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Thursday May 12th 1938, Alice Floyd went into labor early with her twins. The oldest was a daughter, not very big at 5lbs, but significantly larger than her twin brother Marvin who was born just over 3 lbs in the early morning of Friday the 13th.
The doctor said he didn't have a chance. The doctor said many things, a lot of them unspeakably cruel, about my father's chances and the 'best thing to do'.
Instead, they made up a nest, like you would for a baby squirrel, and kept it under the wood stove.
Instead, they made up a nest, like you would for a baby squirrel, and kept it under the wood stove.
They hid my father for months, told the white man whose land they sharecropped on that there was a sick hound puppy being kept under the stove. A good hound had value that a premature Black child did not, so the man who owned the house and land stopped complaining about the heat.
He thought it was a 'fine joke' that my grandparents had played on him when my dad was big and strong enough to be seen and carried. The rage I felt as a child overhearing that bit has never faded, although I understand it better now as a Black woman and a mother myself.
Marvin Floyd was a handful of a child. He was fast and adventurous. He was nosy and curious. He tried to work magic based on things he heard his elders say. He gathered grave dirt and certain bones and brought them to uncles and great uncles. Listened to aunties and grandmas.
It's hard to impress on you how fucking CLEVER my father was. How SMART despite every barrier they threw in his way. He struggled in school, ADHD even though no one knew it at the time, but he loved it anyway. He LOVED to learn. He couldn't wait to learn to read.
He only made it to the 3rd grade. He was big enough to work, and every child in school was a child not picking tobacco, not tending tomatoes, not dealing with poultry. So the man who owned the land and the house said that 8 was old enough, no more school. And that was that.
It never stopped hurting. His whole life, my father's voice would go soft when he told us about how much he wanted to go back to school when he was 8. How much he craved that learning. That chance to know. My father was a lifelong learner, tho he didn't recognize it for decades.
My father moved out in his mid teens, like a lot of young Black men did at that age. People talk about the habit some families have of pushing their children out so young, but not a lot think about how often our families were forcibly pushed apart by people.
It doesn't do to let too many Black mean in the same family stay on the same land or they quickly get the numbers to protect it and the people on it. So daughters could stay, but families had to send the boys on to uncles or cousins at 14 and 15.
My dad traveled a lot. He liked the road under him and he taught us to love it too. I am deeply at peace when I'm 13hrs into a car trip. He taught me to love the whir of the tires on the road, the way the east coast smells like secrets and wishes at 2am.
My father was functionally illiterate for most of his life. He could, with effort, sound out words and read aloud but he didn't like to for obvious reasons. But he could memorize like a sumbitch and passed his poll literary test by route memorization on his 3rd go.
My father was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. He went to the training for the Woolworth's sit in but they flunked him out because every single time someone touched him he jumped out of his seat and whipped around ready to knock the shit outta someone
He had a scar that ran along the bridge of his nose on the left side from being hit in the face with a baton marching in Selma. You won't find him in pictures, he's not in the front, or on the edges. He was just one face of many any that was more important than being seen.
My father drove 18 wheelers long distance for 28 years. He drove the Alaskan Ice Road and route 66. He ran in and out of every state except Hawaii and if they'd had a bridge that long he would have driven it just to say he did. He carried groceries and bodies and weapons.
My father could read a little better by the time I was born, but he got good at it for me. I was reading at 3 and I wanted my daddy to read with me. Maybe he told me he couldn't, maybe I figured it out because 3s are quite clever, but we learned together.
We had plenty of time to spend working on our reading when he was laid up, recovering from that last bad fall unloading his truck of some metal pipes. They shifted and he fell and my dad walked again but he never could go back to work. So he became a stay at home dad in the 80s.
Odds are REALLY high that my dad could do hair better than yours, cook better than yours, and actively parent 3 small children simultaneously better than most parents of any gender. When my mom said she'd work if he raised us, he met the fucking challenge like a boss.
My dad raised an autistic daughter without knowing it because autism looked a very specific way when I was little and I was not how it looked. But he parented a kid who was blunt, awkward, clumsy, and obsessive like I was smart, bold, and focused. So I became those things instead
My dad taught me to fight because I deserved to feel safe. He taught me to change tires and replace toilets and tell the difference between a fan belt whine and any other squeal in the engine. He taught me to love dogs and that I had to respect things I wanted to love me.
My father got to vote for a Black president the year he turned 70, the same year I gave him his last grandbaby. We lived two and a half blocks from our polling place and I dressed my new round fat baby in a little red white and blue outfit and walked between my dad and my kid.
They interviewed us, outside the school, but I don't think they ever used the footage. We were a little intense and it was hard to imagine distance between the 60s and then with a man who took a polling literacy test holding his grandson talking about the unreality of the moment.
Marvin Floyd knew a million stories you must regret never being able to hear, because he was a much fine storyteller than I am. His sound effects were funnier and I always quirk my brow a bit too slow in the wrong place. Half the story was his performance. Shame you missed it.
My father is gone and I am sorry, but he's not completely gone. And for that I'm glad.
If you liked this story, this poor short summary of a much more interesting life, please share the link to help fund a service in his honor.
Thank you for your support http://gofund.me/5b69a705
If you liked this story, this poor short summary of a much more interesting life, please share the link to help fund a service in his honor.
Thank you for your support http://gofund.me/5b69a705
