Daddy (4:58)not_polishOctober 1 2010, 23:20:31 UTC
She had never been close to her father. To Sally, her father was an air of mystery, a man who wrapped himself around working and providing for his family. He was always out working, selling the kind of insurance nobody needed but still bought. And if he wasn’t working he was out at the bars drinking with his friends, stumbling home drunk after Sally and her sister were fast asleep.
Sometimes they woke up to the sound of their parents fighting, but it quieted down to a dull thumping noise that lulled the young girls back to sleep.
Linda had a better connection with both parents, maybe it was because she was older and prettier than little Sally. Daddy said Linda was going places. She was smart, talented, pretty, confident…she knew what she wanted.
And then she died. Just like that. And Sally was alone and her daddy didn’t care.
His drinking got worse, and her mother seemed to have forgotten she had another daughter: a daughter with soft white skin and bright frizzy red hair that was the opposite of Linda’s smooth hair that never stuck out at funny angles when she woke up.
But her mother never meant much to her. She has always been in the background. Sally wanted her father’s attention most of all. She watched the girls in school, saw their fathers sitting in the audience during the play, and afterwards they came backstage in their crisp work clothes to hand their daughter pretty yellow flowers and kiss them on the cheek and raise them in the air onto their shoulders and treat them like princesses.
She wanted to be a princess. That’s why she ran off to the city, to show her daddy that she too was going places. She might not be as smart as Linda, but she was damn pretty and look at how all the boys talked about her and treated her. Some even begging to have her call them daddy. They touched her and fondled her but that wasn’t what daddies were supposed to do.
They were supposed to call their daughters up from time to time and tell them how proud they were. How they watched the news and saw their little girl painted on the B-29 that dropped the bomb and ended the war. How proud they were that their daughter was going places, making history in yellow.
They were supposed to protect their little girls from the boys who break hearts and ribs. They were supposed to walk their little girls down the aisle. They were supposed to teach you how men worked, to understand what men meant when they come knocking at your house one summer day.
Sometimes they woke up to the sound of their parents fighting, but it quieted down to a dull thumping noise that lulled the young girls back to sleep.
Linda had a better connection with both parents, maybe it was because she was older and prettier than little Sally. Daddy said Linda was going places. She was smart, talented, pretty, confident…she knew what she wanted.
And then she died. Just like that. And Sally was alone and her daddy didn’t care.
His drinking got worse, and her mother seemed to have forgotten she had another daughter: a daughter with soft white skin and bright frizzy red hair that was the opposite of Linda’s smooth hair that never stuck out at funny angles when she woke up.
But her mother never meant much to her. She has always been in the background. Sally wanted her father’s attention most of all. She watched the girls in school, saw their fathers sitting in the audience during the play, and afterwards they came backstage in their crisp work clothes to hand their daughter pretty yellow flowers and kiss them on the cheek and raise them in the air onto their shoulders and treat them like princesses.
She wanted to be a princess. That’s why she ran off to the city, to show her daddy that she too was going places. She might not be as smart as Linda, but she was damn pretty and look at how all the boys talked about her and treated her. Some even begging to have her call them daddy. They touched her and fondled her but that wasn’t what daddies were supposed to do.
They were supposed to call their daughters up from time to time and tell them how proud they were. How they watched the news and saw their little girl painted on the B-29 that dropped the bomb and ended the war. How proud they were that their daughter was going places, making history in yellow.
They were supposed to protect their little girls from the boys who break hearts and ribs. They were supposed to walk their little girls down the aisle. They were supposed to teach you how men worked, to understand what men meant when they come knocking at your house one summer day.
But Daddy was never there for her.
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