Daddy's Venom in A Bottle

She loved it when people would braid her hair. She loved it when they would tie those light brown strands into a ponytail or just brush them out from knots that they had become overtime from a long day of working on the farm. She didn’t speak much, just worked. Her hands were blistered and worn from her work that she wouldn’t stop at under any condition unless it was perfectly done. She was always the one who worked on the farm, it was hers all along.
She taught herself discipline. She learned to do this by feeding herself when her father didn’t show up for days or weeks at a time. Once he would come home with a cotton mouth, she learned to hide in the closet to avoid purple puffy looking clouds form under her skin.
She wasn’t anything close to dumb. She was the smartest person I had ever seen. She never received any purple clouds under her skin when she taught herself to do this and other things. Things like taking daddy’s Jack Daniels away while he fell asleep, because often times he would wake in the night to drink more. She observed how he would barely notice if he had drunken too much earlier any how, but if he had it with him he would chug another drink sloppily. This little girl was only nine when she learned to do this.
Only nine years of life and she understood that some drinks change the people who we tend to be. She just didn’t know that her daddy had a special addiction to these drinks and (unlike Alice in Wonderland) after drinking them he only wanted more.
When she was thirteen she realized that she would always come in second to daddy’s special venom in a bottle. She would never be the first thing in his mind when he went to sleep, or woke up. It would always be a way to make her and her buried angel of a mother go far, far away from his mind. And that way was drinking something that told his mind it was ok not to think.
When she was eighteen she moved out, with a high-school diploma and a scholarship to the college of her dreams. The first thing she did was figure out what outfits to pack and what pictures to keep (the ones she decided to be of her mom and two of her dad).
She was the smartest person I had ever seen, that’s for sure. Because she never went back to that ratty town where she watched her daddy drink himself half to death and where she got to feel the bruises form in her arms and legs. And when she went back, it was for one reason only.
She went back at twenty seven to attend her dad’s funeral and to take back the farm that was rightfully hers in the first place.