Chapter One

Chapter One


DADDY WENT AWAY when I was five. My clearest memories of him are from that year, those winter mornings when he would wake me before light so we could go feed the pony, just he and I together. At least that was his excuse for waking me so early; later I thought he was telling me goodbye, over and over.

We lived in Virginia in an old house heated by a wood- stove in the living room. When he woke me, those early mornings, Daddy took me out of bed still wrapped in my quilts and carried me downstairs to get dressed by the stove. After he had gone for good I sometimes jolted awake, thinking for an instant that he was about to come, that the sound of the doorknob had wakened me, but then there was only silence and the cold darkness against my face. Before he went away and he really did come to get me in the early mornings, I didn't begin to wake until my face was scraping against the rough wool of his shirt as he carried me down the steps, didn't open my eyes until he put me on the floor in front of the woodstove and said, "Be quick now, Beryl, your pony will be waiting."

While Daddy went to make our breakfast I got dressed, shivering as I peeled off my footed pajamas and the cold shocked my skin. After I had put on the jeans and sweater Daddy had laid out for me, I sat on the sofa and watched the big window for signs of light.

At first it was so dark that all I could see in the window was myself on the sofa and the lamp beside me, but as the sky gradually lightened, my reflection began to fade. I liked the moment when I could just make out the shadowy forms of trees and then I could see them get clearer and clearer like the photographs Da