The day I left, I found an old photograph of myself in my mother’s cedar chest. I was five years old, wearing Shirley-Temple curls, a velvet dress, and a heart-shaped locket on a gold chain around my neck. I showed the photograph to my father before I put it into my suitcase, beside my mother's obituary. "Who's that?" he asked. "It's me, Daddy,” I said, “When I was a little girl. Do you remember me when I was a little girl?" I asked. My father rubbed the top of his head. "I can't say that I do," he said. "You used to call me Tootsie," I said. "Do you remember that?" "I don't remember you at all," my father said. "You must have lived somewhere else when you were growing up."
Santa Fe Literary Review
27