Butterfly Kiss – Phyllis Nagy

Lily There's a game that children play when they mean to be especially cruel, and it
goes like this: if you step on the crack, you will break your mother's back.

Sloanie, my father, taught me this game when I was five years old. We're on our way
to Lenox Hill hospital. It's visit the sick mommy day. Of course, she's not … really
sick. She's someplace between pretending and death. But how could I have known
that at the time? It's early April and I am dressed in navy blue. A Sunday. My daddy's
got these … huge hands. Like bear paws. And he takes my miniature Lily-hands in
his paws, and we begin to run. I can't keep up with him. For each step he takes, I
take four or five. I'm terrified of messing my new blue suit. I can't breathe any more
and I think I surely will die. Just as I think I might fall to the sidewalk, daddy
squeezes my hand even tighter and he begins to sing: if you step on the crack, you
will break your mother's back.

Singsong. Extraordinarily rhythmical. So terrified is the young Lily of tripping concrete

cracks. I wish I might fly. But faster, faster we go. And when, at the end of our
sadistic run, I do step on that crack, I know my breath will come no more. I have
killed my mother.

This father of mine will not allow me to hold him. No contact is Lily permitted. 'Baby
girl,' he says, 'my only girl, it's a game.'