Daddy
"Daddy…"
She can't finish the sentence, and stops for a moment. She has come up to stand straight in front of me. Very formal. Like she has something very important to say.
She's standing in front of the dresser, directly between the photos showing her mother and me when we were kids. My picture just shows me after some Judo competition, and only got taken because my Dad thought I looked so ferocious for someone who just lost so badly. But Mindy likes it. Kathleen's picture shows her triumphant after a gymnastics tournament. She wiped the floor with the competition, her parents told me. Mindy has just finished her own stretching exercises for her own class. She looks flushed with adrenaline, and so like her mother looking over her shoulder that it's heartbreaking.
She will be five in three weeks, and has been living with me for five days. No. I have been living with her for five days. Every time I catch a glimpse of her, my heart turns over.
Her huge eyes flicker around me, up, down, left, right, and then look me straight in the eye. She's so brave. I want to sweep her up into my arms, but she has started again.
"Daddy", she says more firmly, "why did Mommy hate me so much?"
The world beneath my feet disappears for a moment. "What?" I say stupidly, "Mommy didn't hate you. Mommy loved you. As much as me or Uncle Marcus."
My God, I think, What caused this?
"That's what Uncle Marcus says…" she says uncertainly.
Marcus took care of her while I was inside. Marcus found me this place when I got out. Marcus got me my job. Marcus helped her to get used to me. Marcus handed her over to me almost as if he found it easy. I owe him so much I can hardly stand to see him.
"But he is wrong." She says this with certainty. "Mommy hated me. She killed herself when I was inside her. She wanted to kill us both. She must have hated me."
What do I say to her? Why did Kathleen do that?
"She didn't…She loved…" I stumble, and take a deep breath. "Mommy wanted everything to be perfect for you", I say. "Your Mommy was very beautiful, and kind, and… perfect. When she was at school she was always top of the class. She was head of the cheer team and the gym team, she got the first job she applied for after she left college and everyone liked her…"
"Everything in her life was perfect", I realise. Until I went to jail. I destroyed her. "She didn't know how to be perfect when she was all alone. She didn't know how to bring you up perfectly on her own. She felt she would fail at something, and she didn't know how to face that…" I remember a case when some guy killed his family and himself so he wouldn't have to tell them his pay rise was smaller than the one he'd been expecting. "She was too scared to do something she might not do right."
She looks thoughtful for what feels like a long time.
Her lips move slightly. "Mommy was scared?" she asks.
"Yes…"
She looks down at herself, and then turns around to look at the picture of her mother on the wall. They could be twins.
"Uncle Marcus says I'm just like Mommy."
I'm talking about how brave she is when her look of thought turns into sudden decision. She turns to the dresser, and to the photos of her defeated father, and victorious mother. And reaches up to turn her mothers photo face down.
She turns back to me.
"I don't want to do gymnastics anymore. I don't want to be like Mommy", she says. She looks up to me. "I want to be tough like you Daddy."
If only she knew.