The People Who Watched Her Pass By

“I need to pee,” she whispered. He probably couldn’t hear over the noise of the shower. “Every morning when I wake up,” she explained, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Behind the gray plastic shower curtain, Daddy’s body produced a jagged, almost colorless lump of shadow, like something at the bottom of a muddy pond.

“What’s that, sunshine? I’ll be out shortly! Fix yourself something to eat in the kitchen! I won’t be long now!”

Outside their bungalow apartment, the cracked driveways and gardens were overgrown with tall yellow weeds. If you weren’t careful, they scratched the insides of your legs when you squatted, and the scratches continued stinging long after breakfast. In Daddy’s house, “breakfast” meant a big dry bowl of Lucky Charms cereal, a banana, and a glass of V8.

V8 juice was the only store-bought beverage Daddy allowed in the house. And while Salome could live without it, Daddy claimed that she was lucky to get as much V8 juice as she did.

“Some daddies,” he explained, showing her the red and white tin can as if it were a devotional candle in an empty church, “don’t allow any decent-tasting beverages in the house whatsoever. You get boiled tap-water three times a day, or a can of orange soda.

You never get anything that replenishes your natural juices and tastes good. It’s all one or the other in most people’s houses, but in my house, I believe in doing what comes natural. Even if it means placing myself at odds with the rest of this crazy, hyperrepressive country called America.”

Salome didn’t like disagreeing, so she finished her V8 juice and kept quiet. She had never upset Daddy during their time together, and she didn’t want to start now. After all, he might be the last decent daddy she ever had.

And if there was one thing that Salome had learned, it was that a girl needed to hold on to what she possessed in this world.

Or she might lose it all over again.