In my bed.
It’s the first time that she is in the room.
And the first time, I want someone in this room.
Because she is my person.
“Do you want me to call you a different name?” I ask her after a long while.
She doesn’t answer immediately.
“No,” she finally says. “But what you can do,” she says as she rolls herself onto me and kisses me, “Is that you call me daddy whenever you like to play.”
I bite my bottom to keep myself from grinning.
I grasp her face. Look her in the eyes as I say, “Yes, daddy.”
And it is this moment that I understand the freedom she gifted me. There is nothing wrong with me.
Nothing is wrong with me.
Amelie
“Your mother can fuckthe fuck off,” I say to her as I run to her, grab the phone from her hand, and dial the number Jane just hung up.
Jane stays next to me, her chest heaving up and down as she cannot catch her breath.
“Mrs McKenzie,” I say harshly when she answers. “I am going to say this once, just once, and I require you to understand it. You are a narcissistic bitch, who got a child out of the most selfish and stupid reasons. The fact that you have the audacity to call your daughter on the day of days for the sole reason of diminishing her light because your own ego cannot allow your daughter to shine brighter than you is not only pathetic, but itmakes you a single thing: A small woman. A woman I would pity, if I wouldn’t loathe her that much.”
With that, I hang up and throw the phone away.
Jane looks at me with her arms drawn up in front of her for protection.
“Babe,” I say. But she doesn’t react.
She is breathing flat, retracted.
“Tell me about inhibitory post-synaptic potential,” I say.
She doesn’t react.
I look at her, and she’s not hearing me.
And then I do the last thing I can do when nothing else helps.
I grasp her face with one hand.
She looks at me.
“Kneel,” I order her.
She sinks to her knees without hesitation.
“You do not move. You do not speak. You focus on me. Me alone. Do not avert your eyes from mine.”
She gazes up into my eyes.
Her breathing calmed, and she is fully with me.
