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By Root 1224 0

my legs. My chin was pink and dimpled, my neck pale underneath, so that I could see the blue lines of veins threading up to my ears. I put my palms flat on my cheeks, pushed back and slanted my eyes. My face remained unreadable, my eyes blank and silvery. My face told nothing. It was scary, stern and empty. I bent my head back, looking down to my reddish-brown nipples, my puckered belly button, long thighs, and bruised knees. My neck ached, my teeth, my lower spine and ass. All of me was ugly, pasty, and numb—nothing like Uncle James’s girls in their white nylon crinolines and blue satin hair ribbons. They were the kind of little girls people really wanted. No part of me was that worshipful, dreamy-eyed storybook girlchild, no part of me was beautiful. I could see why Daddy Glen was hateful to me. At dinner when Mama had gone back to the bedroom to get her sweater, he had made a point of telling me that I didn’t have anything to be so proud of.

“You think you’re so special,” he’d jeered. “Act like you piss rose water and honey. Think you’re too good to be straightened out. Your mama has spoiled you. She don’t know what a lazy, stubborn girl you are, but I do. I know you. I know you, and I an’t gonna have you turning out like your useless cousins, not growing up under my roof.”

“Hateful man,” I whispered. “I don’t care if his daddy does treat him bad. I don’t care why he’s so mean. He’s hateful.”

I rolled over and pushed my face underwater. I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen’s eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid. But at the bottom, at the darkest point, my anger would come and I would know that he had no idea who I was, that he never saw me as the girl who worked hard for Aunt Raylene, who got good grades no matter how often I changed schools, who ran errands for Mama and took good care of Reese. I was not dirty, not stupid, and if I was poor, whose fault was that?

I would get so angry at Daddy Glen I would grind my teeth. I would dream of cutting his heart out, his evil raging pit-black heart. In the dream it felt good to hate him. But the horrible thing was how I felt when I was awake and wasn’t burning with anger. The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. It must have been like what he felt when he stood around his daddy’s house, his head hanging down.

Love would make me beautiful; a father’s love would purify my heart, turn my bitter soul sweet, and lighten my Cherokee eyes. If he loved me, if he only loved me. Why didn’t he love me? I drummed my fists on the porcelain walls of the tub, shook my head and howled underwater, came up to breathe and went under to whine again. If anyone had come in, they wouldn’t have known I was crying, and I was sure even God couldn’t hear me curse.

Over Christmas holidays at Alma’s house, I spent my time organizing the cousins to act out complicated stories, half of them drawn from television programs. As long as everybody did what I told them, I was the best baby-sitter Aunt Alma had ever seen.

“You can be Francis Marion,” I told Little Earle. “Reese and I will be Cherokee warriors, Patsy Ruth can be the British commander, Garvey will be the cowardly colonist, and Grey can be a colonist on our side.”

“Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, where have you been?” Little Earle began singing, but Patsy Ruth cut him off. “Why do I have to be the British commander? Why can’t you be the bad guy and let me be a Cherokee?”

“’Cause you don’t climb trees worth a pig’s ass. Everybody knows Indians can climb trees.”

“Then I get to ride the horse, and I want to ride Grey’s bike, not Little Earle’s old one.”

“If she gets to ride my bike, then I want to wear your