Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel Read Free

show me next week’s serial at night when the theater closed. I was always the first to know that Nyoka hadn’t been killed. I swear I never told, not once.
    Nyoka has a lot to do with how I look in person. Daddy spent a whole day making me a swing rope on a tree in the backyard, but unfortunately he made an error in dynamics, as he put it. I grabbed ahold of the rope and he ran me back as far as he could and let go and it swung me right into the tree and now my right front tooth is chipped. Daddy thinks it makes me look different. Momma thinks it is awful.
    Momma has a theory that Daddy has tried to kill me on severaloccasions. Once when I fell asleep in the living room, Daddy cracked my head carrying me into the bedroom. He also knocked me off the pier into the Pearl River when I was three and didn’t come after me for a long time because he felt that young children, like young animals, could swim if they were scared enough. But I wasn’t scared enough. You should have seen the trash I saw on the bottom of that river when I was waiting for him to come and get me … tin cans, an old Roi • Tan cigar box and an old Firestone tire. The Pearl River attracts a lower class of people if you ask me.
    Then there was the time when he picked up a two-by-four on the side of the road and put it in the front seat by me and stuck it out the window. He told me to hold it, which I did, but when the wind hit the board, it turned around and hit me in the head and knocked me out. Another time, when a friend of Daddy’s bought a brand-new Buick, Daddy pressed the push-button window up on my neck. But that time I think it was just a matter of him not being familiar with the equipment.
    The main thing Momma bases her theory on is once Daddy, who is very artistic, wanted to make a life mask of my face. He put plaster of paris on me but forgot the breathing holes. On top of that he also forgot to put Vaseline on my face. He had to crack the plaster off with a hammer. Momma didn’t speak to him for a week on that one. I myself was sorry that it didn’t turn out.
    She also says he is going to ruin my nervous system because of the time he sneaked up on me when I was listening to
Inner Sanctum
on the radio. Just as the squeaking door opened, he grabbed me and yelled, “Got ya,” real loud, which caused me to faint. She also didn’t like him telling me Santa Claus had been killed in a bus accident and making me throw up.
    The Pettibones have very delicate nervous systems. That’s true. Momma is nervous all the time. She’s worn a hole in the floor on the passenger’s side of Daddy’s car from putting on the brakes. Momma always looks like she is on the verge of a hissy fit, but that’s mainly because when she was eighteen, she stuck her head in a gas oven looking at some biscuits and blew her eyebrows off. So she paints them on like little half-moons. Peoplelove to talk to her because she always looks interested, even if she isn’t.
    If Daddy is dangerous to my health, Momma’s not much better. She nearly got us both killed in the street last winter. Momma had read the movie ad saying, “Every woman will want to see Joan Crawford as the woman who loves Johnny Guitar,” and I guess she did. I wanted to see
Francis, the Talking Mule
, so I wasn’t in a good mood anyway. When Momma takes me downtown, it is an all-day ordeal. She was crazy about mother-and-daughter dresses at the time and she made me wear some ratty dress I hated. Whenever we go downtown, she starts her window shopping. Look, look, look! It drives me crazy.
    We always go to Morrison’s Cafeteria to eat. That’s OK because I can get three Jell-Os instead of vegetables. After the meal, Momma sits and smokes and drinks coffee. I have to watch her like a hawk. My job is getting up and pouring her more coffee. That goes on for hours. Then I have to pull her chair out and help her on with her coat. She is big on children having manners. This night I sat through eight cups