A Daughter of Kane

My father disappeared the night I was conceived. Well, maybe disappeared would be the wrong word to use. He was never really there… My Mother met him in a book store and, after three nights of wine and talking, they made love and he was gone with the first rays of the morning sun. I was the product of their one and only night. She told me about him- he was tall and dark and seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders; she never told me his name which made him seem like more of an enigma.1

I used to imagine him as a Prince who had to return home after those few days they spent together for duty and honor. He couldn’t take a secretary as a wife- imagine the national scandal. Later, I would tell my friends he was a spy on a secret mission and if he stayed, he was afraid my mother and I would be in danger. These stories took on lives of their own, as any good story does, and I had almost convinced myself they were true.2

Later in life, once my Mother started going to church and had found a God that I never could relate to, I heard the story of the sons of Adam. Abel was just a legend to me but Kane, the cursed, made me curious. He was doomed to walk the earth with the knowledge of his crimes. How many times had he walked the soils and sands of our world? Would he cry knowing that like the fruit of the trees anything he loved he would have to watch die? Children and wives, lovers and friends would return to the soil that sustained them and they would turn to dust.3

I never told anyone about those Sunday day dreams. I told myself that the nomadic nemesis of the Bible was my Father. That, in his travels, he was drawn to a young woman with doe eyes who spent far too much time in her world of books, and decided to lay with her just once. Perhaps it was his blood that ran through my veins along with the curse of Eve.4

At night, I would stare out the window of my room and wonder if he was looking at the same sky as I was. And, during the day, when I would catch my reflection, I wondered how much of me looked like him. Was my nose his? The curls in my chestnut hair? The way my skin tanned to almost brown in the summer? Was the weird birthmark on my shoulder the same as his mark? I’d like to think that they were.5

Many years later, on the night before my wedding, I stood in my old bedroom and looked down at the street below. It was a cool autumn evening but I had the window open to feel the breeze. It was silent- not even a leaf blew down the cold cement sidewalks. Sighing, I was just about ready to go to bed. In my head I knew I was too old for fairytales and that my mother had just been young and irresponsible but every little girl likes to dream. I would have no Father there to walk me down the aisle. No one would give me away. I had grown up strong and independent, never having the chance to be Daddy’s little Princess.6

Just as I opened my eyes, I saw a figure move under the street lamp. He was tall and strongly built with a cigarette glowing between his lips. Watching him, hidden mostly in shadow, I was surprised when he turned towards the house and tipped his hat.7

I told my fiancée of the figure the next day, he kissed my head and told me that I had more than likely dreamed the whole thing. He didn’t come from a single parent home though- Bob and Darlene, his parents, would be there for our wedding. The girl inside of me, the one who never gave up her hope, liked to think that my father made it back on some paternal sixth sense this was the one night his daughter needed him. I walked myself down the aisle that day but he was watching. A daughter of Kane is never alone.