Deadbeat absentee, my father banged and drunk force slapped my mother down to find me in my room one night where I wasn't sleeping but reading Ramona the Brave with a flashlight beneath my sheet as a plug-in planetarium on my floor rotated and slowly cast the galaxy in circles against my ceiling, my walls. I heard him thud pound bump into my mother's room, heard him grunt and slam the door, heard him coming for me, shouting my name, "Anechka!" I closed my eyes, wasn't fast enough to pull the plug but got the flashlight just in time. "Look, Anechka!" I opened my eyes. He held a knife in one hand, a pillow in the other. Orion's Belt twinkled against his blade, then along his Texas buckle. He sliced the pillow through its middle. The feathers, they exploded into my room and then my mother got him away and what I did was I finished Ramona the Brave and then read Ramona and Her Mother and in the morning I walked through those feathers on my floor like rose petals to an altar and vowed not to be afraid and in the kitchen where I saw him said, "You're sitting in my chair."