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This car is too big for our abbreviated family. Dad drives, and I sit in the back where he can see me, as if I would budge, just the two of us since the accident that reduced us by half. Beside him is empty. Beside me too. He has a metaphorical way of holding the wheel at twelve o’clock with his left hand backwards like he’s prepping for a hard right or fighting a skid, like he’s shaking his fist at whatever’s ahead, ready to flip the bird. Equally newsworthy, his favorite parking space is alongside any unattended female, and every time we somehow get the checkout line with the cutest cashier. I learn what I observe, not what I’m told. It’s clever for a man his age to tell them what we’re up to, to frame himself a single dad buying game cartridges with his son. When they smile, at him, not me, he appreciates me with gum and batteries. Just once he should tell them why he’s single and who was driving if not drunk then nearly, and who was climbing over the seat to get to the front when we ran into a barricade that was meant to stay put and did. We’re survivors, Dad and I. We flew through the moon roof like superheroes side by side and into the night. I would have been belted in, like now, like Mom and Junior were. Dad never believed in them. The belts, I mean. He doesn’t look at the passenger seat. He doesn’t look at me either. But if he has to brake suddenly, which happens a lot, he reaches back to restrain Junior, when I’m the one who’s sitting here. I don’t get it. The living were always better off without Dad’s kind of protection.
Original Copyright © February 21, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 23, 2026
My stupid sister says she wants to be a Sudanese baby in Darfur so Daddy will love her. Now she’s gone AWOL. Mommy says when we find her this time, she’ll wish she was a motherless orphan. It’s just emotion talking; we’re famously emotional. Daddy’s famous for loving children in Darfur. The kids who disappear. He gets their pictures into the paper. He gets their names “out there.” He leaves the door to his office open, even on sick days, but we know not to disturb him when he’s working, which is always. Even with the interviewer, he was eating just enough to take his pills and with his other hand he was sending emails about missing children. He took over my room for his sick bed and most of my sister’s room for his files and folders. Do you see why I feel like a refugee? she said, last time she left. Daddy gets up early when he goes to bed at all. He says, Evil doesn’t sleep and neither can the truth, and someone who could leak the truth is always at a desk in another time zone. But he should sleep. He’s not getting better, even with our marrow. Me, I’d like a regular birthday with candles and presents. I want to change the world, too, but closer to home. I told the interviewer: Everyone can do something. If teaching Shakespeare is helpful, I’ll do that. See what he has to say about politics. What I should have said: If strongly-worded emails could stop kidnappings, I’d drop out of the eighth grade and save whole villages before lunch. Maybe my stupid sister’s gone to Africa this time. Daddy can get her picture in the paper. Mommy’s crying and I have to wonder why wouldn’t she be.
Original Copyright © January 15, 2007 as Daddy Loves Darfur
Revised Copyright © January 22, 2026 as Daddy Loves Sudanese Babies
Very Short Novels 
This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…