Natalia

 

“Natalia, what the hell do you think you are doing?”

 

My father’s voice was as angry as always. It ripped through the heat of the kitchen and pierced my ears with its shrill fury. He soon followed, bundling around the corner, his cheeks purpled with rage. The tendons of his neck stood out stark against his flesh.

 

I froze in place. The dolls on the tiled floor in front of me were worn and filthy. Their hair was a matted mess, limbs were missing, and every article of clothing was as threadbare and tattered as the ones I wore myself. It made sense—after all, they’d been fished out of the garbage—but it didn’t matter to me. I loved them anyway, even Eva, the one without a right eyeball. She had a sweet smile painted on.

 

I liked to pretend that my mother had a smile like that. I wouldn’t know, of course. She was gone long before my memories began. Daddy always told me she’d gotten sick of the Chicago winters and she went to California, where it was sunny and warm. But I didn’t believe him. I could always tell when he was lying.

 

I looked up at where he stood in the doorway. He was skinny, hardly any meat left on his bones, though a little potbelly sagged over his drawstring chef’s pants. He walked with a hunched back and a hitch in his step, cursing up a storm under his breath, always demanding to know why his body was betraying him in so many ways both little and big. His hands were scraped raw from years of plunging them into the hot water from the sink.

 

He’d owned this restaurant for as long as I’d been alive. He used to tell me he’d moved to Chicago and found a job working in the kitchen here under the previous owner. It was a rundown Italian joint. We served spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce, lasagna, and lots of other dishes like that. But there weren’t ever too many people who came to eat here. Daddy was always sitting in his office, shuffling through papers and cursing like he loved to do. He knew a lot of curse words.

 

I opened my mouth to talk, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he marched across the distance between us in two quick steps, scooped up my dolls, and threw them straight into a trashcan.

 

“No, Daddy!” I shrieked, clutching at his elbow.

 

He shook me off, then spun around and seized my upper arm between his skinny skeleton fingers. “I told you to wash the dirty dishes,” he hissed. His face was jammed up against mine. I hated looking into his eyes. They were so scary. “If you don’t listen to me, you don’t get your dolls.”

 

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I wailed. Tears were streaming down my face. His grip on my arm was so tight. It hurt. There would be bruises later. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.

 

“Now, go,” he barked, throwing me backwards. I stumbled, but stayed on my feet. He spun on his heel and stormed back out, ranting quietly to himself.

 

Everything was wrong. It was too hot in the kitchen, my arm hurt, my dolls were gone, and the stack of dishes teetering on the edge of the sink would take me years to scrub clean. Daddy always made sure they were extra clean. He’d pluck one up from the finished stack and hold it right up under his eyes. If there was even the tiniest speck of grime or crusted food on it, he’d make me start the whole pile over, no matter how clean all the others were.

 

I sagged in front of the sink. I didn’t want to stand up anymore. I just wanted to lie down somewhere quiet and cool and sleep for a long, long time. And when I woke up, I wanted Daddy to be nicer and smiling.

 

I twisted open the faucet. Water poured out, scalding hot. Steam rose in spirals from the flow. Reaching as high as I could while standing on my tiptoes, I pulled the first plate from the top of the stack, dunked it in the sudsy water, and started to scrub.

 

I pretended all the bad things were like old food on the plates. If I scrubbed hard enough and didn’t cry out when the hot water hit my hands, I’d be able to make it all go away. The plates were so pretty when they were clean. Maybe my life could be that pretty, too.

 

Hours passed as I scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands were swollen and pink. I could hardly bend my knuckles. The fingertips were like little fleshy raisins.

 

It had to be getting close to closing time. There were still a lot of chores I had to do after the customers stopped coming in, but at least Daddy wouldn’t be quite so nervous and mad. He usually calmed down a little bit once the restaurant was empty.

 

I eyed the pile. There were only a few dozen plates left. I figured I could afford to take a quick break. Stepping down from the stool, I tottered to the kitchen door. I pushed it open and stuck my head out.

 

There was a short hallway connecting the kitchen to the main dining room. The sign on the door was flipped to Closed and the few tables I could see were empty, but, for some reason, there were still unfamiliar voices booming throughout the building. Suddenly, I heard a big crash, like plates shattering.

 

I snuck down the hallway and peeked around the corner to see what was happening.

 

At the big booth in the corner, two men in suits were lounging back, cackling. Their suits were shiny and new-looking. I wanted to touch the fabric. It looked so soft and silky. They each had cigarettes burning between their lips, even though smoking wasn’t allowed in the restaurant. Daddy hated the smell.

 

Strewn across the table were dozens of dishes. That was good, at least. They’d ordered a lot of food, so maybe, if I were lucky, Daddy would be a little bit happier tonight. Maybe they’d even leave him a big tip. That would be best of all.

 

“This pasta tasted like shit, Antonio,” said one of the men. He had a thick, bristly mustache and chubby fingers with lots of gold rings. As I watched, he picked up the plate in question and dropped it on the floor at my father’s feet where he stood at the head of their table, right on top of the remains of another broken dish.

 

It hit the floor and broke into tiny shards. Pasta sauce flew up onto my father’s apron and torso. He flinched, bringing up his hands to protect his face. I couldn’t see his expression but I knew he would be furious. Daddy had such a temper, didn’t these men know that? I bet he was about to kick them out and curse at them until they cried, just like he did to me when I was bad.

 

But he didn’t do anything. He lowered his hands slowly. I barely recognized the voice that came out of his mouth just then. It didn’t sound anything like him. Where was the anger? Where were the curse words? The only thing he said was, “I’m s-sorry, Giovanni. It won’t happen again.” His tone was apologetic and sad. He looked down at his feet as soon as he’d finished talking.

 

I was confused. None of this made any sense. Daddy shouldn’t be acting so nice to these men. He was letting them smoke in the restaurant and break his plates and insult his food. That wasn’t very nice of them at all. If I’d broken a plate, Daddy would have shaken me by my arm and sent me straight to my room without supper.

 

“Fuck your sorry,” said the other man. This one was immensely fat, but he had a baby face, skin as smooth and clear as a pat of butter. When he spoke, his cheeks shook like Jell-O. I didn’t like him any more than I liked the man with the mustache. “And fuck your food,” he added. “Giovanni’s right. It does taste like shit.”

 

“Can I, uh, get you something else?” my father stuttered.

 

“You can get us the money you owe, Antonio,” the fat man said. His eyes were squinty and mean. He took a big drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke straight into Daddy’s face. Daddy coughed hard, doubling over as he wheezed. The men all chortled.

 

Daddy tried to talk, though his voice came out raspy. “I don’t have any money to give you right now. I can barely keep the lights on as it is. Nobody comes here!”

 

The man with the mustache cut in sharply, “The Esposito family doesn’t give a fuck about your excuses, Antonio. We don’t care how you get the money. But you better find a way to get it.”

 

My father started to babble. “There’s just no way, I mean, how can I? No customers, food goes bad, and then—” The sharp crack of flesh on flesh rang out, interrupting him. Daddy’s head snapped back. He fell silent, stunned.

 

The man with the mustache, the one who had just slapped him across the face, winced and rubbed his knuckles. “Christ, you’ve got a hard skull, Antonio,” he muttered. “I hate doing that, you know. Why do you make us do things like that?” He tugged on a pair of leather gloves as he stood up from the table.

 

The other man followed suit. As he stood, he swept an arm across the table, knocking off the dozens of half-eaten plates of food that had been sitting there. They slammed into the floor, crashing and smashing apart. Food went everywhere.

 

“No, wait, please,” my father begged, but the skinny man with the mustache ignored his pleas as he gripped Daddy’s neck and swung him on top of the table.

 

“Find the money. Now. We’ll be back soon if you don’t,” he said, pointing a gloved finger in his face.

 

“Okay,” he gasped through the pressure on his neck. “I’ll find it, I swear.”

 

“Good,” the man replied, releasing the grip on his neck and standing up straight. He brushed a spot of pasta sauce from the lapel of his jacket. His nose wrinkled in disgust.

 

“And clean this place up,” added the fat man. “You’ve got a lot of broken shit lying around on the ground. It’s a pigsty.” He smiled evilly. Both men laughed again.

 

I liked them even less than I had at first. They were not nice men. Daddy was mean sometimes, but even he didn’t deserve this. I felt scared. I hoped they wouldn’t come after me.

 

“Should we leave him something to remind him of us?” the fat man asked his friend.

 

The other rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “I guess so,” he sighed.

 

Turning, the fat man plucked the cigarette from between his lips with one hand and grabbed my father’s wrist with the other. Daddy started to struggle, but the mustache man pinned him to the table top. He looked on in horror as the fat man flipped his hand over, exposing his palm, and pressed the lit tip of the cigarette down into his skin.

 

I ducked back around the corner and covered my ears as Daddy started to scream. I kept them covered for a long time.

 

When Daddy limped back around the corner a while later, I saw he held a corner of his apron pressed against his palm. He looked at me. His eyes were round and sad. For once, he didn’t look angry. He just looked so tired.

 

I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t say anything. He sighed and just kept walking.

 

I never did get my dolls back.