Her Father's Daughter by Marie Sizun

when the father isn’t there, when he’s gone to work, when she’s left alone with her mother, that’s a whole other story, and the child can’t be sure she prefers it. Then there’s a very special kind of silence in the apartment. An icy silence. A terrifying silence.
    The mother gets up late. Gives the child something to eat, dresses her without a word. Then she drifts from one room to another, irritated to have the child there, hanging around not knowing what to do with herself. Every now and then the mother starts to cry, and the child is frightened by the puffy, deformed red face her tears give her.
    She asks her mother to put the radio on. She needs to hear something, some music, songs, the announcers’ reassuring voices. It’s so cheerful now, the radio: militarymarches, love songs, jazz, the news delivered in a jaunty voice. The child listens to everything. Indiscriminately.
    In fact one day she hears them say on the news that the war really is over, that all the prisoners will be coming home. Families will be able to pick them up at the Gare de l’Est. The child runs to tell her mother. But why does this make her cry and then laugh?
    Her mother really has become very strange.

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    In among all this, it’s as if no one sees the child any more. Almost as if she’s become invisible. No one has time for her now. She is there, though.
    When the father comes home in the evening he hardly even kisses her. An absent-minded stroke of her hair as he comes in, acknowledging that she’s been waiting for him, standing in that awkward way she now has. A stroke of his big hand with its freckles. And then, straight away, the arguing starts with the mother, the shouts and tears.
    The child would dearly like to be interesting. She follows the conversation as best she can. She watches and listens. She hopes her father will acknowledge her presence, her attentiveness. She comes running at the least sign of conflict, waiting for an opportunity to get involved, to make her father understand that she’s there, with him.
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    One image in all this confusion will become a memory: the business of the accounts book.
    The father feels they’re spending too much in this household. Can’t think where the money’s going. Is flabbergasted. Appalled. He’s asked Li to keep a record of her daily expenses from now on and has bought her a special book for this. A book the child thinks is glorious. On the glossy hard cover there are birds in every colour and on the inside is a printed page for each day of the week. Some days later he asks to check through it. The mother can’t find it. Has she lost it? Mislaid, she says, I’ve just mislaid it. She’ll find it, it’s bound to be somewhere.
    A silent stare from the father. The sign of an impending storm.
    The child, who watches everything and sees everything, darts off without a word: she thinks she might have seen the book under a sideboard, it must have fallen off. It’s been lying around there for a few days. And she brings it back triumphantly, hands it to her father, expecting congratulations.
    But nothing. The child needn’t have bothered.
    The father leafs through the accounts book, finds its virgin pages empty of any annotation.
    The child sees her father’s face alter as he flicks through it. He looks at his wife, looks at the child. Starts shouting.
    â€˜Even this child’s more sensible than you! We can give this book of yours to her, she’ll make better use of it!’
    And with these words he hurls the book across the room, where it bounces off a wall. Then he takes his jacket and goes out, slamming the door.
    Li bursts into tears.
    The child rushes over to pick up the accounts book, which is the worse for wear, its spine broken and its pages crumpled. Never mind. She starts leafing through it with some satisfaction. It feels to her as if she’s won it. It belongs to her