The Beautiful Anthology Read Online Free Page B

curl; a piece of her life is gone without a sound. Outside, neighbors shriek out front doors, brakes squeal – people’s afternoons are unfolding. The November sun beats against the window, bounces off Mother’s vanity mirror. Shadows fall across the carpet, elongating.
    I can see my reflection in the vanity mirror. It is frightening to see Papa stare at me from my own face. I have his eyes, his ears, and the line of his jaw. Just like his, my shoulders are hunched in that good-natured, non-threatening way. A deception – my father is rangy, temperamental, twitchy with impatience.
    Both my parents are beautiful. Papa has an epicene quality that lends him a youthful air, even as he slips into middle age. Mother is witty and tender. His voice booms; hers tinkles like tiny bells. As for me, my acne is flourishing – I wear it with wounded pride, as though my scars hold a secret that others can’t really appreciate.
    I try to tell a joke to make Papa happy. “ Tim Tim ,” I start, leaning over his shoulder. Knock-knock.
    “Quiet!” he yells, shrugging off my embrace.
    He was supposed to say, “ Bwa sèch .” My mother turns and glares. I’m sure Papa hates me. I want to break out of the room, out of the hostile air that fills its every corner. But the more I try to pouf , disappear, the more present I feel, until, exhausted, I give in, float with Papa’s angry words. If I don’t, I might drown with and in these words. If I don’t, these words might become my own – etched in my brain, and later released from my mouth.
     
    When Aunt G kisses me she leaves lipstick on my cheeks. She measures my every inch because it helps her feel the flow of time, and she shakes her head as if it makes her sad. “Oh, my! We’re not getting any younger, Tita, are we? My, oh my, can you believe how fast they grow?”
    Papa finally agreed to the party. He’s always changing his mind for no apparent reason.
    Aunt G hugs me. “You’re so beautiful,” she says. “Looking more and more like your father.”
    My mother shoots her a strange look – something like sorrow; the look you’d have if you were helpless to save your daughter. Maybe Mother worries I might become my father, rageful with misery. Maybe she’s aware of the anger sluicing through me sometimes – it can be there at the end of a sentence, startling even me like a shadow slinking by an open door. Who knows? I might explode one day. In the morning, when the sun rises, mean as a snake, even before my first thought is shaped, there is this thumping in my heart, like a ticking clock. Something inside me wants to be released. I want to reach in, grab it, and punch it against the wall. And I also want to yell – but I can’t. Because I can’t allow myself to become my father.
    Papa … No one can defeat him at dominoes. Crowded around the table, the adults whoop and holler. Drinks sit away from elbows. Bids are made. My mother yells, “Ha-ha!” Aunt G grins. Papa laughs. The cookie plate for the children is never empty. The radio is on. Toto Bissainthe is singing to Papa Damballah, the voodoo god.
    “Dance with me,” Papa says.
    My father swoops and grabs my shoulders and I’m laughing as we spin. One foot hits the table with a dull sudden thump and my mother says, “Honey!” but I can only see her sometimes in the green blur of the kitchen. Nou vire, vire, vire. We turn, and turn, and turn.
    “Honey, you’re making her dizzy,” Mother says.
    When Papa stops, he’s smiling. He pulls me into a tight armbreaking hug and then I am free. My stomach rolls and lurches and I beam at my father who laughs at me. I am the happiest and most loved girl there ever was. I am better than anyone.
    I show everyone the tooth I lost – yellow and ugly. Pitted and scarred and smooth, too. With a jagged head and a fang of a root.
    Sometimes I feel like a yellow tooth inside. But not right now, when Papa is laughing again.
    “Too much sugar,” Aunt G says disapprovingly,