When she was a little girl, before her mother died, Robin Flood dreamed that she was not only a little girl, but an animal, too. She liked animals, of course, as lonely children often do. Her favourite outing with her parents was a trip to the zoo. But her dream was recurrent: one night she was an ocelot, the next she was a fox. She was okapi, but she was also jaguarundi, otter, panda and racoon. She wore her little girl clothes in these dreams, but her face was furry, her nose tipped black. She was herself, but she was also something wild.
One day her parents, seeing her love for animals, decided that she was old enough to care for a pet. Robin asked for a monkey — but not just any monkey. She was very particular: she wanted a Japanese macaque, a small, delicate monkey with a pink face and sober, soulful eyes.
Robin named her new friend Emily and spent nearly all of her free time when she was not in school talking to her. Emily listened; her parents didn’t. Emily was unusually intelligent and loving, but nevertheless there were times when Emily lapsed — when she was more wild animal than good little girl. One Saturday when Robin was eight, Emily wandered into a prayer breakfast father was giving and bit a few important fingers. Father was very angry.
When Robin came home from school, her father was waiting. He took her into the basement, where Emily was to be disciplined for being a monkey, and not a good little girl. It would be a lesson for Robin.
The basement was dark and scary. Robin liked to play down there with Emily around the great furnace and in the laundry room. It was a scary place but that was part of its appeal to them. It offered a taste of adventure.
Poor Emily! She was tied by her tiny wrists to a big clothes drying rack. She was chattering her teeth and making the high pitched sounds of alarm macaques make when they are frightened. She bared her white teeth in distress, her wet saucer eyes begged Robin to help her, but Robin couldn’t.
Father was father, so he had to punish.
You made me watch, father. It was a belt you used, and you hit poor Emily with it and when she howled, you looked at me. I knew that you could turn your anger on me. It didn’t last very long, but my heart was broken. Then you made us kneel and pray that Emily wouldn’t be bad again. When I went to untie her and pick her up she bit me on the chin and I didn’t make a sound. I knew you would come back and beat her again.
I saw that cruelty was the worst sin. Deliberate cruelty. That cruelty made Emily run into the street a few days later, and she was killed.
After that happened I went into a little room inside myself and shut the door. I was eight, but I have always had a very strong will. I decided I would let no one in my room. I would pretend to be the dutiful Robin Flood, Thomas Flood’s daughter, but in that little room I remained an animal. Emily lived inside me.
I watched you at my mother’s funeral, father. I saw that you were posing. She lay encased in that rich wood and you postured, one hand on her casket, for the television cameras. She looked up at you with sightless eyes from the open casket, and you didn’t say good-bye to her, you said prayers. Prayers!
I knew that you did not love her, that women frightened and disgusted you. I knew that you had been cruel to her because she was a woman and you did not know what that meant.
I hated you when I saw your cruelty, and it dried up my heart.
You killed her. You knew that she was stronger than you, and you feared that she would devour you with her womanhood. So you killed her. But it was her sex you really wanted to kill. Her powers as a woman. Maybe as a goddess, if Laura’s right.
I am the daughter of Aphrodite. We are all goddesses and gods, and your church says we are devils.
Your pathetic, cruel church.
I am an animal. I am a goddess. I am my mother’s daughter. I am not your daughter. I am not a good little girl any longer. When you killed my mother, when you burned me, you made me bad.
Buddy Tate is an animal like me. His smell pleased me — it was hard winters in little towns, smoky sex and sudden violence. His willingness when I fucked him pleased me. The size of his cock pleased me. What he said and how he said it.
I have trouble with passion. It’s too big an emotion to remain stuffed in my little room. If I let it grow there would be a meltdown.
And yet, I think I feel passion for Buddy Tate — and I’m afraid of it. Afraid that it will burn us both up.
You will chase me, father, and I will run, and that will be our history until the end. One day I will stop running and fight you. Or Buddy Tate will kill you for me.
I like to think that we’ll cut your heart out and eat it.
Don’t you understand that you have to die so I can live? Don’t you understand that, until I see your mortal blood, I will never be whole?
The last time I saw you, father, was the last time you hurt me. You’d sent me away to good schools, and for that I thank you, if for nothing else. I learned how not to be your daughter at them. I was in Paris pretending to attend classes at the Sorbonne but actually fucking my brains out when you called me home. You threatened to cut off my allowance if I didn’t come. I was to make an appearance to demonstrate that you’re a ‘family man’. It was a big event — a convention of religious broadcasters, I think. Bible-thumping babblers.
I dressed in black, with pearls, but I left a small gold ring in my nose to signal my defiance of you. I knew I shouldn’t, but I was a bad little girl. You wanted me to make an appearance as the Parousia Foundation’s poster girl: the dutiful daughter who went to the best schools but was still a good Christian — so what were those liberals talking about when they said fundamentalists are uneducated?
But that little nose ring, symbol of my defiance, made you nervous. Your noble brow crunched up with scorn and distaste when you saw it. You reached out and took my nose between your strong fingers and you pulled my head down, forcing me to bow to you. When you let go, I was crying.
Those are the last tears I will ever shed for you.
I prayed to the snake gods, do not let this evil man my father hurt me with his powerful serpent. Its head spat venom and its body was a muscle that could choke my heart.
I swore that I would never see you again, but my dreams betray me. My nightmares will deliver me into your hands.
I must go to you one last time because there is a question I have to ask you: if my mother was bad, like me, how do you know that I am your daughter?