The Free Daughter

Synopsis

Our family's breakfast shop opened at 4:30 every morning, but my parents always made me wake up at 4:00. They kept saying my brother, Alex Harper, was too young, that waking up early would mess with his growth, so he got to sleep in until school started. On the first day of summer break, my dad brought home a yellow timesheet ledger. Alex worked the cash register for two hours every day, and next to his name, it said thirty dollars. The new part-time worker got paid forty dollars for three hours of work. I worked from before dawn until noon, flipped through the whole ledger, but my name was nowhere to be found. "Dad, did you forget to write my name down?" I asked. My dad was counting money, not even looking up. "Why would I pay my own daughter for helping out at home?" he said. I nodded, thinking he had a point. After all, we were family; we didn't need to keep score. But when payday rolled around at the end of the month, Alex spent his eight hundred dollars on a new pair of sneakers. Dad even praised him for knowing how to earn money. The blisters on my wrist from baking had already scabbed over, and all my mom said was to remember to order two more bags of flour for tomorrow. I used to think they left my name out because I was family, closer than any employee. But then I realized that when Alex worked two hours, they called it helping out. When I worked the whole morning, they expected that from me. That yellow timesheet ledger didn't miss a single dollar. But from the very start, they never intended to recognize the value of my work.