Molly Was a Good Girl
Number 3
I played up my position in the family completely. I was the quintessential little girl, all dolls and pink and flowers. I was my mother’s manikin, my father’s baby girl and my elder brother’s princess. I wasn’t spoilt- we weren’t nearly well off enough for that- but they certainly treated me like an expensive china doll. This sounds perfect, but I always hated it; because of Dury. Dury was the awkward child. He didn’t like playing football with my father and brothers, he didn’t play with other boys, he locked himself in our attic room and the only person he would ever open up to was me. My parents would despair- they signed him up for countless sport teams, trying desperately to make him into a normal boy. All he wanted was to be left alone. I will always remember what he said to me one night when we were both lying awake in the darkness;
“I am so jealous of you, Molly. You have this amazing ability to conform to what everyone wants... I wish I could be what everyone wanted. I have tried and tried so hard. Life’s going to be amazing for you, sis, if you keep this up.”
So, that is the reason why I stayed exactly the way everybody wanted me to be. I didn’t go to any of the parties that it seemed mandatory for my brothers to go to. I turned down all offers made to me by boys (these got more and more frequent every year. I think they saw me as a challenge- I was just as pretty as the slutty girls who had had sex by the time they were 13, but for some reason I was harder to get than a pink spotty elephant. They christened me Miss Icy) and I was at home every day by 5 o’clock. I spent the weekends with my mother, cooking and cleaning and learning how to be a good housewife. I wore dresses, and I only had one friend.
Anna. I hated that girl. I hated how effortlessly perfect she was. It took all of my strength and willpower to stay the way I was, but for her it was as easy as the apple pies she made every Sunday. But, she was the only girl like me in my school, and she didn’t offer any temptations whatsoever. In fact, far from that, she was a challenge. We were constantly trying to outdo each other- who could bake the most delicious baked goods, who could decorate a room better, who could make the prettiest party dress, who could play Moonlight Sonata on the piano well enough to make somebody cry. For 16 years she was my bitterest rival, and my only friend apart from my beloved Dury.
“I am so jealous of you, Molly. You have this amazing ability to conform to what everyone wants... I wish I could be what everyone wanted. I have tried and tried so hard. Life’s going to be amazing for you, sis, if you keep this up.”
So, that is the reason why I stayed exactly the way everybody wanted me to be. I didn’t go to any of the parties that it seemed mandatory for my brothers to go to. I turned down all offers made to me by boys (these got more and more frequent every year. I think they saw me as a challenge- I was just as pretty as the slutty girls who had had sex by the time they were 13, but for some reason I was harder to get than a pink spotty elephant. They christened me Miss Icy) and I was at home every day by 5 o’clock. I spent the weekends with my mother, cooking and cleaning and learning how to be a good housewife. I wore dresses, and I only had one friend.
Anna. I hated that girl. I hated how effortlessly perfect she was. It took all of my strength and willpower to stay the way I was, but for her it was as easy as the apple pies she made every Sunday. But, she was the only girl like me in my school, and she didn’t offer any temptations whatsoever. In fact, far from that, she was a challenge. We were constantly trying to outdo each other- who could bake the most delicious baked goods, who could decorate a room better, who could make the prettiest party dress, who could play Moonlight Sonata on the piano well enough to make somebody cry. For 16 years she was my bitterest rival, and my only friend apart from my beloved Dury.