A Little Girl's Story

A long time ago there lived a little girl, who was hurt by the things her mother said. She knew her mother didn't really love her because she never smiled at her unless she did something especially good. The little girl knew that as long as she kept being good and working hard that her mother would smile at her and like her for at least that moment. She lived for the smiles and the nice things her mother said when she did a good job. Most of the time she just tried to stay out of her mother's way. She learned to walk quietly, play quietly and never cry even when she was hurt. She had an invisible friend that she talked to and played with. Eventually her mother became angry and told the little girl she couldn't talk to her invisible friend anymore because it embarrassed her. So the little girl stopped talking to her friend out loud and holding hands. Her invisible friend went away because the little girl wouldn't play anymore and pretended the invisible friend wasn't there when other people were there. The little girl was sad that her friend left her alone.



The little girl also had a dog and loved that dog for many years. She talked to her dog and cried and dried many tears in her dog's coat over the years. She was careful that her mom never knew how much she told her dog or how much she loved her. She never did get her friend back but instead she created a whole group of people for a story that she told every night when she went to bed. The story lasted from the time she was five years old until she was twelve. By the time the little girl was twelve she knew that no one would ever come to rescue her and so she ended the story.



The little girl needed rescuing. She needed it for a long time. But who rescues little girls who don't look hurt? No one. When the little girl was eight years old she made her mother angry and her mother told her she was leaving and never coming back. The front door slammed and the little girl cried for a long time. She finally climbed up on the couch to look out the window to see if her mother was coming back. There on the porch sat her mother. The little girl decided that she needed to learn all she could about cooking and cleaning so she could take care of things when her mother left someday for real. She worked very hard for a long time. Her mother was never pleased with anything she did, it was never good enough. The little girl was growing up on the outside, but was growing old on the inside. When the little girl was ten she realized she could never make her mother happy with her and gave up trying. She did what she always did and worked hard, but she had lost hope. She did what she did to avoid the screaming and endless lectures; but of course it wasn't good enough for her mother. She learned so well to hide all traces of emotion from her face and body. That wasn't quite right, because it brought down new tirades and harder beatings. So the little girl adjusted and learned to keep the expression on her face that her mother expected her to have during the screaming sessions. She learned to cry enough and at the right point to satisfy her mother that it hurt enough when she was beaten. The little girl went through a stubborn phase where she refused to cry and declared that it didn't hurt. That didn't last long and it really hurt the little girl. She learned to cry even when she was still able to take it, because it would stop sooner if she cried just right. She never told her daddy about anything her mother ever did or said.



When the little girl was eleven she had a teacher who was kind to her and said nice things to her. He picked her to help put up bulletin boards. That had always been the most envied classroom helper job in school. But to the little girl who didn't look so little, it became the most dreaded. She did tell her mother that she didn't want to go to school anymore and wanted to tell her daddy that she didn't want to go but her mother forbade her to say anything. By the end of the school year the little girl was a shadow of herself. She still hasn't found the rest of her. She says the rest of her has been killed and the remains will never be found. The little girl's wishes are for the teacher who hurt her to be punished so he can't hurt anyone else again.