That One's Mine
How a pile of deer made me claimed
“She can’t be mine.”
I don’t remember the first time I heard Daddy say it. Maybe I was at the kitchen table doing homework, my feet swinging like wild pendulums because they were too short to reach the flaking linoleum. He said it to Mama, just a hint of accusation around the edges—maybe questioning her fidelity. But my ears picked it up differently. It felt like it was about me. Like I had failed somehow.
“She’s too smart,” he’d always follow it with.
It stung. Deep. I wanted more than anything to be claimed by him, to feel worthy.
Although Daddy attended school until he was 18, he was illiterate. Couldn’t recognize all the letters. Could barely sign his name. He called himself stupid on the regular. And although he wasn’t well-educated by society’s standards, the man was far from stupid. He could do complicated sums in his head, design and build just about anything his mind could create, read the woods and the water with fluency I’ve never seen anywhere else.
But I was an early reader. Good at math. Bored in school, I found other ways to occupy myself. In second grade, I wrote an elaborate play about a dog named Fluffy, loosely based on Old Yeller. I cast my classmates, gave everyone lines. Some played along. Others didn’t.
In third grade, I staged a rebellion against speed math tests. I failed them on purpose. I tried to explain to my teacher that they weren’t a good gauge of understanding—that accuracy mattered more than speed. She scowled. I kept trying anyway.
Sixth grade, I decided I didn’t have to listen to my teacher. She couldn’t pronounce Jean-Pierre, the bunny in a short story. She said “Gene Pee-Airy,” emphasizing the pee. I tried to correct her, but she looked at me like I was something foul she’d stepped in. So I rewrote the cafeteria seating chart, passed it around, started a mutiny. When she walked in with her tray of meatloaf and headed toward the teacher’s table in the center of the room, she glanced our way and stopped mid-step. Her sensible heels clonking on the tile floor, tray hovering. My classmates threw me under the bus. I ended up outside the principal’s office, butt in a hard chair.
I was smart in ways my father couldn’t claim, and I didn’t completely tone it down. I couldn’t. It was who I was.
But that doesn’t mean I always excelled at school. I was a troublemaker. I skipped assignments I thought were stupid. Grades were never a motivator. I never waved a report card up the driveway hoping for praise.
Not just book smart. That was what Daddy railed against. Book smarts didn’t matter in his world. Lots of educated people were worthless. No work ethic, loose morals, couldn’t fix an engine, couldn’t shoot or skin a buck.
I asked him questions. I soaked up whatever I thought he valued — how to shoot, the names of birds, how to move quiet through the woods. Those were my tickets into his world.
Not school. That would never be enough.
It took a pile of deer in the back of a pickup for my father to claim me.
