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            My tiny feet made soft tapping noises as I ran down the downstairs hall of our house that led to the closet with the towels.  I could hear my daddy’s voice in the living room counting slowly in his deep voice like a lullaby.

 “7…8…9…”  Giggling, I ducked into the closet and closed the door, leaving it cracked ever so slightly so that I could peek out. 

“13…14…”  I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep the giggles inside of me when they tried to explode. 

“18…19…20…”  My daddy’s voice boomed out in a playful, monstrous way, “Ready or not, I’m coming for my Lissy!”  I heard his footsteps tip-toeing down the hallway, and I crouched farther into the closet, pressing myself into the oversized coats that hung there. 

“I’m going to find my Lissy!” he bellowed like one of the friendly monsters in my books.  The shadows of his big feet reached under the door of the closet and licked my toes, and a giggle escaped between my fingers.  I gasped and backed as far as I could into the coats as the door was flung open and I was grabbed around the waist by Daddy’s strong, rough hands.  “I’ve got her!” he roared.  “I’ve got my Lissy!” 

I kicked and laughed deeply from my belly as he lifted my feet off of the cold wood floor and lifted me up above his head like the strongest man in the world.  “You got me, Daddy!”  I collapsed onto his chest and gripped it  like a tree trunk.

“I’ve always got you, Lissy.  Always.”

* * * * *

            My feet made shuffling sounds as I walked slowly down the hallway to the living room.  I dragged my blanket behind me by the corner and tried not to catch it on anything.  The baseballs and footballs against the blue background were already worn and scratching off in places.  My other hand was on my lip.  I picked at a piece of skin until it came off and started to bleed.  My nose itched like I was going to cry, but I rubbed my eyes and made myself stop.  Daddy would be mad if I cried.  He would say that I was a baby. 

Even after I rubbed my eyes, my nose still itched from the sour smell in the house, the cologne that Daddy always wore too much of.  I don’t know why he kept wearing it.  I don’t think that even he thought it smelled good.  Sometimes it smelled so bad that it made him throw up outside, but I guess he kept putting it on, because he always smelled like it.  Maybe Daddy smelled things differently because he was so sick all the time.  Sometimes when I get sick, my head feels really heavy and I can’t even smell the cologne.  So maybe he just can’t smell how bad it is.

I peeked around the corner to see if Daddy was still in the chair from last night.  I could see his rough bare feet sticking out from behind the chair and sitting on the coffee table.  My tummy started to hurt and made a long growling sound, so that I ducked back behind the wall to hide.  It sounded like it was loud enough to wake Daddy up.  I squeezed the blanket tighter when I heard Daddy’s chair creak.  I peeked around the corner again, but this time his feet were on the floor and he was holding his head in his hands.  My head would hurt too if I was sick all of the time like he was.  I almost ran back to my room, but my stomach made the growling sound again and he turned his head to look at me. 

“Chase.”  It wasn’t a question.  He wanted me to come.  I held my fingers in my mouth and looked down at my feet as I walked around to the front of his chair.  “What do you want?” He croaked.  His voice was scratching from being sick for so long. 

“I-I…” My mouth shook and I squeezed my lip to make it stop.  “I’m hungry.”  For a little while, he just sat there staring at me.  I looked at his chin where the hair was prickly and gray and his skin was bumpy.  He blinked and seemed to remember that I was standing in front of him before he rubbed his face and stood up slowly from the chair. 

I squeezed my lip hard and stepped back as he tottered on his feet.  Don’t fall.  He fell when he was really sick, and he always scared me.  I didn’t want to think about him not getting up.  “Daddy…”  He glared down at me, looking angrier than he did just a moment before.  I swallowed the words and looked down at the floor where the tan carpet was stained a watery mud color.  After a few seconds, I heard him huff and start to shuffle slowly into the kitchen.  I waited until his feet were through the doorway to chance following him.

I peeked around the corner to find him starting into the fridge.  He was moving so slowly and I prayed that my stomach wouldn’t make any more noise.  I didn’t want him to be mad.  After a long time, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a package of ham for sandwiches.  He checked some of the words on the package before throwing it on the counter and looking at me.

“There.”  He said.  We stood for a while just looking at each other.  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I looked down at my feet.  I felt so small.  I heard him say something that wasn’t loud enough for me to understand and then the sound of his feet as he dragged them across the floor, back to his chair.  When I was sure he was gone, I tip-toed over to the counter where he’d left the package of meat sitting open.  I slid my hand into the cold plastic and pulled out three stuck-together slices of the soggy meat.  I moved quickly back to the safety of my bed and ate my meal under the blanket.

* * * * *

            “Elissa, come down here and show your father your dress!” I heard my mother call up the stairs from my room.  Any other day, I would’ve been slightly annoyed by the way that she obsessed over what I wore.  My other friends’ parents were not nearly so concerned with what their children wore to school dances and other such lame middle-school events.  This, however, was a special occasion.  She had taken the day off of work to take me shopping for a dress for me to wear for my performance at the spring formal.  It’s not like I had a big part in the festivities.  I hadn’t been picked for a solo or anything, but she had insisted that it was a big event and gone on for days about how it would be a perfect opportunity for me to show off what a pretty young lady I was becoming.  I wasn’t psyched about the idea to begin with, but, after today, even I had to admit that my mom’s dedication to “Mission Perfect Dress” had been worth every second.  

            I stood in front of the mirror looking like a sweet 16 year old rather than the scrawny tween that I was.  The simple black dress consisted of cap sleeves, a bodice that was adorned with decorative buttons and subtle lace detailing, and a ruffled skirt that ended just above my knees.  A built-in belt hugged my newly sprouting hips and clasped with a rhinestone circle buckle on my left hip.  My long hair was going to be straightened for the occasion, and I would be wearing a simple pair of glittering black ballet flats.  I looked like a girl from a back-to-school commercial, the kind that have just the right balance of casual and cute so as to attract the attention of everyone, be it guys and friends or teachers.  I was going to look the part, and I had every intention of acting the part.

            “Elissa!” My mother continued to beckon from her place at the bottom of the stairs.  I swung on the door jamb to lean out.

            “I’m coming.  Tell Dad to close his eyes!” My mother laughed and I heard my father join in.  I slipped on the shoes that I had chosen to complete the outfit and quickly pinned a gemstone clip into my hair to keep it off of my face.  Maybe later I could convince Mom to let me wear makeup to the formal.  I was supposed to be a “young woman,” after all, and young women wore makeup. 

            Satisfied that my look was complete, I bounded out of my room on the balls of my feet, stopping at the top of the stairs to remind myself to be poised.  With the cartoon image of a woman balancing a book on her head fixed in my mind, I started gracefully down the stairs, making every effort to appear like I was floating.  My face broke into a huge smile as I saw my dad sitting in his recliner, looking at me. 

            He smiled and set his face into one of joking disapproval.  “Well, that will never do,” he said.  “She looks too grown up.” Blood rushed to my cheeks and I looked down at the bottom of the steps where my mother was standing.  “Where is my Lissy?” He continued.  He suddenly laughed as though he’d said the funniest thing he could imagine.  I tried to stare him down, but in the end, his laugh was too contagious for me to do so.

            Through my laughter, I managed, “It’s still me, Dad.”  In a spontaneous mood, I leapt down the remaining two stairs and twirled in front of him so that the skirt flared out around my legs.  My actions caused him to laugh even louder and I took the opportunity to sit on the arm of his chair.  “Besides, what’s so bad about being grown up?”

            His laughing subsided and he seemed to answer with a little more seriousness.  “Growing up is overrated.”

            “I don’t think so,” I countered.  “When you grow up, you get to do more stuff,” I turned towards my mom and flashed my most innocent smile, “like wearing makeup?” I made it into a question.  She chuckled and shook her head.

            “I’ll think about it, but don’t hold your breath.  Your face is too pretty to ruin with powders and creams just yet.” I smiled, knowing she meant well, but still believing that if I truly had a pretty face, the right makeup could only help. 

I turned back to my dad and continued, “And I can drive when I get older.  And I can go to high school and then college and I can meet a boy and get married…” Though I said it jokingly, I couldn’t help but picture myself in a flowing white gown as my dad walked me down the aisle.  My father smiled as if he was thinking the same thing. 

“I think we’ve got a lot of years before we start hitting those kinds of milestones, little girl,” he chuckled.  “For heaven’s sake, let me get over this one before you start throwing marriage into the mix!”

“You’re going to have to accept it eventually,” I said, “because, believe it or not, you are invited to the wedding.”

“I don’t mind attending, but I’m not going to give you away or anything silly like that,” he said.  My eyes widened, and it didn’t occur that he was joking until I’d already given myself away.  I tried to recover while he sat back in his chair looking smug.

“Well, that’s going to make me getting married very hard, because I’m not letting anyone else give me away.  Either you do it, or I’m not getting married at all.” I realized that it wasn’t the greatest comeback, but I also couldn’t think of a better one.

He grinned even wider, in a way that would’ve been annoying if I hadn’t known that it was his way of showing affection.  “Fine by me,” he said. 

I gasped and smacked him in the arm lightly.  “You don’t mean that.  You don’t want me to still be single and living here when I’m, like, fifty!”

He shook his head, “I guess you’re right.” The smug smile returned.  “We’ll just have to set the date for some time after your forty-ninth birthday.  By then, maybe I’ll be ready to give you away.”

* * * * *

            I leaned against the back of the seat and pressed my legs into the back of the bench in front of me as the bus pulled away from the middle school.  I had to keep my eyes on the window to keep from getting motion-sick, but I could still slump down quite a bit before that became a problem.  My headphones trailed out from an outer pocket on the side of my worn book bag that contained an ancient CD player.   It was by no means advanced technology, but it played music, which was better than nothing.  I took it with me on the bus whenever I could manage to get it out of the house without Dad noticing, which was becoming more and more often, seeing as he didn’t notice much of anything anymore.  I came home from school in the afternoon to find him napping or working on his truck with a bottle of beer, and I woke up every morning to the sight of him passed out in the living room chair, a worn-out item that, like most things in our house, could almost pass for an historical artifact.  I couldn’t remember the last time we’d bought anything new except for food, and even the food we had was never top of the line.  A mechanic’s salary doesn’t exactly bring in a boatload of cash. 

            It didn’t necessarily bother me that we weren’t raking in money or that most of our things were pre-owned hand-me-downs.  It was the fact that Dad didn’t seem to care about anything.  I knew that most of our stuff wasn’t that nice to begin with, but that didn’t necessarily justify him in letting it fall to shambles.  He never cleaned or decorated for holidays or did anything, really.  He drank, but that wasn’t necessarily something that surprised me. 

            Dad got sick right after Mom died, and I don’t think he ever really recovered.  I don’t know if the sickness caused the drinking or the other way around, because I was too young to remember which had come first, but I had a feeling that at this point it was just a repetitive cycle of being sick because he drank and drinking because he felt sick.  I wanted to tell him to stop sometimes, and I often had dreams about walking up and yanking the bottle out of his hand, but I knew what the result would be if I ever dared to be so bold.  I still had a lingering bruise on the left side of my rib cage from a few weeks ago when I made the mistake of complaining that my clothes smelled like booze.  Dad was not at all pleased with my disrespect or ungratefulness, and I made a mental note not to be so careless with my words around him.  It was better to walk on eggshells than to meet with his fist or a flying beer bottle.

            Besides, I couldn’t really complain about the way he handled stress when I was the main stressor in his life to begin with.  I was a kid, and it would be stupid to believe that kids don’t change things.  Besides, Dad had told me that I was a fussy baby.  I was a lot of work, and my mom just couldn’t handle it. 

            Either way, I didn’t usually find it helpful to dwell on the past.  My energy could be better spent just trying to get through my day to day without getting too much in the way.  The CD changed tracks to a more upbeat song, and I closed my eyes to focus on the steady beat of the drums.  The bus hit bump after bump along the road, driving the long route that ended at my long driveway.

            I was vaguely aware of people exiting the bus, but there was an unspoken rule that people kept their distance from me and I from them.  I didn’t really have the time or the energy to worry about having a close friend, and if I was being honest, I didn’t even know how to go about making and keeping friends.  It seemed like it just happened, and it had never happened for me.  It wasn’t something I was heartbroken about.  I was used to it, and I was more comfortable by myself anyway. 

            Finally, the bus pulled up to my driveway, and I pulled the headphones out of my ear before shoving them into the pocket of my bag to hide them.  I stood up and swung the bag over my shoulder before the bus came to a complete stop, which earned me a quick look of disapproval from the large woman driving the bus.  Kids my own age were not my only concern.  I didn’t seem to be a favorite among adults, either.

            I stepped off the bus and saw that my dad’s truck was sitting in the driveway with his feet sticking out from under the front bumper.  When he heard the bus, he slid out from under the truck and stood up to face me.  I knew I was in trouble the moment that he started to walk towards me and I was glad to hear the bus pull away before my punishment became public knowledge.  I continued to walk until I met him halfway down the driveway.  Before I had a chance to find out what I’d done, a blow to the side of my head knocked me off balance and I fell to my hands and knees in the gravel.  I braced myself for another hit, but it never came.  Instead, I felt spittle rain down on the back of my neck as he yelled.

            “What is wrong with you, boy?  Why do you insist on embarrassing the both of us?  Huh?” I shook and kept my head down as I waited for him to explain what specifically I’d done.  “Can you explain to me why I got a call from your teacher today?  Do you want to tell me why you handed in a test with nothing written on it?  Were you trying to be disrespectful?  Did you want to make us both look like idiots?”  My response apparently took too long, because a moment later, I was being yanked by my hair to an upright position.  He forced me to look at his face, which had turned a deep red from yelling.  “Let me make this clear, boy.  I don’t care what you do when you’re alone, but when you are in public, you will not embarrass me.  You will not make me look like a fool because you are lazy.  I will not tolerate it, and you had better hope that I never get a call like this again.  Do you understand me?”

            I made sure to answer promptly this time, even with my shaking lips.  “Y-yes, sir.  I understa-.” My answer was cut short as he flung me backwards onto the gravel.  I felt something sharp scrape my elbow as he turned and walked away, leaving me to clean myself up.