"Your dad's waiting impatiently." Officer McNulty's kind face made it seem as if he really wanted me to have a good visit. I tried to think of things to say which would make me sound good.

"You have a nice day, Officer," I said. Afro-Hair-Woman smacked her teeth as though sending me a message.

Officer McNulty squeezed my shoulder. "You're a good girl, Merry. Go see your daddy."

5.

Merry.

Grandma and I stepped into the visiting room. Beige tiles were dotted with spots that I imagined impossible to scrub out in a million years. Probably blood and bits of brain left from prison fights.

Metal tables with rubber edges and attached benches lined the room. Visitors and families sat across from each other, men always seated facing away from the windows. Weak sunlight washed over the backs of their denim shirts. We sat as far apart from anyone as possible, pretending we were anywhere but here.

My father sat at the end of the room in his usual spot. I barely remembered before-prison-Daddy anymore, the Daddy who'd lived with us and then the Daddy who Mama threw out. That Daddy was bloated, and had dirt under his fingernails and thick hair falling in his eyes. Prison-Daddy had muscles and a crew cut and looked handsome as the pictures from when he first married Mama, the photographs on top of Grandma's dresser. I'd tried to show Lulu, but she'd pushed the pictures away just like anything about Daddy.

I studied the photographs every time I visited Grandma, tracing the lines of Mama's beautiful face, the veil like a magic cloud around her head. In black and white, Mama's lipstick appeared dark as blood.

My stomach lurched when I saw Daddy, followed by a hollow hunger.

"Baby girl!" he said. We embraced briefly, as allowed by the guards, me trying to tug away the moment we touched. I hated when Daddy held on for even one second longer than the rules permitted, certain a guard would yell at me or, worse, at Daddy. I'd seen a prisoner dragged away for yelling at his so-fat-it-hung-over-her-pants wife. Everything on the man had seemed shriveled, but his fat wife had shrunk away as though he were Charles Atlas. The guard had come over with his heavy brown stick and just banged him right across the shoulders and hauled him off.

"Oh, my G.o.d, look," Grandma had said. "He klopped him right across the back!" I was afraid to ask Daddy if he ever got klopped, but I'd thought about the brown stick ever since.

Daddy inspected me just as he did each visit. "How do you grow so much in two weeks?"

"Not from the garbage they feed her at that place," Grandma said.

"At least she gets a good meal from you once a week, huh, Ma?"

"Oh, please." Grandma slapped the air with a dismissive hand. "I can barely see the pots anymore, let alone cook."

I slid closer to Grandma and placed my hand over hers. Her skin felt like paper you'd kept for a long time, paper you'd folded and unfolded until it became limp and cottony. Daddy's earliest letters were like that now, those I kept at Grandma's house.

"So how's school?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Okay."

He wrinkled his face. "Just okay? Is someone bothering you?"

"No. Everything's fine."

"I better see some good grades on your report card, miss. Getting-into-college grades. You don't want to end up like your old man, do you?"

I stared across the table at him, puzzled. College would have kept him out of prison? Did he know something about me? Did he know that sometimes I hated people so much it burned? Like Reetha. How did I know I wouldn't kill someone? Maybe Aunt Cilla was right; it could be in my blood. That was probably why she never wanted us in her house. Maybe I'd go to prison one day.

"Don't be a fool, Joey." Grandma shook her head. "You sound crazy when you talk like that."

Grandma hated my father saying anything about why they'd locked him up. She wouldn't talk to me about it either. No one would, except Lulu, and she only talked about how much she hated Daddy and how seeing him was so stupid.

"What do you want from me, Ma?" Daddy asked. "How many fascinating topics do you think I can come up with in here? Should I talk about how the Black Power guys want to kill the guards?"

"Shush," Grandma said. "They could be listening!"

I looked around to see if anyone had heard him.

"Should I talk about how I'm becoming an old man in here?"

"Stop. You're only thirty-one. You're a young man. You'll get parole. You'll be out before you know it."

Would we live with him if he got out? Would Lulu let us?

"Who's talking crazy now?" Daddy asked. "I'll be a hundred before they let me out. I got life. You think they'll let me go with ten years? Twenty years?"

"You'll get parole hearings." Grandma twisted a white handkerchief with black diamonds around the edges. I peeked to see if the guards had noticed. Prison families never looked at other families; we kept our fights low and quiet, leaking out a little at a time.

Daddy shook his head and pressed his lips together as though blaming Grandma for something.

"All the girls made pumpkin pies last night," I lied. "For fall."

"At that place?" Grandma didn't look like she believed me one bit.

"Yes." I stared right at her. "We carved pumpkins and cooked the insides down to make pies." I'd read that in a book, about how long pumpkin took to cook, and about the stringy, raw stuff inside.

"That sounds good," Daddy said. "Too bad you couldn't bring me a piece, huh?"

"Yeah, too bad." I avoided looking at Grandma.

"Boy, it's been a long time since I had pumpkin pie. Did you put a lot of cinnamon in? And ginger? I always liked spicy pie."

"It tasted exactly like cinnamon hots," I said.

Grandma pinched my thigh under the table. Enough, her sharp fingers said.

Daddy leaned back, putting his muscular arms behind his head. A dreamy expression came over him. "Pumpkin pie. What I wouldn't give."

"Right," Grandma said. "And if wishes were horses, beggars would fly. So, what about that program you wrote about to me?"

"The optical program?" he asked.

"So it's true? You might be able to learn a trade at least?"

"Ma, I had a job before."

Before meant when Mama was alive. Lulu said it also-except she'd say, Don't talk about before. I don't care. I tapped the top of my scar before I could stop myself.

"A widget-wadget job, that's what you had. Shussh. I'm talking about a trade, a profession," Grandma said.

"Making bra.s.s fittings for ships isn't exactly widgets, Ma. It's probably that job, the fact that I had to work to tolerance, that's made them consider putting me on the list."

"What's tolerance?" I asked.

"Ask your grandmother, who's so smart, she knows everything."

"Stop with the feeling sorry for yourself. Sorry I insulted you. Answer your daughter."

Daddy rolled back his shoulders. "Tolerance means working to exact measurements; having anything off, even a tiny bit, can ruin what you're building."

"So you can build things in here?" What he did inside the prison bewildered me. Every time I tried to ask, he'd change the subject by saying, Never mind this place; I'd rather talk about you.

"A program's starting here, an optical shop, where they'll make lenses. I want to get in, so when I get out I can get a job."

"When are you getting out, Daddy?" He never wanted to talk about that, usually saying, Only time will tell, which told me nothing.

"Maybe in twenty or thirty years I can get parole for good behavior."

Twenty or thirty years! I'd be almost twenty-nine or thirty-nine by then. My father would be an old man. He'd be fifty-one or sixty-one. Could he even work?

How could I keep him cheery all those years? Grandma had said that my job was to keep Daddy cheery. "G.o.d knows your mother never did it." Grandma shook her head when she said this. "She made him the opposite of cheery. That's why what happened, happened. Believe me. She drove him to it with all her hoo-ha with the hair and the nails and then the men. I don't like to speak ill of the dead," Grandma would say, "but your mother considered herself some kind of beauty queen. She thought she didn't have to do the same work as the rest of the world."

I didn't understand what Grandma Zelda meant. Daddy killed Mama because she was a beauty queen?

Lulu said Daddy did it because Mama dated bad men. Mimi Rubee said the booze and pills made Daddy do it. Aunt Cilla said Daddy killed Mama because of him being an animal. I didn't know what to believe.

Anyway, what about me? That's what I wanted to know. Why did Daddy stab me? No one ever talked about that, except once, when out of nowhere Daddy said, "I'm sorry, Merry. I know you probably don't remember what happened. You were so little. But I'm sorry."

Grandma got up. "Time for the torture." Grandma always said that when she left for the bathroom, because she had to wait for a guard to take her down a long, long hall that she said was like a walk of shame. They patted her when she went, and then again when she came out, as though she'd maybe found a gun in the toilet. I never drank water before visits. I didn't ever want to have to pee at the prison.

The air got heavier when Grandma left, as though she fanned it around with her constant chatter and kept us from the extreme edges that made up our lives.

"So, how's Lulu?" Daddy asked. "Still a bookworm?"

I nodded. "Daddy . . ." I trailed off, unable to say the words drumming in my head like mechanical monkeys. Why'd you stab me, why'd you stab me, why'd you stab me, Daddy?

"What's wrong, baby girl?" His eyes got all swimmy with love and concern behind his gla.s.ses. "You sure everything's okay at school? Anyone bothering you?"

I shook my head. "School is fine."

"So what is it, cookie?"

Like Grandma, I blinked and blinked.

"Uh-oh. Here come the banana splits," he said.

Daddy used to say that whenever I cried. Before. Then he'd take out his handkerchief, wipe my eyes and say, Let's mop it up, honey. I'd forgotten. I'd never cried here.

Grandma would be back soon. The question pressed harder against my throat.

"Cat got your tongue?" Daddy smiled and tipped his head down, looking all wise and kind, as though we were in an episode of The Brady Bunch.

"Why'd you stab me, Daddy?" I whispered. Words rushed out like throw-up. "Why'd you try to kill me?" Daddy backed away as though my soft words were little knives. Now I was the stabber.

"You remember?" His voice sounded thin, like it came from high up in his throat.

Daddy pushing me away from the kitchen. Mama lying on the floor. Lie down, Merry. Lie down on Mama and Daddy's bed. Be a good girl.

"I remember some stuff."

Daddy holding the knife all covered in Mama's blood. This will only hurt for a second, baby. No, Daddy, it hurt for a long time.

"I couldn't do it." He shook his head. "I started to, but I couldn't. It didn't go very deep."

I opened my hand wide and covered the cotton shirt hiding my scar, as if Daddy might see through the fabric. I knew every b.u.mp of the ridge. It was purple-pink and straight. It was on my left side and the length of the memo pad in which I wrote my school a.s.signments.

"Why did you want to hurt me?" Answer my question, Daddy.

"Oh, baby girl. Booze had me dead-drunk mixed with stupid. Jealousy screwed me up bad. You're too young to understand." He put his head in his hands. I wanted to rip them away, pound his stupid dead-drunk jealous head.

"That's why you did it to me?" I whispered, wondering how anyone ever drank.

"I didn't want to leave you." Daddy crossed his arms as though he were hugging himself. "I didn't want to leave you all alone."

"What about Lulu? Didn't you care about her?"

"Booze knocked the sense from my head," Daddy said. "And I was scared, baby."

"But you were going to leave Lulu all alone? Afraid?" I felt the walls of the room closing in on me.

"Lulu could always take care of herself. You, you're more like me."

I'm not like you. I'm not.

"Oh, Jesus, Merry. I love you so much. All I have left in the world is you and Grandma. No one else cares if I live or die." Daddy took off his gla.s.ses and wiped his eyes with his knuckles. Now the guards would come. Now Grandma would be sad.

"I can't stand the thought of you in that place," Daddy said. "d.a.m.n Cilla and Hal putting you there. d.a.m.n cowards. Cilla, who expected anything from her? But Hal? I thought he was a stand-up guy. If I had just one minute alone with that guy, I swear."

"I'm okay, Daddy. Everything's fine." I had to calm him down. Make him happy. Or maybe he'd hurt Aunt Cilla and Uncle Hal, even from in here.

"You shouldn't be there." He buried his head in his hands. It looked like maybe he swatted a tear away with his thumb. I couldn't stand it if he cried. He didn't have a handkerchief or tissues, or anything. Prisoners couldn't bring anything into the visiting room. I wondered if Daddy could carry things around when he left his cell. Maybe they kept him locked up every minute. Did he ever get to watch TV? Did he have to shower and go to the bathroom in front of people?

Grandma and I visiting him was probably the most important thing in the world for my father, and I was ruining it.

"It's okay, Daddy," I repeated. "I'm all right."