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“Angela from 2B says her dad is the messiah and when he rules the world and makes her a goddess she will send us all to superhell.”
“What? She can't do that! You're lying!”
“No, it's true! See, she showed me-”
—
Seven years old might be too young to achieve godhood and rise above mere mortals, especially considering how she still needs her parents’ help with basic multiplication (it isn't her fault that the numbers don't make sense, and she knows from experience that Ben will do pretty much any homework she brings him if she just bats her eyelashes a little bit, or complains of a sore wrist or tired eyes), but Dad says that anything is possible if she dreams big and puts her mind to it, and he's a god, so she trusts that he knows what he's talking about.
Seven years old might also be too young to achieve a proper haircut all by herself, but Dad says that the strongest leaders are those who can take matters into their own two hands without fear of failure, and Angela is afraid of neither kitchen scissors nor the gallon of white paint she had to sneak out of her Mom's studio when she and Ben had been busy preparing dinner - string beans, by the smell of it, perhaps the only thing on God’s green earth that Angela is scared of, though she won't be admitting that weakness to her Dad any time soon; demigod children eat their greens, probably.
She tries to remember his exact hairdo as she snips and tugs away at her bangs, or at least the hairdo he's described and drawn out for her - Dad isn't a very good artist, not like Mom is -, the scissors threatening to slip from her grip around their handle, now spotted white with acrylic. It stinks a little. She doesn't look very forward to slathering that all over her head.
This Dad isn't her only dad, and technically he's not her actual dad, if Ben and Mom and… well… Dad are to be believed, but he lives in her dad's body and he doesn't mind the title, so, to Angela, he's Dad. The other Dads aren't really dads, and she's taken to calling them other things, like Grandpa and Uncle, to help differentiate between them, because they're both old and look kinda sad, and she doesn't want to confuse them and make them even sadder.
Regular Dad, the one Mom and Ben love, the one that Angela calls Ayin when she's mad and wants to irritate him, and the one that usually drives Angela to school and puts her to bed, unless he's having one of those days where he stays in his room and doesn't talk much, says that this Dad's name is Adam, attached, more often than not, with some billion trillion warnings not to listen to anything he says or take his advice should she find herself speaking with him. His words fall on deaf ears, however, as Angela refuses to let boring adults hold authority over her, and Adam always speaks of world domination and eternal power and all the candy she could ever ask for, which are ideas infinitely more appealing than homework or the same old bedtime stories her regular Dad tries, and fails, to catch her attention with every other night. She hasn’t been seeing her regular dad very often, lately.
She sets the scissors down less than carefully - they make a loud clank as they collide with the sink and for a moment she worries she’s going to get busted - and raises her head to admire her work in the bathroom mirror. Chopped up bangs rain small hairs down on her lashes and into her eyes, forcing her to have to aggressively blink multiple times before she can make out her image through the tears they've elicited. Once she's deemed herself satisfactory enough for godhood, she reaches out to dip her hands into the container of paint, playing around with it for a bit and drawing smiling faces on the mirror in front of her, maybe, just maybe stalling a little bit before she has to put it anywhere near her face. It still smells bad. She holds her breath and thinks of how proud her dad will be when he sees her next (the cool Dad, the god, you know? Not her normal father, who, anyways, has apparently remarried to his job and bedroom recently and has been horribly neglecting his precious only daughter), and that gives her courage enough to start the unpleasant process of pouring the viscous sludge over herself.
She's only gotten through half a head of hair, paint running down her face and staining her clothes a bright white, one pair of fingers holding her nose firmly closed in disgust, before the door swings open on her and reveals her dad hovering in the entrance to the bathroom - her actual dad, she's learned to recognize him, now, from the way he holds himself - with a horrified expression plastered over his face. Angela immediately hides her hands behind her back and tries to flash her most innocent smile, which is more of an awkward grimace than anything resembling the look of someone in delight. Paint drips down her face. It splatters to the floor. She braces herself for a scolding.
“Angela, what- Is that Carmen's paint? How did you even carry- Good Lord, what did you do to your hair? Come here, let me- Did you swallow any? Your face is a mess… I leave you alone for one hour- Come here, spit-”
Angela lets herself get carried off the stool without much protest, because her skin is starting to itch from the acrylic already drying across it, and because Dad rarely carries her anymore - something about her being too heavy now, his back getting weaker with age. She doesn't think her dad is very old, at least not when he isn't Grandpa - then he's super old, ancient, like, older than thirty -, so she's started to suspect he might be lying to get out of his duties as a dad (the duties being, obviously, princess carrying her around the house). He heaves out a small breath as he hoists her up and makes her spit in the sink, then gargle water, then spit again, even though she hasn't drank any paint, she's not stupid, but she plays along and does as she's told.
She likes her dad's strong arms, she likes being tall and held up high, she likes how stable and safe she feels when he holds her. Angela's missed this Dad. Ben and Mom haven’t been letting her talk to him as much these past few weeks. He’s always at work, or he’s always unwell. You’ll get sad, they say, he’s not here now, they say, he’s tired, he’s dealing with a lot, let him rest. Angela doesn’t understand at all, Dad has always been this way and she has always been fine hanging around him, whenever he’s actually there, anyway, but, as of late… It’s been bad, Mom had told her one morning while spreading butter on Angela’s toast, after Angela had asked for the umpteenth time why her father hadn’t tucked her in again the night before, it’s not your fault, darling, but Dad needs to be alone for a little while. This stuff will happen, from time to time.
“Rinse your face off, God, your hands are all dirty as well… How did you even manage this- Here, soap. Remember, count to twenty. Clean under your nails too, good God… And will you tell me what exactly compelled you to paint yourself white at eight in the evening?”
But Angela doesn’t want this stuff to happen from time to time, doesn’t want this stuff to happen at all. Only the last couple of days has her father actually come out of his room for more than two hour intervals, gone to work, watched TV with them, but even then, he hasn’t really been himself, hasn’t really been much of a dad, her dad. She’s spent more time with the others than him, and while, normally, she doesn’t mind them one bit, normally, she tends to cry and beg for Adam to come forth and entertain her whenever she’s bored instead of her actual father, this hasn’t been normal. She misses normal. She misses Ayin, who gives her screentime limits for her cartoons, who makes her practise addition and subtraction until she dozes off on the page, but only on purpose, only so that he can carry her to bed and kiss her goodnight, who takes her to the park and tries to keep up with her games even though she can tell he always has trouble following.
An internal count up to twenty, then arms, then face. Angela hums a song and kicks her feet as she watches the soap bubble and go in circles round and round the drain, all the while her father struggles to support her weight, shifting her slightly in his arms and looking on in thinly veiled despair. When he reaches to set her down and inspect her hair, however, she flinches so hard he nearly drops her on the marble, grown wet with the soapwater dripping from her face and elbows.
“Not my hair! I'm not done yet!”
“Angela, what are you talking about? You're getting in the bath right now, I'm not letting you sit with that on your head. God knows how much of it has seeped into your skin already…”
“No, no!” She thrashes in his embrace and clings to his, now thoroughly soaked, sweater like a lifeline, pressing as much of her body as she can against his chest so he doesn't even dare think about letting her go. “I'm not going! You can't make me!”
“Angela, for God's sake, you're going to rupture my spleen, I can't carry you like I used to-”, which only makes her latch her little arms around his back tighter, as tight as she can muster with her limited reach, and her knee lands a kick to his diaphragm that almost makes him choke. “Ow! Angela! What's gotten into you today?”
“Don't put me down, don't put me down! Ben still carries me! Mama still calls me Angie! Why don't you call me Angie anymore? You're always gone somewhere! You've always got more important things to do! And when you're here, you're not!”
“Angela, wait, slow down-”
“You don't like me anymore! You're always busy or hiding! You don't wanna see me! Only the other Dad plays with me! You hate me! I'm not going in the bath, I'm not going in the bath! You're gonna leave again! They’ll tell me I can’t see you again! Because you’ll be all sad and tired and not you!”
Dad's face looks all wrong now, and Angela, through bleary eyes, can tell she's hit a soft spot, and she's hit it hard, even though she's yet to understand why Dad always gets so sad whenever she mentions the other Dads. He gives up trying to untangle her from himself, which is good because she doesn't have any strength to keep fighting him, only repositions his arms underneath her and cradles her closer. She can hear his heartbeat if she focuses hard enough, right next to her temple, fluttering spasmodically inbetween his troubled breathing. Why isn't Dad breathing right? Angela tries to match her breaths to his, to calm him down, but she gets lightheaded quickly and has to keep herself from being sick all over. A hand travels upwards to rest in her hair, crusted with paint and heavy with the scent of acrylic.
Angela can feel the faint spasm of shaking fingers over her skull. She doesn't dare move. She doesn’t dare breathe any deeper than her lungs deem strictly necessary.
Now, they’ll take her away, for sure. She’s made her dad upset when he’s already been so bad-
“It's okay… it's okay. You're okay,” and she startles, not quite sure if he's saying this to her or to himself, “I'm sorry, Angela… I'm sorry I've been so busy, I'm sorry I haven't been… present… Don't cry, it's okay. I'm here now, okay? Your Dad is here, I've got you, I'm not going anywhere. I'll carry you more, if you want to, I'll carry you on my shoulders again, remember, when you were little? I'll call you Angie again if you want to, I’d thought- I'd thought you would be embarrassed, that you're too old- It's alright now. I'm sorry. I'll sit you down on the sink now, yeah? I'm not leaving, I promise you.”
She allows him to place her gently on the rim of the sink, despite wanting the hug to last years, years longer, because the wet spot on Dad's sweater (from the water, not tears. Definitely not tears. Angela is a big girl, she doesn't cry.) has started to feel unpleasant against her cheek. She wipes the water from her eyes and sniffles, vision blurry, regarding her Dad with curious sympathy as he also wipes what is clearly water from his own eyes. An awkward silence falls, which Angela tries to fill by turning the tap on and off, over and over. Dad is not good with his words, she knows, that's more Mom or Ben's thing. As the seconds stretch into minutes, part of Angela starts to worry he's slipped off again, the way she’s seen him do, sometimes, and whenever he eventually comes to it isn't him but someone else, though he promised her he wouldn't be going anywhere this time, but then he clears his throat and he's still her dad, and all is well in the world.
He pats the top of her head and she stares up at him. His fingers are smudged with paint and dried ink. Angela wonders whether he might be angry with her. She wonders whether he’ll tell Mom.
“Feeling calmer? No more tears, alright?”
“I wasn't crying.”
“Okay, okay.” A pause. Another faraway look. Another missed beat of Angela's heart. Don't go. “I know… you know I don't do… this… to hurt you, or punish you, or-”
“I know.”
“Life… work… everything has just been so hectic…”
“I know. Mom and Ben told me.”
“And the stress, it's… I haven't been… It gets like this, sometimes, it will probably get like this again, maybe better, maybe worse, and I regret not having warned you sooner, but you were so young, we didn’t think you’d understand…”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You know. But you shouldn't have to know, Angela, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for ever making you think there could be a chance on earth that I wouldn't love you. If it was within my power, if it was something I could control, I swear to you I would spend every moment I could with you, with Mom, with Ben… It wouldn’t be like this if I could help it. Do you believe me? Angela? Look at me.”
She holds her gaze to her hands in her lap, little hairs and flecks of paint coating the undersides of her fingernails. Angela picks at them absently, she doesn’t mean to be difficult, but once you’ve started, it’s so hard to stop. She wants to bring her fingers to her mouth and bite, but she knows that's a bad thing to do, a bad habit she needs to break. Mom scolds her when she catches her doing it. She’s too old to still be finding comfort in chewing her nails.
“...I missed you. I missed when you're just… Dad. My dad. Grandpa and Uncle are nice to me, and D- Adam is super cool, way cooler than you are, but I want my real dad now. When will you be my dad again?”
“Angela… Angie, I'm always your dad. I never stop being your dad, even when it looks like I'm gone. Even when I'm not here, I'm still with you.”
“But I don't wanna know that you're around! I want you to be around! I wanna play with you and go to the park, and go on trips with Ben and Mom and you, the real you, not any of the people in your head!”
Maybe she’s harsh. Maybe. But multiplication is difficult, and Dad is good at math, way better than Mom or Ben, and she wants them to solve her exercises together.
“I know. I know. I try. I'll try, okay?”
“And I want you to carry me more. You can! You just did!”
“Angela, my-”
He pulls a face. Angela ignores him.
“And I want another hug. The others don't like hugs. None of them hold me! It sucks! Can't you tell them to hug me more?”
She's lifted up into the air once again, this time without warning, giggling and with her feet kicking the air, and she wraps her arms around her dad's neck and buries her face in his shoulder. He smells like work and Mom's shampoo. When he speaks, his voice reverberates through his chest and into her own, making her ribcage feel all funny, like when she’s listening to music too loud and the bass tickles the inside of her abdomen.
“Yeah. I'll tell them.”
“Mmm.”
“Angela.”
“Mm.”
“You still haven't told me what you were trying to achieve with that paint bucket. And you've made a mess out of the bathroom. Ben just cleaned yesterday, he's going to kill me.”
“Adam said,” and Dad definitely groans at this, but she pushes forth, “that white is the color beti- befi- The color that gods should wear.”
“Of course. Of course he's somehow involved in this. How many times have I told you not to listen to what Adam tells you? The only thing you're going to achieve by pouring paint down your head is rashes on your scalp, and I know for a fact I'm going to have to be the one to answer to your mother for it.”
Angela pulls away, annoyed that her insolent father dare question the wisdom of the heavens, and he probably predicts another kick coming, because he sets her down and crouches on one knee, instead, so he can look her in the eye.
“But I wanna be like Adam! He says he'll make me god! He says we're gonna rule the world together, and-”
“And Adam is delusional, and you shouldn't-”
“You're so boring! Adam is right, you'll never become a god.”
“He told you that?”
“Did too! He said you're boring, and dumb, and, and, and ino- incop- inocp-”
“Right, okay. How about this,” her father holds a finger up to her nose to catch her attention, before she's managed to call him iconpetent, whatever that means, “We speak with Mom and Ben and we'll see if we can dye your hair white. But only for a little while, okay? And you have to promise not to steal any more paint from your mother's studio. It's not a toy.”
“You'll turn my hair white? For real?”
“Only if Mom agrees. And only if you agree to take a bath. We need to wash that stuff off of you, it's bad for your skin.”
Her scalp has started to itch now, too. A bath sounds… kinda good. Warm water and soap.
“Okay. You swear, though, right? Pinky promise? You can't break a pinky promise.”
“We have to ask your-”
“Pinky promise me.”
Dad lets out a sigh of what might be resignation as Angela makes to link their fingers. There, now. She'll be a god soon, for sure. And gods don't have to do multiplication exercises. Probably.
She'll have to ask Adam.
The water runs scolding hot in the bathtub, filling up the room with steam and condensation, little drops of moisture clinging to the mirror, the windows, her hair and clothes. Angela shakes herself out of her shirt, drenched in white and most likely a washcloth-to-be, and goes to retrieve her rubber duck from the cupboard under the sink, when her father suddenly reaches out to yank at her arm, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“What's all this- When do you even find the time to vandalize your body like this?”, referring, presumably, to the permanent marker tattoos adorning the entire length of her left arm. They aren't as cool as the ones her other Dad has, obviously, but she had to work from memory, and for that, she thinks, it's pretty decent work.
“Adam says that this is how I'll-”
“You know what? Actually, I don't want to know. I don’t want to know what Adam’s been telling you. Right, jump inside. Let's see if we can scrub… all that off before anyone sees and thinks I'm tattooing my child. Stars above.”
Angela hops obediently into the tub and lets her dad struggle to rinse the now completely crusted paint out of her hair and face, splashing her toys around the water and trying to decide what mandatory rules she wants to enforce when she and Adam conquer the world, inevitably. Her first order of business, she thinks, as god, will be to ban all string beans everywhere, forever.
She doesn't worry about the tattoos. She can remake them, even better, later.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you love me?”
“I do.”
“Okay. Cause I love you too.”