I was nine. I remember because on my birthday Mommy had gotten the whole day off of work. I was really excited, because I had the whole day planned out for us. Mommy had, too. Her ideas were different than mine, but I agreed with her because it looked like it made her so happy. So we got into the car, and drove to the City, a huge place to me even now. She took me to the Museum, but not the art one. This one was for families with children. I loved it, mainly because I was with my Mommy.

Let me explain. For all of my life until I was seven, the only person I had in the world who loved me was Mommy. Then I had my Two Daddies, but they never talked to me or hugged me, just watched out for me.

Mommy had to work a lot to make sure we had the stuff we needed, so I didn't see her a lot in the day. I couldn't call out and have her fix my problems. From an early age, maybe five or earlier, I learned that I had to take care of myself with what I had.

Now, what little natural intelligence I had then wasn't much. And if I got into a jam I couldn't fix, I'd have to wait it out until Mommy came home late at night. But over time, that happened less and less. Soon Mommy was treating me like a teenager.

You may ask – wait, if her mother worked all the time, how did she leave care for her daughter? This is where Uncle Bill comes into play. He wasn't really my Uncle, but a friend of the Daddy-I-Never-Knew. When I was very little, he'd leave me in my crib all of the time, watching T.V. until my cries for food, drink or clean diapers annoyed him too much. Then he'd do the least he could before going back to the T.V.

When I got to around four or five, Uncle Bill suddenly took an interest in me. He would always rub his scratchy beard on my face while holding me down, not stopping until I screamed. Or he'd be trying to get me to hug him or sit on his lap and wriggle. One day when I did what he said he pushed me on the couch and held me down with one hand while going for his belt with the other. I was way too afraid to scream, because Uncle Bill had never acted like this!

He was about to take off his underwear when Mommy came home early from work. When she saw what was going on, she told me to go to my room and lock the door. I did, and hid under my blankets until the screaming stopped and the front door slammed and she was saying through the door, "It's okay, you can let me in, now."

She promised me that I'd never have to see Uncle Bill again. The next day was my seventh birthday, when I first saw my Daddies at the park. I saw the Daytime Daddy first, because it was daytime. He was tall and big and had light hair and eyes, and was really pale.

When I first saw him I stopped for a moment. The memory of Uncle Bill was still fresh in my mind, after all. But Day Daddy looked at me and smiled with his eyes before writing in a book.

When it started to get near dark, Nighttime Daddy came. He was tall, too, but skinny, and had dark hair and eyes. But his skin was as white as Day Daddy. He smiled at me, too, when we first met eyes. He then nodded to Day Daddy and sat in the spot the first one left.

Night Daddy looked around a lot more, though I didn't know why. By the end of the day I had put the Uncle Bill incident in the back of my mind, so had forgotten how dangerous people could be.