a few minutes into the movie i look down. leg, lots of leg. contorted, smooshed, flattened on the table. cellulite. fat. i am fully aware of it for the rest of the film. on my mind, constantly. why? i think. how? i can't worry about that now. i must find the best angle, i think. i can't let them see all this. and before i know it, this comment comes, the one i don't need to hear. loud and clear. and i wait til they leave and i run to my bed and cry into my blanket and i wonder what the fuck is wrong with me and i go to bed.

part 2: finding out about her

"Daddy, what's this?," I asked, handing him a soft, long nightgown covered in some christmasy pattern. Before I even got a response, he was practically dragging me across his small apartment, through the computer room, through the kitchen and into the tiny bathroom that was lined with yellow linoleum floors.

I was the last to find out.

He sat me atop the toilet and pulled a chair in from the kitchen for himself. He was vague--"just the nightgown of a friend," he told me. "A girlfriend?" I asked. "Yes." I proceeded to ask more questions--all so naive--about her name, where she lived, if she had any animals, if I would ever meet her, etc. I wasn't angry, as I would be now. I was curious and perhaps a little confused. It had only been a matter of months since he'd moved out.

I went along with it, just as I had the separation, but I wondered, how could he love anyone other than mommy? Gone was any possibility of my parents getting back together. In a way, it offered me a sense of closure but at the same time, the hole in my heart grew. Nobody prepared me for that. It came at me like an impossible to catch fastball and instead of stretching my arm out to catch it, I let it hit my bare hand and drop to the ground.