he died before my prom, I sewed my dress from his shirts. Everyone laughed when I walked in—but they stopped laughing when the principal finished speaking.
It had always been just the two of us… Dad and me.
My mother died while giving birth to me, so my father, Johnny, took care of everything. He packed my lunches before going to work, made pancakes every Sunday without fail, and by the time I was in third grade, he had taught himself how to braid hair by watching YouTube videos.
He worked as a janitor at the same school I attended, which meant I spent years hearing exactly what people thought about it:
“That’s the janitor’s daughter… Her dad cleans our toilets.”
I never cried in front of anyone. I kept that for home.
But Dad always knew anyway. He would set a plate of food in front of me and say,
“You know what I think about people who try to make themselves look big by making others feel small?”
“No… what?”
“Not much, sweetheart. Not much.”
And somehow, that always helped.
