by Nyasha Lee

Created on: January 26, 2010

The New Dad

There are few situations more frustrating than one in which you know you’re the only not-happy person in a room full of happy people, particularly when you know that it’s all your fault that they’re happy and you’re not. You sit there in the middle of it all, trying not to fold your arms too tight or kick your legs too high, and doing your best to ignore the scratchy prison of peach and white lace enveloping you. But you’re only eight, and staying focused is easier said than done. You get distracted dreaming of the lake outside, where you are sure you will be able to find something nasty with which to ruin your frilly beast of a dress. And as you daydream your legs kick higher and higher. Eventually a grownup will put a hand on one of your restless limbs. It will be an aunt, or a cousin, or some random person who thinks that a little slip of paper and a party is all that it takes to make them family, and they will send you one of those knowing looks meant to remind you that grownups can read minds. They know your secrets and your sins, and you cringe inside for it.

When the ceremony’s all said and done, you will try not to show your disgust at the sight of your little sisters clinging to the creature leading your mother down the reception line, like two frilly leeches. And when you hear their cries of “Papa, Papa, can we go swimming now?” you will try not to cry, even though Mom says to call the new dad “Papa,” because that’s what she called her new dad. You don’t like it. “Papa” is just another word for “Daddy.” But the frilly leeches like it; they are “starved for male affection’ and they need “a proper father before they start looking for that affection elsewhere,” or so the grownups say.

You do not know who or what elsewhere is, but you know that there is no way that it can possibly be a legitimate excuse for any little girl to cling to a man that’s not Father, as though Father will never come home. Even if Mom says he won’t, you know better. You know that she only says it because she banished him and doesn’t want him to come back. You know that everyone thinks he’s a bad man now because of what you made him do and because he isn’t paying her money to keep you, as though you’re a wild animal whose owner has to pay someone else to watch over you.

As for the frilly leeches, it’s hardly

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