My Father Stole My College Spot for His Foster Daughter

After seven straight days of running to the post office with nothing to show for it, my father pulled me into the kitchen and let out a sigh.

Stop waiting for it. Your acceptance letter went to Eddie.

She's got no mother, no father. If she gets to go to college, she won't be stuck in this village suffering her whole life. You're different. You're tough, you can stand hard work. You can go work the factory line and still make something of yourself.

I stood in front of the stove, and it was like someone had doused me with well water in the dead of winter. The cold sank all the way through me.

His face darkened, and he started in on me.

"Penelope Fox, Eddie grew up with you. I've thought of her as my own daughter for years. I've already worked it out. Whatever you earn on that line goes toward Eddie's tuition. She's a good girl, loyal. She'll pay you back well someday."

It felt like a coal had been dragged across my chest. But when I looked at him again, I was strangely calm.

"You're right. Since she's your daughter, then from now on, I'm not."

He froze, then his face went red.

"Penelope, what kind of garbage is that? She's just using your spot to go to college. Do you have to blow it up into some great injustice? We're family. You don't see Eddie acting heartless like you."

I didn't answer him. I turned and lifted the lid off the pot, where the pig slop was still cooking.

He strode over and grabbed my arm.

"Let me tell you, you'll accept this whether you like it or not. Eddie's coming tomorrow, and you'll stay home. You don't come out!"

I slowly pried his fingers off and said, easily, "Fine."

Pretending I hadn't caught that he meant to lock me in.

He hadn't expected me to agree so readily. He paused, and then it made him wary.

"You really agree?"

I scooped a ladle of water into the slop, which had gone a little dry, and said evenly, "Isn't she off to college? I bought a backpack in town a couple of days ago. Might as well give it to her, no sense letting it go to waste."

He stared at me for a long while, and seemed to decide this meek act of mine wasn't put on. The corner of his mouth eased. He clapped me on the shoulder.

"That's more like it. You've always been the sensible one. Your dad knows that."

But that same afternoon, he took my household register and my ID.

"Eddie needs them for her enrollment paperwork. Don't lose them."

He didn't look at me when he said it. He tucked both into the inner pocket of his shirt and patted it.

I said nothing.

He stood in the doorway a moment longer, like he wanted to say something, then turned and left after all.

The door shut.

I heard the lock catch outside.

Then his voice, lowered. "Keep a close watch. This girl's got a mind of her own. If she tries to sneak out, you come tell me right away."

Two unfamiliar shadows passed across the window.

Not villagers. Men he'd brought in from somewhere.

I stood by the window watching for a moment, then turned and walked to the old camphor-wood chest in the corner.

It had been my mother's.

The lock had broken long ago. I worked it open with a fingernail.

On top were a few patched old clothes. I lifted them away one by one, and underneath was a stack of yellowed envelopes.

Ten letters in all.

From the time I was eight until I came of age, my mother had left me one every year.

In her day, my mother was the first person in the village to finish high school.

Top scores in the whole school, and still she failed to get into college.

It was Eddie's mother instead, an average student,

Beatrice Swanson, who threw a three-day-and-three-night celebration in the village to mark getting in.

Everyone said my mother jumped because she couldn't bear failing the exam.

Only I knew better.

The day she died, she'd made me my favorite pot of soup.

She loved me down to the bone. There was no way she'd have hardened her heart and left me here alone.

I opened the last letter, and my mother's neat, graceful handwriting quietly surfaced:

Penny, you've always been at the top of your class. You should be getting into college this year, shouldn't you? Mom is so sorry. I won't be there to pin a big red flower on you myself, to set off the firecrackers for you.

Tears blurred a damp patch across the page. I folded the letter and put it back in the box.

Mom, don't worry.

This year's red flowers and firecrackers,

I'll prepare two sets.

My father didn't come home all night.

Early the next morning.

I was still cooking the pig feed when Edwina unlocked the door that had kept me shut in.

She had on a brand-new floral blouse,

the kind of fine fabric you could tell at a glance came from the county department store,

and she drifted over to the front of the stove, half-casual, half on purpose.

"Penny, up this early cooking pig feed?"

"You know, isn't heaven just so unfair? How is it that you of all people failed to get in, and I'm the one who made it instead?"

Edwina stood beside me, all smiles, raising a hand to fuss with her hair so the designer wristwatch on her wrist showed.

"Oh, right. Uncle gave me all the family's ration coupons and cloth coupons to keep yesterday. I took them into town and traded them for some money, bought myself a few new things."

She made a show of smoothing the floral blouse, smug all over her face.

"Penny, guess what? Those ration and cloth coupons aren't worth much at all. They only came to a few hundred dollars."

"Uncle said we might as well sell that plot of land on the hillside behind town too, to scrape together a thousand for my tuition."

I lifted a stick of firewood with the tongs and fed it into the stove, answering flatly, "Oh."

Edwina looked like she'd swallowed a fly. The smile thinned on her face. She took a sip of water and tipped her chin up on purpose to keep going.

"Can't be helped. Uncle says the village is too poor. If I stayed, all I could do is marry off early to some bachelor and pop out a litter of broke nobodies, and there'd be nothing to me for the rest of my life. So Uncle says he'd sell everything down to the pots and pans to put me through school in the city. He told me not to worry about the money. He said he's got it all arranged."

My heart felt like it was being roasted over a flame, burning until it ached.

A small place too poor, no future in it. And yet he had me sitting at a factory line.

And he had me earning the money to put Edwina through college, telling her not to worry about her living expenses?

In that dizzy moment,

I even started to doubt which of us was really his own daughter.

I gripped the tongs tighter, the iron faces rubbing my palm raw,

but my face gave nothing away as I set the firewood steadily into the stove.

Watching the crackling, popping flames, I answered softly,

"That really is wonderful."

Edwina was about to say more when footsteps came from outside.

My father stepped over the threshold, gave Edwina a warm, smiling look, and praised how nice she looked in those clothes.

Then his face went cold and he told me to stop feeding wood so often, that I was wasting it all, before he went on:

"I'm planning to take Edwina on as my daughter. Until school starts, she'll be staying here with us, and as her older sister you can help her get familiar with the material on the entrance test."

The state university wasn't like other schools. Before enrollment, there was an exam for incoming students.

A kind of placement test, really. It had no effect on your spot at the university.

My father had even arranged a small thing like this for Edwina.

Get familiar with the entrance test?

It sounded fine,

but what it meant was that I'd be teaching her, with my own hands, how to impersonate me.

Edwina agreed brightly, said she'd go home and pack her bags, and left.

My father was about to go too. Stirring the feed in the pot, I asked him, like it was nothing,

"Dad, Mom's grades were so good back then. Why did she fail to get in?"

The step he'd taken out the door stopped on the threshold.

He was silent a long while before he said,

"Plenty of candidates fail to get in. Maybe she just didn't want to go to college herself. What are you asking about all this old business for?"

She didn't want to go?

I almost laughed out loud.

My mother had the top scores in her whole school. Going to college in the city was the thing she dreamed about.

How could she ever have just given it up?

I lifted my eyes and looked straight at him.

He rubbed his nose, uneasy, then turned and pulled the door shut hard behind him as he left.

That afternoon he came back on the heavy old bicycle, Edwina riding behind him.

They each carried a woven sack, and not long after they came inside,

the back room filled with the sound of drawers being yanked open and things tossed around.

A moment later Edwina walked out with an armful of things and dumped them on the table.

The enamel basin, the warm thermos, towels, soap, and a pair of cloth shoes I'd just finished sewing the night before.

"This enamel basin's really nice. And I happen to be short a thermos too."

"Penny, all this stuff was for you to take to college, right? Such a shame, you had bad luck and didn't get in. And I happen to need it for school, so Dad won't have to spend money buying me my own."

She chattered on to herself, lifted the cloth shoes for a look, then curled her lip in distaste.

"These shoes are just too tacky. What decade is this? Who still wears these. Throw them out."

She flung them out the door without a second thought, and my heart jumped right along with them.

The letter to the state education board, hidden under the insole, was about to slide loose.

Laurel Lambert, carrying her water buckets, caught the whole armful by sheer chance.

She was about to hand them back to me when I narrowed my eyes and gave her the smallest shake of my head.

Laurel froze, glanced at the strange man standing guard outside our house,

dropped her eyes, tucked the shoes against her chest, and went on her way with her buckets.

"The fabric on these is so good, perfect for my oldest girl to wear out in the fields. No sense wasting it."

Edwina and my father didn't notice a thing.

Once they'd gone through every usable thing in the house, they turned and left.

I lay on the bed and didn't sleep all night.

The next morning, in the first gray light, a fierce argument broke out beyond the door.

I pulled the curtain aside and saw Laurel being dragged back into the yard by my father and Edwina,

and the stone that had been sitting on my chest leapt clean out of my heart.

My father had the opened letter clenched in his hand, his face an iron gray.

"Penelope Fox, I knew you wouldn't stay quiet."

The words were barely out before the two strange men at the door moved.

One pinned my shoulder, the other pulled a coil of rope from his waist,

and in a few quick motions they wrenched my arms behind my back and bound them tight.

The coarse rope cut into my flesh, and the pain made me suck in a sharp breath.

I forced my head up. "Dad, what are you doing?"

He ignored me, crouched to check the knot, gave it two more tugs,

and only when he was sure it was tight did he stand.

"You ask me what I'm doing? Grown your wings, have you, bold enough to write letters and report us?"

"If that letter had gone out, Eddie wouldn't get into college, and you wouldn't have an easy time of it either!"

His eyes were bloodshot as he looked at me,

without a trace of guilt or pity in them, nothing but calculation.

Laurel rushed over with her hair loose, finding the nerve to speak up for me,

only for my father to threaten her daughter's life and scare her off.

As she went out the door, her eyes were still wet with tears.

A sour ache rose in me, but I let out a steady breath.

"Dad, I'll ask you one thing. How exactly did my mother fall from that building back then?"

His pupils froze for an instant. Then his lips curved into a smile.

"She just couldn't get past it on her own. If she'd been a little more generous, not so stubborn, it never would've come to that."

Each word was a knife carving into my chest.

My whole body shook, and even my voice trembled.

"My mother was murdered by you and Edwina's mother, Beatrice Swanson."

The slap landed before the anger in his voice.

"Penelope, I raised you for eighteen years. This is how you talk to me?"

He crouched down, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and yanked my head up.

"Just like your mother. Clamping down and never letting go. Don't blame me for getting rough."

He let go of my hair, stood, fetched a rag and stuffed it into my mouth, then waved at the two men.

"Throw her out back in the pigpen."

I struggled. It was useless.

They dumped me in, and I hit the filthy stone slabs, splattered head to foot with pig muck.

My father stood at the gate of the pen, looking down at me.

"You stay right here. Once Eddie's gone, I'll deal with you!"

The pen door was locked again.

I lay on the cold stone, my whole body unable to move.

I don't know how long it was before Edwina strolled in.

In her hand was the only photo of my mother that still existed. I'd hidden it in my pillow, and she'd dug it out anyway.

She waved the photo in front of my face.

"Your mom was pretty. Shame she couldn't get over herself."

Then she pinched the photo between both hands and tore it slowly apart.

The pieces fell into the pen, onto my face.

I pushed at the rag in my mouth, sobbing as if my chest were splitting, but I couldn't get out a single word.

"Oh, right, Penny."

She propped her chin in both hands and blinked at me.

"Dad arranged a good match for you. Damian Whitney, from the next village over. Honest man, hard worker. The birthmark on his face is a little scary, but still."

"His bride price was a lot, though. Eight hundred. Dad says the money's perfect for my college living expenses."

Eight hundred.

The rest of my life, in his eyes, was worth eight hundred.

Edwina stood and brushed the dust off her skirt.

"Three days from now I get on the train to Columbus. Once I'm at university, you and I will live in two different worlds. You and that litter of little birthmarked kids you'll pop out are only fit to rot in this village for the rest of your lives."

She turned to leave, took two steps, then seemed to remember something and looked back.

"Oh, and those pigs you've been raising. Dad says he'll sell them for my tuition. Once you're married off, all this belongs to your old family anyway."

She walked off, dainty and graceful, and the pen was left with nothing but the pigs grunting.

I braced against the slab and sat up, leaning against the wall.

The rag had rubbed my mouth raw and bloody, and still I couldn't work it loose.

The sky went dark and bright again, I lost count of how many times.

Far off, the firecrackers crept closer, and the cheerful wail of the wedding horns came from the edge of the village.

Damian Whitney, from the next village.

Come to collect me.

I closed my eyes. Tears came on their own, sliding from the corners of my eyes into the dirty coarse cloth of my clothes.

I couldn't move, couldn't speak.

All I could do was stare through the gap in the pen's slats.

Several sets of footsteps drew closer.

Beatrice Swanson, Edwina's mother, spoke first as she came into earshot.

"Damian, you've paid the bride price, sure, but the send-off fee for the bride is another five hundred. Not a cent less."

Damian gave a dull, good-natured laugh. "All right. Whatever you say, ma'am."

Listening to them haggle over me, I clenched my fists in the pen.

Beatrice took the money, and only then did she clack over in her heels and lean down to peer in through the gap in the slats.

"Oh, lord, what a sin. Look how filthy."

She covered her nose, deliberately letting the jade bracelet on her wrist show.

It was the heirloom from my mother's family.

All this time I'd thought a thief had taken it, and I'd grieved over it for a good long while.

I never imagined my father had quietly handed it to her.

"Penny, girl, your mother was just as stubborn back then. Held on right to the day she died. And in the end didn't it all come to me anyway?"

She pushed open the pen gate, walked in, and tipped a whole bucket of cold water over me.

"Come on now, let your auntie wash you up. Can't have you marrying in a coat of pig filth. People would laugh."

"Eddie left for the state university three days ago. By now she's probably already sat through a few classes. You, making a scene out herewhat does it get you besides a harder time?"

"Take your auntie's word. Once you're married, settle down and live quiet. Don't walk the same road your mother walked."

So Edwina had set off three days ago.

I sat straight on the stone slab and curled my hands into fists.

When I said nothing,

Beatrice scrubbed my face with coarse cloth, hard enough to be scouring a hide.

My father stood in the doorway, his voice low.

"Penny, be good. When Eddie's done with college and comes back, she'll pay you and your husband back proper."

"Once you've given the Whitneys a grandson, your dad'll buy you something pretty to wear."

Something seemed to cross his mind, and he paused before going on.

"Today's your wedding day, but I still can't untie you. You've got too much going on behind those eyes. I already had Damian buy a sedative ahead of time. Once tonight's wedding night is done, it's all settled for good."

The rope bit into my flesh, and tears blurred my eyes until I couldn't open them.

Damian stood in the yard with the heavy old bicycle,

that blue birthmark running from his forehead all the way down to his chin.

My father pressed me face-down onto the back seat of the bicycle

and lashed me to it with three tight loops of rope.

Everyone was praising Damian for landing a bride who was obedient and had book learning besides.

They praised me for being dutiful, for earning my father such a fine bride price.

They praised my figure too, said I'd surely give the Whitneys four or five grandsons.

Even the man on the horn blew harder than ever, sending the sound ringing out over everything.

Just as I thought this was how the rest of my life would go,

a black sedan swung around from a little way off,

cut across the gate of our yard, and sealed off the way out.

The horn cut off in an instant.

In front of everyone, the driver got out from behind the wheel, trotted to the back, and pulled open the door,

handing out with great respect a gray-haired old man in a dark mandarin-collar suit.

"Excuse me. Is this the home of Penelope Fox, the county's top scorer?"

The old man spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but every word carried a weight you couldn't quite name.

My father shoved up through the crowd, a smile pasted on his face.

"I'm Penelope Fox's father. And you are"

The old man drew a work ID from his pocket and held it out.

"Homer Dickerson, president of the state university."

He gestured to the middle-aged man at his side.

"This is Harry James, our director of admissions. We've come in person to take Miss Penelope Fox to enroll."