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Entry tags:
a narrative
When she starts school, she learns to love books. It takes a while for her to learn to read; it's a skill neither of her parents thought to teach her, and when the other kids talk about having stories read to them, she makes up lies, remembering the titles they talk about. One day they catch her out on the lie, when she doesn't know how Where The Wild Things Are ends, and that's how she ends up in the library, reading the books her classmates talk about, so she can pretend her parents read them to her. Like so many children living in an unhappy reality, she finds an escape in books, in stories.
She likes Where The Wild Things Are. She imagines becoming king of the monsters and bringing them home to eat her father, even if that's not how the story is supposed to end. Matilda, of course, is her favourite. The little girl with terrible parents, who gets magic powers, and finds a way to save herself, to make a wonderful new life with Miss Honey. She knows all about powers. There's a man who works with her father, who can make the shadows come to life, crawling over her skin, pulling her hair, tugging at her clothes. He laughs when she screams, so she stops screaming, no matter what the shadows do (eventually, she stops screaming no matter what anyone does). She doesn't want powers like that, but she still dreams of waking up with magic, still looks for her own Miss Honey, in every teacher she sees.
And then one day, half her dreams come true.
She can't make things move with her mind, like Matilda, can't make people scream, like the shadow man, but when she concentrates really hard, she can make her face change. It hurts, but she's young, and scared, and still thinks magic powers mean she can escape. Her father catches her, sees what she can do, and tells her all the ways they're going to use this to their advantage. It still hurts, changing her face feels like skin tearing and bones breaking, so she refuses, but then her father learns ways to hurt her more than the changing does.
It's not like a story at all.
She likes Where The Wild Things Are. She imagines becoming king of the monsters and bringing them home to eat her father, even if that's not how the story is supposed to end. Matilda, of course, is her favourite. The little girl with terrible parents, who gets magic powers, and finds a way to save herself, to make a wonderful new life with Miss Honey. She knows all about powers. There's a man who works with her father, who can make the shadows come to life, crawling over her skin, pulling her hair, tugging at her clothes. He laughs when she screams, so she stops screaming, no matter what the shadows do (eventually, she stops screaming no matter what anyone does). She doesn't want powers like that, but she still dreams of waking up with magic, still looks for her own Miss Honey, in every teacher she sees.
And then one day, half her dreams come true.
She can't make things move with her mind, like Matilda, can't make people scream, like the shadow man, but when she concentrates really hard, she can make her face change. It hurts, but she's young, and scared, and still thinks magic powers mean she can escape. Her father catches her, sees what she can do, and tells her all the ways they're going to use this to their advantage. It still hurts, changing her face feels like skin tearing and bones breaking, so she refuses, but then her father learns ways to hurt her more than the changing does.
It's not like a story at all.