a hairy bear-of-a-man, my dad knew
only how to love and fight death
matches. unless knocked unconscious
or it was broken up, somebody was doomed
to die. simple as that.
to beg my mom not to leave, my dad
shoved a pistol into her lipsticked mouth.
she left him anyway, daring
to live – and, if possible,
he adored her even more for it. Sometimes
violence is the only love one gets. my dad
used to brag
about getting his top four front teeth
knocked out. they’d been surgically replaced, twice –
courtesy of the U.S. Army. first time, a boxing match.
second time was the story
he told, retold, and retold. he’d tilt back his head, yawning
open his mouth to display the gunmetal rears
of those perfectly machined Army teeth. “See?
I was arguing with my ex-wife and called her a bitch.
That damned fool shot up and kicked my teeth
down my throat. I never called her a bitch again.
Not to her face,” he’d chuckle. he’d show photos
of my mom’s brother, a taekwondo master. in one
a three-foot-high stack of red bricks parted
left and right in neat waves, frozen mid-air
by the camera, my uncle’s brutal chop caught
cracking through the bottom brick.
sometimes love needs violence like that. a heart attack
killed my dad during my murder trial.
i was relieved because he had sworn to God
to get us both shot to pieces by the police
right there in the courtroom if I got convicted –
and I wasn’t quite as eager to die
while attempting to escape my death
sentences, my two failed suicides aside.
ten years later my tiny Korean mom came to visit me
on death row. i had to ask, “Mom, why
did you even marry my dad to begin with?
You two were so different, I just can’t understand it.”
she dropped her wrinkled gaze, as if weary or
embarrassed, then looked up with eyes ablaze. i flinched
as she launched into a story. “You father was so handsome!
Not like after he got fat.” ((she pronounced “after”
as apter and “fat” as pat)) she bloated out her cheeks
to show “fat face” then slowly exhaled, making a scraping,
bubbling, throaty growl
to indicate visceral disgust. it summarized her
feelings following their divorce. then she went back
to being dreamy-eyed and tender.
“He came into bar with friend. Me and my sister there.
They so handsome in uniform. You father was better looking.”
she lowered her voice at the end as if revealing her secret.
“It was disco bar. He ask me to dance – Oh, my God,
he such bad dancer! But cute. You father, he dance
like this. No matter song, he dance like this.” she sprang up
in the cramped visitation booth to demonstrate
a big man, a big moment. i ducked
to study her
through the six-inch-tall, two-foot-wide, waist-level window –
through the black iron bars and double-paned, grimy plexiglas
as graffiti-scratched as a nasty gas station bathroom stall,
through greasy handprints holding hands through the glass,
through crusty bodily fluids, through all this history
of lust, pain, anger and disgust, loneliness and madness and
beauty, all of which tried to distract me
from my origins, my heritage, my parents. but I was, finally,
ready to see them as real people, not just symbols
of dysfunction. and so I watched
my mom raise her delicate fists, spin them one-over-the-other
like Ali hitting a speed bag at heart-level, while two-stepping
back-and-forth, twisting slightly at the hip
on the back-step to toss a take-a-hike thumb over
her shoulder. “You see? Like this… Like this…
All the song, like this…” she said giggling
and panting like she did forty years earlier
at nineteen. she was breathless with adrenaline.
i had never seen her like this. so animated.
so alive.
i laughed too, because I saw how it must’ve been.
in the midst of all her teasing about my dad’s bad dancing
i spotted the operative phrase: “all the songs.”
translation: she stayed on the dance floor with him,
laughed and joked with him, tripped and fell head-first
in love with him. it was simple, it was pure, it was even
atavistic, drawing on a primitive period when a violent
amount of eye-contact, body grinding, pantomime
and empathy’s grunting communicated everything. when
each had to give the other their absolute undivided
attention or they’d miss something. neither spoke
the other’s native language, but the tongue of raw humanity
transcended their cultural barriers. they were smitten.
it was only twelve years, seven pregnancies, and five kids
later, once my dad’s schizophrenia began to speak, that
his violence turned divisive. till then, my mom said,
“A lot of Korean, they hate American soldier. Every time
we go out people cuss us, spit at me. We fight
together. But you father, he very proud,
very strong. Always he want fight for me. A lot
of people go hospital.” she was virtually swooning
and had to sit back down. i did not know this woman.
within weeks my parents married, having a traditional
Korean wedding, yet their honeymoon attitude was ruined
when the Army wouldn’t acknowledge it as binding: it was time
for my dad to return to America but the Army stiff-armed
my mother. when he tried to go AWOL she urged him
to just come back. he promised and she promised
to wait for him.
the Demilitarized Zone was a strip of land that ran
like a ribbon the entire east-to-west length between
North and South Korea. it represented the fragile
nature of peace between enemies who used to be family.
it was off-limits. if either side
spotted anyone within that tense ribbon of land, they
might shoot without warning. sometimes the North
took pot-shots at American soldiers, who helped the South
patrol it, on foot. the terrain was jungle like, riddled
with landmines. ((it described my parents’ post-divorce
dynamic exactly)) the DMZ was aptly nicknamed
the Dead Man’s Zone. the only way to reach my mom
was for my dad to get re-assigned to the DMZ.
it took a year.
“He came back for me. You father. He came back for me. My family
say he wouldn’t. Everybody say he wouldn’t, say he only want
one thing. They make me give up
baby. They say they kill baby if I don’t
give him up. But you father come back.
He so upset when no baby there. So upset. But
he understand.” she started to cry. i didn’t know
what to say
so I said nothing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer with a unique style, and a solid commitment to his craft. He is an occasional contributor to WITS, a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, and his writing can be found on several other platforms. We always enjoy hearing from him – simply put, I look forward to every submission he sends in, knowing he will never disappoint.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at:
George T. Wilkerson #0900281
4285 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
