watched me a moment and then got up and returned
the glass to the bathroom.
I started to dry heave and did it so many times,
my stomach ached.
"Good,I'll let everyone know you're sicker,'
she said gleefully.
"Once again, it will just be me at the dinner
table with Daddy. Well have tea and toast brought up
to you. I'll bring it myself. okay?"
She paused and tilted her head as she scowled, "I don't know why I'm so nice to you. You're
never this nice to me. You always avoid me in school
and act as if we're not related."
Then she smiled again.
"But, I'm not angry. I'm not and at all. Daddy
loves me, too."
She walked slowly toward the door, gazed back
to wave and then closed the door behind her. My eyelids slammed shut almost
simultaneously and I fell into a deep sleep, perhaps as
a way of escaping a living nightmare.
There are times when we all want to rush back
to our Good dreams. My poor troubled brain was
willing to turn itself inside out if it had to in order to
take me away from my own painful, aching body.
Happier memories blossomed like bright flowers in a
dark garden, forcing back the cloak of dread and
sadness and retrieving smiles and laughter. I was a little girl again in that innocent time
before I would be introduced to prejudice and hate,
violence and poverty. I did not vet understand who I
was, where I was and what storms and turmoil raged
and awaited me just outside my precious world of