The radiator clanged once. I tense up. I flinch, bite my lip, and brace myself. My mother is at work, my brother out and I’m home alone.

I can hear my mother’s instructions:  “Do what he asks. He’s drinking that Mad Dog and it will knock him out within 1/2 hour. Just be patient and do what he says till he goes to sleep and he’ll be out for the night.”

She knows my temper. Although still more child than adult —I am fearless when convinced I am in the right and when my father is drunk I always think I was right.

Clang, clang, clang again. Louder this time, with impatience.

I reluctantly make my way up the steps. Holding back tears, I enter the room. Television blaring he is laying across the bed. I look at him with disgust while straining to be civil.

“Make me some cream of wheat.”

In as conciliatory a voice as I can muster, I ask:  “Do you want a small bowl or a large?”

He answers, “Small.”

“Do you want a teaspoon or a tablespoon?”

“Teaspoon.”

“Do you want butter and sugar? Do you want milk?”

He says yes to both.

This is The Dance. I know every step. I know to be as explicit as possible and as nice as possible. I know to do anything it takes to keep him from morphing from an almost pleasant drunk into a demanding and unreasonable one. Can I maintain a cool until the Mad Dog does its job of nullifying the curse of a lifetime of feeling not good enough? The drink will produce dreams of success he felt should have been his.

All of his 22 siblings, with one exception, drank to excess. They all suffered from the disease of not feeling good enough. I had a front row seat observing the lives of a family with an inherited family legacy of not measuring up.

The Caldwells are a squat, dark, abrupt group. My father wore a size 6 ½ triple-E shoe and in his mind was 5’4’’ tall. His height and poor eyesight kept him out of WWII, which was a particular embarrassment. Our necks are nonexistent. We are as far away physically from Anglo standards of what is considered handsome or pretty as one can get. No straight backs in this family. We are hunched and our clothes never fit correctly. We have sparse hair, bad teeth, and difficult personalities. We fight with each other and delight in our ability to cuss people out.

We are good readers of reasonable intelligence but we do not believe we are good at anything — except cussing, for people who look like us are not even given an opportunity to prove ourselves worthy. We are followed in stores because we look shady. Our hands could be raised in school but we are never called on. We can offer an opinion only to be told we are incorrect and hear someone else parrot our words and be celebrated for their insight.

I learned to make flawless cream of wheat. There are no lumps. I had lots of practice, for his ulcer flare ups for long periods of time did not allow him to eat much of anything else.

I know the whys of the drinking. Even at age 15 I understood the legacy of abandonment. My father was 8 when his mother died and he was sent to an orphanage where he was ill-treated. His schooling stopped at the age of ten. Yet he installed central heating and indoor plumbing in the fixer-upper he and my mother purchased, in expectation of my birth. He made our furniture, could fix any automobile, and was a voracious reader. He taught himself algebra so he could tutor my brother and his friends. He would quote Whitman, FDR, Machiavelli, and Rousseau at whim, and was a devout follower of Marcus Garvey and W.E.B DuBois.

The radiator clangs — this time even harder, louder. I deliver the Cream of Wheat. He has changed his mind. “Why is their milk in the bowl? Why a small spoon—you are supposed to be a smart girl,” he says. “I am a man. Only children eat with teaspoons.”

I hold my tongue and pray that he falls asleep as I feel the ugly side of my soul rising and I certainly do not want a fight tonight.

But fight we did. The Dance ended on its usual note. But the ending to that night is for another reading at another time. I’m feeling good today so will end on a positive note.

My father did have the good sense to marry my mother—a woman who had a remarkable, loving personality. She was pretty, five inches taller even in flats, which she never wore. She was a stiletto lover and four shades lighter than he. She was strong, fully confident and let no man rule her. He so desperately did not want his children to be Caldwells and managed to find a woman who was everything a Caldwell was not. She loved herself and she loved him.

I’m more her than him and more often than not, I hated him. But because of her, I loved him too, for  from her I learned that Everybody is God’s Somebody.