His Little Girl

He walks back and forth from his den into the kitchen. His pace is slow and he is silent. She can tell that he his hoping to converse with her, spark some extended discussion that will bring them closer, remind him of the little girl that used to sit on the apartment window sill, waiting patiently to spot him through the window as he returns from work. The little girl whose photo he still carries in his wallet. The little girl whose chubby cheeks he used to pinch. But that was 35 years ago.

Daddy’s little girl has grown up, and with her adult eyes, sees a very different person in her father. As a child, she blamed his cigarettes for his faults. His anger, his outbursts, the cruel things she would hear him say to her mother, the hours that she would spend hugging her mother when the tears settled in after the shouting. It’s not really him. It’s the cigarettes. They make him behave this way.

But then the cigarettes went away and he was still angry.

There was always something to be angry about. Something outside their lives that warranted raised voices, frustration, and disregard for the good that directly surrounded him. Good health, financial security, friendships and success are not an adequate distraction. In fact, they serve only to create a smooth horizon from which to pick apart the faults of others who touch his sphere.

He doesn’t see this. He doesn’t realize the added layer of wall that goes up with each negative comment he makes. The increasing distance he puts between them and anything good that she could offer him. He doesn’t understand that he is impossible to talk to with alcohol in him.

And there is always alcohol in him.

The ritual is starting earlier and earlier. It is a daily occurrence and a protracted duration. Inside the home or outside, there is no reprieve. The empty cans and dwindling volumes in the bottle, a screaming commentary on what is really going on. A loud message to everyone except him. He doesn’t realize the effect that it has on her. He doesn’t see her shoulders tighten with the sound of the can opening, the aversion of her gaze as the drink fills his glass. He doesn’t see that he is losing her.

She wonders if it was ever “just the cigarettes”. She wonders if she will become like him. It is her greatest fear. She has tried to help him. She has tried to be patient. She has tried to make him see the positive in his life. Now she wonders if her dad is “just like this”.

And so she sits in the kitchen, watching him pace back and forth, hoping that he will not converse with her, knowing that any conversation could ignite an extended discussion that will only hurt them both, that will show the scars of years of shouting, of memories etched in one of their minds and obliterated by alcohol in the other’s. The little girl whose photo he carries in his wallet, the little girl whose chubby cheeks he used to pinch, watches him walk away.