Daddy’s skin is gray. His lips are the color of gristle and his eyes have shrunk down into his head like something was pulling at them. I know what that something is. It’s death.
If death goes on long enough, death claims everything in the body, even the bones, the fingernails, the hair. That’s what they taught me in school.
Daddy made me go to school. He told me I had to because if I didn’t go to school the city would come around asking why. Then they would take me away and sell me and I’d be a slave forever, even when I grew up.
So, I decided to go to school and Daddy got me all dressed on my first day. He took my hand, but he didn’t open the door. He knelt down and said, “Listen close, Carolyn. You’re gonna go to school, but you can’t tell nobody about the special things we do together. Nobody.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
He shook his head and grabbed my chin and forced me to look into his eyes. I was afraid of his eyes, but I had to look anyway.
He said, “Do you remember Pancho?”
Pancho was the name of the dog we had once. He was always nice to me, but one day he tried to bite Daddy. So Daddy tied him to a pipe in the basement and killed him. Daddy made me watch. He said, “This is what happens when you’re bad. This is what you get.”
He hit Pancho with a golf club. Hit him again and again and again. Pancho screamed for a long time. Then he whimpered for a long time. Then he died. I remember watching his chest rise and fall, faster and faster. I remember that his tongue was hanging all the way out and it was covered with blood. I remember that when he died, his eyes looked like Daddy’s do now.
“What happened to Pancho could happen to you, little girl. Yes, it could. Anything can happen to bad little girls and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
I didn’t tell anyone. My first year and my second year in school. I didn’t talk to anyone except teachers when they asked a question and I always sat by myself and I never looked at anyone. I wanted to be the invisible girl, but they found me anyway. First a few. Freak, freak, freak. Then everyone. Freak, freak, freak. Pinches, shoves, yanks came next, but they weren’t anything at all compared to Daddy. Alone, though, always alone. At home, at school. Always. They could smell it on me.
I told in third grade. I told Mrs. Vallardi. She was my counselor and she said it would be all better if I talked about my problems at home. She knew something was wrong she said. I couldn’t fool her. So, I told.
I told and I told and they took Daddy away and they gave me to the Acevedas in the Bronx. The Acevedas were nicer than Daddy. If I did my work, if I was a good, good girl, they never punished me.