That Poor Girl by Finnian Burnett

Finnian Burnett has made the2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize shortlistfor That Poor Girl.

They will receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand theirwork has beenpublished onCBC Books.

The winner of the 2023CBC Nonfiction Prizewill be announced Sept. 21. They will receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand win a two-week writing residency atArtscape Gibraltar Point.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions.

• CBC Short Story Prize open for 2024 submit your new fiction now!

Burnett holds a doctoral degree in English pedagogy and teaches English online for a U.S. college. Their writing explores intersections of identity fatness, mental health, disability, queer joy. Finnian's work has appeared in Blank Spaces Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Pulp Literature, and more. Their second novella-in-flash, The Price of Cookies, is forthcoming. They're currently working on an epistolary novel about a trans man trying to reconcile a complex relationship with his dead mother. Finnian lives in British Columbia where they spend their time watching Star Trek, doting on their cat and applying for university jobs in Canada.

Burnett told CBC Books about the inspiration behind That Poor Girl: "The intense and complex feelings my sisters and I carry around our father, especially after his death. We've talked about him, sometimes haltingly. The conversations are hard because we all experienced him differently, some from a place of abuse."

You can readThat Poor Girlbelow.

WARNING: This story mayaffect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.

Forgiveness is the first step on the path to healing, my sister says on the phone because she's at his bedside and he's dying and wants to know why I won't come to see him after all these years. He's coughing up blood, she says, and he has COVID now, too.

Also, time heals all wounds, she says.

Not all, I tell her. Not all.

I need you, she says.

I'm going to throw up, I tell her, and I hang up before she can beg because if I hear her say please, I'm going to cave and hop on a plane.

But I can still hear her begging, so I do cave and I am on a plane and the flight attendant smiles warmly at my ghostly face and says, Is this your first time in the U.S.?

No, I tell her, I grew up there. But I'm safe in Canada now, I want to add, but I don't.

Jamie Lange said my father touched her, I want to say to the man in the seat next to me who looks out the window whenever I turn his way. Who have you touched against their will? I want to ask him. He looks like my father, with a gray beard and an expensive haircut and the confidence of a man who has never been told no. His hands shake when he reaches for his drink and his watchband rattles against the tray table.

Who have you hurt? I don't ask him.

And he doesn't answer. He's silent, absorbed in the thoughts that don't keep him up at night and I wonder if he has a daughter somewhere who doesn't want to come home to watch him die.

Jamie Lange, my father had said. What a piece of work.

And we laughed, all of us, we'd laughed, that poor girl, so messed up to think he'd do anything like that. He laughed with the cop, my father did, laughed about screwed up kids and absent fathers.

That's what the world's coming to, the cop said, and my father had nodded. I try to spend as much time as possible with my kids, he said.

So much time, my sister had whispered.

We'd laughed until our other sister's friend said he touched her, too. And that poor girl, she just didn't realize how affectionate he was. But this time, there was no cop, just an angry mother who had come in for a drink and my father's smooth talk and who could fault him, charming as he was, and so good-looking. No wonder all these girls make up stories about it. The mom left on a wave of laughter, hers and my fathers, and she promised to take her poor confused daughter to therapy.

If there's anything I can do to help, my father had said, and we'd laughed again, but this time, the laughter burned my throat and landed in my lungs, and I had to push out air around the laugh, but poor girl, my father said. Yes, poor girl, we'd repeated, poor girl, so confused.

But then the exchange student from Japan wanted to go home before the school year was over and come here, Aiko, he would say, putting his arm around the back of her legs as she stood awkwardly next to him.

And my sisters and I laughed. Why is he so weird, we asked each other, and how come he and Aiko go to Walmart together so often?

He's a friendly man, we told each other, he loves people.

Girls, I said. He loves girls.

But we all cleared our throats and changed the subject and tried not to remember that my sister said she can't remember anything that happened to her when she was a little girl and how we joked about my uncle being creepy until he was arrested for having child pornography on his computer and how even though we were shocked, we weren't surprised, not really. And after all, the rest of us can remember things, most things, and if something awful had happened to one of us, wouldn't the rest of us know?

It wasn't funny, I say to the man in the seat next to me who still stares out the window and why won't you just look at me, I want to scream, but he has headphones on and I'm not sure what I want him to say anyway. Forgive me. I was wrong.

The flight attendant puts a second drink on the table in front of me and that poor girl, I whisper as she walks away.

The man next to me gets his phone out as we land and his conversation grates over my nerves until I want to scream at him to shut up, doesn't he know that no one wants to listen to his voice, that no one has to listen to him ever again?

Poor girl, I mutter, and I yank my bag from the overhead compartment, striding down the aisle before the plane stops taxiing. His voice follows me, projecting down the aisle. Crazy woman, he says, and people laugh. That poor girl, someone says behind me. And I'm running toward the terminal and back to the Air Canada ticket counter.

Poor girl, we said again, and again, and it wasn't until years later when I told my therapist about him, about them, and, oh, poor girl, she said, and I realized, poor girl, poor girls, I should have said something, spoken up for them they way no one spoke up for me. But I never did. I never said anything, and oh those poor girls, if nothing else, I want to call them and tell them that he's almost dead, that he's in pain, that all he wants is to see my face one more time before he dies.

I'm not coming, I manage to cry into my cellphone from the ticket line, and my sister hangs up crying, too, and it's patently unfair that he's the one on oxygen and we can't breathe.

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.

Read the other finalists

• Glossary for an Aswangby Louie Leyson (Surrey, B.C.)
• Environmental Servicesby Christine Lowther (Tofino, B.C.)
• Black Diamondby Barbara Joan Scott (Calgary)
• The Edge of Changeby Kelly S. Thompson (Colorado Springs, Colorado)

About the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize

The winner of the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and win a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open until Nov. 1, 2023 at 4:59 p.m. ET. The 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January 2024 and the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April 2024.