I left his bedroom. I walked down the stairs. I went out the front door. I walked down to the road. I hugged my arms around my body. My thin, white, ankle socks didn�t shield my feet from the cold, wet cement. My thin, blue nightgown was pasted to my pale, shivering skin. Light, cold rain plastered my hair to my head.

I walked along the street, about half a mile, to a neighborhood girl�s house. On the way and older gentleman in a brown-ish station wagon stopped and offered to give me a ride. I shook my head and kept walking. He was a stranger. Just because I was now homeless didn�t mean I could start talking to strangers.

When I got to the girl�s house, the mom let me in and gave me a towel. I told her not to call my mom. I knew Mom was mad at me too. She was married to Dad. Dad said I wasn�t welcome in his home anymore and Mom would back him up. It was her job to back him up. Somehow I would find a way to make it alone. Besides, the good thing in all of this was that the brother finally had what he�d always wanted� I was gone. At last the brother would be happy.

Mom showed up after a while. I don�t know if it was ten minutes or two hours. I realized then, though, that I couldn�t trust that girl�s mom. Anyway, Mom brought clothes for me and to this day I think her unconscious choice was extremely apropos. The T-shirt she brought for me had a picture of a bedraggled rat with his tail caught in a trap. The rat was asking, �Was today really necessary?�

After I got dressed, Mom made me get in the car. I figured she hated me because not only did she require me to go with her, but she took me back to Dad�s house. Actually, come to think of it, that morning was the last time I ever thought of that house with any fondness or propriety. In the space of a few hours, it had gone from a family abode to Dad�s house. It became the house I lived in, rather than �my house�. Huh, I�ve never thought of that before. Interesting.

Anyway, we all went to the 7-11. I was taken into the store as the visual aide while Dad questioned the clerk about the silver dollars. The clerk, of course, had no knowledge of the silver dollars and didn�t recognize me. Dad queried the manager as well with no better result. My plan to have the penny candy be my proof had fallen through.

So, I said it had actually been the grocery store� a mile further down the road. We went there and again I was dragged into the store as the example of what a shit looks like. Here I am, thief and liar, bane of Dad�s existence. I don�t deserve to live and the fact that he can hold a civil tongue in his head while talking to you is evidence of what a wonderful and self-sacrificing man he can be while standing in the presence of the greatest evil. Obviously, the clerks and manager of the grocery store hadn�t received any silver dollars in the past week and no one remembered me.

I could feel the hate and loathing from Dad throughout that day. When he had to look at me, hate filled his eyes. When he had to speak to me his voice was enraged, filled with barely-restrained revulsion. I was a shit because I had stolen his money, lied about it and spent his two silver dollars in such a way that they could never be retrieved. He hated me. He wanted me dead. And, I had come back from my exile without his permission, against his will and against his express wishes.

For the next two days when we had interactions with other people, I was the example of who not to be. When we went to the Stiles� house, everyone got out of the car. I started to get out and Dad hissed at me. �You stay here. I will not allow a thief to infect my friends.� So, I stayed in the car. When Denise came out to talk to me, she got yelled at and was told to go back into the house, to leave me alone.

When we met up with Grandma to walk through some out-door art exhibit or� I don�t remember what it was� it was at a school, community college type. When we met up with Grandma, Dad told her not to talk to me, that I was evil and bad.

For three days Dad humiliated, shunned, ostracized and� well� hated me. He outright hated me for 72 hours. He simply ignored me for the next ten years. As I said before, though, I�d rather be ignored than beat up on. He hated me� all because I got up for cuddle time.

That was the end of those family love fests. That weekend my father was an evil, mean, vindictive, caustic and violent man. That weekend I learned that my life � my existence in this world � was worth less than two dollars. That weekend I realized I wasn�t a child, I was a liability.

I realized that Dad didn�t love me. No one, absolutely no one, who loved a child would be capable of what he did. I believe, with everything I am, that if it had been Bing or Sherrie in my place, he�d have been thoroughly pissed, but he wouldn�t have hated them; his anger would have been tempered by the blood they carried.

I also believe that if it had been the brother in my place, Dad probably would have killed him. Dad was so completely out of it during that beating phase that if I had shown even the slightest hint of hesitation or non-compliance, I would have been grabbed and choked to death. The brother never would have sat still� he�d have fought. And, he�d have died.

I�ve seen Dad angry since then. I�ve seen him pissed off. I�ve seen him at the end of his rope. Not once, though, not once since that weekend has he come anywhere near that level of absolute hatred. If the force of the recent hurricane Charlie were a 25 on the scale of violence and heedless destruction, Dad, on that weekend, was at 100.

I didn�t deserve that treatment. I didn�t take his money. What�s more, I didn�t even know he�d had it. I didn�t know what silver dollars were. I didn�t know how big or little they were and I didn�t know what they were made of� if they were actually silver or if they were just called silver. I seem to recall Dad saying, at some point, that each of those silver dollars was worth about a hundred bucks a piece. Still, there�s a part of me that gets angry and frustrated and scared whenever I think about this.

Of course, I try not to think of it because I don�t like getting angry. I don�t like rehashing the bad stuff. However, and this is largely why I bothered writing any of this anyway� I hope that with the writing of this event, maybe I can exorcize the nasty parts. I�m hoping that I can heal myself� and possibly him� and maybe the family.

In my non-professional opinion, I believe that the Silver Dollar Incident was the event which destroyed our family. There was enough hard stuff to deal with before this, but after� there just wasn�t anything to work for anymore. There wasn�t a reason to be a family anymore.

What do I want now?

I want my Dad. I want my Dad to prove to me, with loving actions, that I am more important than two silver dollars. I don�t give a rat�s ass if they were worth two hundred bucks. I don�t give a rat�s ass if by now they would be worth so much more.

Damn it, Dad. Don�t you KNOW it�s the father who gives the daughter her sense of self worth? Don�t you know that it�s the Dad who instills in his kid the knowledge that they don�t have to settle for being doormats?

No, you don�t know that. You don�t know it because you�re still pissed off about money. Money is still more important to you than I am. I want you to love me more than money. I don�t want to see you as a man who only values people based on how much they can get him. You�re better than that. I need to believe you�re better than that.

Sigh.

I guess the real point is this. I�m scared. I�m afraid that even though I�ve been hurt and shunned and ignored and� and even though I�ve felt like shit� I still love my Dad. But, I�m afraid that he never did love me. I�m afraid that if I show him this particular chapter, he will read it, be filled with rage and anger and guilt� but not over what he did. I think I am afraid that Dad will look at me and I will realize that the hateful, vile man I met that day so long ago is the real man.

I�m afraid he never loved me. I don�t want him to know about this chapter, not for all the wounds it might open, not for the pain it might cause him. Here I am, less than three weeks away from my 34th birthday and my heart trembles at the thought that maybe he doesn�t really love me at all. Maybe this man, the man I love so deeply, so intensely� maybe he never loved me. God help me. I hate being afraid.