By Claire Riddell
Your daddy kissed every knuckle before he swung and called it love and only married your momma because she missed her birth control, and they raise you on simmering arguments and secondhand thrift stores, and you never question why they don’t kiss at Christmas.
You don’t notice the glass bottle collection until suddenly Daddy’s drinking every night even though it makes Momma sad, and your neighbors start dropping off food at the doorstep and say they accidentally doubled their recipes, and you hear Momma crying even though you’re supposed to be asleep.
Momma tells you not to tell Daddy that you’ve become a woman, but he finds out anyways when you accidentally stain your sheets, and when a boy in your English class drives you home from school when you miss the bus one day, Daddy’s eyes are stained red, and that’s the first time he calls you a slut even though you’ve never been kissed.
When Daddy goes to jail for using his gun on somebody he met at the bar, Momma never goes to visit him, and pretty soon you move in with your grandparents who place a crucifix next to their ashtray and buy lottery tickets when their football team wins and you stop sending letters to your daddy except for the holidays.
You make your momma cry when you earn scholarships and when the time comes to leave and start your life anew, she presses her forehead against yours and says your name like a prayer, begging you to become more than she ever was, demanding you claw your way to the edge of the earth and never look back.