Mr Llewellyn

“I’m going to be going away for a while I’m afraid, Billy. Your bitch of a mother has been cheating on me.”  

These were my father’s words that come to mind any time someone asks me: 'What led you to work with underprivileged families?' Their tone often carries just a hint of disdain toward the whole endeavour, if they realise it or not.  

'You're braver than I am. I can't fathom dealing with those filthy dysfunctional people. They must all be druggies, wretched things!'  

I mean sure, some struggle with addiction, but it doesn't diminish their supposed worthiness of help. If anything, it just makes things clearer that we need to extend our compassion. We’re all just humans after all, I feel that we have an innate desire to support one another; it's just in our blood. 

You never know what journey someone might have been on to have landed at the destination they now find themselves in. Sometimes they’re just normal people that were blown off their desired course, they started out with the best intentions but never really had a chance.  

My father was one such of these cases. He was raised alone by a single mother after his old man was found dead on his back on their hallway floor one morning.  

‘Asphyxiated’ the coroner had told his mom, a kinder (or at the very least, more clinical) way to say: ‘he choked on his own vomit after a night of boozing’. A hell of a sad way to end a night of celebration at the fact that you just had your first son. 

My Grandma once told me that my dad was brought into the world so early that they didn’t think that he would make it through the night. She and her sister stayed up until the early hours of the morning praying for him, despite neither of them being the ‘pray and hope things will work out’ sort, they were just covering all bases.  

They were practical and resourceful women, with no crib in sight, they had made him his own cosy little sleeping space from a cupboard drawer and some soft sweaters until they could afford to put together their own. 

Many moons from that makeshift bed, my father soon learned that he had to grow up fast. He was one for skipping school just to scrape together whatever cash he could grab in odd jobs, doing whatever it took to put food on the table for him and his Ma. It was that or they just didn’t eat. Life has a way of toughening you up when it's a matter of survival.  

I always thought that maybe that's why he developed such a ‘to the point’ attitude, as he called it, even with me when I was a child. I guess he had always seen the world through eyes which were peering over a raised shield.  

“I’m going to be going away for a while I’m afraid, Billy. Your bitch of a mother has been cheating on me.” I remember my father spoke with one hand on my shoulder while tightly clutching the handle of a hastily packed suitcase in the other. We stood together at the mailbox in our front yard as rain rattled our otherwise quiet suburban street. Thunder had rolled across our sleepy town, waking it to the sound of furious rumbling and raindrops that hit tin roofs like barrages of machinegun fire.   

I didn’t really know what this news meant for me at the time, or what it meant for our family dynamic. What stayed with me was the silence that followed his words and the water which trickled from his trilby hat and down the lenses of his rimmed glasses, eventually finding his damp overcoat. 

He maintained his calm disposition even in the delivery of his angered words despite having just stormed out of our tiny house. 

“Papa, you said a curse word.” I finally broke the lingering silence.  

He chuckled softly and released my shoulder, his gaze shifted to the open sky before returning to me. I don’t know if it was the pouring rain or the lump forming in my throat, but I couldn’t meet his eyes.  

“Listen kiddo, I’m sorry for cussing, clearly, I’ve raised you better than that. But I've just learned something which changes things. You see Billy, you’re not my own pup to be raising.” 

“What does that mean, daddy?” 

“It means...” He paused, his breath heavily sighing “it means that I ain’t your daddy either. I’m sorry, there isn’t really any easier way to tell you, but I’d rather do it like this than have her feeding you more lies.  

Lord! Six years I’ve been raising you! Six blessed and cursed years! All those extra shifts, breaking my back, working through the holidays! And for what? Trying to give a kid that ain’t mine the life I didn’t have. The life I still don’t have! That bitch!” 

“I’m sorry Papa...” I mumbled, not knowing what else to say. It felt as though it was somehow my fault, though I didn’t understand why that was.  

“Billy, it’s okay, you don’t need to be sorry, alright? I’m sorry that we are here, but I can’t put that genie back in the lamp.” 

“So, what do I call you?” I enquired full of confusion as my voice started to break. “Eugene has a new daddy since Eugene’s daddy got sent to heaven when he went to Vietnam. He calls his new daddy ‘sir’ and ‘Mr Harland’, but I don’t like that, I want my mommy and daddy to be mommy and daddy.”  

My eyes began to tear, and snot began to steam from my nose, which was becoming colder with every passing minute. 

My father, or ‘Mr Llewellyn’ by Eugene standards, knelt to meet my eye-line as he placed his bag on the wet ground and held me squarely to look me straight in my eyes.  

“Look, son... Billy. I don’t know who your real daddy is, but when you’re all grown up, I want you to think back about me and say, ‘that was my dad, then think of all the fun we had together.  Even if it ain’t my blood that’s in your veins, you were mine for those six years, alright?” 

I nodded sombrely as I wiped at my nose on the back of my hand and my eyes with my palm. 

“When I’m big? Am I not allowed to see you no more?” I could feel myself welling up, I had tried so very hard to hold my nerve, but the dam was almost overflowing. 

“We will see what happens next, okay? I need you to be very grown up for me. You’re the man in charge around here now, so you need to look after your mother... Don’t let her have too many of those iced teas, alright?”  

Little did I know back then, ‘Iced tea’ was the codename that my mother had given to her cocktails to hide her alcoholism from me. She would take various hard liquors and whatever could be found in the cupboards to be concocted into mixers. In the early hours of the day, I would wake up to find that she had already began her second drink, and it was the only time I’d usually see her smiling.  

“Alright kid, I think it’s time that you got inside before you catch a chill. I have a long drive ahead of me as well, so I should hit the road.” He rose to his feet and summoned his bag to his side. “You take care now, William. Be good.”  

A faded curl tugged at one corner of his mouth just for a moment as he looked upon me once more, almost as if he had wanted to smile but instead stuffed something he wanted to say deep into his stomach where no one would hear it. He turned on his heels and began walking towards his rusted blue Volkswagen Beetle. My heart tightened as the overflowing dam began to crack and the water leaked from within, beyond my control.  

‘Papa!’ I cried desperately as I began running after him. 

He halted where he stood and turned to see me coming after him, a child soaked through to the bone, sobbing and calling out with all the might they could muster.  

As I reached him, my arms shot out and wrapped around his waist tightly, not wanting to let him go. He closed his eyes with a bittersweet smile gracing his lips as he leaned down to embrace me, his long, skinny arms encircling my small frame. 

His fingers gently met the curls of my wet hair as I buried my head into his shoulder, inhaling his familiar scent. We stayed there for a few moments longer than two people usually would as I could feel him drinking in every second of that moment. Although he could not bring himself to say it at that time, I knew from his embrace and the twirling fingers in my hair that he cared for me deeply.  

No longer my father, Mr Llewellyn finally let go of me and climbed into his car. I remained there in the rain and watched as his smoking exhaust spluttered out of our road and further out of ear shot. 

It was the last time that I would ever see him again. 

I remember that moment so vividly, how isolated I felt as that six-year-old boy watching his father’s taillights disappear into the night. I wished that someone, anyone, would pull up in place of that blue car and ask me if everything was okay. Instead, I stood there until the wet clothes on my back clung like a second layer of skin and my mother called for me to come inside.  

I wanted for no child to have to ever feel that way alone.