The loneliest colour

"Dad?", she asked, peering from behind the curtain separating the living room from the rest of the house. Not that anyone did much living in there since her father was rather strict about the noise. He didn't like people talking over each other, raucous laughter, running anywhere within two miles of the boxy television set or switching to any channel except the one he wished to peruse at that particular instant. He didn't like fart jokes, games that involved physical contact, his daughters or anything else for that matter. Didn't like them but loved them, or so they say.

"Dad?", she repeated. He never did listen to her the first time around. Wasn't deaf or anything, no nothing of the sort. Yet on a good day it took five tries minimum to get his attention. He had better things to do, far more pressing than his tiny daughter.

She took a deep breath and considered raising her voice just a notch. She had work to do, his help was required, she couldn't simply keep squandering time away waiting for him to look away from the television's futile babble. Her dislike for loud voices and coarse manners won out; nothing was ever so important that she'd forget her p's and q's. No, she was seven now, she knew better.

Didn't mean the thud of the science textbook couldn't do the talking for her.

He looked up at her, then back at the book. His manner was as disinterested as ever, but his pride had lit some small spark of curiosity within.

"Listen," she began, rather self-importantly, pleased with herself for she had managed to catch his notice without being reprimanded in the way she had gone about doing so.

"Mom's busy talking to some patient or something so she can't help me but I really need to understand this chapter by tomorrow. It's a whole three pages but it might as well be a thousand for all the sense it makes to me. So I need your help. Will you help me? It won't take long, I promise; all my teachers say I'm a fast learner."

She rattled off her purpose in a single go, just as she had rehearsed for the last five minutes in her room. Her father didn't talk to her much, probably because he never had the time. And here she was, gambling it away in so juvenile a manner. Solemnly, she decided to make this session as short as humanly possible; she'd fire up all those neurons and make his work easier, so he wouldn't end up wasting too much of his time on her.

He grunted and flipped open the book. He did that thing where people lick their fingers then turn the pages, a habit she found repulsive but thought it wiser to keep her thoughts to herself. She could see his big hands skimming through the chapter in question, a physical marker of him ingesting what he had to teach.

She drew up a small orange chair (her favorite; of course her sister had wanted it but being the eldest came with perks attached) next to the coffee table and opened her notebook eagerly. Her pencils were sharpened, she had a ruler and an eraser: some small corner of her believed that if she worked her hardest, she'd eventually make him proud. Second graders gotta do what they gotta do, y'know.

However, ten minutes in and things weren't looking so peachy. She was struggling to understand it; his voice seemed to rise an octave everytime she said asked him to repeat. His fingers were rougher with the book now, flipping the same three pages back and forth, jabbing the concepts as if his fingers could teach her brain the link between them.

It was overwhelming. This had been a mistake.

"Could you explain it once more please?" she asked, misty-eyed but resolute to not cry come hell or high water (her father absolutely despised crying, especially when he hadn't given you a "reason"). He had switched to yelling in the last minute or so and while it absolutely terrified her, this was going to be on the test tomorrow. 

Everyone knew, good grades equal good child.

He snatched the notebook from her and roared; the kid swore she saw the windows rattle. His voice drowned out the television now, it drowned out everything. Panic set in, so she did what panicked children do. She started crying.

But silently, for he did detest noise so very much, so very much indeed.

Silently, with blurry eyes and a frightful case of rather sudden hiccups, she tried to get her textbook so she could leave. She leaned out of her chair, trying to reach her book halfway across the table; being short was certainly not doing her any favours.

The next thing she knew, he had a vice-like grip on her chair and was screaming about how she had better sit back down this very minute so they could get on with their work.

Enough.

"My work." she said quietly, trying to subdue the sniffles long enough to speak properly. This was no time to be a child.

His eyes widened and so did his jaw, but that went right back to flapping; yelling, shouting, intimidating, doing what he knew best. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered something small and orange crashing against the far wall (nowhere near the television, oh heavens no).

But the fear was gone. In its place was a cold, seething fury, far detached from emotions present in your usual kiddo's lexicon.

"I will not be treated this way by anyone. You will never treat me in this manner ever again. You will never teach me again; I don't need help from anyone but myself from now on. I don't need a father if this is what fathers are." saying so, she walked out, her textbook held firmly in one hand, the other wiping the endless tears off her face.

She hated the way he made her feel. She hated that she had given him the right to make her feel this way. She hated herself for crying, for being too slow to keep up, for being a disappointment. She hated herself for hating him.

Exhausted, she settled in to teach herself the chapter. Math homework was next.

On her way out the next day, she saw the orange chair in splinters and hid a grimace.

When she returned, with a perfect score on her test clutched in one hand and a newfound sense of loneliness in the other, she saw that the chair had been removed. Presumably by her mother, so as to discard of the potentially hurtful shards and splinters.

The child handed her the test paper told her that she needn't have bothered; it was her chair, she could very well remove it by herself. She didn't need help.

Plus, she decided, she never liked the color orange anyway.

Note: this might be the first of a three, four part series of short stories. i dunno really, depends if it's worth reading. if it's worth writing. eenie meenie we'll see.