I haven’t really felt like this for a long time, at least not since Bootsie came back when I was six and reminded me all over again that there was something about me that made people want to leave me behind. My friend JoEllen Parker buried her daddy last Saturday, which got me thinking about my own daddy. I knew better than to ask Bootsie, because she always just gets a funny look on her face and then tells me that the past is best left to the past. But I never really knew him, and that emptiness is part of my present. Maybe learning something about him will fill this empty hole in my heart before the mildew spreads into that, too. I was in the kitchen helping Mathilda polish the silver and decided to ask her. I’d long since figured out that the best way to speak to adults about something touchy was to ask them when you were both busy doing something else. Mathilda was probably the best person to talk to about my family anyway. She’s known Bootsie since before Bootsie was even born, helping to take care of her as a baby when my grandmother drowned in the flood.
