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I can smell the grease on my own face.
     
    My nanna told me that the eyes are the window to the soul. Win-dow-to-the-soul. That is a fat five with bigvowels, and when you say it your lips are mostly pursed, like for kissing. She says I have beautiful eyes. My mum looks sad when she looks in my eyes. I suppose she sees my soul, too. I cannot see Creepy’s eyes behind those big binoculars. I draw him with them, except only with the lenses, so those big black circles become eyes so wide they spill off the sides of his white face. Big as black planets.
     
    Soon my eyes will become so small that my soul will be trapped, and even those big binoculars will not be able to find me. So I draw the only part of me that is still alive and worth looking at. The part Creepy likes.
     
    Of course, that is the part that got me into so much trouble. I did not feel anything while I listened to them calling me dirty. Well, they did not use that word. I wish they had. They used words like indecent and corrupt and pornographic. I think I should have felt something, but I seemed to be all squashed out of the room by everyone else’s feelings. Dad’s embarrassment was as big as a tree and cast a wizened shadow over everyone, as only a very old, very big tree can. I wanted to get home and draw that tree as soon as possible. I could tell my mum felt just a little bit sick. Her face was inscrutable but she clenched her hands, and her pretty blouse was dark with sweat under the arms. I felt sorry for her. I so wanted to tell her she did not have to worry, but, given that shelikes to, I could not take away from her the one thing she is capable of feeling.
     
    When we get home, my dad kicks our cat, Sylvia, across the lawn, then blusters into my room and takes away my paper and my pencils. He misses my little stubs of charcoal, though. I hide them in my doll’s house. They are smooth, and shiny as jewels. I use the charcoal to draw my tree-dad. He is wild and restrained at the same time. The way angry disappointment really is. I like to draw with charcoal because there is no going back, no rubbing out. If you make a mistake, you just chafe at it with your fingertip until the fault becomes a downy shadow, like it was always meant to be there. And your fingers go black like frostbite. And I wonder: would it not be good if in real life, exposure smoothed away mistakes and made them just a part of the background that looks like it was always meant to be there?
     
    I do not show Creepy the drawing of my tree-dad. Instead I draw myself. For him.
     
    I am a disappointment. My parents love me but they are disappointed. It is in their looks at me and at one another. It is in Dad’s treatment of Sylvia. I try not to think about it too much. I roll my little jewel charcoals in my warm fingers and the dust that settles over the picture of my tree-dad reminds me of his face. Dark and changeable. The face that creases his whole body into acurlicue of disappointment just before he kicks Sylvia. Just before he slaps me and screams, ‘What were you thinking?’ And I reply, ‘Thinking is not best,’ and for a moment I think he might cry. Thin-king-is-not-best. Thin-king-is-not-best.
     
    But if you do not think, you do not have a position, and if you do not have a position you adopt other people’s. That is what Nancy says and that is what I do. I am a chimera. I was myself for such a short time that I cannot remember me. The little piece that is me has been swallowed up now by all the grafting; I am Rapunzel’s castle in the brambles. I will take on the thoughts, beliefs, characteristics of whomever I most want to please. I have no personality. Insert what you want and it will become me until someone else more important, or more pushy, usurps you. It takes a lot of work and energy to adapt so completely and so often. Darwin himself would write a book about me. Darwin would think me a miracle, not a disappointment.
     
    I should not complain, really. Nancy