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Michelle McMahon is a writer of short stories, experimental fiction, and poems. She completed her BA in creative writing at Pepperdine University and is completing her MFA in fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in River Walk Journal, SHAMPOO, Hot Whiskey Magazine #2, the anthology The Year of the Blue Jay, and on the experimental fiction website Cut ‘n’ Mix. She grew up in three countries, four states, and eight cities and now lives in Santa Monica, California, with seven dogs, two pigs, a chicken, and her husband (all of them imaginary, except the husband).

How I learned my dad was an alcoholic

By Molly, 9

My first memory is from inside the white wicker laundry hamper in my parents’ bathroom. It was five years ago, which means that I was four, my sister, Kelly, was three and my little brother, Timmy, wasn’t even born yet. My mom was trying to give me a bath, but I hate baths, so I sneaked out of the bathroom while she was getting a towel from the hall closet. I ran through her room with the giant bed with blue quilts on it, through the living room with the big, flowered couches, and into the kitchen, where my dad was laughing real loud and drinking beers with his friend.

“Hey there, kiddo,” Dad said. He picked me up and I sat on his lap. He didn’t seem to notice I was naked.

“You have to hide me,” I whispered. “Mom is trying to give me a bath, but I’m not even dirty. I just had a bath a couple days ago.” My dad laughed.

“Molly!” my mom screamed from the bathroom. “Get back in here.”

My dad stood up and put me under his arm so I could fly on my side like Supergirl. “I have an idea,” he said and shouted, “She ran up to her room!” towards the bathroom where my mom was. We giggled when we heard Mom’s feet stomp up the stairs to my room. Then Dad carried me back towards his bathroom and dropped me into the laundry hamper. “Shhh,” he whispered as he put a tobacco-stained finger to his smiling lips and closed the lid. “She’ll find you if you’re not quiet.”

My mom came back into the bathroom, and I could see her through the holes in the basket weave of the hamper. She had her hands on her hips and made a mean face at Dad. “Where is she?” Mom asked. “She needs a bath, and I’m sick of being the bad guy.”

“I haven’t seen her,” Dad said. “Last I heard she was stomping up to her room.”

“You think this is funny?” Mom asked. Then they both walked into their bedroom and I heard the door slam. They kept talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I cozied down under lots of Dad’s white pocket T-shirts and Mom’s wrinkled skirts. I thought, maybe they’ll forget about me and I can stay dirty forever under these musty clothes while Mom and Dad yell at each other. It smelled like the jeans Dad wore when he rode the lawn mower.

I did have to take a bath that night, after hiding out in the hamper for a really long time. I took all the clothes and put them on top of me so not a single strand of my messy hair or my skin was showing. After a while, I thought they really did forget about me, and that made me sad, so I poked my head out. Dad was standing there with his camera and took a picture of me. I had my hands braced on the edge of the hamper because I was taller when I was standing on all the clothes. My head was holding the lid open. And that’s what I look like in the picture of my first memory.

I actually don’t remember that. I just saw the picture in a silver metal frame on my dad’s side of the bed. He chuckles every time he looks at it, and he likes to pick it up and hand it to me and say, “That’s you, silly.” I remembered the rest, or dreamed about it, or just wanted it to be that way.

My first real memory is of my dad’s friend Vinny telling me that my dad drank a lot. Dad works with Vinny at Patterson Chevrolet, which is a place that sells cars made by Chevy, which are the best cars money can buy, in Hamilton Square, New Jersey, which is where we live. And my mom works on airplanes because she is a flight attendant for TWA, which stands for Trans World Airlines. She usually goes on trips during the first week of the month. She used to go on more trips, but she only goes once a month since Timmy was born. Sometimes we get to go on family trips when Dad can take time off work. I have been all the way to Paris, which is in France, but I was littler and I don’t remember it. But I saw a picture of Mom pushing me in a stroller in front of the Eiffel Tower. I’m holding my favorite Barbie and Mom is wearing big sunglasses. And she’s holding a cigarette, but off to the side of her hip like she’s hiding it. She was probably embarrassed, and she doesn’t smoke anymore because she says it’s bad for the lungs. When she goes to London, England, she brings back chocolate or butterscotch candies in little tins shaped like red phone booths. That’s what phone booths look like over there. There are slots in the tins to put coins in after you finish the candy. But I can never fill those little phone booths because I always empty them to buy Rocket Pops and Drumsticks from the ice cream man.

“Your dad would be a fucking millionaire by now if he didn’t drink so much.” That’s what Vinny said. And he laughed real loud after saying it. I didn’t know what that meant. Did he spend all his money on beers instead of bringing it home to Mom? “Smart guy, your dad. Smart guy.” He patted me on the head and rustled my already tangled hair when I passed him his beer. Dad let me pretend to be a waitress and bring them beers. Sometimes I pretended I was a flight attendant, like Mom.

“Not for kids.” That was the rule they always told me. Weird, because one time, by the Giacones’ house in the cul-de-sac, we were having a BBQ and Dad held a beer can to my lips and insisted that I try it. I did, and it tasted like pee. I knew after that not to ever drink it again. They didn’t even have to tell me.

Dad came back from the bathroom and gave my head a pat. That’s why I have matted, messy hair all the time. Everyone is always patting me on the head. When my mom comes back from her trips, she usually has to cut knots out of my hair, and then I get bald spots that Jeff on the school bus makes fun of. One time, I asked Dad to braid my hair, and he took two pieces and twisted them in a knot and said, “There you go, kiddo.”

Vinny told me, “Get your daddy another one.” Vinny used to hang out at our house a lot, especially the summer his girlfriend kicked him out of their apartment. When I asked Dad why she did that, he told me it was because she was a bitch, and I asked him what that meant, and he said it meant that she was a really mean woman who screams all the time.

Vinny once slept in my little brother’s bed, even though I had already set up the guest room for him. Mom showed me where all the sheets and towels were in the hall closet so I could set them out for Dad’s friends. And Dad had friends sleep over a lot, especially when Mom was working. Timmy tiptoed into my room as I climbed in bed. He was dragging his stuffed dog Max. Max only has one eye left and his tail is ratty because Timmy drags him everywhere. “That man is in my bed,” he whispered. He smelled like spearmint toothpaste.

“What?” I turned and saw that his brown eyes looked wet and scared.

“I went to go potty, and when I came back to my bed, he was sleeping in it.” His eyes widened even more as he whispered. “He smells.”

“Do you want me to tell him to leave?”

“I already tried,” Timmy said. “I shook him real hard and said, ‘Hey, Mister, you’re in the wrong bed’ real loud, but he didn’t move.”

“I think that means he just had too many beers,” I told him.

“Can I sleep with you?”

I rolled over and pulled the covers back so he could climb in. I had to lift him since my canopy bed was so high and he was so small. Max took up almost as much space in my bed as Timmy. Timmy really wanted a life-sized stuffed dog because Mom and Dad won’t let him get a real one because Mom’s allergic. Timmy was wearing his favorite PJ, dark blue cotton shorts and a blue T-shirt with a white stripe on it. Dad had a matching one, so that’s why it’s Timmy’s favorite.

My mom said once that Timmy and I were like twins, except I was older and a girl. I looked at him and thought he did kind of look like me in the pictures from when I was three. His golden brown hair and freckled cheeks matched mine. But I had longer hair when I was three. Timmy definitely looks a lot more like me than Kelly. Her hair is blonde, like Mom’s. And she has short bangs and big, pink-framed glasses.

I don’t know why my dad couldn’t be a millionaire just because he drank so much beer. But Vinny told me several times that my dad would be a “fucking” millionaire if he didn’t drink so much. I’m allowed to say bad words, like “fuck” and “shit,” if someone else says them, like Jeff on the school bus when he is mean to me, and I’m telling Mom or Dad the story about it.

I never knew my dad was an alcoholic, which meant that he drank too many beers and did bad things to the family, until my mom told us to pack our favorite toys for a trip to visit my grandpa, who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I packed my favorite blanket, a dark red woven one from a trip to Mexico. It wasn’t from the real Mexico, but the one at the Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. There were also parts of the theme park that were Norway and China. And Norway had a Viking boat ride where you fall down a huge waterfall. It made me feel like my stomach was floating.

When we got to my grandpa’s house, my mom took us to visit the school, signed us up, and told us we would never see our dad again because he was an alcoholic. And that’s when she told us what being an alcoholic means. I knew that Mom and Dad had fights and yelled at each other a lot, but then they always made up and snuggled and kissed after Dad made Mom laugh or brought her flowers. I thought that my mom was just having a bad ’tude, which means that someone is in a bad mood after a fight. But she told us that she wasn’t just having a bad ’tude; she was serious.

I didn’t know that my dad’s drinking beers was so bad. But I started to think about things, like how my sister and I were always the only kids at the bar. My dad used to bring us some nights when Mom was working and he was in charge. One time, Kelly told him that a police officer came to their classroom and talked about strangers, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. She said that the policeman told them that drinking and driving was bad and they should tell their parents not to do it. Dad laughed, and then he pulled the car out of Roadhouse Bar’s parking lot. Kelly and I both loved the Roadhouse. There were two arcade games with steering wheels. For a quarter each, we could race fast cars around a track forever. And Dad’s friend Scott worked at the bar. He looked just like my half-brother, who I only see every other summer. He’s my half-brother because we have the same dad, but not the same mom. Dad used to be married before, but then he met Mom and loved her more, so he married her instead. Scott and my half-brother are both tall and have dirty blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and red faces. Scott always gave Kelly and me cherries from the plastic box by the bar and poured us Cokes in fancy glasses.

One time, Kelly and I were watching TV in her room and my dad came upstairs. Kelly has a TV in her room because she got it as a present after she had her tonsils out and she had to spend lots of time in bed. We like to sit on beanbags on her floor and watch TV with the lights out and pretend we are having a slumber party, but then I go sleep in my own room when I get tired. Dad smelled like cigarette smoke, which he always does, and told us he was going to the liquor store to buy some more beers. I could hear people laughing downstairs. We had a BBQ in the backyard earlier that night, but Kelly and I were already in our pajamas, giant T-shirts from Sea World. Mine had a penguin on it and the word “COOL” spelled out in ice letters across the back. Kelly freaked out and started crying.

“Don’t go,” she cried. Dad kissed her on the head and said she could go with him.

“You’re not supposed to drink and drive!” Kelly came home from school the week before with a keychain and gave it to Dad. It had a picture of a beer bottle with a red circle and a slash through it, like a “No Smoking” sign, but for beer.

“He’s not gonna drink in the car,” I giggled.

Kelly kept crying until Dad picked her up and hugged her tight. She wrapped her skinny, bare legs around his waist and nestled into his shirt, getting her snots on the pocket where he kept his Camel cigarettes and a light blue Bic lighter. She always acts like a baby, even though she’s just a year younger than me, which means she was six when this happened.

“You wanna come, too?” Dad asked me.

“Sure.” I turned off the TV and ran to my room to get my jellies. If Mom was home, she would have made me put shorts on, but she wasn’t, so I didn’t have to. But I did have underwear on, so I wasn’t being gross.

We rode to the liquor store with the top down, bouncing around to The Who in the backseat of Dad’s 1989 Camaro convertible. Dad didn’t make us wear seatbelts, and he always took the top down, even at night. Vinny sat in the passenger seat screaming, “Tommy, can you hear me?” Kelly and I giggled when the wind blew our hair around. Dad flicked his cigarette from the side of the car, and it made orange sparks in the sky. Then bright red and blue lights swirled behind us.

My dad pulled over without looking back and said, “fuck” under his breath. Kelly and I knew something was wrong and sat back in our seats with our hands in our laps like good girls. Dad had to try to walk a straight line and breathe into a tube before he kissed us goodnight and got into a police car. Vinny drove us home in my dad’s car after stopping at the liquor store. We dipped our fingers in the big bucket of water people use to cool wine bottles. Kelly licked hers afterwards, but I thought that was gross.

When we got back to the house and Vinny parked Dad’s Camaro in the driveway, he turned to us in the backseat and said, “Don’t worry about your dad. He’ll be home in the morning.” Then he patted us each on the head and told us to go upstairs, brush our teeth and go to bed. As Kelly and I walked towards the house, Vinny took two boxes of beers from the car to the backyard, where Dad’s friends were still talking and smoking cigarettes.

The next time my dad got pulled over by the police was one night about six months ago on the way home from Roadhouse. Mom was on a trip, so Dad was in charge that week. Kelly and I were sitting in the back on either side of Timmy, who was sleeping in his car seat. Timmy had Max in his lap so he was facing forward like he was a real dog looking out the windshield. Dad got into one police car and Kelly, Timmy and I had to get into another one, and the policeman drove us to the Giacones’ house. While we were driving there, he asked us questions like, “Does your daddy drive a lot after drinking alcohol?”

Kelly opened her mouth, probably to say something stupid, but I pinched her leg and said, “No, sir. He doesn’t.” Kelly looked at me with wide eyes. “He’s a really nice dad.”

The policeman laughed and said, “I’m sure he is.”

Then Kelly told him what she learned in school about drinking and driving.

When the policeman dropped us off at the Giacones’ house, Mrs. Giacone was already standing at the door in her pink, fluffy robe. Her face was red from crying and she gave me a big hug, smushing her giant boobs in my face. Then she took us upstairs to sleep in the guest bedroom. Mrs. Giacone asked me if I was all right, and I didn’t know what should be wrong with me.

My mom came back early from her trip the next morning and rang the doorbell at the Giacones’ house while we were all eating Lucky Charms at the kitchen table. She was wearing her flight attendant uniform, a dark blue skirt and a white blouse with her name pin on it. She gave us all big hugs and took us back to our house across the street. When I asked Mom where Dad was, she said he was at work. I thought it was too early for him to be at work, but I didn’t ask any more questions because Mom was acting like she might scream or cry if I wasn’t quiet. And that’s when she told us to pack our favorite toys to go visit Grandpa. I don’t really like visiting Grandpa because he doesn’t talk a lot, and you have to yell at him if you want him to hear you, and he smells like dust. But he sometimes gives me lollipops and quarters, so he’s nice.

After we got to Grandpa’s house and Mom told us all about Dad being an alcoholic and said we were going to live with Grandpa for a while, she told us that she was going to divorce Dad, so I told her that I wanted to go back and live with him instead. My friend Susan’s parents got a divorce and I remembered that she got to pick which parent she wanted to live with, and I wanted to live with Dad.

“I pick Dad,” I said. I was standing at the foot of the staircase in Grandpa’s house with my Hello Kitty matching suitcase and duffel bag. Mom just stared at me.

“You can’t pick Dad. Go unpack your bags, silly.” She was sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book called Marriage On The Rocks: Learning to Live with Yourself and an Alcoholic. Grandpa was snoring in the rocking chair by the TV.

“I’m serious, Mom. You’re supposed to let us pick!” This made her put the book down.

“Your dad is sick.”

“I don’t care,” I said and tried not to cry.

“Okay. You want to live with your dad?” She got up from the couch and walked towards me. She picked up my duffle bag and carried it through the open door to the patio. “Let’s go. I’ll take you now.”

“You will?” I wiped some snots on my arm and dragged my suitcase.

Kelly was standing at the top of the staircase now with a pillow and her stuffed Miss Piggy. “I want to go, too!” Kelly screamed, running down the stairs.

“Okay. Come on.” Mom waved us out of the house. Kelly and I marched behind her. Kelly put on her pink My Little Pony sneakers at the door, each on the wrong foot.

We passed Timmy, sitting in the yard with a plastic hammer and a bundle of twigs he pulled off a shrub. He stood, picked up Max, who was sitting next to him in the grass, and followed us.

“Where are we going?” he asked, holding a pile of twigs in one hand and Max in the other.

Mom turned towards us with the car door propped open. “Your sisters want to go live with their dad. Do you want to go, too?”

Timmy shook his head. His shirt, which had a picture of Superman flying over a train, was dirty.

I tried to get my suitcase in the back seat, but it was too heavy with Barbie dolls, purple T-shirts, and my Mexican blanket. I looked to Mom to help, but she just stared at me. I looked back at Kelly and Timmy. They were standing like they were frozen at the edge of the driveway.

“You really want to do this?”

“Yes,” I whispered, thinking I might have hurt her feelings.

“And you, too?” She looked back at Kelly, hanging out of her sneakers, holding on to her pig and pillow.

“I don’t know.” Kelly looked over to Timmy.

Mom sat on the back seat of the car, hanging her legs out the open door. She held her face in her hands. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. I could see little bits of brown at the roots of her hair, where it turned blonde.

“I’m staying.” Timmy ran to the car and stood at the door, waiting for Mom to lift her head.

“I’ll stay, too.” Kelly dropped her pillow and Miss Piggy on the driveway and ran behind Timmy.

Mom pulled Timmy and Kelly into her, hugging them tight, crying really hard into their heads. I stood still and thought about what to do. I decided to stay with Mom because I figured I’d probably end up with her anyway, and I didn’t want her to be mad at me forever.

“I’ll stay, too, Mom,” I mumbled.

She didn’t say anything, just reached her arm out to add me to the bunch. Timmy crowded in closest to her; then Kelly and me. We hugged tight for a long time, and then I walked back into the house to unpack my bags.

I started third grade at my new school three days later, and it wasn’t even that bad. There were two other new kids in my class. One was a boy named Howard who wore khaki shorts and a green T-shirt with a spaceship on it. The other was a girl named Stephanie with brown pigtails and a checkered pink and white skirt. I had on a new pair of purple leggings and my favorite yellow Pippi Longstocking shirt. I came home from school to my grandpa’s house excited to tell Mom about the fieldtrip we would be taking the next week to an apple farm. From the hallway by the kitchen, I could see a man with brown, curly hair and glasses sitting in a chair in the living room. He looked older than Dad, but younger than Grandpa. Mom was on the couch with her legs crossed, and Timmy was playing with some trucks on the carpet. Mom smiled funny at me. She had been crying. Her nose and cheeks were pink and her eyes were shiny.

“Hello,” the man said. “You must be Molly.”

“Who are you?” I asked, holding my backpack tightly in case I had to make a run for it. Should I run back out and warn Kelly not to come in the house? She stopped on the walk home to pick some daisies, which I suspected were growing in a bed of poison ivy, but she didn’t care.

“I’m Dr. Green,” he said. The only part of him that moved, other than his tiny mouth, was his right hand. It was coming out of a white shirt, which was tucked into khaki slacks. He smiled, but I was still suspicious that he might be taking me and Kelly and Timmy somewhere, most likely to ask us questions. I hate questions.

“Sit down, honey,” Mom said. “Dr. Green wants to ask you guys some questions.” She didn’t move either. Why was everyone so still? Except Timmy. He was pushing his trucks around in circles, slamming them into each other with loud crashes and beeps, dumping Legos out and scooping them up again. “Where’s your sister?”

“She’s coming.” I looked outside, still wondering whether I should make a run for it.

“Sit down, Molly.” Dr. Green pointed at the couch, then to the chair across the coffee table. “Wherever you like.”

I decided to stay and took off my backpack in the hall. Kelly skipped in from the sunshine with a handful of weeds.

“I made a friend today!” she shouted into the house, her pink-framed glasses were crooked on her nose. She smiled at me and then ran to the kitchen looking for Mom.

“She’s in the living room,” I said and pulled Kelly by the arm. “With some guy. We have to talk to him.”

“Hi.” Kelly looked directly at Dr. Green. “I’m Kelly.”

“I’m Dr. Green.”

I led my sister to the chair, leaving my mom on the couch alone, and squeezed Kelly into the chair with me. She shimmied in between the armrest and my hip and smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth.

“Beep, beep, beep!” Timmy led two trucks together in a giant CRASH. Mom jumped a bit on the couch. Kelly laughed.

Dr. Green asked Mom, “Do you think you might want to leave the room with him so I can speak to the girls alone?”

“No. We’ll stay. This is important for the whole family.”

He said my name again: “Molly.” Mom and Dad never really say my name, unless they’re mad. They always call me honey, or sweetie, or silly. It bothered me to hear my real name, especially from him. “I’m here to talk about your dad with you and your sister.” Kelly and I nodded. “Do you know why we need to talk about your dad?”

“Because he’s an al-co-colic!” Kelly shouted it like it was a fact, like how he had reddish brown hair, or that his face always turned red when he laughed, or that you could hear when he woke up in the morning because he coughed twice right before he got out of bed to pee. I loved it when he coughed twice because then I knew he was awake and he would come get me so we could eat cereal together and watch Bugs Bunny cartoons before school.

“Yes, that’s right, Kelly.” He raised his right hand like a robot, then picked up a pad of paper and a pen from the coffee table. “Because he is an alcoholic.”

“It’s not bad,” I added.

“No?” he asked, as if I was wrong.

“I miss him,” I said.

“Me, too,” Kelly said.

“Well, it is bad,” said Dr. Green. “One of the reasons it’s bad is because he brought all kinds of men, other men who drink a lot, around the house.”

“They’re nice,” I told him.

“One of them got in my bed, and he smelled.” Timmy didn’t look up from his trucks. He had already told Dr. Green the story.

“Did one of them ever get in one of your beds?” He looked at Kelly and me.

We looked at each other, sensing something strange. “No,” I said.

“Did any of those men touch you in places you didn’t want to be touched?”

“In my boobies and vagina?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Did any of them touch you there?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Your dad’s friends.”

“No,” I said.

“Then why did you tell me about those places?” He thought he was on to something.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re trying to hide something from me because you feel guilty, like it’s your fault.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not trying to hide anything.” Everyone was staring at me.

“You can tell Dr. Green,” Mom said. “He’s here to help us.”

“Molly,” he said. “Did your father’s friends molest you?” Dr. Green poised his pen.

“No!” I shouted. “That’s gross!” I remembered a book my mom once gave me called Don’t Touch My Privates and that word: molest. The book told me that if someone tries to touch the parts covered by my bathing suit—that means my boobies and vagina—I should shout, “No!” and run to find a policeman. I learned that strangers try to get you to go in their cars by telling you they have candy and puppies, but they really want to molest you. That means they want to touch your privates. If anyone tells me they have candy or puppies in their car, I will grab the candy or the puppy and run away real fast. But no one ever tried to molest me.

“No!” Kelly shouted. I knew that she didn’t even know what molest meant.

“No!” shouted Timmy, raising a truck in the air, laughing. Kelly and Timmy just like to copy me because I’m their big sister, so sometimes they just say whatever I say.

“One of them got in Timmy’s bed!” Mom stood. She was about to cry. Dr. Green touched her leg and she sat back down and took a tissue from the box on the table.

“Sometimes we repress these memories because they hurt, because we don’t want to think about them. Your mother is worried that some, or at least one, of these men maybe touched you in ways that are not allowed.” He stared at Kelly and then me. “Tell me the truth. Did any of those men, your dad’s friends, ever touch you in a way that made you uncomfortable?”

“Yes!” Kelly shouted.

Dr. Green looked shocked and Mom started to bawl.

“No!” I turned to Kelly. “Why did you say that?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly giggled. “That guy wanted me to.”

“Kelly, tell him the truth,” Mom managed between sobs.

“Is it true, Kelly?” Dr. Green waited.

Kelly stopped giggling and looked around the room at each of us. “No,” she said. “No one touched me.”

We all had to talk for a long time. Everyone ended up crying because Mom was crying so much. Dr. Green even looked like he wanted to cry when Timmy started shouting that he wanted to go home and see Dad.

Two weeks into the school year, after the apple orchard fieldtrip, but before I started to pick out my Halloween costume, just after I’d scheduled my first weekend play date with a girl named Gina in my class who also liked Pippi Longstocking, Kelly and I came home to Grandpa’s house to find Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table. There was a bouquet of white daisies, Mom’s favorite flowers, on the table, and Dad was holding her hands across the table. I could tell that Mom had been crying because her eyes were red and puffy, but she smiled like she was happy when she saw us. Dad told us that he was going to start meetings with AA, who are the people who help you when the car gets a flat tire, and he told us it’s for alcoholics, too. And we were all moving back home.

After we’d been back home for a few days, Dad tucked me into my bed. He read me a chapter from Matilda, which he has read to me five times already because it’s my favorite book, and he even did the funny voices. Then he kissed me on the forehead and he smelled like cigarettes, which I like because it smells like him. He said, “Goodnight, honey,” but he didn’t leave. I had my eyes closed, but I could feel him standing next to my bed after he turned off the light. And I could hear him breathing, so I opened my eyes. Then he asked me if something was going on between Mom and that therapist guy. I think he meant, were they doing sex together, but I didn’t want to ask him if that’s what he meant.

“No,” I said.

I had lots of things I wanted to say to him. I wanted to say that I defended him to Mom and Dr. Green, and that I wanted to live with him instead of her. I wanted to tell him that I tried to leave her like she left him. But instead I just said, “No.” And then Dad kissed me on the cheek and said he loved me, and then I said I loved him, too.

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume IV - Number 3 - March 2007

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