She often caught men staring at it, hanging there between the vague outlines on her blouse.She often caught men staring at it, hanging there between the vague outlines on her blouse. Her breasts were not large, but they did fit her slender build. She felt that they were too noticeable, no matter how plain her outfits were. She sometimes thought about getting a shorter chain, or wearing it on the inside of her clothing, but she never had. She told herself it was to remember her father by. Her ears were not pierced, and she wore only a plain barrette to keep her shoulder length blonde hair out of her eyes. It had a little bit of a curl to it, and in the right light it would show faint red highlights. This was a pleasant compliment to her eyes, which were a pale green, like mint. She never saw this beauty herself. She was painfully clean, for she scrubbed herself in the bath every day, hard enough to wash away feel of the city she lived in. She didn't want to feel like the people she saw on the streets, evil and corrupt, in their malfeasance and vice. She sat in the row of pews closest to the alter. After pausing a moment, she leaned forward to rest on the thinly padded wood that passed for a kneeler. She didn't have many sins to confess, she never did, so her penance was short. A few rosaries, which came automatically to her lips. Part of her wished that the priest had been more stern with her, asking for more of a repentance, more of a punishment. But she put that aside, knowing that it was somehow bad. She had only her mother waiting for her at home, her mother whom she could never ever do right by, no matter how much she prayed, no matter how reverent she was, nor how much of her life she gave up to care for an old and deranged woman. The words "slut" and "harlot" were like punctuation marks in the few sentences they exchanged these days. |