‘Your dad’s got scars on his face,’ Wilf said, backing away from me at the door. I didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d been playing out and I wanted to go in for a drink.
‘What?’
‘Your dad’s got scars,’ he said, ‘all over his raas claat face!’
I looked at him funny because his mum and dad were West Indian and he dropped his voice deep sometimes to speak like them, but I never heard them say that.
‘What scars?’
Both his mum and dad were nice to me, especially Mrs Aarons, who looked down at me seriously with a long-drawn-out face that had those Deputy Dawg marks going down from her nose to the corners of her mouth. When she smiled, the lines lifted up under her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with fun. She said she liked me because I was a clever boy and I should please teach Wilf how to be brighter than he is and better behaved, because even though he was good at sport you can’t spend all your life running.
His dad was a carpenter for the council and always shook my hand using both of his which were huge and soft, with short stubby fingers. He looked at you and sized you up and made a note in his mind before moving back quietly behind his wife, from where he fiddled with bits of wood to be doing up their house with.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘leave the boys, they have things to do.’
We got water from the tap in the back kitchen where they always sat, and you could see as you passed the open door of their front room there were lots of frilly things in pink and blue with glass bowls and plastic yellow flowers.
‘What’s in that room?’ I asked, and his mum looked at me like it was a secret I shouldn’t be asking.
‘Curious, eh?’ she said. ‘And you would like to find out?’
I still had the cup in my hand, it was empty and I didn’t know where to put it, so I nodded.
‘Still fixing up,’ his dad said, ‘but you could go in.’
‘Always fixing, never finish,’ she said, and took the cup from me with a wink. ‘Wilf could a learn some a dat.’ She was shaking her head at me with her face long, ‘Always finish, never fix – dash and done.’
‘You’ mother nag so?’ his dad asked, looking up at me. ‘Soon done,’ he said, and looked down again.
‘And you don’ think is time I have my feet up like you was promising me the moon to get me in the boat and come? Seasick tek me an’ me neck dangling over the side so! Him fixing me a deck chair on the Titanic, eh?’
I looked at Wilf who rolled his eyes, and at his dad who shrugged and went on fiddling.
‘We’re going now, Mum,’ Wilf said, edging me out the kitchen.
‘Soon come,’ she said and brushed him away and took me by the hand back down the corridor. She picked up a pink feather duster at the door and told me, as she closed it behind us, the front room was ‘for special’.
It was dark because the curtains were half drawn, but there was a radiogram with polished wood she dusted down, pointing at all the dials with the feather duster like she was a fairy with a magic wand, and there was a cloth on top of it with its corners hanging down to form triangles, as well as some small polished side tables in wood and glass with smaller cloths and frilly edges. There were glass cabinets on both sides of the fireplace with long, thin legs that were full of cups and saucers and glasses and ornaments in glass and plastic on glass shelves with glass doors that had yellow and black patterns engraved on them, and it was all mirrored on the inside.
She shook a see-through plastic dome off the mantelpiece that had a palm tree inside and a beach with the word Jamaica written on it so it made a snow storm, and showed me and said, ‘For Christmas.’
She drew the curtains fully closed and put on the side lamps. They had pictures of dominoes in black and white on the shades. She turned round and told me this was where they’d put her when she was dead and it was for me to remind them to take her out of the house feet first because she didn’t want to have to come back and do all the damn dusting and plumping herself like some people who never would lift a finger would like. ‘But you have a nice thing about you,’ she said. ‘You must help your mummy.’ I nodded. ‘And where she from?’
‘Ireland,’ I said.
‘And Daddy?’
‘Africa.’
She put her head back, and peered at me for a moment. ‘Never mind. And you?’ she asked.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, ‘From here.’
‘Wilf is a English boy, too,’ she nodded. ‘Don’t let none of that hold you back. You have good in you.’
‘What’s that for?’ I asked. There was a metal plastic thing standing on the floor by the yellow sofa that came up into a bubble with a knob on top and looked like a spinning top on a long leg. She pressed it down and it span inside itself like a flying saucer.
‘Ashtray,’ she said, wrinkling her nose up. ‘That’s a dirty habit. I don’t allow it in my house.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and looked round at all the knitted and nylon things, flowers and vases, the framed photos of everyone looking younger, untouched chairs wrapped in shop plastic, the plumped, patterned cushions looking spotless, and nothing needing to be fixed. I looked back at her to see what else wasn’t allowed, but she spread out her hand and waved the duster round the room and said, ‘Now you see, this is my living and dying room, and the man promising me we going back home before it could catch me getting old.’
I must have looked like I had my mouth open because she said, ‘You have a sweet tooth? So have I,’ and lifted the lid off a bowl with some blue and yellow birds on it and gave us both a pink boiled sweet wrapped in see-through cellophane twists. ‘Just you and me,’ she said with a wink, and pulled both ends of hers so it unravelled neatly and popped it in her mouth.
‘You can keep yours,’ she said. ‘Just pop it in your mouth when you get homesick.’
I didn’t get homesick, I kept it in my pocket, but Wilf wouldn’t come in with me. I’d been to his house but he didn’t want to come in mine.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He’s got scars. They’re ugly,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Scary. I’m not going in.’ He was still backing away from me, shaking his head and getting ready to run – his feet were clever in the turn, he dropped his knees low.
‘Oi!’ I shouted.
‘Haven’t you seen?’ and he stopped to draw his fingers in a claw across his cheek. ‘Like a tiger’s scratched him. See ya!’ And he ran off.
‘Is that why he’s afraid to come in? He thinks we keep tigers?’
‘No, Mum,’ I said, ‘just saying, he has got scars, hasn’t he? How’d he get ’em?’
‘You’ve no sense sometimes. Go and ask him.’
He was watching the news on telly, so I had to wait. I hadn’t seen them before. I’d seen them, but they hadn’t made sense. Like writing before you can read, you know it’s there but you look at the pictures. The telly was reflecting on to his glasses. He had eight scars on each cheek, broad slits going across, in two columns ... How couldn’t I have seen sixteen scars? I was sitting beside him and he put his arm around me. Tanks were clanking on the telly into Biafra.
‘Daddy?’
‘Sh,’ he said.
I saw a man standing up and firing a gun, and lots of dust coming up. Children were starving. That was his country. ‘ United we stand, divided we fall,’ that’s what all his friends were saying.
‘What are those scars?’ I said when the weather came on. He looked at me and touched some of the craters in his face around his glasses. I hadn’t seen those before either. They were like black spots pitted round his eyes.
‘Smallpox,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s when God comes and takes away your children.’ I sat rigid, but he shook himself out of watching the telly and gave me a hug. ‘No, there’s no god of smallpox in this country,’ he said. ‘I’m going to keep you.’ But there were shadows in his eyes that weren’t there before.
I looked up at him as his head moved and his eyes blanked out with the light reflecting on his glasses. I saw windows surrounded by spots of smallpox. I couldn’t see what he was thinking. He must have seen I wasn’t sure because he kept hold of me.
‘Is that like chickenpox?’ I said.
‘At home we say Obaluaye – which means “king of the world”. But it’s not this world. It’s another one, and a long time ago.’
It sounded like a story, I felt better. ‘What happened?’
‘The children I had before you gave up the ghost,’ he said.
I wasn’t shocked, I was calm, but I was tumbling backwards. I didn’t know about children he’d lost. I didn’t know what this was. I wanted my dad again. I wanted the peace between us. It was shattered.
‘Who?’ I said. But as he tilted his head towards me I didn’t know what that meant, so I said, ‘What children?’
‘You’re my child now,’ he said. ‘No one will come and take you away from me.’
I had to get my dad back. I reached out to touch his face and drew my fingers across his scars. They were smooth.
‘There’s no smallpox in this country.’
‘That’s what these are?’ I was seeing them properly for the first time.
‘No!’ and he started laughing. ‘These are tribal marks.’
I touched them again and thought about it. It was a story, but it kept changing. He was laughing. What was I getting wrong? They weren’t scars, they were tribal marks. But I could feel them, they were scars, they were real. What about the children?
‘Did it hurt?’ I said.
He shook his head, ‘When you’re a baby, either it doesn’t hurt or you don’t remember.’
‘Of course they’ve all got scars. They’re like zebras,’ Busola snorted, hanging upside down off the edge of the bunk bed. ‘You’re stupid!’
She had me in her sights, swinging from her legs. I let it go until she had the bucket between her knees in the downstairs kitchen. I reached over and dropped my peelings in, ‘I’m not stupid!’
She gave me a sneer, the way our dad did when we were being thick, turning up her nose with her nostrils flared. It was our turn to be peeling yams for the party. Visitors were already barging in through the door with their loud voices on, banging about in the kitchen with big pots to take over the serious cooking and making themselves at home, but still leaving it to us to do the peeling.
A big man we didn’t know turned round and caught her mouthing ‘Stupid’ back at me with her lips and let his mouth drop open. ‘And you? What are you? Are you stupid?’ he asked.
Busola didn’t answer, she wiped her eyes with the back of her knife hand and opened one eye at me behind it to let me know she was having to put up with this because of me. ‘Just rude!’ he said, and gave up and turned away.
‘Very stupid,’ she said under her breath.
Our eyes had started crying from the onions going on to the cooker, and there was the acrid, burning smell of hot peppers that reached into the back of your throat and made you cough. We carried on and tried not to look up in case people noticed us – either they’d flick drops of water off the wooden spoons into your eyes or pick you up and throw you into the air. They took you over and kept you up and wouldn’t let you go until your mum said it was time for bed.
Sometimes you didn’t mind, when it was the nice ones who took you up somewhere you wanted to go and held you tight for you to get a good look. But the ones who caught your eye and gave you daggers of withering looks, or flicked you with water so you’d have to keep your eyes shut to stop it going in, those ones had it in for you and didn’t mind you could see it coming.
But when it came to plucking and scorching chickens, Mr Adebisi, who we loved, sometimes distracted us from the smell by giving us the raw chicken legs to pull. You pulled the strings and the claws moved. You could chase people around with them and scratch their eyes out. Even the nasty ones would run, it was really satisfying.
But there we were in the kitchen, doing the peeling and playing our stupid game – one by one as people came in, carving the shapes of their heads and showing each other, before cutting them in half and dropping them into the bucket.
We were used to Irish people being called Spud, so we changed it and did yams instead of potatoes for the Nigerians after we saw a woman come in with a great big tangle of yam roots on her head. They still had earth on as though you could have turned her upside down and planted her. Some of the women plaited their hair like that in loops and folds, with spikes that stood out to make them look beautiful or scary. But yams were bigger and tougher than potatoes, and that felt right for the people who trooped in to please our dad on the days we had our big parties.
They were all his townspeople, and in London he was the leader of his town. They had ceremonies and meetings and discussed things and took notes and turned it into a big bash that went on late into the night so we could stay up. And the feeling was this was going to be a really big one. So we just kept our heads down and watched.
People were arriving done up in their best clothes. The way they walked in changed – proud, almost dancing, instead of trying to be cramped and invisible alongside English people which they were never good at. The men were wearing agbadas, stiff, patterned robes with matching trousers and long loopy armholes that folded back over their shoulders. Most of them wore cloth hats, flattened over to one side, or stand-up berets with a bobble on top, though some of them, the modern ones, wore English suits with razor-sharp creases and had side partings in their hair. The women were all in high-waisted, wraparound skirts folded over blouses in different patterns, with hairdos or the gele headwraps tied up at all angles off their heads. It was instead of the normal blouses, cardigans and stockings they wore with dark skirts and thick glasses to blend in when we saw them outside.
They would come to us first on the ground floor to say hello because we were working and then go upstairs. Up there the ladies would kneel to my dad and the men would drop down and lie on the floor in front of him. Usually, when the men went down on one knee with a leg stretched out behind and their heads bent, he’d stop and lift them up and hug them, but sometimes he’d let them go the whole way down and touch their heads to the ground and stay there. Then you knew they were in trouble and he wouldn’t look at them as they greeted him, he’d turn up his nose, pick his ear and just ignore them. That’s when everyone would start talking at once and the trial was on.
It could go on as long as they wanted with voices for and against, pleading the case or accusing them of even more. Sometimes he wouldn’t decide it then and there but put everything off until after people had eaten and had time to digest. When they felt a bit better, they’d go at it again – this time, though, they were reasoning and my dad’s voice was urging and consoling, so I could see he had to work hard at it.
Once, when a woman came in and went to lie all the way down on the floor in front of him, her starched clothes ballooning out everywhere, there was the biggest explosion of shouts I ever heard. Her wig fell off along with the tangled up headwrap she was wearing. It was like her head had been cut off and was rolling on the floor, and her scalp was grey and grisly. People were screaming and shouting, pulling her up off the floor with the lampshade swinging from the ceiling, and my dad jumped up and went out the room. The whole house was shaking and it spilled out on to the street. From the window, I saw people pulling each other on the pavement and passers-by being startled. A man crossed over to walk past on the other side but then started running, and a car went into reverse and backed all the way up to the top of the road.
I ran to find out what was happening. In the downstairs kitchen, Mr Adebisi was busy restraining his wife who wanted to go up and slap the woman with her wooden spoon, so I didn’t ask him. Mr Lawal was smoking in the backyard, he was the only one not bothering about what went on and it suddenly occurred to me he was the cause of it, so I went out and asked him.
He looked down his cigarette at me, screwed up his nostrils and spat out a bit of tobacco. ‘She’s an insult. To go down on the floor – as a woman – never! Unless it’s the dirty whore you will wipe your penis on.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant but I knew it wasn’t good. The trouble went on for the rest of the evening, and because no one was bothering about us we heard a lot and we saw a lot – there was a struggle between the men and the women – and it was one of the best parties ever. The whole town was in uproar and my dad was working hard to calm it, even though it was the women who did most of the shouting and Mr Lawal had to go when they started flinging wooden spoons at him. The house only stopped shaking later when people stopped to catch their breath and there was dancing that slowed to a rhythm like the sobbing before sleep.
Anyway, there we were in the kitchen, peeling and playing our game. Manus and Connor were off somewhere because it wasn’t their turn, and my feeling was it was something to do with them that people were coming and they were being kept out the way. Busola started giggling as a woman we didn’t know came in adjusting her wrapper and rolling up her sleeves. She had a baby on her back who turned and looked at us. She was the spitting image of her mum, with the same four lines of scars going back across her cheek towards her ears then turning sharply up towards her temples. There were also another three little scars standing upright on the lap of those bigger ones, over her cheekbones. We laughed because they looked like mummy scar and baby scar, except the baby winced at us and turned away, burying her face in her mummy’s back.
‘Oya! Don’t sleep!’ her mum said, and gave a shake with her shoulders.
We let that one go, but we made up for it by really laying into the other people coming and going. We peeled the rough shape of the head, leaving a patch of skin and tendrils on for someone going bald and letting some be monsters. But then we got down to the real work – tracing the different scars that walked into the room. If we didn’t like someone, we’d do a big cross over the face and drop them – plop! bang! – into the metal bucket. A beautiful person would take time, and you’d want to hold them in your hand longer than you should. No one noticed us until Busola nudged me finishing off a nice smiley man’s five scars on each cheek with a flat, squat head and big, bulbous nose. I showed her.
‘You’re so stupid,’ she said.
My dad was looking at me from the door. He didn’t say anything, he came over and looked in the bucket. He picked up one of the chunks, took my knife and cut it again in two. The pieces fell down – slap! thud! – into the bucket with the other yams.
‘That size,’ he said, and walked off.
‘You’re adopted,’ Busola said, and I couldn’t say anything.
‘Why so miserable?’ Mr Adebisi asked.
I was hanging about on the stairs. I wanted my dad, but I didn’t want him to see me. So I just shrugged.
Mr Adebisi picked me up and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. His bristles scratched into my skin which was the only thing I didn’t like about him. I turned in his arms and looked at him. Under his beard he had tribal marks going everywhere.
‘Why have you got that beard?’ I said.
‘For professional reasons.’
‘To hide your scars?’
He laughed, and swung me. ‘You’re sharp! You can be a lawyer.’ Then he dared me, ‘Go on, touch them.’
I put my finger in under the beard and traced a scar with it.
‘How does it feel?’ he asked.
I just nodded.
‘Do you want some for yourself?’
I tried to shake my head but it wouldn’t move. My neck was stiff. So I said, ‘You have to be a baby.’ And then, because he didn’t say anything, ‘Is that when they did it to you?’
He was looking at me. That’s what Mr Adebisi was like. When he used his eyes you knew he could see anything you were feeling. ‘So now you’re grown-up. And you’re upset you haven’t got?’ he said.
I didn’t know why I nodded, I didn’t want to. But I didn’t know why I didn’t belong.
‘Look around,’ he said, moving me into the front room. ‘Lots of people – that man over there, he doesn’t have marks, and he’s the king.’
I twisted in his arms to look. The man in my dad’s chair was leaning forward, looking at everyone. He hadn’t been to the kitchen so we didn’t draw him. He came later with lots of people shouting and calling after the party had already started. My dad had gone down on the ground in front of him, which startled me because I hadn’t seen that happen before. Now it was like Mr Adebisi was turning me in his arms to see the world upside down and blood was rushing to my head.
‘He’s everybody’s teacher,’ Mr Adebisi whispered.
I shifted and put my arms round his neck and stared at the man. He had a big face and a broad smile, he turned his head to look across the room at me. I hadn’t seen anyone that colour before. His skin was smooth like a blackboard, the whites of his eyes shone out as though he was open and curious about everyone. A tooth rested against his lip like a piece of chalk and made him look like he was amused at me staring.
‘What do you think?’ said Mr Adebisi.
I kept looking as the man turned away and looked back again. He was listening and watching with a calmness that made everyone feel comfortable, so he could be the centre of everything going on, without saying anything. It was like when my dad was with people who liked and wanted to be with him, but really he was alone with himself and detached so he could listen to everyone and everything at the same time.
I blinked and still he was looking at me, people were talking and laughing all around but we were meeting in silence. I questioned him with my eyes and he let me, tilting his head slightly to be the face of all the people I’d been meeting since I was born. I liked him, and I let Mr Adebisi see it. I looked again to make sure – there was a slight scar on his forehead, his eyes were waiting for me to speak.
‘Are you the king?’ I said.
Everyone stopped talking and turned to look. They looked at me and they looked at him. He put his head on one side, like he hadn’t heard me, so I said it again, ‘Are you the king?’
He nodded, and everyone burst out laughing, slapping my dad on the back and cheering. My dad was grinning, so he couldn’t tell me off after that, and he gave a thumbs-up to Mr Adebisi who joggled me in his arms.
Connor came in first with a face like thunder, Manus was dragged in by my mum, he’d been crying. It wasn’t I hadn’t noticed they were gone, but I’d got caught up and forgotten about them. I felt something bad had happened while I’d been enjoying myself, so I kept quiet.
We’d just finished eating out the shared bowls, pounded yam and stews which were delicious and left your mouth on fire. I’d been allowed to eat with the grown-ups in the front room, and Busola had been in the kitchen which she said had all the best bits of beef and stock fish while we had all the tripe and knuckle. But I’d had the ewedu which was made by pounding and grating green leaves with the end of the witches’ broom Mrs Adenle said was a grater until it ran thin and sticky off the end. You couldn’t get enough of that, it made the hinges on your jaw ache just to smell it. Busola kept drawing air into her mouth to cool down and tell me how much pepper I’d missed out on, but we were both having fun telling Mr Adebisi we shouldn’t only be eating with our right hand because that was the hand we used to wipe our bums. The door banged downstairs, and Manus and Connor came in furious from the hospital.
‘What’s the matter?’ my dad said.
‘The anaesthetic wearing off,’ my mum said. ‘They’ll be all right.’
Mr Adebisi was the first to start heaping money on to their heads, sticking it to their foreheads, dancing and praising them for being brave. People joined in with money and turned the music up on the radiogram to drown out the sounds of Connor fighting people off and Manus not trusting anyone. My dad picked them up and did a dance with both of them in his arms, Manus sulking and Connor pushing my dad’s face away. He pushed out his chest and stomped with his legs, going lower and lower with his back bent until their feet nearly touched the floor and the boards shook from him about to leap. People cheered and sprayed money – pound notes! – all over them. And when he put them down, people pressed forward to stick even more money on their foreheads. Everyone was up on their feet, dancing and calling, and you could see as Manus and Connor filled their pockets, the money spilling out their hands, that what they were feeling was starting to change. I bent down to pick up a note but my dad pulled my hand away and told me to go and sit down. A big hole opened up and it was only my mum bending down in her coat to pick me up that stopped me bursting into tears.
She took me up to her bedroom on the top floor, where we could hear it still going on, and sat me on the bed as she took off her coat and gave me a hug.
‘Are you enjoying the party?’ she said.
I looked at her, fighting back the feeling of being pushed away by my dad. She looked worn out, there were wrinkles under her eyes and in the corners. ‘Where have you been?’ I said.
‘With your brothers to the hospital. I’m back now. Have you eaten?’
I nodded, and clung on to her.
‘So what’s the matter?’ she said.
‘Why do they all get the money? Why’s it always about them?’
‘Hasn’t Daddy told you?’
I stopped to think about it, and shook my head against her arm.
‘Look at me.’ She put her tongue up on her top lip which she did when it was going to be difficult. ‘They’ve – it’s their big day. It’s an operation, they’ve had. Down there –’ and she pointed to my willy.
‘Why only them?’ I asked when really I didn’t like the sound of that and wasn’t sure it was worth the money.
‘Because God already blessed yours, and he hadn’t blessed theirs.’
I wondered for a moment if she was fobbing me off. How could God bless your willy? Wouldn’t an operation leave a scar? I must have looked like I didn’t believe it because she said, ‘You were a baby, you wouldn’t remember.’
I had a feeling something had happened to me and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if other people could see. I didn’t know what it meant.
‘Am I scarred?’ I said.
‘You are,’ she said, ‘and blessed. Something has been taken away.’
That was too much. No one had told me. It was loss and anger and sadness at the same time, and I couldn’t handle it.
‘Do you know about Daddy’s other children?’ I said.
‘I’ll know when he tells me.’ And she stood up from the bed with her face turned away.
Busola looked in the door, ‘Daddy wants you to come, the Oba wants to see you.’
‘I’m coming,’ my mum said. ‘Close the door.’
Busola just stood there and looked at me.
‘What d’you want?’ I said.
And she waved a pound note at me.
Wilf had his finger in his ear with his shoulders crooked, he was moving his jaw from side to side and knocking his knees together. Connor was saying he wasn’t coming out for football because they’d chopped his willy off and he couldn’t run.
‘Why d’you tell him that?’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘Sorry about the other day,’ Wilf said, patting me on the back. ‘But look what goes on in your house,’ and he burst out laughing.
‘What d’you mean?’ said Connor. ‘What goes on in our house?’
Wilf looked down at the pavement in case he was gonna have to make a run for it, and shrugged.
‘He didn’t want to come in because of Daddy’s scars,’ I said.
‘What scars?’ said Connor.
‘On his face,’ Wilf said, trying not giggle.
I could see Connor weighing it up, could he catch him? But he decided against it, and used his mouth. ‘Yeah, I suppose he has, but your mum’s off with the fairies, and you’re a wanker.’
I didn’t know how he knew about Wilf’s mum. I still had her sweet in my pocket. ‘She’s not,’ I said, ‘she’s nice.’
Connor looked at me like what was the point?
‘My mum likes you, though, more than me,’ Wilf said, and I had a pang of feeling sorry for him and then guilty. But he smirked, and it changed around to mean he didn’t really like me even though she did.
He took his finger out his ear and flicked his willy under his trousers. ‘Mine still works,’ he said. ‘How d’you go for a pee?’
‘Come here, I’ll show ya,’ said Connor, but Wilf backed away shaking his head.
‘I’ll tell everyone,’ he said.
‘Tell who you want,’ said Connor, ‘but you better keep running.’
Wilf flashed a smile and ran off up the road waving back at us.
‘Do you know his mum?’ I said.
‘What of it?’
‘I think she wants to go back home,’ I said, as Wilf jumped up around the corner by the corrugated iron, laughing his head off.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘Does it really leave scars when you get your willy chopped off?’ I said.
‘Have you got scars?’ she said.
I shrugged because I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell.
‘Well, then.’ And she walked out the room.
I went to find Manus.
‘Manus, does it still hurt? Can you show me?’
He was drinking a cup of water out the sink and nearly choked. He looked round at me severely, took a sip and blew a splash of water into my face so it dripped over my shirt.
‘There you go,’ he said.
‘Daddy?’
My dad looked at me and wasn’t cross even though the news was on. I didn’t say anything, I got in the door and curled up under his arm and watched the war going on. A skeleton boy with a big belly was holding on to the arm of his baby sister to get up a step and go for help, but she couldn’t do it, she was too weak to lift her head, she fell over on the step and curled up, and he just stood holding her bony arm because he couldn’t let go. I felt for the scars on my dad’s face and found a place for my fingers where I could touch him. It was wet, but I held on to let him know he was my dad and I was still there, I wasn’t gone.