In the quiet of twilight, when everyone else was gone, I went out to Dad’s garage behind the house. He was working on our old Ford Ltd.

Again.

Sitting on a stool in from of his worktable, I posited, “Daddy?”

“Yes, baby?” He responded while putting parts together. He’d tried teaching me mechanics, but it didn’t take, leaving him so frustrated that he yelled at me to go back inside and learn how to cook. I can’t cook neither.

“Daddy, I need a lock on my door.” The silence expanded to fill my head with his rising anger.

“What the hell do you need a lock for? You’re not locking me and your mother out of that room. We pay the rent here. Whatever you’re hiding we’ll find out anyways.” Holding the part, he dropped onto the creeper and rolled under the car.

“Daddy, I’m tired of Sam coming into my room without knocking. He comes in when I’m dressing and won’t leave no matter how much I scream. I gotta grab my clothes and go past him to dress in the bathroom.”

The creeper flew out and Dad sat up, looking at me with his crazy eyes that scared me, but I held my ground. “Are you serious?”

I nodded.

He stood up, wiped his hands on a red rag, and paced the room, shouting, “That little sonuvabitch! That little bastard! I didn’t raise no son of mine to be a pervert. I didn’t raise him to be peeping at his sister.” Daddy stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and asked, “He never touched you, has he?”

“God, no! Ain’t it enough that he’s looking at me? That he’s coming in my room without permission?” I hugged myself and shivered, having not thought of that possibility.

“Alright, baby, I gotcha,” he reassured me as he looked for a lock in his tool box. After picking up his drill, he left the garage, me following him inside and down to my room. A simple latch lock went onto my door in a few minutes. Daddy kissed my head and returned to his garage.

That evening, I was reading in our downstairs family room when my brother got home from his after school job. Daddy was waiting for him. Soon as the door opened, he launched into him, reamed him out clean. He didn’t even show up for dinner.

Halfway through dressing the next morning, Sam’s voice boomed through my door, “You awake in there, Serena?” A little chuckle turned into a BAM as he hit the door that wouldn’t open. I stood quietly in front of my closet, one leg in my pants, as he pounded the door and hollered to be let in.

My journal is filled with possibilities of what coulda happened without that little lock.