Eva decided to take a hot bath and soak with a good book. This was one of her most favorite things in the world and she could only indulge in it when Daddy was out. They only had the one bathroom. Eva put the little rubber stopper in the drain and started the water. Then she went down the hall to her room and got her tattered copy of A Walk Through Cold Fire. She loved that book, she had read it at least five times.
An hour later she lay in the cooling water totally immersed in Violet's imitation of Debbie in the barroom when there was a startlingly loud knock at the door. She started and dropped her book in the water. “Fuck!” The loud knocking started again.
“I'm coming!”
She grabbed a towel from the linen closet and threw it around her in a hurry. Without a thought for who could be at the door she ran to answer it. A knocking door demanded answer.

Forty five minutes later she set Daddy's plate in front of him on the coffee table. His eyes never left the TV. She returned to the kitchen and ate her own dinner without worrying about Daddy's eyes on her. After a while she heard the front door slam and knew he was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief and began cleaning up the dinner dishes. This was a good night, she had the house to herself.

When the dishes were done and the kitchen was tidy she started her homework. It went very quickly, school came easy to her. She had just shut her Algebra book when the phone rang. As always, she hoped for it to be mother. It was not, it was Daddy's friend Jim.

“Hey there, sugar bunch. Is your Daddy home?”

“No he went out.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, but you might try Mack's.”

“Well, what are you doing?”

She sighed. As she got older, the more Daddy's friends tried to talk to her. She didn't understand why, they had to see it annoyed her Daddy. Hell, it annoyed her. She disentangled herself from the conversation as gently as possible (it wouldn't do for Jim to tell Daddy that she had been rude to him) and thought about calling Beth. She decided against it. Beth would only say something stupid about her Daddy and Eva wouldn't know what to say. This always happened when she talked to Beth on the phone. Beth was a nosy parker and Daddy didn't like her. But, she was Eva's best friend. Her only real friend.

Beth thought that Daddy was too hard on her. She didn't understand all of Eva's imperfections. She didn't understand that he was just trying to help her be better. Beth often embarrassed her with her praise and outright lies about Eva's abilities. According to Beth she was pretty and smart and had a lot going for her. She liked to listen to her friend ramble on about their futures complete with college (yeah right) handsome husbands and two kids a piece. They would have nice little houses with adjoining yards and everyone would finally see how great she was. She knew this was a silly little dream. Eva would probably never get married because she couldn't please a man. She couldn't even make her Daddy happy.

He was a big man, he filled up most of the doorway. He had dark brown hair which often fell onto the wire rim glasses that hid his steel blue eyes. Tonight those eyes were cold as ice and he kept clenched and unclenched his fists obsessively. She wished for a hole to crawl in or a door to hide behind. But there was only the two of them in the confines of their little house on Orchard Street. She had a feeling that if she screwed up the slightest thing tonight she wouldn't get the belt, she'd get his fists.

Eva hesitated, studying his eyes. She knew that she should know what to do, but she didn't. On a day like today (the clenched fists, God, the clenched fists!) Daddy would want a beer, and she should offer him one. But, the beer cans always piled up in the sink and then inevitably she got hit. Sometimes he would pass out before it got too bad. She still stood, indecisive, trying to decide the best course of action when Daddy growled, “What the fuck are you gawking at? God, I can't stand to look at you today. Just go make my dinner, I'm going out.”

Her heart soared. Going out meant she wouldn't have to try to stay out of his way. If she could just pull off dinner he'd be gone until long after she went to bed. She'd even be able to call Beth tonight. Keeping her face a careful blank she hurried to the kitchen and started the meatloaf, silently cursing herself for not putting it on earlier. She went slow because this was not a night for mistakes. It was a night to be perfect.

She didn't have a phone number for her mother or an address. The woman just popped up occasionally with gifts and her glorious praise. When her mother was around Eva felt warm and wanted. But, that was a rare occurrence. Mostly she was alone with Daddy.
Daddy was hard to please despite Eva's best efforts. She was clumsy and slow and stupid, but she tried so hard to get something right. She studied hard, thinking that good grades would please Daddy. They never did. He would sign her report card with straight As on it without comment. Grades B and below were a reason for the belt.
There were lots of reasons for the belt. Burnt dinner, spilled drinks, slow answers all meant the belt for Eva. But, inexplicably, the worst sessions with the belt were always when Daddy felt she had called attention to herself or worse, him. Last month Eva had tripped at the bank and fallen into the little island where businessmen and housewives signed their checks before getting in line for the tellers. A whole sheaf of checking account pamphlets had been jarred off the corner and gone wafting across the room in different directions. Everyone had turned to stare as Eva had dropped to her knees and crawled around the room collecting the pamphlets, one man had even picked up a few and handed them to her. When she stood up she saw Daddy's eyes on her and nearly dropped the little pieces of paper again, his fury was so blatantly stamped on his features. She'd missed two days of school, the skirts she owned didn't cover all of the marks and she didn't want more trouble when some nosy parker (Daddy always called the people who asked about her marks nosy parkers) went digging into what had happened to her legs. If she hadn't been so clumsy and so backward it never would have happened.
Eva was pulled from her thoughts by the slamming of the back door. Daddy was home. She hurried through the house to meet him. He liked to see her when he came home. “Please be in a good mood, please be in a good mood,” she prayed silently. When Daddy was in a good mood life was so much more pleasant. She knew her prayer had gone unanswered as soon as she saw him.

Over the course of her life two things had caused her infinite trouble. The first was her insatiable curiosity (her Daddy said, “she couldn't mind her own damn business.”) Eva didn't know why she always needed to know, she simply understood that she did. For Eva unsatisfied curiosity was like a bad hangnail that throbbed and pulsed. It had to be seen to.
Her second downfall was a complete inability to keep her mouth shut. She suspected this worried her Daddy much worse than her bothersome inability to mind her own business.
She tried, really she did. It felt like the words just spewed out of her mouth involuntarily. She often embarrassed herself and never did herself any favors when she opened her mouth. It was like there was a pathological need to spill every secret, unburden her mind of every confidence. Try as she might to keep her lips sealed she heard herself blabbering away with great frequency.
Shockingly, Eva's mother failed to see these faults. She always greeted Eva with the same words, “Look at my baby girl!” and wrapped her in a bone crushing embrace. Eva always wished that these visits wouldn't have to end, but inevitably her stepfather would look at his watch and grasp her mother's shoulder. Her mother's eyes would cloud over and she would tell Eva that she would see her again soon in a voice that sounded somehow broken. It was never soon though. Sometimes it was merely a month or two, but once it was a whole year.

This is where I'm getting a feel for how readers recieve the fictional work I'm doing. Right now I'm working on a novel. We'll see how that goes.