father
When Girl was three, Father lived a few miles away with his new wife, #Four. The children visited him every other weekend. At Father’s house, Girl shared a room with Brother, which Father kept locked at night.
One morning the sky through the curtainless window was starting to grow lighter, but it wasn’t bright enough to signal that the day had arrived. Girl knew that it wasn’t time to get up yet, but she had to go to the bathroom. She rattled the white metal doorknob, but it was locked.
“Daddy? I have to tinkle!” she called through the closed door as she knocked. No answer came. Girl pounded the door with her fist. Pounding hurt less than knocking on the old wooden door. She shifted her weight back and forth in what Mother called “the pee-pee dance.”
“Daddy! I have to tinkle! Bad!” Brother rolled over and faced the wall, ignoring her, but there was nothing he could do to help, anyway.
Girl held her hand between her legs, her fingers holding back the stream of urine. Father wasn’t coming. She would have to use the mayonnaise jar he left between the children’s beds when he locked them in last night. Her four-year-old brother could pee in the jar just fine, but it was harder for a girl. She pulled her nightie up around her waist and squatted over the jar, but she couldn’t see down there and missed the small glass opening. Warm urine ran down Girl’s leg and splashed over her feet, puddling on the wood floor as hot tears flooded her cheeks. Girl cried and called again for Father. It isn’t fair, she thought. I am a big girl, I know how to use the bathroom on my own, and little girls can’t pee in jars. She pulled her cotton nightgown over her head and tried to dry her legs off with it, then left it in the puddle of pee for Father to find when he finally woke up and unlocked the door.
That Christmas Father gave Brother an anatomically correct boy-doll with blond curly hair. It peed if you gave it a bottle. Father was very excited for Brother to open this gift in particular—it was the first gift Father pulled out from the pile. Girl was very interested in the naked doll’s plastic molded penis, which was different from Brother’s. It looked like a pink elephant trunk. Not understanding the difference between circumcised and uncircumcised penises, Girl wanted to look closer to see what was wrong with it.
“No, Girl! It’s not your doll! Get back and let Brother see it!” Father held the naked doll in the crook of his arm. “Look, Brother, this is how you feed your baby.” Father tilted the little white bottle up to the doll’s open mouth. The instant the baby started to “drink,” a stream of water arced out of the doll’s plastic penis.
“Get a bucket!” Father yelled to #Four, jumping out of the old brown armchair. He held the doll at arm’s length while it continued emptying its body cavity of water. #Four ran to the kitchen to get a bucket, but it was too late—Father and the rug were soaked. Girl was glad the doll peed on her father, even if it was really just water.
Girl and Brother watched as Father and #Four put the last few boxes into their yellow-and-white Dodge van they called Big Mama. They closed the doors with a final bang. Father had a scraggly hippy beard and his hair curled over his collar. #Four had long white-blond hair past her shoulder blades, straight and fine as corn silk. They were all smiles as they gave the children one last hug and climbed up to the white leather front seats. They were moving to Alaska. Father, #Four, and her teenaged children were driving from Rochester, New York, up the Al-Can Highway to Anchorage, over four thousand miles away. The van trailed dust clouds and exhaust as the children waved until Big Mama turned the corner at the end of the city block. Girl didn’t know why Father didn’t want them to go, too, and she wondered if she would ever see Father again.
After the van drove away, the children went back to Mother and Stepmother’s house on Lake Road. Mother was in graduate school and worked as a nanny for a family with nine children. The two-bedroom house was part of her salary and sat at the top of her employer’s property. They all shared the same yard, though the children knew the manicured lawn, like their house, wasn’t really their own.
When the children got home, Brother went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. The sink was old and it had two faucets, one for hot and one for cold, each with a white porcelain x-shaped handle. Brother took a photograph of Father that he was holding in his hand and held it under the running water. He rubbed his thumb over and over his father’s picture until the color came off and Father’s face ran down the drain. Girl wondered how he knew that would happen.
When Brother was five and Girl was four, they went to visit their father in Alaska. #Four’s children were there: Jane, the oldest, was sixteen; Sara was fourteen; and Anne was twelve. Three girls with long, straight, white-blond hair. So pretty and cool in their hip-hugger bell-bottoms. Girl’s half-sister Juli was twelve, the same age as Anne, and Juli was blood, not step, so Girl always loved her best. Father and #Four only had two bedrooms downstairs, so they split up Brother and Girl. In one room slept Juli and Sara, in the other was Jane. There was a brown couch in Jane’s room, and a camper in the driveway. Brother and Girl alternated nights—one in the camper, one on the couch—then they switched, except neither of the
