There had been other accidents. The girl’s father had permanent bruising that stretched from the tops of his feet to just above his knees, making his legs look as if they had been smeared with grape jam.

The girl remembered how when she was young, she would watch for her father from the large porch window. She would count all the red cars that passed, too many. She would finally hear the door springs, while lying in bed, at once feeling anger and relief.

His legs were bruised and his arms always sore; he would not play ball with her or mow the lawn, or do much else besides work at the airbag factory all day and watch television at night. When he came home he sometimes would say things at her. But he never talked to her. She, the girl, belonged to her mother.

Before the first accident, the girl had found several things on top of the bookcase in her father’s "work" shed, among them magazines of women, white, thin paper in which to roll green stuff that smelled like the wet forest burning down. "You promised you stopped," the mother cried. "You promised." The girl’s mother held her head between hands that shook. "Thank you," he said to the girl, tipping his head toward her, as if signaling victory. The girl nodded back.

That drive to find something to incriminate her father was unlike the many accidents, past and those to come. That was intention.

The first accident had involved beer and absurdity. A dim contest between the old man’s sports car and her father’s RV. Some people perusing the paper found comfort in that the old man was indeed elderly and not entirely coherent. It was not as if her father had crashed, head on, into a mother and child, or a foolish youth. It was a seasoned old man out for a Sunday drive in the canyon.

It was not as if her father had killed anyone really. The old man was on the wrong side of the road and her father was drunk. The cop was a friend of the family. Therefore the situation was deemed negligent, not homicide. The situation was rendered ACCIDENT on the typed report, not to be discussed.

So when the girl came down the long staircase (it had been three hours or more since Mama woke me to tell me and told me to not tell my sisters yet, to let them sleep) she tried to imagine what he might look like.

There had been a scarecrow in their garden. Made from bits of rag and paper sacks, its face shriveled and sagging, the crows picked at it continuously. The scarecrow reminded her of her father. It was beginning to get dark out. She crossed over the grass, stepping over the vegetables. The girl walked up to it. Whispering I am not afraid, she put her nose on its sack face and stared through it, looking at all the small insects that had gotten in, and the bits of leaves that crunched as her mother called for her.

Mama warned us that he looked quite terrible. The girl’s mother had a tendency to exaggerate, so the girl thought it best to reserve any judgment until she finally saw him for herself.

Or at least until she began to make the trek down the staircase, which was made of wood and creaked so that in her mind it evoked Christmas Day, for it was early and cold, and snow covered the walks. She and her sisters were in their pajamas. She was the firstborn, so she lead and her sisters followed, with eagerness in their eyes.

The mother waited at the bottom of the staircase. She quickly gave the girl a pat on the head and kissed her sisters’ small foreheads. The woman paused for a moment. They all looked to her for reassurance. She glanced at the girl once more; a look of fear stayed on her face as she turned back to them.

You must remember, she told them quietly, that even though he does not look like your father, it is indeed your father. His face is terribly bruised and cut and he can’t move his arm yet. His face looks as if it has been…it’s been sleeping. It kind of sags to one side, do you understand? She said this to none of them, staring past them. They all nodded their heads. Do you understand?

And though they told her they did, the girl felt she understood very little as she entered that dark room, their bedroom. And upon entering the doorway, she tried to remember a time when she did not look at her father with distrust. She tried to remember a time in which her parents were not doing battle and could think of nothing. There had been no time for the girl to look up at the two, to guess at what it was, what sort of ancient ritual they were re-enacting. She thought of the thousand times she tried to look upon her father while his mouth contorted in screams, and had fixed her eyes indefinitely on her mother, whose fists were perpetually tight and straining with vigor, shaking.

Her mother’s fists were closed once more.

Her father was as he had always been.

No, he had been changed. His face was altered. I am not for this time, the girl thought.

She looked to her mother, who had wrapped her fingers across her mouth. Gasps. She looked to her small

sisters. Tears and shutting eyes. Their fingers across their cheeks. Sighs. She looked to her father once more, to his face. Her hands did nothing and everything in one swift motion. Repentance. The man who was her father, her enemy, bent his eyes downward, flooding the floorboards with his own regret. Misery.

Remember it is your father, the mother told them through parted fingers. Go to your father, the woman commanded through parted fingers.

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