“Even when you gave tours, you’d stand in the doorway to give your speech and let the visitors explore on their own. You said this area gave you the creeps and you refused to walk inside.”
I guess that sounds more like me. At least more like the me I’ve been told I am, instead of the one who wants to laugh in the face of Satan and his ominous message. I know I should be rubbing away goose bumps on my arms like a normal person would, staring into the small rooms where the most violent offenders in the state, going all the way back to the Civil War era, lived and died, but that’s the problem. I don’t feel like a normal person. I don’t feel like the girl everyone keeps telling me I am.
“That’s what I always loved about you,” my father continues, staring blankly above us at one of the tall windows. “Even after living here all your life, you never grew immune or indifferent to this place like the rest of us. You still felt bad about the horrors that happened here before our time and they affected you deeply. You felt everything so much more keenly than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I’m the eighteen-year-old daughter and only child of Mr. and Mrs. Tanner Duskin. My grandparents were Russian immigrants and moved their family to the United States to give them a better life when my father was just a baby. I graduated at the top of my class in high school last month and received a full ride to Brown University to study literature. I was the president of every academic club they would allow me to be and I have a very limited number of friends because someone with my extracurricular schedule didn’t have time for a large group of people in her life to distract her. I wear sensible clothes that never draw attention to myself, and my long, black hair is always kept in a thick braid that trails down to the middle of my back. I have my mother’s fair skin and bright green eyes and my father’s serious disposition and hardworking nature. And I’m deeply affected by the things that happened in this prison, I guess.
These perfunctory facts are what I’ve been told about myself the last few days when I woke up in a state of confusion from a two-day coma. They are the list of my attributes, given to me by my mother as if she were reciting a grocery list.
“We need eggs, milk and bread. You have my eyes, a good head on your shoulders and you’re the most perfect daughter anyone could ever ask for.”
This is the reason why I’ve stopped asking questions and I pretend as if nothing is amiss in my addled brain. These are the facts I’ve been told and the only truths anyone will give me about myself. This is the girl my parents raised and the girl they pinned all of their hopes and dreams on.
This is also the girl my father speaks about in past tense, as if she doesn’t exist anymore, even though I’m standing within touching distance of him.
“I think I’m going to head back up to my room before anyone gets here,” I tell my father, keeping my eyes focused on him, instead of back inside the cell where they want to go.
“That’s probably a good idea. You’ve had a rough couple of days.”
He turns away from the window and opens his arms to me. I hesitate for a moment before walking into them. When I do, I bury my face in the lapels of his black suit coat and inhale his scent: peppermint from the mints he always keeps in the inside pocket of his coat and the faint, fruity smoke from the pipe he sneaks when my mother isn’t at home, and the reason for the peppermints.
My father is a tall man and my cheek barely reaches his chest as I wrap my arms around his waist. Eighteen years of hugs, eighteen years of comfort and yet it feels like this is the first time he’s ever held me this tightly.