Vulture Chapter Two, a dollanganger saga fanfic

"VULTURE" by Alessandra Azzaroni

STORY LAST UPDATED ON 05/02/2003

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Written in Australia. Sovereign Hill, Ballarat, is a real place in the state of Victoria in Australia.

CHAPTER TWO

New Year's Eve meant it was summer in Australia, but of course, sometimes the infamous Melbourne weather made it seem as though it wasn't. Victoria was officially known as the Garden State, but Melbourne was unofficially known as the Rainy City.
New Year's Eve fell on a Tuesday. Since midway through the week before, it had been hot. Our house didn't have air-conditioning, and I didn't have a fan - whether it was a box fan, a ceiling fan or otherwise - in my bedroom, so sleep was a trouble. The overnight low was 20°C the night before New Year's Eve, and on New Year's Eve itself, the temperature didn't even make it to 30°C. It was such a relief to have this weather again. I was a winter person, most definitely.
The day before, we had had some rain, and December 31 was the same. We needed the rain. Because of the El Niño effect, the country was officially declared in a drought. The more rain, the better… but that's not what I thought later.
My mother kept her promise, but I didn't really care. I didn't know why she was fussing so much, but pregnant women were stereotyped as being cruel, or they hysterically cried, if they didn't get their own way. There were lots of things said about pregnant women, and I had no idea if even any of them were true.
For instance: morning sickness. In a book I once read, the girl actually had evening sickness, and she first thought she'd eaten something that her body just couldn't handle. She'd gone for an abortion after that, but she ran away after she was called into the room. She was a swimmer who had a good chance of being in the Commonwealth Games, but she had to give that all up. But she still enjoyed her baby boy.

My mother says I'm beautiful only when I care to be
Which is never

Not only would I be an unemployed dole bludger, but I'd also be single.
I didn't want my mother to go too far with prettying me up. I didn't think she could do much to make me beautiful. Gap-fillers weren't beautiful. We were ordinary, nothing special.
She'd found a hairdresser's that was actually open on New Year's Eve. This was surprising, but she explained to me that many people wanted to be prettied up for parties, so business was booming in hairdressers' all around the country (the countries north and west of us were behind us in time difference - they had to wait).
My mother had booked me in for a two-thirty appointment at Sofia's. The name immediately occurred to me as strange, for I knew of two restaurants named Sofia's. Guess it was not just for food.
Italian-Australians ran the whole place. My mother hadn't brought a book or magazine to read, for she said she just wanted to watch me. Was she expecting a transformation? Was she expecting something drastic to happen?
While Francesca washed my hair, my mother asked me what I wanted done. I answered simply, "No colour at all, no completely different style. Just a trim."
"Just a trim?" she repeated, eyebrows raised. "Oh, come on, mate, other girls colour their hair."
"Well I'm not 'other girls' now, am I?"
Francesca turned off the water, removed some excess water and towel-dried my hair. My mother had a dissatisfied look on her face, but it wasn't because of Francesca. It was because of me. But good instinct knew that I'd get my own way regarding my hair in the end.
Francesca led me over to a vacated black leather swivel chair, in front of a mirror and a built-in bench where the equipment lay. She said to wait for Mario, so I lazily had a look at the combs, scissors, clips, a shaver, a hairdryer and a spray bottle in front of me.
"Want your belly pierced?" my mother asked.
Of course, my answer was no. I didn't want to show off my belly, so why on earth would I want it pierced?
Mario came up behind me, I could see in the mirror. He had a shaved head and wore a denim vest… and were they leather pants?
"So, what do you want done?" he asked.
"Just an inch off."
He took my hair and brought his fingers up to not far below my shoulders. "There?"
"Yeah."
He got to work clipping sections of my hair out of the way, and took a fine comb and the thin, long scissors. It didn't seem like too much time had gone by when the cutting was done. I was offered for my hair to be blow-dried, and I took up on that offer.
I didn't look that different when it was all done. Just an inch of my hair was gone. Of course, any haircut made me feel that my head was lighter, but that was probably just a psychological thing.

Sometimes I wish I were a conformist
Because then people might smile because of me

My mother had already bought things for me to wear. She even got the sizes right. I didn't know when she had gone out shopping, though.
The first item was a sleeveless, black-sequined top. Then there were black leather ankle boots with chunky heels. "You could wear these with the jeans we got you for Christmas," she told me. My jeans weren't fancy, just plain dark blue denim. Altogether, I didn't think the outfit was bad at all. In fact, I was touched to see that she bought things that actually suited me.
I dressed, and then she got to work on my face. I wouldn't let her paint my nails, though. I said that if she really was so desperate, she could give them a clear coat. This was a nice gesture by my standards.
She liked my complexion, and said that I had good lips, so she concentrated only on my eyes. I think she knew that only a little makeup would go well with me.
As she applied the eye shadow, eyeliner and mascara, she said to me, "I think the baby's gonna be a boy." I was about to say that that would be nice, but she broke in. "Don't speak, don't move until I'm done." She smiled. "It'll be nice to have another bloke in the house."
"Mm," I sounded.

My mother thinks she has magic hands
And can transform me like the ugly duckling
But transformations don't happen to Gap-fillers