Jalondra Davis, Daddy Page 4
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I just found out about a half sister I never knew existed. We have to give away the dogs we couldn’t feed anymore because even with my mother working three jobs, we are barely eating ourselves. But my Mommy tells us, “your Daddy loves you.” He is writing her letters from rehab, letters she lets me read, beautiful poems in which he calls her his angel, his queen.
My twelfth grade boyfriend tells me he loves me after coming two hours late to the dance show I have the lead in, and I believe him. He tells me he wants to be with me though he doesn’t want to take me to senior prom, and I believe him. He tells me I’m special though he doesn’t call me for a week after he became my first in his musty room, and I believe him. For some reason I cannot grasp why I shouldn’t believe him.
I am a young woman in college, unwillingly home for the summer. I walk through the door and have to gulp for air. I have had months without hearing the word bitch, a semester of freshman psyche, and a growth in confidence. My parents argue and I ask my father what he would think of a man calling me a bitch. I am his princess, stainless and sweet, and maybe I think this will trigger some kind of epiphany. If that’s what you act like, that’s what you are, and that’s what you get called. I shove the plant on the dining room table in his direction. Eyes wild and crimson with hurt and rage, he pushes it back, much harder and further. It flies onto the floor and the soil my mother feeds with rotten egg water sprays my face, my chest, and the closed curtains behind me.
