What Sally Said

When people ask I say he doesn't hit me hard, my mom rubs lard on the places that hurt, thats why i have brusies and scratches. Or i say i fell down the stairs. But I think to myself asking who would believe me, im sorta a big girl and the way people look at my face probably think she couldnt be falling off the stairs. If i was an animal, that'd be the way he would beat/hit me. I think he's just afriad that i would leave like his sisters did and make the family ashamed. I go to school with a bad full of clothes and a little brown bag of sweetbread that my mama had sent. But then my dad came crying and said please come back, this will be the last time. So I went. I was talking to a boy one day and i guess my father had seen and the next day i didnt go to school and the next, no school. He just went crazy and told me that i wasn't his daugther, and broke our with his hands.