My mother says that we should look beyond the scope of what our father provides. She doesn't understand our father and she makes no effort to. She wears her ignorance like her hair, sleek and straight, smelling like coconut oil.
My father does things differently than most men. He treats his daughters like eggs, sometimes it is inevitable that he smashes some against the wall. It only happens when he is angry and we always make him angry. But I try, I try to make him happy. I let him slake his lust, and vent his rage on me, and he feels happy afterward. His smile is the rainbow after heavy rain.
Mother cries at night, softly into her pillow. My sisters cover their ears against the grunting and growling and eye me with great derision. They know nothing. They do not know what it feels like to be adored, to be worshipped. They do not know how to be the swan among ducklings, their feelings are inadequate at best. I am my daddy's home.
Our father does not come home for days. I am unsettled, my belly rolls and dances and shakes. My dreams are torturous. My sisters laugh and sing and watch TV, they breathe free air. Mother fries plantains and opens all the windows. I can't breathe. They do not love our father, my daddy. I fear that he may be dead, and so I withdraw from everyone. My sisters leave food outside my door.
It is three weeks after. The clouds have gathered and mother calls for the girls to bring in the clothes from outside. A vase clatters to the floor, my sister pees herself, her fright is real and unfettered. Father stands at the door, shadowed by lightning and thunder. He is back! My mother's gasp is loud in the sudden quiet, all the music stops. I am the only one joyful. I run to him and wrap my arms around him, breathing in his scent. And then I take three steps backward, I wish to see his face.
The knife is thrust to the hilt and he is unable to act. He touches the wound but he is weak from his exertions and soon he is on the floor, a red pool forming around him.
I was struck by an epiphany in my withdrawal in those many days, and holding a knife to my mother's throat one morning, I asked for the truth. Perhaps she said more than she should have told an angry teenager, perhaps she feared that I may have murdered her and my sisters in their sleep, but she said it all. She told the truth of my existence, I was not her child, my father's first wife bore me, and because I looked like her so much, he did all those things to me. And she could do nothing, she had her children to protect.
My therapist asks how the story ends. I tell her the truth: we leave him lying on the floor, empty his pockets and pack two bags. We never speak of him again.
The End.
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