My mother hid the cross in a small triangular box covered in mirrors I saw her retrieve it one day as the late afternoon shadows skimmed warmly across her hair I was only five My father was the man who shook the table Oil wells and such I needed a passage I escaped that summer in my sailor dress Down to the water praying "good girl" baptised in the ditch I don't know when He discovered it was gone I returned before dinner Satan punished me that night with a belt.