I first saw you in Daddy's room baring your all to an eight-year old girl. You hung all over, fat sweating off your bones in rolls. Two full breasts-bulbous, frankly huge, swinging like the potted plants on our front porch. Your thighs rubbing together, embracing in the middle, black like hell in the space between.

Your scent bitter, gastric, a bit of garlic I could almost taste, smacked me like a wave as I entered the room, threatening to drown me in poisonous gas. I struggled to breathe, swallowing a mouthful of you, of your smell.

You rolled your eyes, two shiny black marbles, to meet mine. Blank like a stray dog that needed petting. Your shoulders hunched, then fell, a soft movement, graceful, a lazy bee in the heat of day. The light from the cornered candles made you golden. Like Buddha you sat still for a moment, sniffing air. I stood like a statue, helpless as a dream.

You: a flash of yellowed teeth, a curve of tongue. A pass of recognition and then your finger came alive, coiling over on itself. Your mouth opened. A hiss escaped, or was that my imagination? A word slid into air, into meaning. Precious. You called me precious. You pat your thigh as if it were a Great Dane kneeling at your feet. It moved.

I was to come to you.

I was to put my tiny hand on your wet, meaty knee.

My skin pricked at the touch.

"Suzie!" This slurred from my father's mouth. He entered, tripping over the cheap blue carpet, to scoop me up, to carry me to my room. He smelt of showering, soap still clinging to his hair, a telltale towel wrapped around his thin waist. It fell twice, landing in a swirl at his feet. Daddy held me in one arm and bent to right the towel. We teetered on the edge of falling, until he dropped me into bed-a small cot covered with a tattered pink blanket. Daddy buried me in it to my nose. Its familiar fuzz clawed at my now sweaty skin.

Daddy stumbled over the door jam, gently pulling the door behind him. Whispers wafted in from the next room, filled the air with nonsense. I sniffed my hand where it had touched your knee. A smell too thick to describe. I rubbed the wet from my hand into the sheets. I let my mind work on your face: the black wires sticking out of a loose bun at the back of your head, its strands coiling around thick, puffing cheeks; the pale, stub of a nose, with a touch of pink at the peak; the sharp, angle of the chin, sloping to the chest; the eyebrows like mud-caked night crawlers pinned to the forehead to keep them from crawling down; the black eyes hard, yet water-dense, like a fish. This wasn't my mother I saw. Mom was tucked safe away in a hospital on the east end of town.

Mom who fell over in the garden, spilling herself into the red tulips. Mom who gave Daddy another fat chance after he tore her shirt and played with you in the sandbox outside. He had grains of it in his thin, greasy hair. You had rolled on him. Buried him with your fat. Covered him in sand to suffocate us. But Mom sniffed you out. A cheap perfume Daddy never bought her. A rotten stench you could only create in your armpits. A sickly glow that Daddy could only get from you. No, Mom wasn't dead yet. Only half way there at the time. You must have been sent to pull her the rest of the way.


This morning you left my father naked on the bridge. You stole his shoes, his clothes. You placed him in plain view of the church.

When I find him, he is waltzing with an old brown bowler to cover his crotch. His other hand keeps the balance. His toes scrape the concrete, unnatural without wing tips to trap and guide their movements. When he spins, the pale moon of his cheeks shyly assaults my senses. My cheeks grow pink at the sight. Another turn and his chest: nipples jutting out like tiny peaks on little flabby anthills. His ribs glistening through his wet skin.

It's still early. The road abandoned, the church silent. Dew and mist settle on the windows of my car. With the door open, I get the chill of mid March, the pungent, fishy smell of the river. A full view of Dad. My stomach flips.

After some tugging and a few unkind words, Dad is in my car. It reeks of smoke and sweaty men. I'm a busy woman-a waitress full time at a diner. It's a job I adore. Really. Low pay, low tips, a proposition from a sleaze on the side. A spank on the behind every now and then. You know the routine. A job made for you really. I'm just lucky I snatched it first.
My black shoes and stained apron take shotgun. Dad rests in the back. The church stays cemented where it is, at the center of town, small houses huddled on either side. The Virgin stands before the front doors with her hands hiding her breasts, her eyes dripping rain from last night's shower.

My old blue Toyota whines. I cut sharply, wheels spitting stones in the church parking lot, grinding to a halt in the back. The cemetery hides here, full of guilt and dirt. Mom's stone is visible from the car. Simple, gray, a double plot with a space left for me, or Dad, if he wasn't such an asshole. I can barely read the inscription. "Jeanne Marie Singer. B. 1935. D. 1979. May the Lord's face shine upon you, and give you peace."

You were at Mom's funeral. You snuck in wearing a tight black pantsuit, hair glued to your head, a fat ponytail hanging out the back. Your face plastered and plucked, a portrait of cheap on a body too big for size seven shoes. Dad stood respectfully beside me, keeping a tight grip on my hand. "It's okay, honey." He kept calling me "honey." I wanted my hand back. With my hand wiggled free, I wiped his sweat from my palm on the seam of my pink dress. We waited at the front of a long queue, leading up to the wide-open coffin. On tiptoe, I leaned to look inside.

That face wasn't hers. They pulled it too tight. A ghost of a smile stretched all the way across her face. Too pink, too, for a mother who never wore makeup. The crooked wig tugged at her head, showing its lines. And finally that smell! A pungent odor full of chemical permanence and the cheap perfume tactlessly used to cover it. I sank to a kneel and buried my nose in my elbow.

Dad shifted to one leg, sliding aside. "Suzie," he whispered. His fingers gripped my wrist, pulling me to my feet. I yanked back, my wrist beginning to purple. I bowed my head, studied my black paten leathers, the whitish scrapes I put there that morning, the wrinkles forming creases that showed their age. Relatives arrived bearing gifts, flowers, cards that began to repeat as the day wore on.

Poor thing, they said to Dad, as if I couldn't hear.
Does she cry much?
How does she feel about all this?
Can you handle her alone?

Ten minutes later I was at the window, sun filtering down through a thin layer of clouds and buildings. You stood on the steps of the parlor, puffing a cigarette and looking snide. You blocked the entrance with your fat strut, a lumbering pace that clashed with the others' hurried concern. A closer look and you were crying. My fingers pawed at the window. My forehead pushed against glass. My lashes dry, I slid my head down to rest on my arm.

Now, the grass in the cemetery conceals the steady growth of weeds. A long rectangle-a different color and consistency than the rest of the grass-reveals the size of Mom's coffin. I stand irreverently on top. I shiver with walking on Mom's grave. Left Dad in the back seat, a pink blanket covering his nakedness, keeping him warm enough inside the dead car. It's still early for church. I take my time, walking barefoot down the stone path, brown loafers dangling from stinging fingers. My feet tingle on the edge of numbness by the time I reach the car. I toss shoes inside, lock the doors, and hum as I enter the church.

What's that song she used to sing to me, teetering on the edge of sleep? Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be… Why does it now sigh back into memory?

She leans over me. I feign sleep, eyelids fluttering ever so slightly, head like lead lying indented in the pillow. She pulls the covers gently up to my chin. She plants a kiss on each eye. Her hand glides over my forehead. I stir involuntarily. She rests herself on the edge of the cot. She bends to hum in my ear, breath tickling my eardrums, letting the melody slide in like a soft breeze. Her hands soft as she brushes my face, stroking the hair from my eyes.

It's so familiar. The slim figure above me. The way the cot sinks with her slight weight. Her thin, wasting hair dangling past her cheeks, stopping just below the ears. The voice light and airy, melting into dreams.

I sit in the church, willing myself to forget Dad for a while. The bench is hard against my back. My legs cross themselves. I place my shaking hand on my forehead. My compact mirror is in my purse. I dip in to pull it out. I study Mom's face in my mirror. They say she looked like me.
They say she looked like me.

You were at my graduation. You came in a great pink parka; it was so cold. And Dad sat beside you, a small brown bowler on his head. The patches on his jacket new enough to be sewn by your own hands. I shivered anonymously in a folding chair, standing when appropriate, staring at the sky. The clouds were so pale. I could see through them for miles. A birdless day. Too chill perhaps for them to flock. I sniffed the cold in the air. My white gown shook. I smashed my mortarboard to my head to keep it from blowing off. At the end, we tossed them, all 208. I found mine under one of the bleachers at the end of the football field. The wind must have taken it. You and Dad met me there. A hug and a handshake, one for good luck and one for a bright future. Finally, I drove off, tassel in the front seat, gown and mortarboard falling onto the floor in the back.

A week later I had my own place, just a mile out of town. Cheap rent. Cheap area. Simply a place to carve my own niche, to plant my own seed. To bury my head in the sand.

The church is beginning to fill now. I slither over to the phone in the back. I slip in a few quarters. My boyfriend is on the other line. I've called him at work, at the diner. A whispered conversation.
Mike, I can't dress him. He's my father. It's too weird. Besides, I don't even have any of his clothes.
A heated reply. I don't want your drunkard father messing up my clothes. Mike's voice is over-masculine and silly. I've told him before to quit the macho man act with me, but he likes it. I feel his finger pointing at me through the phone. He's your father, Susan. Why don't you take care of him? Buy him a new outfit or something? Mike takes a puff of his cigarette. I can almost smell it as the smoke cradles the phone on his end.

Frustration. Silence. Time to check on Dad. I pull the phone cord as far as it will go and peek out the door. The car doors are closed, but my blanket lies contorted and abandoned on the cement. I don't see my father anywhere. I whisper into the phone. I think Dad wandered off.

He's not in the car.

I hear Mike taking another puff on his cigarette. He couldn't have gone far. He probably just went off to puke. I stare at my dark blue Toyota and the hat at the mercy of the wind, twisting and turning softly on the ground beside the blanket. I leave the receiver hanging, with Mike on the other end. He can go screw himself, if he wants.

I slip out of the church the way I came in, leaving behind the broken crucifix, its wood cracked halfway up the cross, and two rows of dusty pews.

I break into a jog.

The car is locked. Reaching into my jeans, I spill the keys onto the tiny gray stones. I scoop them up, line up the key with the lock-upside down then right side up. By then, I have Dad in view, lying diagonally on the back seats. He must have gone out for some fresh air, but he's safe inside now. Still outside, I lean over the back window, pressing my nose to the glass.
I have my Dad's nose, long, rounded. His cheeks are different than I remembered, thinner, almost translucent. His eyeballs peak through slits beneath wrinkled eyelids. His face is the color of sand. His lips look bruised, revealing exactly how they've been kissed. I retrieve the blanket, the hat. The door unlocks. The blanket is too small to cover Dad's torn feet. I want to rub the red back into those feet.

Dad teaches me to dance when I am sixteen. He sticks the old record on the player and some woman's voice begins a soft airy melody. Dad reaches out for me.
"Here's where your hand goes, and here's where my hand goes." He plants his hand on the small of my back. My stomach flips over. My breasts heave in and out between us. He lifts my chin, aligning our faces. He stares me down, twirls me about, teaches me to slow dance.
"Now don't get any closer than this. Respectable girls don't dance cheek to cheek with boys."
His face wrinkles and his mouth curves into a smirk, his eyes glowing in a knowing twinkle. We look to our feet and begin the box step together, his old black wing tips leading my white tennis shoes. The rhythm is alive in us, and we move smoothly as one.
We dance a long time. I'm on tiptoe and I twirl under my father's extended arm. He bends me back, dips me low. His trousers brush by my jeans. My feet begin to ache and I lose my balance. I stumble into Dad's chest. It's time to stop. He winks at me.
"Pretty good for a first try."

Here's where you came in, half a second later, to find me sitting on the couch with my homework. Dad hugged you, played with your stringy hair, both your monstrous breasts squashed against his chest. Your smile may have been real, but so was my scowl. I buried my nose in the book.

I press my back in the drivers' seat. From the smell, I determine that Dad has pissed himself. Just now. At least all that alcohol (or whatever you gave him) is filtering out of his system. I roll down the window and fill my lungs with air. The blanket rustles in the back.

"Suzie." A voice so bent it's barely recognizable. But the name is the same.

I answer by turning on the ignition. The car rumbles like thunder at my touch. It settles into a low gravelly whine. Dad is in the rearview mirror, his features backward, more comforting that way. I back out of the space, turn towards the bridge.

You are standing there, clinging to the rail, bending over, cloth from your overly large black blazer bunching around your fat rolls, flapping around your waist. Your dark pants squeeze your thighs, sucking at skin. The breeze blows sticky pieces from the graying bun pinned on your head. Your lips call for Dad. Your brown-loafered feet on tiptoe tip you dangerously over the rail.

Don't bother to look down there. I have him. Dad is here, in my back seat.
I park in a space not far from the bridge. I walk, approaching you slowly. But for Dad, I would push you in. Instead, I tap your fleshy shoulder. Even the fabric feels greasy.
You turn into a giant hug. I disappear in your great arms. I am consumed by your cabbage smell. You are genuinely happy I found him. He wandered off last night. He lost his clothes? His shoes? Isn't that strange.

We're walking to the car. Your fat fingers are on my upper back, fingering the hairs on my neck. How am I doing? How's work?

Fine is all I have the courtesy to answer.

I search your face. The wrinkles make it old, but your eyes dance now, in the morning light cutting through the bridge. Your mouth is moving. You wonder how Dad got here. You left him at the bar last night. He seemed okay to you. You're sorry I had to find him like this.
We're at the car. The back door is open. Our heads lean together, facing in.
Dad's chin points toward the ceiling, his head resting back on the seat, his eyes staring through us both. Through the hole in the clouds. Through miles and miles of cold, birdless sky.