Girl Called Karen Read Online Free PDF

father are related to his career. I loved the zoo, and I got to spend a lot of time there. Because I was the doctor’s daughter, I had access to behind-the-scenes dramas. When the mother lioness ate all her cubs save the one the handlersrescued, a prominent zoo supporter took the baby lion to care for. The little guy got pneumonia, and my father took him back to the zoo for euthanasia. When he told me he was going to put the cub to sleep because it had no chance and was going to die, I got so upset that my father let me take the baby home to nurse. I fed the sick little animal every two hours and mothered it right back to health.
    Then they returned the cub to the influential family. I felt cheated. After all, I was the one who saved its life, but I didn’t donate the large sums of money that the other family did, so I wasn’t allowed to keep it.
    It was one of my first lessons in the power of wealth and privilege. I still had a lot to learn about this world.
    One of my greatest joys was to hold onto my father’s hand as we walked down the street or into the animal hospital at the zoo. He worked hard for long hours, and he was not readily accessible to us kids.
    He was a quiet man, and I treasured his rare words of praise. One of my happiest memories is of the time when he attended my first piano recital, and, although I had played wretchedly, he complimented me on my performance. He said something to the effect that I had the best stage presence of anyone in the entire program. I think his words helped me become a good public speaker in later life.
    I loved my father, I almost worshiped him, and I was always a little in awe of him.
     
    As I gradually awoke that awful, awful night, I felt someone crowding into me, hot and shoving. It was a man, a strange man … no, it was not a strange man. Incredibly, it was my father, but it was not my father, and he was acting weird, and he was touching me down there over and over again. It was my father, the stranger, who jammed his finger into the hole between my legs and was pushing and pulling it roughly inside me. The painful pleasurable sensations kept on and on, and I had trouble controlling my breathing. I knew it had to stop, and I knew I didn’t dare act like anything had happened. It was bad, really bad. I knew I would be in trouble, or he would think it was okay, or he would want to do it again. Any way you looked at it, I was facing eternal damnation. And so was he.
    I moaned and moved as if I were about to awaken. He rolled to the side of the bed and padded out of the room. I had loved my father dearly, I thought, but his behavior now was just disgusting. How could he do such a wicked thing? How dared he do that to me? How could he perform an evil act that he knew would send me straight to hell? I didn’t sleep again that long, lonely night.
    The next day, my father acted the way he always did, but I knew I would never trust him again.
    Months packed with turmoil and upheaval went by before I told anyone about what happened that night.
     
    I can’t remember my father being around much when my mother was ill, though he may have been there. She got weaker. Her body retained lots of water, and she became very large. She couldn’t walk anymore. My terror grew.
    We kids tried to help her as much as we could. The day came when she fell to the floor and couldn’t get up. Mama had to go to the hospital. Children were not permitted to visit.
    She had only been in the hospital for a couple of days when my father came home and without preliminaries said, “Your mother is dead.” I screamed at him and called him a liar.
    I could not believe it. I had not believed her when she said she was going to die. I should have believed her. I had not been a good daughter, and now I was abandoned.
    After she was gone, the medics said it was a brain tumor that killed her.

CHAPTER FIVE
A Funeral and a Wedding
    T he next day saw a flurry of activity. One of the worst scenes took place at