money we'd saved up until she found a job, and then she could apply to a
school. That became our new plan.
Everyone was mad at Dad, which gave him a case of the sulks. He said
he didn't know why he even bothered to come home anymore, since he
no longer got the slightest bit of appreciation for his ideas. He insisted
he wasn't trying to keep Lori from leaving for New York, but if she had
the sense that God gave a goose, she would stay put. "New York is a
sorry-ass sinkhole," he said more than once. "filled with faggots and
rapists." She'd get mugged and find herself on the streets, he warned,
forced into prostitution and winding up a drug addict like all those
runaway teenagers. "I'm only telling you this because I love you," he
said. "And I don't want to see you hurt."
One evening in May, when we'd been saving our money for almost nine
months, I came home with a couple of dollars I'd made babysitting and
went into the bedroom to stash them in Oz. The pig was not on the old
sewing machine. I began looking through all the junk in the bedroom and
finally found Oz on the floor. Someone had slashed him apart with a
knife and stolen all the money.
I knew it was Dad, but at the same time, I couldn't believe he'd stoop this
low. Lori obviously didn't know yet. She was in the living room
humming away as she worked on a poster. My first impulse was to hide
Oz. I had this wild thought that I could somehow replace the money
before Lori discovered it was missing. But I knew how ridiculous that
was; three of us had spent the better part of a year accumulating the
money. It would be impossible for me to replace it in the month before
Lori graduated.
I went into the living room and stood beside her, trying to think of what
to say. She was working on a poster that said TAMMY! in Day-Glo
colors. After a moment, she looked up. "What?" she said.