Tiny Smiling Daddy

Takesha Flowers

Literary Criticism: Short Fiction

January 29, 2008

"Tiny, Smiling Daddy"

Reading Response #3

This story depicts a man who is struggling with his identity issues as well as those of his daughter whom happens to be lesbian. He hasn't come to terms with the fact that his daughter changed from this sweet little girl, into someone that he barely knows. All the while not understanding how he feels about his daughter, and how she truly feels about him. Stew is angry, but he is angry at himself because he doesn't know where he went wrong in the relationship with his daughter Kitty. His attitude toward his daughter is out of pure curiosity, after he received a phone call from his friend Norm informing him that his daughter had written an article about him in Self magazine that he had no idea was published by her. So begins the journey to figure out what the article said, and why Norm would have to be apologetic about the whole thing.

Stew reminisced a lot about the old Kitty and how he loved that part of her life where she was so innocent, and didn't have any clue what the real world was all about, or acted like she knew everything, to Stew she was daddy's little girl. Stew was married, but his marriage didn't seem to fill the void that was missing in his life, his wife was never home, so Stew was usually home by himself, they had one car so he could come and go as he pleased. He really wanted to get to a store to buy that magazine to see what Kitty had said about him. He was so worried about it, that he imagined what the outcome would be. "Maybe she had written an article about how wonderful he was, and she was too shy to show him right away" (pg. 229) He knew better than to think that because he knew his daughter, she wasn't shy, "This was doubtful. Kitty was quiet, but she wasn't shy. She was untactful and she could be aggressive. Uncertainty only made her doubly aggressive" (Pg.229). His memories of the past was clouding his judgment of how Kitty was now, he couldn't see past the fact that she was a lesbian, and had been since she was an early teen, he just hasn't been able to accept it, and at this point he probably never will.

The dreams he has only goes back beyond her twenties, he daydreams about when Kitty was 16 years old as opposed to Kitty the twenty eight year old woman she is now. "He tried to compare the sullen, morbid Kitty of sixteen with the slender self-possessed twenty-eight-year old lesbian who wrote articles for Self" (Pg. 230). Stew and his wife Marsha knew that Kitty was no angel once she got older and had a voice of her own, and it was one that seemed louder then theirs. He recalls many a times walking up on Kitty in the midst of a conversation with one of her friends saying mean nasty things about her mother, "Well at least your mom's smart," said Kitty. "My mom's not only a bitch, she's stupid" (Pg. 231). Kitty was strong-minded when it came to her parents, and that's why they but heads all the time. Kitty was defiant to everything her parents told her to do. When her mother asked her to set the table, she would have to tell her more then once to do it, she seemed to be ungrateful to them because she wouldn't do as she was asked.

Stew more interested in what she said in the article, even though the memories of their past seeped into their now, it didn't matter. He wanted to know why she would publish such a thing and not tell him about it. Maybe it was because she wanted him to see how it had hurt her, to know that she lived with a man that didn't even accept who she was even if she was his daughter. When you have a father that doesn't want to have anything to do with you because of choices you made. Those were things that Stew and Kitty had to deal with; his anger towards her for being gay, and her animosity