I Am Nina — Chapter 2 — The Spoiled Girl
Elizabeth dies and leaves her father alone with a five-year-old he barely knows how to hold.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
After Elizabeth died, my dad was left alone with a five-year-old he barely knew how to hold.
And he did what a lot of fathers do in that situation. The wrong thing.
He worked away almost all the time. Consulting — that's how he describes it, with a pause before the word (it's the same line I use years later, main story, ch. 9). We moved cities all the time, but always from one nice house to another nice house. Pool, gardener, a woman who cooked, a man who drove.
And every time he came back from a trip feeling guilty for being gone, he came back with a gift. An expensive toy. An outing. A "yes" to anything I asked for.
At nine, I was a little monster.
I'm not going to soften it. I was spoiled, obnoxious, and I thought I was better than everyone. I yelled at my dad's staff when the food took too long. I cried when I didn't get things right away. I treated adults like adults were a service.
I wasn't cruel. It was worse — I was certain. Certain the world worked that way, that I was at the top of it, and that anyone who wasn't serving me was doing their job wrong.
My dad saw all of it and did nothing.
Today I understand why. Back then I just thought that was how things worked.
Once I threw a glass on the floor on purpose because the juice wasn't the right fruit. The kitchen lady came to clean it up. My dad was standing in the doorway, watching. He didn't say anything to me. He just stood there looking at the broken glass on the floor with a face I couldn't read at the time.