The day your father decided he didn’t want me anymore, he put a locked door between me and you, my baby girl.

I didn’t see it coming. I was only gone a few minutes, so I didn’t have my purse or keys, just my wallet and a jar of peanut butter. Goddamned crunchy peanut butter. I’d walked down the street to the Jolly Jug just to get out of the house, just to get out from under him for a minute. Just to do one nice thing for myself.

“Can’t we get crunchy peanut butter for once?” I’d asked him that morning, mesmerized by the monotony of the smooth peanut butter I was spreading onto my toast.

“I hate crunchy,” he said. “You know I hate crunchy.”

“So don’t eat it! We can get two jars! Why can’t I have something for myself?”

I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I know that. It was such a stupid thing to argue about. Such a stupid thing for you to have to hear.

It wasn’t just about the peanut butter, though, and you knew it even then. You were only three, but the fighting had been going on your whole life. When you were four you told me it was my fault we didn’t live with Daddy anymore, because I was the one who yelled. You still blame me.

I walked out of the house before I’d even finished choking my toast down. When I slammed the door behind me, I heard you start to cry. I heard your father singing to you. I didn’t hear the deadbolt sliding into place.

I came back calmer and tried to turn the doorknob. I thought there was a mistake. Or maybe it was a joke. Al played tricks on me sometimes, like the time he hid my glasses and pretended to help me look for them. I wore my sunglasses for three days before he finally came clean. So I pounded on the door and yelled, “Ha ha ha, Al, very funny!” At any second Al would open the door with that gotcha grin on his face and he’d laugh at me. Then he’d take my jar of crunchy peanut butter and put it on the shelf beside his smooth.

But he didn’t.

I went around to the side of the house, where the bathroom window was propped open with a roll of toilet paper. “Aldous! Open the door!”

He came to the window, holding you in his arms. You waved at me and giggled. He shook his head. “It’s always one more thing with you, Sandy. Always complaining, always wanting. I’m done.” He pushed the toilet paper roll off the sill and the window slammed shut.

I took a step back and nearly fell sideways over the garden hose. When I tried to get my balance my palms scraped down the stucco siding of the house, and I screamed, more out of fear than pain, I think. You were on the other side of that window and I couldn’t get to you.

I started to cry. “You can’t keep me from my baby!” I banged on the window. I hammered on the door. I went around to the front and tried to throw the jar of peanut butter through the living room window, but it just bounced off into the grass.

I ran out of the yard then, and back down the street to the pay phone at the Jolly Jug. I called the police. I called my father. I called anyone I could think of to come and help me get you back. When I ran out of coins I went home and slammed my body against the door, trying to break across that same threshold your father had happily carried me across only six years earlier. My shoulder dislocated just before the police pulled up in front of the house. I was crying; you were crying; your father was yelling at me to leave. The police told him to hand you over.

I was twenty-eight years old, and it was the end of my marriage. I didn’t know who I was; I didn’t even know what colour my eyes were. When I was with your father, his blue eyes saw right through me. I fell into them when I was very young, and couldn’t find my way out again. But looking in the mirror, looking deep into my own eyes, all I saw was muck and filth and the reflection of his personality erasing mine.

I can see myself again, now that the divorce is final. I see everything so clearly. I see you come back from your visits with him, laughing a second after he laughs, walking a step behind, always trying to keep up.

I see how even though you’re only six, you’re already so much like him. You always reach for the smooth peanut butter. Daddy’s girl. I watch you spread smooth peanut butter across your toast and wonder how long it will be until you turn on me, too.