Birth of a Goddess

She was a beautiful child, always interested in everything and always ready to try something new. She wanted to know everything, was ever ready to talk or play. Everyone loved having her around and spending time with her: they all commented to her parents how mature she was and how pretty she would be when she was older.

She was pretty already, with a slim child’s body that never gave way to puppy fat. Her hair was a glossy red, a throwback to some distant relative. None of her immediate family had ever had those big deep eyes or that pixie face with a gently freckled face. There had never been anyone so svelte and slender before.

Her mother was proud of her, her own unimaginative brain marvelling at the gymnastics of her daughter’s mind. She glowed with pleasure at the compliments from friends and parents of friends. Always she wanted to hear about what had happened during the day and meet all of her schoolmates. The poor dull mother, the antonym of her daughter’s beauty and grace, was desperate for inclusion in a life she had never experienced for herself. She wanted, perhaps subconsciously, to live her life again through her daughter.

But her daughter didn’t want her mother’s approval: she was looking for her father’s love and it wasn’t there. He was older by many years than her mother and he spent his time locked in his office, working. Her persistent attempts to interest him in her life went unheeded and only served to irritate him and drive him even further back into his world of figures and facts.

As she got older the rift grew deeper. Her mother still delighted in her daughter’s vibrant social life, encouraging her to go to the parties and spend time with the friends that began to demand more and more time. The girl was becoming aware of the power she could hold, over boys and men especially. Somehow her desire for her father’s attention had grown into a desire for any man’s attention. There were boys her age but mostly there were men, usually married, always much too old. They were captivated by her beauty and deceived by her maturity; they never questioned her too closely.

But it was the wrong kind of love: it wasn’t father-love; it wasn’t an interest in her life and her personality. Gradually the personality faded and the external interest died. She became inverted, obsessed with her developing desirability. She no longer recognised her goal; she had long since passed the point of no return, losing sight of her initial aim.

By the time she left school her cause was lost. There was little left of that dancing, happy child that she had been once. In the eyes of those who noticed her she was merely a sex object, or a rival. Her mother was the only one who still tried to listen to the doings and interests of her daughter, but there were no longer any interests of which she would care to hear.

No college would accept her; her resume was not of the kind any school would be proud. But she had no desire for further education. She left at sixteen and took a job as a cashier in the first ramshackle corner shop she could find.

The months and years rolled by, each one bringing a new man and a new wave of despair. The corner shop closed and she was back on the street again, making a half-hearted effort to find somewhere that would accept her and smoking her dole money compulsively. At nineteen she found herself on a training course to become a secretary. The course was simple and actual work was not necessary; fortunate, and after a few weeks she had her first qualification. The small garage in the town took her on as a favour to a mate, who had taken pity on the girl in the jobcentre. They kept her even as they expanded and hired other, more competent women to keep the accounts and write the letters. Perhaps the owner, happily married and inherently monogamous, could not bear to lose her. Perhaps in some way she had proved useful as an employee.

She left by choice with the man who came with his car written off and who asked her, tentatively and dubiously, to have dinner with him. He never really worked out if she had agreed through a desire to spend time with him or if she merely needed a free meal: either way it didn’t matter. She entered his life in the way she had entered so many others, but he was different. He had no reason to let her leave again, and she did not.

She moved into his flat without discussion. Somehow it was never decided that he would not live with her; his home, which was squalid and cramped, was nevertheless more inhabitable than the single room in which she spent very little time. She entered his life, which was beginning to take gentle slow steps towards improvement after studenthood, and brought with her all the disaster and ruin of her own.

Twenty-five years old and she was still captivating. The heinous lifestyle had taken no toll on her appearance; only the dullness of her eyes and the silence of her once-incessant chatter told of the impact of quarter of a decade of destructive decadence. Her hair had matured into a glossy mahogany, her skin still smooth and clear of any wrinkle or blemish. The flat, which had begun as a small and unfurnished string of rooms, reflected more clearly the devastation wreaked by her occupation: cigarette ash covered the once-beige carpet, empty tins and bottles littered the kitchen and the single bed, too small for more than one person, was crumpled and dirty.

She had grown accustomed to mess and disorder, and barely noticed it. She didn’t see the peeling paint on the walls and ceiling, and the mould growing around the window frames. Had she looked, she would have been unimpressed by the gently shifting colours, from green to orange to purple as the underlying dirt changed. The outside view from the window was equally colourful: the shop fronts filled with tattered clothes and weary mannequins, the litter strewn across the empty pavement. Rarely were there any cars on the street. The inhabitants of the flats could, on the whole, not afford a car. The ones who could were transient, seldom staying for more than a few weeks.

She was crawling down towards thirty and he was a little older. They had become accustomed to one another but somehow she still wasn’t settled. Every day he woke feeling glad, and slightly surprised, to see her lying asleep on the sofa opposite him. She was as elusive as a butterfly; as aloof as a panther. Inside her head was unfathomable even after many years. Even she did not always understand her thoughts.

A lifetime of searching for love had resulted in almost complete annihilation of values. She no longer cared how people felt or what they thought of her; on some level she still was desperate for approval but she become resigned to never being accepted. She would merely continue existing, perhaps for ten years, perhaps for fifty. It would be an existence; not a life.