Chapter 13
"Tell me about your father."
"What is there to tell? He yelled, he hit, he embraced and loved. There was no rhyme or reason to when he would hug you or take a swing at you. Not atypical behavior for an alcoholic."
"When did he become an alcoholic?"
"I don't know. It was gradual I guess. When I was really small he didn't seem to be angry." Sara surprised herself with the memory. She hadn't thought of her father as anything but angry and abusive in at least a decade.
It was as though the thought of him not being an alcoholic had never occurred to her. As an adult she had never taken the time to look back and remember the time before the fear began. Under Dr. Case's guidance now, she began to consider things from a different light.
Her father carried her on his shoulders frequently. Sara loved feeling tall and though she didn't have the words for it then, she knew now that she loved the skewed perception it gave her of the world she was used to seeing from a much lower vantage point.
When her mom would go out with "the girls" for a night and dad was left home to babysit he would build forts in the living room with blankets and sofa cushions and teach her to sing camp songs. They would roast imaginary hot dogs and make real s'mores in the fireplace.
Slowly, as she got bigger, her father seemed to grow more distant. She still craved his attention but it became more difficult to obtain so she began devising plots. When she wanted to be carried she would limp, feigning a twisted ankle and daddy would lift her in his arms.
She would work extra hard in school and collect papers with gold stars, stickers, words of praise on them and keep them in a box under her bed. On the increasing occasion that her father was isolating himself from her, and her mother, she would pick one of the papers and present it to him. A kiss, a cuddle, her reward sometimes included being told that she was the brightest little star in the world.
One afternoon while following her father on one of his walks she called out to him. He had been moving too quickly to keep up and though he hadn't carried her in some time, she thought he would slow and maybe hold her hand if she claimed to have fallen in one of the many holes left by energetic wild animals near their home. Lying on the ground and holding her ankle in her hands she yelled out for him.
He ignored her. If anything he seemed to walk more quickly away.
She moaned louder, "I'm hurt daddy…daddy, come back."
He kept walking.
Little Sara told herself that he hadn't heard her. She imagined stories of cars going by and muffling her small voice, or her father singing to himself and not noticing her behind.
In her heart she knew, he had chosen not to know.
It was weeks later that he was in the kitchen, arguing with her mother over money and she went to her box. She sifted through the thick stack of papers and chose just the one to balm her father's anger.
"Daddy, look." She set it on the table. Red faced, white knuckled he continued his raging against her mother.
"Daddy, I got 100, see?"
"Not now Sara." He moved her away, his fingers tight on her shoulder. Casting her into the back of the room without a glance.
"But daddy, the teacher says…"
He turned on her, "What? What does the teacher say? That you're smarter than your daddy? Is that what you want to prove? You're so smart then YOU pay all the god damned bills around here! You and your mother should do just fine as soon as the stupid old man gets out right?"
He was shaking her, screaming so violently that little drops of saliva spit from his mouth and landed on her face, mixing with her tears or shock and fear.
"Jackson." Her mothers voice turned him away from her and she ran to her room, hiding in her closet and pulling her clothes to her ears to block out the screaming.