FRESH YARN presents: Just Like My Daddy... by Kambri Crews

FRESH YARN presents:

Just Like My Daddy
By Kambri Crews

It was August 12, 2003. The former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, was giving a speech at a private party held in her honor, and said "…and I'd like to thank Kambri Crews…" To her, I was a producer, event planner and publicist. Little did she know that I grew up in a tin shed, my parents are deaf, I witnessed my dad try to kill my mom, and he is now imprisoned for attempting to kill his girlfriend.

My mother was born to two deaf-mute parents. Although she could speak, her hearing was impaired enough to require her to attend the Oklahoma State School for the Deaf. It was there she met her husband, and my father, Theodore Crews, Jr. He was the seventh of ten children born to farmers in Bowlegs, Oklahoma. Although his twin brother was hearing, my father was born completely deaf with a precocious wild streak. He quickly became the black sheep of his very strict Christian family.

At five, he was sent away to deaf school to live in the dorms. Known to classmates as Teddy, he was a charismatic ladies man. A strikingly handsome athlete, gregarious and affable storyteller and a bit of a bad boy, so it was no surprise he charmed my mother. They married at 19 and had my brother at age 20. I was born four years later and our family was complete. After a couple of years living in Houston with me a latchkey kid at age five and my brother hanging with older kids unsupervised, my parents decided to try a more rural lifestyle. So, when I was six years old, they moved us deep into the undeveloped woods of Montgomery, Texas.

Our early time there was spent camping in tents as we worked to clear the heavy brush, but we were soon living in a one-room tin shed approximately 20 x 20 in size with a concrete slab floor. We made the most of our space by sleeping on bunk beds made of chicken coop wire pulled taut over 2 x 4s and fashioning a closet out of rope attached to two posts. We were resourceful, too. An oversized electric cable spool turned on its side served as a table, a discarded pick-up truck bench was our couch; we used kerosene lanterns for light and camping gear for cooking. We had an outhouse, which required a flashlight and some guts to brave at night. "Be sure to check the hole before you sit, you don't want a snake to bite you in the ass," my mom would warn -- words to live by.

With no running water or nearby source, we resorted to thievery. At night, my dad would load the back of our dilapidated '66 Chevy pick-up truck with a few ten gallon jugs and drive several miles down the road to steal water from the only store in town. We treated that hijacked water like gold. We cooked, cleaned and bathed with it very sparingly. We used a metal trough as our tub and would share the same bathwater. Luckily, I was the youngest and least dirty so I bathed first. But dirty we were. This land took work. Each day consisted of chopping, dragging, burning, cutting and building. My dad led the expedition and had big plans for our four acres. Down time was spent looking at floor plans of pre-fabricated homes, sketches drawn by my mom of her ultimate dream house complete with elaborate landscaping, and talking of the day when we would have a real house with electricity and water that came out of faucets. That wish came true when I was ten years old and our new mobile home was delivered to our humble acreage. Modern day conveniences would soon follow.

One hot summer evening, we all gathered around a pole and watched my dad finish wiring the box that would catapult us into the 20th Century. I treasure a photo I have of him, his white smile gleaming through the grime on his face, as he flipped the switch. Electricity! As far as I knew, he was Ben Franklin. In the following months, he dug a water well which tapped into the natural spring that flowed freely beneath our land and a septic tank which meant we wouldn't need that outhouse anymore.

Life in Montgomery wasn't always work, it was an exciting adventure for a young girl. I swam in the nearby creek, played football, collected turtles and built my own shanty out of loose brush and spare wood. My parents were always hosting big parties with bonfires and eclectic friends. My brother and I partied alongside the adults, passing around joints and stealing sips of alcohol. We were given adult freedoms, sexuality was never censored, we were free to come and go as we pleased and often left to supervise ourselves. Although I instinctively knew it was illegal, my parents would constantly remind me, "You know not to tell anyone we smoke marijuana, right?" "I know, I know!" I would sign. Jeez, what did they think I was? A kid?

In the summertime we would pile into the Chevy and drive to Galveston Beach. My mom would make homemade sour cream and onion dip, and my dad would scold me for double dipping the Ruffles. When we would finally get back to our trailer in the woods, I would smell the ocean for days. Tiny grains of the beach would find their way into my bed and scratch my sunburned skin as I slept. I always got too much sun so my mom would rub me down with vinegar to take the chills and blisters away. We would talk about the trip and recall how my Flintstones flip-flop fell through a rotted slat while riding in the back of the Chevy. Without hesitation my dad had stopped the truck and ran across four lanes of highway traffic to rescue it for me. "I can't believe he did that!" I marveled, before drifting off to sleep.

Somehow I managed to fit in with the wealthier kids. During sleepovers, I would show off to my friends by screaming curse words at the top of my lungs when my dad was in the room, and we would laugh hysterically. He knew what we were up to, but he didn't want to spoil my devilish fun. When Dad was a boy, he was punished regularly with a razor strap or switches made of cherry tree branches for the smallest infractions. At age three, his father left him at the shantytown where the poorest black families lived. At dusk, his father returned and threatened to leave him there "to live with the niggers" if he didn't behave. He held onto this memory with bitterness; so instead of scolding me, his carbon copy, he laughed along with us. "You're just like your daddy," my parents would tell me.

As I entered my teens, it started to bother me that I didn't have what other kids had, especially the little things. Soda was served only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Desserts were a rare splurge and strictly rationed. I never got strawberry flavored lip gloss or Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. We shopped for clothes once a year at a discount store called Weiner's. Weiner's. And that Chevy that had transported our precious water and so faithfully taken us to the beach? It became a constant reminder of who I was and who I was not. I never looked right or got attention from boys, so at 13 I got a job bussing tables at the nearby yacht club and used the money for new clothes, junk food and cigarettes. I would wait on kids I went to school with and ask, "Pepper for your salad?" They always looked shocked and perhaps a bit awed. I had a job; I was a grown-up.

Eventually my parents' partying and drinking began to take its toll. Our trailer was repossessed and we moved back into the tin shed that had been serving as a barn for our horse. My dad would miss work to nurse his hangovers and would sometimes disappear for days at a time. I would fretfully pace the driveway and waste time by drawing patterns in the dirt with my shoes. "What if he died in a car wreck? What would we do?" My mom would never tell me the truth, saying simply, "I don't know where he is. Why don't you ask him when he comes back?" Years later I would learn that he was with his mistress. My mom was a faithful wife, hard worker and good mother. She could have allayed my fears with a simple, "He's with friends," but she wanted my dad to answer my questions, to see first-hand the angst he caused me, his "baby girl." When I would finally see his headlights advancing down our long, windy dirt road, I would race to greet him and open his car door. "Where have you been? I was worried sick about you!" He would smile, looking pleased at how much I needed him and sign, "I'm sorry. I was with friends." "Why didn't you call us?" I would sign back. "No phone," was his reply. That seemed to be a good enough reason for me. He was home.

During my freshman year of high school, we ventured north to Ft. Worth. Bars that had taken an hour to reach were now across the street. I barely saw my parents. I was working full-time and busy with school, and they were enjoying the nightlife the city had to offer. Despite their marital and financial woes, my parents supported my ventures. My junior year, they traveled to Austin to see my drama troupe compete in the Texas State one-act play finals competition. A very serious outing, we aspiring actors were on our best behavior. Just before the awards ceremony began, I heard a smattering of gasps and giggles mixed in with familiar guttural noises and high-pitched nonsensical sounds reverberating through the sound system. Anyone who looked up at the stage observed a deaf-mute man doing his best gyrating Elvis impersonation into the microphone. A few people rushed the stage and the emcee wrested the microphone from Elvis's hands. Rather than exit the stage, Elvis continued to perform more enthusiastically to the crowd. The emcee announced, "If he belongs to you, would you get this monkey off the stage?" My friend Scott queried, "Hey, Kambri, isn't that your dad?" Always up for a dare, he had impressed his friends and made everyone but me laugh hysterically as we watched my mother scramble to get him off stage.

The laughs shared between my parents were becoming further apart. My brother was heavily into drugs, had dropped out of high school and would disappear for weeks. I was the polar opposite: a successful student, working full time and active in theater after school. With her responsibility to two children waning, my mother decided to separate from my father. He couldn't bear the thought of her living a life without him. He began harassing her by surprising her with drunken, late night visits and angrily accusing her of sleeping with other men.

It culminated on one very long August night. The sounds I heard woke me up from a deep sleep. I looked into my mother's bedroom to find her on the floor and my dad straddled atop of her with his arm cocked back ready to punch. He caught sight of me and punched the floor instead. They scrambled to their feet and I tried to get my mother to tell me what was happening. I wanted to call 911 but wasn't sure if I should. I didn't want to get Dad into trouble but I was terrified -- I had never seen him act this way, and the walls were riddled with holes. I had slept through punch after punch after punch. The next few hours were a blur. In an instant he would turn from calm to enraged. He punched the walls, broke glass, and graphically described my mother's sex life telling me, "Your mom gives good head. Did you know that?"

He worked himself into a frenzy. He grabbed her by her neck and lifted her off the floor. I couldn't pry away a single finger of his, so I switched tactics. I tried to get his eye contact and signed, "Please, don't do this. Look at me. I'm your baby girl, remember?" With that line, he let go. I screamed to anyone who could hear me through our thin apartment walls, "Somebody help us! Call 911!" Nothing. The calm broke to rage again when he picked up a knife and held it to my mother's throat. I raced to the phone and dialed 911. My dad caught me and disconnected the call, but they called back within seconds. Being deaf, he wasn't aware the phone rang and had lost sight of me. I quickly confirmed our address and made sure the operator realized my father was deaf and therefore might not comply with the officers' vocal commands.

Domestic violence laws were much different then -- it was at least five years before Nicole Brown Simpson's murder would change the laws in favor of victims of spousal abuse. When the police arrived, my father was in a calm state and seated at our kitchen table, so the police simply sent him on his way. Minutes later he returned with a vengeance. He busted the front door off its hinges and ripped my phone out of the wall. I made a quick escape and called 911 using another phone. The police arrested him for trespassing, but a day later he was free to continue his harassment.

I thought my cries for help that night had not been heard. I was wrong. We were evicted from our apartment within a week for "excessive noise disturbance." We found a new apartment, and my mom and I went into hiding. A few weeks later I began my senior year of high school with trepidation and fear. Would I be safe at night? Would I go to college?

Over the years, I re-established communication with my father. He never apologized and never admitted responsibility for his actions, but I didn't hold it against him. I felt it better to have a relationship with him than hold a grudge. I moved to Ohio and I no longer had to be afraid of him since he lived so far away. The distance helped us develop a new relationship through correspondence and sporadic visits. Occasionally, I would receive late night calls from drunken women who would interpret for him. "Kambri, I love you. I miss you, Kambri." I wrote him about my escapades, foreign travels and aversion to being tied down. "You are just like your daddy," he'd write back.

Our shared sense of adventure and exploration led me to the British Virgin Islands in June 2002. I was hosting an exclusive party for Jose Cuervo contest winners on the privately owned, five-acre island dubbed "The Cuervo Nation." For me, it was just another paying gig masquerading as an outrageous and elite event. That is, until I received a late night phone call. My father's girlfriend was in the hospital and might not survive. Dad had stabbed her five times and slashed her throat so severely she was nearly decapitated. The police had broken into their apartment and found him straddling her -- the same way I had found him on top of my mother that August night 15 years earlier. His girlfriend lived, but this time there were consequences he could not escape. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections with a possibility for parole in ten years.

We still write to each other. He sends me drawings, asserts his innocence and gives me fatherly advice in his deaf-speak: "Remember don't take any dopes and heaving drinkers." (Translation: Don't take dope or drink heavily.) I buy him writing supplies, subscriptions to periodicals and deposit money into his inmate trust fund so he can purchase strawberry ice cream, toiletries and other treats. "I'm exciting to have some money from you. Don't worry it. I will pay you back when I'm free world!! Oh boy I can't wait to buy toothpaste and deordant [sic]." I research various things for him on the internet -- the history of HIV/AIDS, ADA laws for the Deaf, who Prometheus and Atlas were and whatever other whimsical queries strike him -- send him postcards and photos, and tell him about my life as a producer in New York City.

In the same way he was destined to fail, I could have, too, and no one would have blamed me. I used to dwell on how much better my life could have been, if only. Mourning for my past seemed to drop away that August night in 2003. In one of those moments while I listened to Governor Richards thanking me, I suddenly felt an intoxicating sense of relief. It dawned on me in that instant how far I have come. The realization was intense, dizzying, overwhelming and took me by surprise. There, in the midst of all the celebrities, paparazzi and silly indulgence, I felt for the first time that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to be "just like my daddy."