Chapter 5 The first part of childhood two or three things

It was my grandmother who raised me.Besides me, she took in Marcel, Pierre, and Jean, the children of an aunt of mine who had died.There was also Madeleine, the daughter of another aunt, Aunt Laure.Aunt Laurel has two daughters. Madeleine's hair was auburn, and her mother didn't like her because of the color of her hair, and because Madeleine looked too much like her dead father. In this way, Aunt Laurel easily pushed poor Madeleine to grandmother, paying five francs a month.Even if it was only five francs, she often forgot to send it. If there is a sign on the door of this house, it can be written: "Home of Five Wild Children".

My mother lives in Paris. In order to fill the stomachs of us little hungry ghosts, grandma worked tirelessly.She must have suffered a lot for us! She used to yell at us, but we yelled harder than she did. Neighbors scolded her, saying she was too cowardly.In order to convince the neighbors that she also taught us a lesson, sometimes, grandma deliberately grabbed the broom handle and slammed... the table. The five little ones pretended to cry and howl like someone was skinning them. The female neighbors said to the grandmother: "Poor Mary! You're going to die! Throw these to the orphanage."

At such times, grandma would flush with anger. "I'll raise these wild children of mine! No one else can control them. It's their bastard father who did the crime." The only dad alive is mine, and he can't deny that I'm his, I look so much like him. As luck would have it, he lived in a beautiful and luxurious house within a few meters of our shabby house. God is only fair once, so that my poor boy's self-esteem can be comforted.I heard someone tell about the daughter my father had with his wife: "It's nothing to say, what two sisters! One is uglier than the other."

Whenever the two of us meet, each wants to swallow the other alive.When the two were fighting, she said, "I'll tell my dad." "Whatever you want," I replied, "he's my dad too." I'm older than her, so I think he should be my dad more. But every festival, she takes revenge!My cousins ​​and I always had our hair cut short, but even so, lice still made camp on our heads. There are one or two festivals a year, and in order to prepare for the festival, my grandmother allowed us to not have a haircut for a few weeks. My dear and poor grandma! She understands our humiliation.She knew it would break our hearts to see other little girls with long curly hair and big bows.

While I was pulling my hair, I applied Vaseline on it, so that I could tie a narrow ribbon. This kind of ribbon only costs one sou and one meter. It looks almost like a bow, but in fact it is more like a wild vegetable! But I'm not as sad as I used to be, because, in those days, Granny didn't wash our hair with kerosene, but with rum and distiller's grains, so it didn't smell as bad as usual.Except, the bugs in our heads must be as happy as we are.They were so happy there, as if there were twice as many as usual! Natural curls, a nice braid, how much these things mean to a little one!

My hair is thin and short, and I feel so pathetic, insignificant, and dismissive! Maybe it's not where I'm proud of, but outwardly, I don't have the strengths to make up for my hair, or the features that make me forget that I'm not attractive enough. If you meet an ugly little girl with a head shaved like a bald egg, please don't laugh: Ugly hair makes adults laugh, but makes little ones cry!