OPEN 24 hrs
(excerpt)
The
That Daughter Rant
Its that. I can't stand it. I started boxing my ears.
Keep all that shit out. Everything is money. My father is all.
Business. I cannot stand it. What is it. Money. Given up for time.
For my father, always it is money. At dinner he counts the mouthfuls.
How much must he take in. Minimum. To work all day. He belches with
glee. The only time he is happy. I squirm. He asks me. He laughs. I'd
like to stick an umbrella up. His urethro.
"What's the matter, my only daughter?"
"That," I reply. Imagining that anger is not
the only reaction to boredom. My analyst keeps prodding me for
details about. My sleeping habits.
Look at his plate. The cost of a sad potato. Bought on
discount. Ready to turn into mud. And the vegetables. Carrots soft
before they dive into the soup. And the meat. More gristle. More
salt. From the local butcher. In our neighbourhood there are no cats.
There must be other ways to cut corners. Cannibalism comes to mind.
Father has mother bill him for the meal. Everything goes
in the book. It’s like eating in a restaurant. Without the tip. And
of course father compares our prices to those at the Canadiana
Restaurant. Looking at the savings seems to help father’s
digestion.
Our father will not eat Indian food. He says that we
must become more Canadian. He says that we smell. Like what we eat.
And we must smell Canadian. But my mother cannot cook spaghetti. Or
stuffed heart. The thought of eating a heart makes my mother faint.
Or Irish stew. What is Irish stew anyway? Leprechauns boiling in
laughter.
“And father makes us listen to the Beatles. My mother
tries. She sings along with the song, With a
little help from my friends. But she cannot
get it right. She doesn’t understand the song. Why is it friends?
She asks. Why isn’t it, family? And father makes us watch ice
hockey. Field hockey, I can understand. I made the school team but
father would not come out and watch us play. We
are Canadians, he said. F***
the field. Play on ice.
Well, he didn’t say the ‘f’ word. But he wanted
to. It’s Canadian. Mother gets very upset when she hears father
curse. He said we had to learn. To speak Canadian. They use the ‘f’
word in every other sentence. My mother tried to use it. One time she
used it. At the small Indian grocery store she likes to shop in. The
manager got very upset with her.
"You must leave," he said.
Mother told him to go 'f himself.
She told my father. He got angry with her.
"Why
do you use that language around our people?
he said. You
want to ruin my business!”
You cannot win with my father. It's that. Which bothers
me. But more.
My father forces me to work. For him. At slave wages.
Under intolerable circumstances. Without texting.
Paul told me to call the Ministry of Labour. Paul works
next door in the pharmacy. A sweet boy. He will be my lover one day.
He comes over to talk to me. When father is not around. We mess
around with my hair. He likes to stick his tongue in my ear. Paul is
my own little Q Tip. I'd like to examine the rest of his alphabet.
That. Won't happen if my father has his way.
Father has taken to meeting some friends. Canadian
friends. Or so he brags to us. Over dinner. At the Canadian
Restaurant. He meets them. Which he does not tell mother. Mother
thinks that the friends are customers. In the shop. I do not tell my
mother. It offends me not to tell her. And its that. I can smell the
beer off father. When he returns. Sometimes he drinks so much that he
takes a nap. On one of the sofas in the back of the store. When Paul
visits he ask me.
"Does your father hit you?"
"Of course, he does not. Father is pathetic, but he
is not a monster."
Sometimes Paul and I fool around. Nothing serious.
Kissing mostly. And feeling each others. Ups and downs. Outside our
clothes. Never under. Paul says that he wants to see me naked. He has
never seen naked brown skin. I don’t know how he dares to talk like
that. But I like it. Sort of. I tell him that that is definitely not
going to happen. This month. The word ‘that’ has replaced using
the word ‘sex’ between Paul and I. I don’t know what I would do
if father walked in. On us as we were fooling around. He’d probably
be pissed that I wasn’t at the cash register. In case someone came
in. Who buys couches in the middle of the day? In the middle of the
week?
When Paul asks me questions, he writes everything I say
down in a book. Another book. Like my father's book. I asked him what
he was doing. He said he likes to record other people’s thoughts.
But those were not my thoughts, I tell him. I have one thought. And
that's that.
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