THE POKER

I smeared my daughter’s body with zinc cream and sat her— a bonneted, white-frosted bun—on the bench next to me. My own skin I oiled with a product that promised to brown it.

When the game was done and the requisite slapping of hands and asses complete, the players emerged with dripping cans of icy beer. My husband took his time. The big russet-haired player, on the other hand—let’s call him Struther—was first to come out. He’d brush past his admirers—the dependable cluster—and head straight for us.

Here they are, he’d say. What can I get for my girls—some pop? A candy bar? Your wish is Uncle Struther’s command!

He was always asking to hold my daughter, and when my arms got tired or I wanted to do something else with them for a few minutes, I let him. But once, while I queued at the snack shack, I looked back and there was something wrong about his hand—how it cupped her bottom, how it probed. Across one huge, ropy arm, her little legs splayed wide. I threw my cigarette to the ground. I flew. I grabbed and lifted, but he held on. My daughter started to cry.

No need to be greedy, Struther said.

But it was a season of pleasure and we mostly enjoyed it—my daughter, my husband, and I. We slept on the screened porch and ate fruit from roadside stands. We stopped at street carnivals to try our luck. My husband was luckier than most—he got our girl a big stuffed horse. We sat with her between us in a giant teacup that spun slowly on its saucer.

Then, after the last game of the year, on a night my husband was out of town, the doorbell rang. Struther was on the stoop. Could he take my daughter for an ice cream?

She’s sick, I said. From the window I watched him walk back to his truck. He started it but sat in the cab a long, loud time before leaving. From the tailpipe came a thin blue smoke I could still smell later, when I sat in the bath.

At work the next day, I picked up the phone. Mr. Johnson’s office, I said, How can I help you?

You can help me with my huge cock, said the caller.

Struther? I said. Is that you?

No, he said, and hung up.

Then I was pregnant again.

Before I started to show, Mr. Johnson asked: Can I use your daughter? She’d sit on Santa’s lap ten minutes while a camera rolled. The commercial would be good for business, he said—and my bonus.

My daughter was lifted, tickled, fluffed. They painted her face. A man carried her across the set like a china vase and placed her on the broad velvet thigh of the man impersonating the fiction I’d recently sketched for her in vague strokes.

He comes into our house at night when we’re asleep, I’d said.

My daughter’s large, dark eyes took in the room. They turned to the face of the man who held her. Beneath his curly white beard, he was a haggard, bloated youth.