Facing the Music by Jennifer Knapp Page B

enough means to afford both. I wanted his confession.
    â€œFifteen thousand dollars, ” he said flatly, then walked away.
    I came unhinged. All the energy that fired its way through my body shuddered with a violence that felt sure to rip me apart. Overcome by panic, my body began to contort and twitch against my control. I rocked back and forth, grasping at my chest. My vision went black. I couldn’t see, but I could hear mybreath and a groan that seemed to come from a distant place, apart from me.
    When the color began creeping back into the world, a thousand little voices came with it. A decade’s worth of family quarrels replayed and echoed through my head. Every insult I had ever heard joined in chorus. Every insecurity that I had ever carried inside my little heart spoke at once. Every dark and evil voice that loved to come in moments like this confirmed I was what I had always feared . . . nothing. They all swirled about in a buzzing fury until I finally channeled them all into one meaning. One sentence to describe the absolute heartache I felt at that moment.
    â€œHe chose her,” I said aloud. Calm now, and detached. It took a decade for me to see it, but it finally sunk in. My father had made his family, and though I was there to witness it, ultimately, I had not been grafted in. I just didn’t see until that moment. I had been too focused on my own life, burying my head in music and dreaming, but, now, I couldn’t ignore it any more.
    My father and stepmother had two sons by now. I had two brothers, but I hardly knew them. I watched them grow in my stepmother’s belly like an apparition that became manifest in our world, but I never dared to touch them. So distant had my stepmother and I become, the only serenity my family ever seemed to have was when I was separated, locked in my room, or busy with my own affairs. I felt that they did not need me. They did not want me. And, worst of all, it seemed that I would never be missed.
    Over the last decade, my parents had built their family, but that day I understood that neither I nor my sister had truly been a part of it. It was as if we were appendages or acquaintances, rather than children. We were the remnants of my father’s previous life, not the evidences of his current one. I began to see it all play back as if it were a movie, but the role I held in it began to evaporate. It was like when my sister moved away. Her person was literally forgotten. Her pictures removed. Her name left unspoken. I realized that she had been erased upon her departure. She never came back to visit, nor did my father invite her to remain in his life. This was to be my fate, as well; I just hadn’t seen it yet.
    Despite our wounds, none of us are exempt from the results of our own behavior. I had my own portion of responsibility for having become so alienated. I replayed in my mind how selfish I had been. I questioned over and over again how it was that I had failed so miserably at securing my father’s love.
    Why didn’t I work harder to fit in?
    Why couldn’t I have been a better daughter?
    I am an awful human being and no good will ever come of me. I tried so hard, but it’s no use. I am corrupt.
    I felt powerless to fight against the doubts of my own worth; even my own father, for some reason, could not come to rescue me. I tried to soothe the savage voice inside me that urged me to put out the light and just give up. I didn’t really know what to make of the world after such a crushing blow, but I needed something to kill the pain of it.

    BY MOST STANDARDS, I had always been a pretty good kid. I kept good grades, minded my curfew, and generally achieved all that was expected of me. While the other high school kids wereout testing the boundaries of their coming adulthood with the usual suspects of sex, drugs, and alcohol, I usually preferred to keep distant from the riskier adventures. My pride came from my