Ugly Behavior

Blood Knot

“Just a damn knot. You can’t untie it; you can’t burn it off. Older you get the tighter it gets. Might as well accept it, ’cause that’s the way it is. What else you going to do? Kill everybody in the family? Jesus Christ, it’s a goddamned blood knot.”

I heard my daddy say this when I was thirteen, fourteen, something like that. We were at our last family reunion: daddy, me and sis, and daddy’s fourth wife, June. “Junebug,” he called her—I guess because she was so much younger than him.

Flashforward ten years later and there daddy is in a hospital bed coughing his lungs out. He pulls me closer—I was in my army fatigues—and with breath that smelled like shit he tells me, “I married my June bug ’cause she was so young I knew the rest of the family wouldn’t approve and they’d have nothing to do with her. Had me a ready-made excuse to stay away from the rest of them, give myself some breathin’ room. With your family, well, you’re who you are but then you’re not who you are, you know what I mean? Because you can’t move. You can’t change. Too bad she was so damn dumb.”

I thought he was a fool. He had everything I’d ever wanted: kids, and a house, and more than one wife who’d loved him more than he’d deserved, surely more than was good for her. By then I’d found out that I had no talent for girlfriends, not even bad ones. They never lasted long enough to get bad. They never lasted long enough to be a pleasant memory after they were over. I was too reckless, or I wasn’t reckless enough. I was too kind, or I wasn’t kind enough. Something. Whatever it was that brought out the skittishness, the scared dog look, in those women, I had. In plentiful supply. I asked, even begged sometimes, for answers, and it was always something like, “maybe it’s the way you talk,” or “maybe it’s all that stuff you think about.” And that was if I really made them give me an answer. But they didn’t know. I didn’t know, and they didn’t know. Hell, I thought being a little weird attracted some women. But not in my case.

“Some things are fated. Maybe you’ve got bad fate, or something, Harold.” That was Linda, the night before she left me. She held me, and she let me cry in her bed, and she listened while I spilled my guts about needing a family of my own, someone I could love like I was supposed to, and she was good, so good she brushed away my embarrassment when she brushed away my tears, and the next day she left me. Fate, I guess.

Well, fuck her. She was good to me that night, but fuck her.

I’m not sure, but I think Daddy killed June one night, shortly after I’d turned eighteen. I don’t know—we just never saw her around again. There’d been a lot of noise, a lot of drinking. I’m sorry to say that at the time I felt a big load had been taken off, because of the way she looked at me, the funny way she made me feel. Daddy always said she never really was part of the family. She kept herself apart and, after all, she wasn’t blood. And she was young, too young to understand him, or us, or much of anything about living I guess. Maybe that was why I could feel about her the way I did—my own stepmother after all. She wasn’t blood, and like he’d always told me himself, blood is everything.

I don’t know what Daddy would have made of my three daughters. I don’t want to know. If he had lived I wouldn’t have let him anywhere near them—even if somebody’d pulled off his arms and snipped off his balls. I had that dream once, where somebody cut him up like that. He didn’t even scream. In fact he thanked the man, the man in the shadows holding the razor. He smiled and said “Thank you very much—I sure needed that,” even as the blood spurted from his crotch like some kind of orgasm that had been going on too long. I don’t know if it was a nightmare or not.

“It don’t matter if you like your family or not. You’re tied to ’em; might as well accept that. It’s in the blood.”

So yeah, it finally happened. I met my own June, only her name was Julie, and she was quite a bit younger, and not very smart. I oughta be embarrassed saying that I guess. But I’m not. I did love her, still do, I’m sure. A person doesn’t have to be smart, or the right age, for you to love them.

I’m never going to know I guess if she really loved me, or if it was just because she was younger, and not knowing what love is really, and then the girls came along, and so like any good mother—and I’ll always swear that she was a good mother—she stuck with the father of those children, however strange his thinking, and said that she loved him with all of her heart. And maybe she did. Maybe she did. I’ve never really understood women. Not my wife. And not my daughters.

But oh, I’ve loved my daughters. All three of them, precious as tears. Only a couple of years apart—Julie for some crazy reason thought I wanted a son so she insisted we keep trying, but I was overjoyed, I felt blessed, to have daughters—but my oldest Marcie was small for her age, and my youngest Ann was taller than average, and middle daughter Billie was just like the middle bear, just right, so the three of them together were taken all the time for triplets. We were always told how adorable they were, how beautiful. People were just naturally attracted to them. And the boys? Boys are always just naturally drawn to something a little different. I know.

Things were pretty much okay until the girls got to be teenagers. Don’t tell me about that being a hard time of life, I know that’s a hard time of life but knowing that still doesn’t help a father much. The girls started wanting dates and it was okay with their mother because Julie just didn’t know no better I guess. They were too damned young and I said so but of course they went and done it anyway and after awhile I just got tired of watching them and chasing after them and let them just go right ahead and date too young and ruin their lives—what was I supposed to do?

Oh, I still loved them you can count on that but I have to say I was mad at them most of the time.

But my girls sure looked beautiful in those date dresses of theirs—so beautiful I couldn’t stand to look at them when they were all dolled up.

They tell you on Oprah and Donahue and every other damn program what to do with your kids but they don’t tell you a damn thing that helps. They act like kids and their families are separate people that have to negotiate every damn thing. They just don’t understand it that a family’s got to be all tied up in knots you can’t get loose of no matter how hard you try. Cut those knots apart and somebody’s bound to wind up bleeding to death on the floor.

I don’t know if my girls knew I still loved them. I couldn’t be sure cause I stopped telling them I loved them once the oldest got to be thirteen. That might not have been the right thing to do but I just didn’t feel right, telling a young fresh-faced beauty of thirteen that I loved her. Perverts do that, not a good family man. Not a father.

Besides they shoulda known. They shoulda always known. We were blood weren’t we, all tied together?

The girls all started their periods early. Hell, the youngest—my baby Ann—was nine, and you know that can’t be right. My wife handled all that stuff of course but she still talked to me about it—I don’t know why women like to talk about such things. She told me the baby was young to be having her period but that was becoming more and more common these days, but as far as I was concerned that was hardly any kind of recommendation. Not much right about these days what with baby girls having periods and watching actual live sex acts on the TV when their daddies ain’t around. And their mothers making it a secret, too. Mothers and daughters, they always have these secrets that no man alive can understand.

What was I supposed to do about any of it? What could I do?

People expect the man to change the world but the world is a damned hard thing to change—it just rolls on pretty much the way it wants to until it runs right over you.

Sometimes all the females in the house had their periods at the same time and the blood stank up everything and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and sometimes Julie wouldn’t be in the bed and then she’d come back and say why she’d just been down the hall in the bathroom but the bathroom was near where the girls slept and I’d think every time, I’d sit there in the dark and think, what if Julie and my girls are down the hall drinking some man’s blood?

Now, I know that ain’t true and it’s a pretty crazy way to think but I wasn’t always sure at the time. My girls’ breasts were getting bigger every day and it seemed to me they weren’t eating enough at meals to be puttin’ on that kind of weight.

Then one day I thought I had it figured out—they were bleeding out and they were getting breasts and hair in return, breasts and hair so they could fuck as many guys as they could before they got too old to enjoy it.

And of course what they were bleeding out was the family blood, dumping it like it was something dirty and all used up and something they didn’t need anymore.

They were fools, of course. Like you could untie the knot by disrespecting it that way. What right did they have anyway? I was tied to them so hard I wasn’t ever going to get loose so why should they get their freedom? What had they ever done to earn it? Here I was having done everything for Julie and the girls and I was going to be tied to it forever. I wasn’t ever going to be rid of the taste of their blood, their dirt, their flesh. I was going to die choking on it.

I can’t even say I didn’t like the taste of that knot. That salty, ocean taste like it was everything we’d ever come from for thousands of years. I can’t say I didn’t like it—maybe you have something shoved in your face long enough you hate it for awhile but maybe there comes a point—years maybe—where it’s been shoved there so often you just start liking it again. You feed on it and after awhile maybe that’s all you live for practically.

That was me and my wife and my girls. Our blood knot. I loved them and I hated them and then I loved them so much I couldn’t be without them, couldn’t let them out of my sight. It was like I had the taste of them in my mouth all the time and I was liking that taste more and more, and I just couldn’t live without it, no way.

If they’d stayed home more often things probably would’ve turned out okay. Maybe I would get tired of them, tired of the taste and smell of them, and I’d get tired of it all like I did when they first wanted to date and then I’d just let them do what they damn well pleased. Julie could have made them stay home if she’d had the mind, but I married her too young and she was just too damned dumb. A good mother in every other way but too dumb for my girls I’m sorry to say.

I loved my girls, I loved them dear. I started trying to tell them that so maybe they’d stay at home but it didn’t work.

My youngest, my baby Ann, she even laughed at me and what’s a man supposed to do with that? I would’ve hit her real hard right then and there but at that point I still couldn’t hit my baby girl. The other two, but not her.

I should’ve had boys, should’ve made Julie give me boys but I never could’ve loved boys that way. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing.

Let me explain something: I know I wasn’t always the best father and husband. If I had been I wouldn’t have let things get so far. A good father and husband keeps a lid on things, keeps things from going so far. Keeping things from going so far—with his kids, his wife, with the neighbors—that’s the main thing a father’s supposed to be doing. And I know I failed at that one.

Things collect, and they don’t go away. Things get together, you get too many of them, and then things go too far.

Knots get untied. Blood gets spilled on the old, dry wooden floors and the floor soaks it up so fast you can’t believe it, lots faster than you can clean it up and pretty soon the whole floor is stained red and everything you look at looks red.

I think they all four must have been having their period. They weren’t complaining about it but the whole house smelled like it and I tasted it in every meal for two days and I breathed that blood in every time I opened my mouth and all my clothes smelled like it and even the newspaper and two nights running my dreams were so red I couldn’t make out a thing in them.

Marcie had come back from one of her “dates.” Fuck fests more like it but a father can’t say that in front of his daughters and still be a good father. I just smiled at her and asked, “Have a nice time?” And she just stared at me looking scared. There was no point in that—I loved her—didn’t she know that?

Then I saw that my baby Ann was with her.

“What the fuck!” I yelled and immediately felt bad, saying the F word in front of my girls but it was already out there and I couldn’t get it back inside.

“Had me my first date, Daddy!” Ann piped up with her little dollie’s voice. “Mom said it was okay with her. Me and Marcie, we doubled.”

I couldn’t say a damn thing, just stared at the two of them all made up like models, or whores. They’d put me down in a box, and I couldn’t see a way to climb my way out. I turned around and went into the bedroom and closed the door, sat down to think. Once you got a family, you don’t get too much time to think.

I felt all loose with myself. I felt untied. The women in a family, they have a way of doing that to their men.

Being in a family is like being in a dream. You don’t know if it’s a good dream, or a bad dream. You don’t know if you’re up or down. Everything moves sideways, until before you know it you’re back where you started again, like you hadn’t moved anywhere at all. That’s where I was, moving sideways so fast but not going nowhere.

My girls, they started the untying. It wasn’t me that did that part. My beautiful, beautiful girls. I just finished what they started.

But when you start untying that blood knot, it’s more blood than anyone could imagine. It goes back forever, that blood. You taste it and you breathe it and it stains the floor and it stains the walls and it stains the skin until you’re some kind of cartoon running around stabbing and chopping and tasting.

My babies’ breasts like apples, like sweet onions, like tomatoes.

Once they were all in the blood it was like they were being born again, crying out “I love you daddy,” and I could kiss them and there was not a damn thing wrong with any of it, cause daddies are supposed to love their babies.

Because they’re your blood, you see. And you’re tied to them forever.