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at Momma, saying with his eyes what he did not want to say with his mouth. He noticed her long, thin body growing fast. The curls enveloping her face were the same ones she’d worn as a baby. She was auburn brown, the color of sky right before the sun hits the horizon, and she was pretty, true to the nickname given to her years before. She was the baby of the family, but she had never been his baby. Toward her, he had never been soft; so many parts of him hardened before she was born.
    He expected her to turn, to run before he became what she’d always known him to be: heavy, pressing, crowding out anything that did not please him. But she stood limp, head down, without confrontation, just standing. He waited for her to plead, for her to say something that would cue him to scream, to order her away, maybe even slap her for talking back. But, she just stood. He had skills when responding to talking, to those working to convince him, but standing, silence was different; he found it difficult to reply when conversation had not begun.
    He’d not often had that problem, but something in him wanted to wait for her, to see what she would say, what she would do inorder to capture what she desired. One thing was certain: he did not want her to go. He’d already lost so many: her momma, his sons, his other daughters. Out of them all, she was the one left. Who would he be without someone to lean his power on? She, the coffee table of his life, had been there to hold his drinks, his food, his stress when it grew too heavy for him to carry. But part of him wanted this for her. Part of him was proud of her accomplishment, even though he didn’t fully understand what that accomplishment was. She had written an essay that won her something. That must have meant she was a good writer and a smart girl. He and his wife may have given that to her before she was born.
    Growing up, Granddaddy had never been a big writer or a reader; he was never good with words. Numbers were his thing. They meant dollars, survival. Words could get you dead. Too much talking meant not enough working. But his baby was smart, even though she hated words and he often had to chastise her into finishing her work for class. She’d written an essay that had gotten her into college before she was old enough to go. That opportunity he wanted to give her, a chance to be more than he could. But no one had ever given him anything. He took to breaking the law in order to get what he and his family needed. That was the world she had inherited. To demand anything less would make her weak and he’d seen to it that none of his girls were weak. So he’d give her work she’d already proven she could do.
    He swallowed hard, sat back farther in his chair than the frame had ever intended, and said, “If you want to go, Pretty, write ten reasons I should let you. Write ’em out and I’ll think about it.”
    Momma sat in her room, writing words that did not flow as they had when she wrote the essay for Upward Bound. The words she wrote for her daddy were reluctant to appear, as if they feared her daddy too. Her writing was disjointed, too much pressure on the paper, her life sketched in scraggly lines. She started, stopped, balled up the paper, started again. She scratched out a word. Wrote another. In between each page she crumbled, her future dipped into a valley. It stalled there, unable to muster energy to creepup the mountainside. There were moments she was able to press on the gas of her existence, when she barreled up that mountain, revved herself past the downward tug of incline. Then, there was no destination in mind, just the moving reminded her she was fighting toward her own space. Finally, she’d scribbled ten things, ten reasons her daddy should let her leave his house.
    â€œWhat were those reasons?” I once asked. She said she does not need to remember. I, on the other hand, must know. Did she write she had missed