Conversations with my father

My father tells me that he worries about me when I come home late at night. He says that I should always ring him when I arrive at the train station so he can pick me up in his car. "It's not safe for me to walk home after dark," he tells me. I realise he is thinking of something bad happening to me. Perhaps someone grabbing me off the street and raping me? He tells me that he cares about me. He corrects himself. "Your mother and I both care about you," he says. I wonder if he often thinks about a stranger raping me. Is he jealous of that stranger? I feel uncomfortable talking about it with him. He isn't looking directly at me when he talks to me. Why? Is he embarrassed by what he is saying or does he suspect that he is giving away some of his private thoughts?

I am not wearing a bra. I don't enjoy wearing them. They're uncomfortable and it's a relief not having to wear one at home. A shop assistant at the department store tells me that the bra I'm wearing is too small and I need to get a bigger one. I don't want to talk about bras with my father. When I tell my mother she says that the shop assistant is a fool and only wants to sell more bras.

At the end of the day we have dinner together. It is one of my responsibilities to lay the table for dinner. Knife and fork for father; chopsticks for mother and me. "How was school today?" my father asks. "Good," I reply. "What did you learn today?" my mother asks. "Nothing," I reply crossly. "You there for whole day and learn nothing? Stupid girl," she says angrily. I say nothing and my father laughs at us both.

I am not wearing a bra. When he looks at me, I wonder if he notices. Does he enjoy looking at my breasts? Does he find me attractive, like the men in the street? Does he desire me in the way he desires my mother? He glances at them and thinks I do not notice what he is doing. He thinks he performs this furtive act so quickly and cleverly that he is not observed. He is so clumsy about it that even my mother notices. Later in the night my mother tells me he is a fool like all men are.

Sometimes at the end of the day I massage his feet. He enjoys this very much and he tells me that I do it well. "Better than most," he says. He is presumably comparing me to the massages he receives at the local Asian massage shop. "Perhaps I should give up my studies and become a massage therapist," I tell him and he laughs. "Your mother would be very angry with you," he replies. "So, perhaps not." I wonder if the girls at the massage shop give him happy endings. Is that what he is wondering and hoping for as he looks down at me, while I work on his feet.

When we meet at the end of the day I feel awkward. I want him to hug me and to show that he cares about me. When I was younger, he would always hug me when I came home from school. He would call me his "baby girl". We don't hug anymore. We stand apart. Perhaps further apart than is needed. It is as if we were aware of the pull of each other's gravity. That if we were closer, we would fall into each other's arms and kiss one another.

If I were working in a massage shop I wonder if he would choose me rather than the other girls working there.

I am not wearing a bra. When he looks at my chest I wonder if he imagines reaching out with both his hands and cupping them, feeling their weight and caressing them gently. I imagine him kissing them and his sighs of pleasure.

If I were working in a massage shop I would pretend that I had not recognised him. I would be ashamed for the other women to know that one of my regulars was my father.

I am not wearing a bra. If he were to touch my breasts accidentally, he would pull his hands away like he had touched fire. My face would be hot with shame. He would be angry with me, as though it was my fault that he had touched them.

If I were working in a massage shop I would pretend not to recognise him when we were alone together in privacy of the massage room. He would tell me that he desires his own daughter. I would tell him in reply that it doesn't matter - that wanting to is not the same as doing so. He asks me to call him daddy and I accede to his request, and by doing that, I imagine I'm protecting the girl at home by what I'm doing here.

When he comes home late from a night drinking, I wonder if he were drunk enough, he might open the door to my room, instead of his own, and get into my bed. I pretend to be asleep as he climbs into my bed and begins to kiss me.

I am not wearing a bra. If he were to reach out for them I would slap his hands away from me. He would be mortified with shame. He would apologise and beg me not to tell anyone. Our relationship would be ruined. I would hate and avoid him. I would become silent and morose, and when my mother asked the reason why, I would start to cry, and tell her what he had done.

I sometimes imagine him ejaculating inside me. I imagine his incest seed dripping out of me. It's a lie. I often imagine this.

I am not wearing a bra. If he were to reach out for my breasts, I imagine placing my hands over his and pressing them to me. I would move his hands over them and sigh with pleasure. I would tell him how long I have waited for him to touch me this way. We would kiss and I would tell him that I have wanted him to make love to me for ever so long.

I am waiting in the foyer of the local police station. When it is my turn, the policeman asks what I want. I try to tell him what is happening to me at home, but it's noisy there in the foyer and he can't hear what I'm saying. "Speak up, Miss," he tells me. The other people waiting in the foyer stop talking and stare at me. "What is it?" he asks impatiently. I shake my head and tell him it's nothing. I hurriedly leave and know it was a mistake to have gone there.

I am not wearing panties under my skirt. He doesn't know, but I do. How would he ever know that?

He comes to my room and stands at the door, not wishing to intrude. I answer his questions impatiently. "What do you want?" I seem to say in curt and abrupt answers. If, however, he came closer to me and was standing behind my chair, for instance, I would not feel nearly so assured. If he were to rest his hands on my shoulders, I doubt I could reply to him at all. I would sit there and let him do whatever he wished.

It has been several weeks since what happened between us has happened, and I wonder if I am pregnant.

If he were standing behind me now and resting his hands on my shoulders he would know that I am not wearing a bra. "You feel so soft and warm," he tells me. I place my hand on one of his and tell him he always says kind things to me. He leans closer to me and softly kisses my cheek. I turn to him and this time he presses his lips to mine.

My period has still not arrived. I don't take any action to find the reason why. When I pass by a chemist, I don't even think about purchasing a test. I tell no-one. I pretend that nothing has changed and that things are as they were before.