My father Arthur’s place is cold, he lives like a slob and I really don't want to be here. I always get a sore throat, sometimes before I'm even in his apartment. That makes as much sense as standing in the hallway in front of his door with my stomach clenched while the plastic handles from the grocery bags cut off blood from my fingers.

I have many ways to explain the tension. Arthur seems to be getting worse. He writes things down on index cards and leaves them around the apartment so he can remember things. My job is to determine his level of functioning and compensate for the lack of it. I might be the one who decides he can no longer live on his own.

It stinks inside. It's hard to find room on the kitchen counter where I can set down the groceries. The dishes that aren't mouldy have dried food stuck to them. The TV is on and there are porn magazines laid out on the couch. A pair of dirty underwear hangs off one of the arms of the recliner.

YOU ARE TRYING TO REDUCE YOUR INTAKE OF FATS AND SUGARS

Using my new method of cleaning, I walk around with an orange hefty bag and throw out anything that is objectionable. And I've bought rubber gloves so I don't actually have to touch anything. I trust his memory not to miss these things and his sense of shame not to mention them if he notices. I don't know if this is evil or not. It probably is.

Arthur sputters whenever I talk about moving him to a nicer place, a place where he can be cared for properly. He tells me I should take care of him properly and then he would be happy. Arthur wishes I would be like his wife who was a real woman. Comments like that make me realize that if it weren't for the weekly doses of intimidation and shame from Cal, I would have written off Arthur long ago.

YOU WERE A UNION ORGANIZER UNTIL MAY 18, 1978

Arthur walks in naked again. It doesn't matter how many times I tell him. I see him in my periphery but I can't face him. We play this scene one more time. I skirt the perimeter of the room until I can make it to the bathroom to get a towel to put around his waist. Sometimes he blocks the way to the bathroom.

I can't do it today. I've got the towel, but I can't put it around his waist. I can barely stand the smell of him. I hold out the towel and tell him to put it on. He ignores me. I order him to do it, almost growling out the words.

He finally puts it on and sits down to watch television. Today, lesbians who have battled both sexism and prejudice to

become ministers in the church.

THE RENT IS DUE ON THE LAST DAY OF EVERY MONTH

I vacuum around him. I dust around him. I send his filth down the garbage chute. His cards seem to be breeding. I try to put them in places where they will be most helpful. The people ones go by the phone, the diet ones near the fridge and so on. There's a new one on top of his radio in the bedroom:

THE GIRL WITH THE FULL FIGURE IS YOUR DAUGHTER

My throat begins to throb. I search for a reason for my sudden anger. Arthur bumps into me from behind and then I'm staring at the light cover from my room in our old house.

There were two sockets but only one worked. A dim 40-watt bulb lit the room. I had studied it so closely, all the frilly designs etched into it and that pile of dead bugs darkening the centre.

I remember a big mayfly, hearing that zapping sound as it hit the light, maimed but not dead. I could see the shape of its body fairly well through the cover. It twitched for a while and I imagined myself in that strange glass bowl with the savage electric flame roasting me, leaving me too weak to escape.

When I sit down, Arthur sits down beside me setting the right side of my body on fire. I have to move. Make tea. I have to make tea, find the kettle in the kitchen where it is cooler. I have to search for a tea bag but when I find one I just stand there squishing it, sweat from my fist mixing with the tea, staining me.

I leave Arthur's apartment and catch a bus on Hastings which is strange because I drove here. It's a few blocks before I've realized what I've done. A guy offers me his seat and it makes me want to kick him in the balls. This isn't even the right bus. It's an express and it won't stop until Brentwood Mall so I'm committed to a 45 minute bus ride in the wrong direction.

I'm going to get home eventually and when I do I'm going to put on all the locks, pull the blinds and moan quietly into my pillow. For days, if necessary. Everybody is looking at me because they all know how dirty and useless I am.

I'm in the apartment before I can afford to think of it again. Simply this: looking up at the light cover while he did things. Then later, looking up at the cover while he did things and his penis was in my mouth. Choking me. Making me sticky. Later, his lecture on becoming a woman.

Memory hurts. Without it, I can function. With it, I'm lying here gasping for air. What's the point then? With more knowledge I am less able.

There's a tree on East Georgia that I can't go past anymore because the branches are shaped liked erect penises and when the wind blows they bob and dangle like the real thing. It's so rude I don't see how people can have that on their lawns. Why don't more people run screaming?

And I'm fixated on microphones now so that eliminates any kind of concert or lecture. I can't go to the Malcolm Lowry Room on Wednesdays anymore. That's ruined for me. But worst of all is the men around me, men I used to trust, relationships I used to find appropriate and now I just don't know. There is no one who can guide me.

I wish I could go back in time to last month, before that tiny nut of information in my brain cracked open and poisoned everything. I was happy before. At least I think I was happy, which is the same thing.

I can't go back to his apartment now. That seems impossible. One night Cal calls me and starts scolding me for avoiding Arthur. He says if he were here he would handle it himself. He wonders if I can do anything right. He forces me to promise to visit Arthur.

It takes three weeks to get to the point where I can stand stupidly in front of this door again. How can it be possible that I have returned to do kind things for Arthur? What is wrong with me that I am able to do this?

Arthur's out, thank god. I see why he requested extra cards. They're all over the apartment by now. There's guilt as I think of him alone for three weeks followed by anger for feeling guilt.

Among the cards on the table there is an incomplete one which says YOU HAVE. I finish it for him, easily imitating his wobbly scrawl. I reach for a blank card. After twenty I plan to mix them with his cards but it seems better to collect his and throw them out. An hour later, I have replaced all of his cards with my versions.

YOU HAVE NO REAL WORTH.

Cal phones three days later. Something is wrong with our father. Arthur's really shaken about something but he doesn't know what. Cal said Arthur sounded confused and hurt and close to tears.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE ALONE.

I think this is beautiful while I try an appropriate response for a loving daughter. Cal might hear my smile if I'm not careful when I speak. He's flying out from Calgary on the weekend. My stomach clenches as I think of ways to prepare for his arrival.

YOU WILL BE PUNISHED FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.

Everything I can remember goes into my notes, all the things that happened to me, with approximate dates. It's a heavy thing, this feeling of doom, but I'm hoping a script will prevent me from feeling like a child. If I don't have one they'll just roll over me. I'll start crying or become weak.

Cal is worse in person. It's only on the phone that I can distance myself from his insults and belittling. He's a small man with wound-up tension that makes him seem close to violence. Wrinkles that might make other men look wise and gentle make him fierce and severe.

When I open the door to Arthur's apartment, Cal steams toward me with all his force and anger. He holds up a pair of Arthur's underwear and yells at me for the place being such a mess. There is crap everywhere but no more than usual. Cal wants to know how this is possible. Don't I care about our father? How is Arthur supposed to be happy in a mess like this? I have a lot of explaining to do.

I say I will be happy to explain everything and ask them to sit down. My hand is in my purse, gripping my notes. I have been so scared of losing them, or Arthur destroying them, that I made a copy and mailed it to myself.

As I pull out my papers, they sit on opposite ends of the couch, suspicious of what I am doing, impatient for me to start. The notes probably make me look ridiculous but I start reading anyway, without looking up. When I'm finished I wait for a response.

Cal grabs my notes and asks if I've been spending all this time writing short stories, all this time, leaving poor Arthur on his own so I could practise creative writing. And it's not even very good writing. And why would I want to write about some disgusting thing like that? Why would I want to make up all those horrible things about my father?

Arthur calls me crazy, wonders if that's what an education does for you, makes you crazy, makes you talk trash to your father. Cal won't let me have my notes back, holding them above his head as I try to reach them. I'm getting flashes of scenes from a homicide, yellow tape covering the door.

I go for the old suitcase under Arthur's bed because Cal's got to know what a sick fucker this old guy is with his mountains of porn. There's some kiddie stuff in here, I know it. I'd like to see Arthur explain that away. There's so much of it in the old case and most of it's new. This isn't a classic daddy-stash with Penthouse and Playboy going back two decades. This is Californian hardbodies in the open air, bright flash colours, nothing older than a year.

I know he has some kiddie stuff here, he has to. I scratch my way to the bottom of his mess, furious, hysterical. There's a tear in the orange lining of the case and I rip it wider thinking I've found his secret stash.

This must be his unpublished collection. Polaroids with me as a baby and Arthur over me, Arthur with his finger in me, Arthur licking me, Arthur with his cock in my mouth. The colours change so quickly in my head that relief over proof of my sanity is changing to anger as I take the photos into the next room.

Arthur seems jolted seeing the pictures in my hands but he quickly buries the surprise. He's the victim of all this. He wants to know where I got the dirty pictures. Pictures of that young man and that dirty girl. Where did I get those?

I'm standing over him screaming that he's the young man and I'm the dirty girl. He's the dirty man and I'm the young girl. I'm pointing out these two people in the photograph in case he doesn't get it and then there's this tug on my hair. Cal's behind me and pulling my hair until I'm crying with the sudden knowledge of who took the pictures.

There is no one who will help me. There are the two men who pushed me in, standing at the edge of my sinkhole, but they just watch. There's a limit to how long I can hold my head above the muck.

Back out, leave, run from this place. They laugh now and will laugh forever. If mother were alive she would be on my side, protecting me. She must not have known. She knew nothing of what went on because she loved me and would have died for me and that's the truth because I said it.

Karen's mother ends up being the one I tell, not Karen herself because she wouldn't be able to take it in, but her mother because she is solid and can hear this. Tuesday, I tell her, when I know Karen and Roger have gone to a movie. It's raining and it takes about an hour to get it out. If she had been impatient I wouldn't have told her but she keeps pouring cup after cup of tea and makes that the whole focus of the hour, as if it is very important work, which it turns out to be.

When I'm done she holds me and feeds me those stupid, cliche, comforting lines that seem so impotent but actually work, like spells that aren't much to hear but do their magic anyway.

A week later I'm returning to my family of origin. The key still works in the lock. I suppose that means he's not afraid of me, but why would he be?

This is the way he used to approach me in my bedroom, quietly at night, a concerned parent checking on the child. Here I am at last, with freedom and power. I am conscious. He is not. But even as I fantasize a knife near this throat or a pillow over his face, I know I won't do it.

Back in the living room, I look around at the things I have given him to make him comfortable. The rice cooker for his birthday, the fountain pen set, the cordless phone, all gifts from the dutiful daughter, scattered with no particular care.

THERE IS NO MERCY.

Only the VCR seems to have attracted some pride of ownership and that is why I unplug the cables and pull it off the shelf, begin my final evacuation. I imagine the old man looking around his living room, wondering why he has so many video tapes, the problem briefly wrinkling his forehead, then fading.

The Girl With the Full Figure is Your Daughter was published in PRISM international, Volume 36, No 1, in slightly different form. It also appeared on the PRISM website.

Copyright © 1999 Oscar Martens