“But I had already killed him over and over in my mind.”
This quote struck out to me because you can really feel the hurt that Nadia was feeling. Even though she had already created and anticipated this horrible image of her father when she met him she did not feel the kind of hate towards him that she had thought. This reminds me of when you are crushing on someone you create this personality for them in your head and when they don’t meet those expectations you had of them you are disappointed that they are not who you thought they were. She may feel angry with her mother who stimulated this false narrative of how he chose to abandon them.
I agree with your interpretation of this passage. I found that her thoughts on how she “killed him over and over”, was a way to justify the reasoning behind her father never making contact with her as well. She used this as an explanation for her behavior for not attempting to contact him, which really shines on her “innocence” or her longing to have been able to communicate with her father. In relation to the latter part of your post, I would say that she tried to create this reality where her father was not alive as an ideal reason behind him never contacting her, so as to not be disappointed. I do think that her father did choose to abandon them which the mother was right about, as it states he learned of his daughter’s presence when she was a teenager, and would rather take care of hundreds of kids rather than one.
In response to your post Sharielly, I feel that before she was given the information that her father did not know about her by her mother, it was sensible for Nadia to imagine his death and her killing him. She was told her abandoned her in order for her to stop questioning his whereabouts and stop her from looking for him, had she known he did not know about her, her attitude and behavior towards him would have been completely different. Instead of wishing death upon him, she would continue to search for him in order to experience what it feels like to have a father figure in her life, and say the word “Papa” endlessly instead of just one time, at his death site.