This piece is one of my earliest versions of storytelling, written sometime in the early 1980s.
Today, in October 2025, my sister brought me the original copy typed, dated, and worn, the paper itself softened by time and water rot at the edges. Reading it again, I revisit the true connection of A Girl Dad Remembered Daddy.
If once upon a time there were fairy tales where a pauper became rich, a frog turned into a prince, and a homely girl found her handsome love and rode into the sunset to live happily ever afterthen I would not be writing this.
Because what I know of life contradicts all that fantasy.
The happiest years of my life must have been before Daddy died.
I was nine.
And since then, the loss has wrapped itself around me sometimes softly, sometimes like a fog that won’t lift.
As a child, I felt I belonged, though I was never quite sure to whom.
Mammy had eleven children. Because my brother Anthony, born with Down Syndrome, passed away, I became number ten the last of the tribe. Anthony was a special soul. He’d make a mess of himself and the walls one moment, and the next he’d melt your heart with the most angelic smile. He drew attention without meaning to. Poor Mammy how could she mother one child more than another when love had to stretch so far?
Mammy loved Daddy more than I think any woman could love a man. She had fallen from grace once pregnant before marriage and when she finally became Mrs. Walker, she meant every word of her vows: for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death. Daddy was different from her less polished, not as educated, but charming and alive. She had come from what used to be a proud, well-to-do family, with a grandfather who, according to old stories, drew the plans for the Red House of Trinidad and Tobago our national monument of record and history.
But the times being what they were, a Black man’s work was often signed off by a White one. His name Eugene Te’nar lives only in our memory, not in the archives.
Mammy’s commandment in life was simple: be Mrs. Walker. That was her honor.
And it wasn’t easy. Daddy loved her, truly but he also loved life too much. He had energy to spare, and temptation followed him wherever he went. Still, he adored his children. And Mammy, though weary and wounded, never broke. She stood upright through gossip and hardship, a woman of moral strength and religious devotion.
