut the door
and never let him back in
"if he fucking wants them,
they can fucking have him"
promptly burning all his pictures
making sure my brother and I had her last name

decades later I am told the stories
I am never lied to
raised by my step-father from the age of one
a gentle, if some-what uneven man
tall as hell and furry for at least half the year
I know I am not his child
but he never treats me that way
and I am glad I don't grow up afraid
I am told the stories of my real father
the man I never knew
I am told how he died when I was eight
having never sought me and my brother out
(which was better in many ways)
having done time
and needles
and violence
and how the final virus of the eighties
which we all now know to fear
the great equalizer of the last two generations
the specter named HIV
caught him unaware
and killed him fast

just last year
my mother gave me his obituary
she had it tucked in the pages of an old book of poetry
she said 'I guess I've been saving this for you'
funny to know so much
and yet so little
about the man who you came from
but I know this
I am the daughter of a bad man
and I will never have children of my own