CHAPTER 3

      "My father's been dead twenty years today, and tomorrow I'm getting married to a man that reminds me so much of dad. May the lord have mercy upon my soul.

      "I can feel him sometimes, you know. I can feel him in the room watching me sleep like he did when I was a little girl. Looking back, I was the lucky one, Daddy's little girl. I had a room of my own, toys of my own, and a mom and dad who loved me. Pretty strange for someone with siblings, pretty strange thinking about how dad treated them.

      "Dad was never a nice man, I loved him dearly, but he was far from being a nice man. He wasn't a God fearing man either, although he always said he was. I feared him more than God.

      "I was the youngest of four, and the youngest of the two girls that belonged to dad. My older sister Sera was twelve years older than me, but I was only seven when she was killed. My step-brother Jimmy and her had this really close kind of relationship, and I know he was there when she died, and I have a fear that he did it. What few memories I have of my sister, were always of her with Jimmy or dad. She was always defending Jimmy from my dad, and I think my dad did stuff to her. Sera and Jimmy ran away from home when she was seventeen. I don't remember anyone really missing them, though I did.

      "Jimmy would be about thirty-two now, wherever he is. I remember he really caught the brunt of dad angry side. Daddy always told me that Jimmy was retarded cause mommy did a lot of bad stuff and got in trouble a lot while she was pregnant with Jimmy. I don't know if that means he hit her or something, but I know that Jimmy was always a little spacy, and disturbing. When I was five, Jimmy was rushed to the ER after Emma found him laying on the floor in his room, blood everywhere. I can remember her screams, and running to go see what had happened, and seeing Sera rolling his naked body over, and retching as she saw what we all did. In one hand, he held a small x-acto blade with which he used to cut off the head of his penis. Daddy pulled me out of the room quickly, and I heard him give Jimmy such a severe beating, then we went to the hospital.

      "Emma is a little older than me. She was really Mommy's little girl, and she really followed in mom's footsteps, a lot of it I think cause mom brought her there. The men who visited mom, really liked it when Emma was around. She knew a lot of them by name, and dad said that Emma had a lot of uncles and daddies, which I didn't really understand till I was a lot older.

      "And me, I'm the youngest of the bunch, daddy always protected me from my brother and sisters, I was all his. And now, I think I'm still all his, even with Gabriel in my life, I still feel like daddy is just around the corner, watching me."

            -- Terra Sarton