Reasonable charges plus a little extra on the side...
I grew up in my parents' inn. I had a room there that I shared with my sister, and later my brothers. Though there were many rooms in the inn, my parents refused to let us occupy them because paying customers could be sleeping there. Cosette slept on a small bed of straw in the stable where our customers left their horses.
Everyday I would wake up and play with my sister. I had wonderful toys. Whenever there was a doll I wanted, I would just ask and my parents would buy it for me. I had the most beautiful dresses too. Cosette wore rags and had no toys.
I was horrid to Cosette when I was little. I never let her play with me. One day when I was 5 and my sister, Azelma, was 3, we were playing with our dolls. "See, Azelma, you just twist this around this and then do this and see, it's a braid," I said.
Azelma stared at my work. She worshiped me back then. "Wow! I wish I could do that to my doll," she said.
"Try it then," I told her.
Azelma took her doll in her lap. She started twisting the doll's hair around and tangling it.
"No Zelma, not like that! Your messing it up!" I scolded her.
"I am not!" Azelma whined.
"Yes you are!" I said.
Then I felt a tap in my shoulder. I turned around to see Cosette. "What?" I asked.
"If you start from the top and keep adding hair you can make a very pretty braid. I'll show you," Cosette said. She tried to take my doll.
"What are you doing? Give it back you theif. My dolls are too good for you! You sleep with smelly horses! I'm going to tell on you!" I shouted. Then a got up and ran to my mother who was cooking .
"Mommy! The Lark is trying to take my doll!" I complained.
"Oh, poor baby," My mother said. She handed me a bread roll. "Go tell Cosette she has to clean up outside. Your father will be home soon, you know. Go take your sister and get cleaned up. You don't want to be dirty like her!"
I chuckled and sneered. "Come on Azelma. I'll do your hair," I told my sister. She obiently fallowed me to our bedroom.
"Why can't The Lark touch our dolls?" she asked.
"Cause she's dirty. Mom said. Her mother is off the dirty sorts. Like our customers. Scumy, you know," I explained even though I had no idea what I was talking about. When you are five you don't have a mind of your own. Yo. Just say fragment of what you remember your mother saying.
Alzelma nods. When you are three you dont actually know what your sister is saying but you nod anyways so that your sister will play with you and do your hair. "I'm glad I'm not dirty," Alzema says. I tie a bow in her hair as I hear the inn doors open.
"Daddy must be here," I say. Azelma and I run to the main dining room in our in. "Daddy! You're home!" I said.
"Yes, my girls. I brought you home gifts,." He handed Alzema and I each a brown wrapped package. I tear mine open. It was a beautiful doll.
"Thank you father. I shall call mine Marie," I say.
"I shall call mine Azelma," my sister said.
"But that's your name," I said.
"It's a fine name," Azelma said.
My parents smiled and laughed as Cosette stared at us through the window with her big blue eyes.
I pause on the sidewalk. That girl could write a book with just one glance. I never forgot the look she gave me that evening. The jelousy she felt for me. Me. But that was back when my father would get me things when he came back from trips and my mother would laugh and call me baby. It was back when Azelma looked up to me and we didn't live in a small apartment in Paris. It was back before I saw fault in my parents and before I fell in love with a man who sees me the same way I saw five year old Cosette. Dirty. Scumy. I look down at myself. I am those things. What have I become?