My mother stands at the front door with an apron over her skirt. She says the same thing every morning, the same words. Don't tell family business. Looking back one last time before climbing into my father's old station wagon, my eyes beg her to drive me herself. She shuts the front door. I watch as the pretty white house with the big evergreen in the front yard gets smaller and smaller. I want to stay inside that house so badly. I want to sit in the big comfortable kitchen and watch my mother prepare the roast and bake the cake for tonight's dinner. I want to rifle through her apron drawer to find the prettiest ones to try on. 

Instead I am on my way to school, the instructions clear in my mind. Don't tell family business.

I don't tell about the ride to school, the way my father's car smells like the inside of a toolbox. The tools in the back rattle and clank with every bump in the road.  I ask him over and over on the thirty-minute trip to school, Daddy do you feel okay?  He complains of pains in his chest and threatens to have a heart attack nearly every morning. I never take my eyes off  him. I need to be vigilant. I am not allowed to use the word "drunk," but I look for those signs more than signs of a heart attack.

By the time the ride to school is over, I can count on my sweaty fingers the number of times my father has sworn at another driver or pushed his foot down on the gas pedal way too hard to get in front of another car. The tools clanking together in the back, the horns blaring and my father yelling at imagined injustices create a dizzying cacophony in my head. 

When we pull up to the elite private school my mother so desperately wanted me to attend, I am sick to my stomach. My teacher sends me to the nurse where I am invited to lie down on one of her soft beds.  There are two beds in the nurse's office, separated by a floral chintz curtain, each with a large basin on the nightstand. I lean over it to gauge the distance in case my toast does not stay down. The nurse wears a crisp white uniform and a starched white cap. I spend some time wondering how it stays on top of her grey-white bun. I think she is very beautiful, like a grandmother in a storybook. I love her blue eyes and the way the wisps of grey-white hair try to escape from her efficient bun. 

She asks me when my stomach started hurting. There is no good answer. My stomach hurts every time my father is home. It hurts every morning on the ride to school in the old station wagon.  It hurts when the fighting wakes me up at night. It will hurt the night the bottles smash and the gun appears but that is still a few years in the future.

The nurse puts a cold washcloth on my head and closes the curtain. I think I doze a little before going back to my first grade classroom. I missed Show and Tell. I hadn't brought anything to show this day.

And there is nothing to tell.