Uncle Raymond loved me very much. And I loved him very much. He would tell me I was his little princess, and I loved him for saying that because I always wanted to be a princess. I was once in a play about a princess and a pea, and since I was the princess I got to wear a tiara for the whole day at school. So, Uncle Raymond took me shopping, and he bought me the prettiest sparkly tiara I have ever seen. I looked so beautiful that Mama even put up a few pictures of me on the refrigerator in all my jewels and high heels. But the other day in class, my teacher had each of us draw pictures of what we wanted to be when we grow up, and when I turned in a drawing of myself in a pink dress and a purple crown, she told me that I could not be a princess if I was not born one. I cried and gave my picture to Uncle Raymond the next day, and he said he thought it belonged in a story book. He had me put my tiara back on as he told me a wonderful story about a princess who didn’t know she was a princess. Then he said that for all we knew maybe I really was a princess, just waiting to be discovered. I wore my tiara for a whole week after that.
I always believed that Uncle Raymond saw things in a different way than most people did. Like the time he convinced my parents to let me go to the rodeo. He told them it was going to be a grand time for the two of us and that they didn’t need to worry a bit. Although Papa didn’t need much convincing, Mama wasn’t so sure about letting me go watch “such wild and reckless foolishness.” Raymond assured her with his sweet smile and big white teeth that it was a great sporting event and also an educational experience. He said he would be right by my side the whole time. And he was, and that was one of the best days I ever had. We laughed at the clowns and their silly movements, we cheered for our favorite cowboy, and I stuffed myself with enough cotton candy to “turn my brain into sugar,” Raymond said as he bought me another one. But the next week when Raymond offered to take me to the movies, my Mama protested saying she didn’t think the one he’d chosen was appropriate for my age. Yet, once again Uncle Raymond was able to convince her that although the film was about war, it was also an enchanting love story. Mama finally gave in, telling us that she was too tired to say no. So we went to see it and although there were a few times he had to cover up my eyes, I felt like a real grownup cause I didn’t see any other children in the theater.
Uncle Raymond was always doing things like that for me, but for some reason Mama didn’t approve of him very much. She said that his smile could tame a stallion. When I looked up that word (stallion) in the dictionary I decided it made sense since Raymond sometimes played horse and pony with me. Raymond and I liked to play together a lot because Mama didn’t let me have fun in the house ever. Some days I would watch her at her desk below the window in the front room, and I could see her staring but could never tell what she was looking at. The view from our street was rather dull and the houses all looked the same. Every once in awhile I would see our neighbors walk by, but they never waved hello even when my mother was sitting at her desk. Mama never went out except maybe once a month for church on Sundays, so I invited her to come along with me and Raymond on an adventure. She said that she wasn’t feeling well and that I might be sick too so I should stay home but I didn’t have a cough or anything. Mama was sick most of the time so I stopped asking her to play with me. I never saw Papa take care of her and whenever I tried to help she wouldn’t let me. When I asked Raymond if I ever made him sad he said that that was impossible because princesses always made princes happy. I was very glad to make somebody happy.
Mama kept staring for the next few months, and I started to notice wrinkles beneath her eyes. There were some special vitamins in her bathroom cabinet and one morning I tried to eat them. She got very upset at me and told me I was too little to be taking vitamins. Sometimes I would see small bottles of them in her purse and would wonder what they tasted like. Mama never went anywhere without them, so they must have been good. She didn’t smile very much anymore, and I wondered if she missed me when I was with Raymond. There seemed to always be something she was trying to say before he came to take me away. Papa never minded when I left the house, but then again he was rarely ever home to miss me. I never heard Papa speak of Raymond even though they were twin brothers, and Raymond didn’t say hello anymore when he picked me up at the house. My Papa was gone most of the time “on business” Mama said. When Papa wasn’t away, he stayed in his office for long periods of time. I sometimes tried to listen at his door but could never hear anything. Some days it was the closest I could ever get to him.
Papa was a “working man” as Mama called it. She said that Papa didn’t have time for trifles and though I didn’t know what a trifle was, I knew that it had something to do with me and that Papa wanted nothing to do with me. He didn’t usually speak to me or Mama – just a few words here or there, when he needed something from us. Mama said that he had a lot on his plate and that he needed space, but I figured our house was big enough for the three of us and that it wasn’t the space that Papa needed.
The summer after I went into fourth grade marked a change in Papa. It was late August and he stormed into the house on one of those nights that was really dark and wet. He didn’t look at me or Mama when he walked through the door, he just threw his raincoat onto the couch and then shut himself in his office. I was frightened because I hadn’t heard any doors slammed in our house before. The book I was reading was on the couch, and Mama had gone upstairs to her bedroom when I heard the door to the office open. Looking up, I saw Papa walking towards me, a piece of his hair hanging down over his eyebrow. Yelling, he asked about some envelope he had left by the door earlier that day, and when I didn’t answer right away he grabbed me by my shirt, which pinched the back of my neck. I didn’t look at him when he screamed in my face, all I could think about was the bitter breath that I smelled. Then he started to curse and swing his arms around. After he had thrown me to the floor, that’s when Mama came downstairs and Papa went away again. My face stung as Mama wiped away my tears. She said Papa was probably just tired, but he had never hit me before when he was tired. There was something wrong with Papa and it wasn’t the fact that he had slapped me across the face, but rather the look in his eyes that terrified me. I hid in my closet for awhile with the telephone from the basement and dialed Uncle Raymond’s number which I had memorized. His voice was sweet and tender, the same as it always was – and for a moment I forgot about my angry father. After a few seconds, Raymond asked if I had been crying, and then I really couldn’t stop. As I told him what had happened I heard shouting in the kitchen and then footsteps on the stairs. Covering the receiver, I sobbed into the phone and Raymond sang to me.
I didn’t see Papa for the rest of the night, partly because he never came out of his office and partly because I was rescued. Slipping downstairs with my pillow and pajamas, I told Mama that I was spending the night at my best friend Sophie’s house, even though she was out of town. I ran out to meet the headlights of the car which was so familiar, and Raymond met me with a big hug and a warm kiss. The next weekend I called him again and I didn’t see Papa for three whole days after. On these “Rescue Knights,” as we began to call them, Uncle Raymond and I made up a game where I was the damsel in distress and he was my knight in shining armor. I always felt safe in his arms. Mama didn’t really know where I disappeared to most of the time because Raymond said it was our little secret. She thought that I was at Sophie’s house, though I barely talked to Sophie anymore.
There was a place in my heart that felt sorry for Raymond. After all, he and my father were twin brothers, though for me that was hard to believe. I had never known two people to be such opposites. It seemed unfair that Papa got what Raymond wanted: a good job, a wife, and a child, while Raymond had no family of his own and has been a 3rd grade teacher ever since he graduated from college. And yet, I was not sure that Papa wanted what he had anymore. Raymond said he wished they could trade places sometimes and I wished that too. Whenever I tried to speak to Papa, I always felt like there was something behind me, or around me that caused his eyes to wander all about, though I never saw anything. On the day before my birthday I asked Papa if he knew what kind of surprise I was going to get. He told me he had forgotten it was my birthday and that I shouldn’t expect more than I deserved. The next day he left for a business trip and didn’t even leave a card or call, but Raymond did. Uncle Raymond spent the whole day with me. He bought me the prettiest pink dress, and we went out to town together. Raymond called it a date, like what mamas and papas were supposed to go on except I’d never seen my papa take my mama out before. I’d never seen Papa touch Mama like Raymond touched me. The simplest touch from Papa is now painful to me, but Raymond’s simplest gesture is gentle, his arms held me tight and when we hugged I like to smell the extra cologne he put on his shirt just for me.
When I turned eleven, Mama said we had to have a conversation together. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was wearing that same light blue dress with the ribbons at the back that she wore every time she went to church. She sat me down in the sitting room, which seemed appropriate with all those chairs in there and nobody ever sitting. Then she told me things about myself that I never knew before, things that were going to happen to my body and what might start going through my head. She said I wasn’t allowed to spend any more time with Raymond. She told me that Raymond and I were very different and that it wasn’t appropriate for me to be around him anymore. I listened to as much as I could bear and nodded when I felt she needed me to, but I called Raymond after that talk with mama. When I thought she was napping, I sneaked out my bedroom window and ran down the street to meet him so he could take me out to ice cream. We both loved ice cream and always got the same flavor: Chocolate chip cookie dough, and we always let each other have a lick because one scoop might taste different, Raymond said – even though they were the same every time.
It wasn’t until my thirteenth birthday, when Raymond bought me a diamond necklace and the most beautiful ring to go along with it, that my mama tried to end things for good. I heard them fighting on the phone for a long time and although Mama went outside I could still hear her yelling. I sat at the table, admiring the sparkling flecks of light reflecting off my first diamond ring. I put it on the same finger Mama wore hers but I was only able to wear it for one day. When Mama got off the phone she took it away from me, and she took the necklace too. She told me I wasn’t going to be allowed to see Uncle Raymond ever again and I was very upset that she could ruin something so beautiful. I didn’t speak to her for almost a week, until I couldn’t find the bleach for the load of whites I wanted to wash and had to ask her where it was. Mama and I didn’t talk about anything special or important together for a long time. She had once given me life and now she was a destroyer of life, or what happiness there was to be had in it. Sometimes I would search her room for my jewelry while she was away, but I never found anything. Though I gave up the search, I was still desperate for some communication with the only person who really loved me.
Papa still ignored me, and I think Mama was afraid of me. I am their only daughter and yet I never was their daughter. I was only ever Raymond’s daughter, his friend, and his little lover bug as he once called me. I tried not to forget the way he used to look at me. I tried not to forget the soft features of his face, or the way his rough and calloused hands always felt on my skin. Mama didn’t notice the broken latch on my window sill and she never found the last letter Raymond wrote to me or his last gift; she didn’t know that the earrings I wore on special occasions were real diamonds.
