Tag: sisters

Day# 17 Paula McBeale

#17 Paula McBeale for Aedre's Firefly by Jande Rowe

Daddy’s Little Princess

Paula McBeale and her sister (#18)Agnes live across the road from Aedre’s new house on Hook Rd. They live in a tiny one-bedroom house that is far too small for four people. To Aedre’s view, they are disgorged from the house every school morning, and swallowed up again right after school as if they don’t exist at any other time.

Paula is secretive and constantly feels deprived, since she get no allowance and has to beg for everything she feels she needs. She finds an outlet for her feelings of resentment about this by stealing small things from school, from stores, from her friends, though in the latter case she calls it “borrowing”. Her favourite thing to steal when she can get it, however, is money. No one finds out about this habit of hers for many years.

She is an excellent actress. After all she’s been acting for Daddy since she was a baby. Sometimes the things he makes her act for him make her uncomfortable but at least she has his undivided attention for periods of time. Daddy is an avid photographer, but he never shows his photos to anyone but Paula, keeping them locked away in a box under her bed, and he says its “our secret game, Princess”. So she is cautioned never to tell anyone about the secret game or Daddy won’t be able to play with her anymore.

She takes to hanging out with Aedre on the way to and from school because she feels that Aedre is so pathetic it makes her look good, and besides, sometimes she can steal stuff from her and she never seems to realise the only person who could have stolen it was Paula. Paula holds Aedre in contempt while pretending to be her friend.

But then, Aedre is conditioned to think that everything bad that happens is her fault, and so if something goes missing then she must have lost it somehow. This suits Paula just fine. Daddy’s little Princess knows how to get on in the world.