So, I had lunch with my Dad the other day. After we got some work shit out of the way, we started talking about our weird-ass family, and I said something about my 'siblingcousins'. The term made the couple at the table next to us recoil in grossed-out horror. I didn't pay them much mind though, because the guy had a diamond stud in his lip and a waxy, handlebar mustache, which on its own is already hinkey enough to make him inconsequential.
Am I saying he looked like a douche? Yes. Yes I am. Probably even something worse.
He had shark eyes too, you see, and shark eyes don't lie.
But, yes, my childhood was strange (and yes, I say 'yes' a lot). When I was six years old, my mother was murdered by a man who wanted to make my Dad suffer. My Dad, for those of you who may be new, was a big-time, star homicide detective in NYC throughout the eighties. He's good at his job. Like, exceptionally fucking good. That sometimes gets him into trouble, and that trouble sometimes spills over onto the people in his life.
My Mom, a much-beloved TV news reporter named Maryanne Harper, was one of those people. Without going into too much detail (for my sanity's sake), Dad got a guy put away for murder, and that guy's Dad lost his shit and went fucking nuclear on our family, threatening to kill all of us.
Mom was the only one he got.
My parents sent me to stay with my Uncle Albert here in Seattle, in an effort to keep me safe while they tried some of their tricks to get the prick locked up. Five days after I got here and started settling in, my Dad called for me (like he and Mom did every night). Only when my Aunt Sam finally gave me the phone, I saw that Uncle Al was crying.
Then Dad told me what happened...
But it's the years following my Mom's death that I'm gonna focus on right now.
After Mom died, my Dad sorta self-destructed in a pretty fucking severe fashion, becoming a full-bore alcoholic to the point where he lost his job, and all that kind of stuff. He remained in NY for about five years, intent on solving my Mom's murder (which had become a cold case) and putting away the right people, even if it killed him. Which it nearly did.
I was almost Batman.
I would still hear from him frequently, but there was a hollow distance in his voice when we'd talk, ya' know? He was really fucking vacant and depressed, and always felt like he was failing me and Mom. A far cry from the man he was and eventually (mostly) became again. I don't know how the fuck he held it together as well as he did, to be perfectly honest with you! I mean, I've never seen anyone in love like my parents were. They were fucking awesome together, ya' know? A real team.
A great example for what a couple can and should be.
Anyhoo, in those five years, I continued living with my Uncle Al, Aunt Samantha, and their son Arnold; The oldest of my 'siblingcousins'. I'm a few years older than Arnie, who was born a year or so after I moved in. He genuinely thought that he was my little brother for the longest time and, in many ways, he kinda is. I mean, I never got to have siblings of my own, so...well, I almost did, but, whatever.
I don't wanna talk about that.
The first year I spent apart from Dad was definitely the hardest. Not only had I lost Mom, but the only person who could remotely soothe the fucking burn was all the way on the other side of the country trying his hardest to hold on to any tiny shred of humanity he had left, all so he could do right by her. Which, again, he eventually did! And when he did, he almost immediately packed up and moved out here to Seattle to be with me.
People are always surprised when they find out that I don't resent my Dad for what happened. My own fucking husband can't get past it, and he's been with me day in and day out for, like, seven years. If he weren't such a great guy, I'd've probably kicked him to the fucking curb by now. If I didn't love him like my Dad loves my Mom.
Here's the thing; In the time Dad and I were apart, I totally understood why things had to be the way they were. I also knew I had a choice to either accept it as one of those things I couldn't control, or let it consume me. Though I was ridiculously depressed for a long time, I chose the former, and immediately set out to find something I could latch onto and make the best of things until I could be with my Dad.
Arnie was vital to me in that time, and remains so. I crashed headlong into the role of surrogate big sister. Again, I didn't have any siblings, and Arnie didn't yet (he would eventually get one in the form of a little sister named Synthia), so we both totally embraced the situation. Of course, he could barely even speak beyond sputtery, adorable baby babble, so he didn't have much of a choice early on.
I was running the show. I tend to do that. Just like Dad.
Thankfully, my Uncle Al and Aunt Sam are about the sweetest fucking people going. Uncle Al doesn't have any of the same venom Dad does, but he is monumentally brilliant in his own right. Dude's a fucking biochemist as well as, like, the biology professor at the University of Washington. He's a bona fide, card-carrying genius! The 'Harpness' is potent.
As for Aunt Sam, she was at one time the Dean of U-Dub, but she's been retired for the last four years or so. Now she just hangs out at home and paints all day. She's really fucking good at it too. Needless to say, they were both fairly disappointed I didn't attend U-Dub, but I'll talk about that, like, waaay later...
Back on track (clickety-clack!), way back in the heady 1990s, they were both super-busy with work well into the evening every evening, which meant Arnie and I would be stuck with various babysitters. Some were pretty cool, others were bland as iceberg lettuce on white bread, and one of them, the last one, was a straight up psycho dickhead who would torment us.
This guy, James Kim, was an unequivocal bag of dog shit. Like, I swear the other bad kids in his neighborhood probably just broke pieces of him off and set 'em on fire on old people's doorsteps, ya' know? What sucked though, was that he'd pulled the wool over Uncle Al and Aunt Sam's eyes. Made them think he was a good kid...of course, he wasn't. I can say beyond any remote shadow of a doubt that I hated James Kim with every single fiber of my being.
Still do. I can never forgive behavior like his. No-one should.
Yup. It's gonna be one of those kinds of stories, kids!
Arnie and I were being watched by James one afternoon, toward Easter break. Coincidentally my last Easter break before Dad finally moved out here. James was being particularly salty that day because his girlfriend wisely dumped his sorry ass the previous night. This meant that it was a 'no talking day' for Arnie and I.
No talking days were any day James happened to be upset. If we spoke—or, more accurately, if I spoke—he'd either lock me in the fucking coat closet or lock me out in the back yard, the latter of which I obviously greatly preferred! And he'd leave me there until it was juuuuuust about time for my Aunt and Uncle to get home. There was also the threat that if I said anything to my aforementioned guardians that I'd get much, much worse. Which, I'm super fucking ashamed to say, worked.
For a time.
Like I said; Bag o' dog shit.
Anyhow, we were staying quiet and keeping our distance from James. Just chilling out in my room upstairs like good kids. I made the mistake of turning my back on Arnie for two fucking seconds, and he was gone! I frantically searched through the upstairs portion of the house looking for him, but he was nowhere. Meaning I had to brave the downstairs portion if I wanted to keep us out of trouble.
Arnie, being a very small child, was still kind of...wobbly, but he'd already scuttled down into the living room. Little dude was determined, ya' gotta give him that. Before I could catch him, he weebled by James and spilt the juice he was carrying on our esteemed captor's letter jacket, which made him freak the fuck out. He snatched Arnie's cup, slinging it in my direction. Then, he grabbed Arnie by the back of his shirt, lifted him up off the ground, yanked his pants down and started fucking swatting him hard enough to where it echoed through the house.
Almost louder than Arnie's cries.
Furious and absolutely fucking horrified, I scooped up the cup and lobbed it at James' fat fucking head, yelling...something. I don't really remember what. I just needed him to put Arnie down.
When the cup hit him, it did take his attention off of Arnie, but directed it squarely at me.
So, I bolted for my room. I could hear him gaining on me, but I didn't have time to panic. I needed a solution and I needed one fast. Thinking on my feet, I spotted a roll of quarters on my dresser and remembered my Dad teaching me the importance of improvisation in a life and death situation (which this absolutely was to me). He taught me that any and everything is a weapon if used properly.
That's what you get with a gruff homicide detective for a Dad; Fucking solutions!
I swiped the quarters and tried to dive under my bed, but before I was even halfway under, James was in the room. He grabbed my ankle and started violently jerking on it, hard enough that there was a crunch followed by the searing fucking pain of a sprain. The last yank pulled me out from under the bed completely, but he wasn't done.
He clutched the waist of my jeans and tugged, popping the button clean off. To this day I don't know if he was going to spank the shit outta me like he had Arnie, or do something much, much worse, but I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of either. I was fucking done being a victim. Instead, I did what I any good Harper would. I clenched that roll of quarters hard enough to where my knuckles turned white, and I socked that pig fucker right in the side of the head with every ounce of strength I had.
That knocked him over, then I jumped on top of him and kept walloping. Mind you, I was only just about to turn eleven at this point and was pretty spindly, so I definitely needed the quarters. The fucking guy played varsity football for fuck's sake!
Once I was certain he wasn't gonna fight back, I hobbled back down the stairs, scooped up poor Arnie, and ran as best I could next door to the neighbor's, Teddy and Harriett Nelson's house. When I told them what happened, Teddy, a super-fucking-cool WWII vet, hopped out of his seat and went to our house to 'keep an eye on' James, while Harriett called the police.
When she was done, I called my Dad.
Yes, it probably would've been smarter to call Uncle Al, but a Dad is a Dad is a Dad, and that's who I fucking wanted!
Needed even.
Dad was absolutely furious when he heard the fear in my voice as I explained the situation, but after we both calmed down, he said something to me I still think of every time I'm about to go fucking nuclear myself, even if it doesn't always stop me from doing so:
"Don't let this ruin you. No matter what. You're better than him and he knows it now. Period. Keep it that way."
Now, like I said earlier, this was still a good few months before Dad finally got to move out here, so, with his guidance, Uncle Al took care of pressing charges and all that super-fun legal shit. I, on the other hand went into self-defense classes at Greenlake Martial Arts, with plans on moving on to full-blown Tsun Jo lessons.
I chose to do this because the words my Dad said on the phone that day, though simple, meant something huge to me. They meant that he fucking believed in me. Maybe more importantly that he believed I was capable. I never wanted to feel as fucking desperate as I did that afternoon again...I did lapse in my training after a while, but I've held onto enough of it to where I can still take care of myself, and follow in my Dad's footsteps a bit.
I remember hearing through the grapevine one day during my freshman year of high school that James, who was in the thick of college football life at the time, mysteriously wound up severely beaten and left at the fucking emergency entrance at the U-Dub Medical Center. According to those in the know, he kept insisting that he'd fallen down a hill. He was too scared to say what really happened. Who really beat him to a pulp. But I knew, and so did Arnie. It was justice. Real justice from someone who gave a shit!
A final aside, I saw James just a couple years ago in the parking lot to the Northgate Mall. He approached my vehicle, knocking on the window when he was finally close enough. He looked pretty pissed, which in turn infuriated me.
What...fucking...nerve!
I didn't have Nat with me, so I decided to give him an inch and rolled down my window.
"What? D'ya' come to try and fucking spank me again?" I snarled.
"Get out, bitch," he ordered like he had the right. "You and that old fuck ruined my life and I'm gonna fuck you up."
Charming.
Rather than going with his shitty plan, I went ahead and made an awesome one of my own on the fly. I rolled my eyes, took out my Taser, and lit him up like a fucking Christmas tree. I admit, I kept the current going a little longer than I probably should have, but that's what you fucking get. God, I even got out of the car just so he could see my face the whole time...
I'm a monster.
TLDR; It's, like, the absolute worst idea in the universe to fuck with a Harper. As Dad might say, "That's science."
Indeed it is, Pop. Indeed it is!
- E.