In the opening chapter, Doria meets with her therapist, Mme. Burlaud, as she does every Monday. Doria tells the reader that Mme. Burlaud is old and ugly but “harmless.” Mme. Burlaud has Doria look at pictures of “huge blobs like dried vomit,” presumably a Rorschach test (1).  

Doria’s teachers at school, who are “between strikes for once,” recommended she see a therapist because she has become withdrawn since her father left six months earlier (1). Doria’s father, whom she refers to as the Beard, has gone home to Morocco, to marry again and have a son, as Doria’s mother has been unable to have any more children. Doria is acutely aware of having disappointed her father by being a girl. Doria recalls her father simply walking out one day as she watched The X-Files. She imagines the traditional baptismal ceremony back in Morocco for her father’s new son, complete with the sacrifice of a sheep.

Doria concedes that Mme. Burlaud is “pretty smart,” because she doesn’t believe Doria when she says she doesn’t miss her father. Doria insists that her father’s absence isn’t a “big deal,” as she still has her mother, even though her mother is so withdrawn that she seems absent as well.