Dare to Say

Chapter 4 - The Doll

Life seemed to continue on. My brother's were always very close, even though there was a four year gap between them. They often played together and just generally seemed to enjoy each other's company. I always felt a little left out of things. Not that they were mean to me or anything like that, they just seemed to prefer to be together and I always got the impression they didn't really want me around.

They also looked very different to me. I remember looking often at the family picture I always had on my bedside table. Both my brothers had mum's brown wavy hair and dad's blue/green eyes. My hair was much lighter and dead straight, nothing like my dad's black hair or my mum's brown hair and my eyes were a bright almost piercing blue. I looked at my mum's big brown eyes. My mum had said that sometimes genes skip a generation and that I had the hair and eyes of her grand mother. As we had no pictures of this person and of course she had died well before I was born, we only had my mum's word for it.

Mr and Mrs Granger had left the area and we had a new gardener.

When I was about 11 I remember going down to the shopping precinct with my brothers. Greg at 13 was in charge. He was very mature for his age and both Paul and I always did as he asked. It wasn't hard really, he was very fair and always gave us a few treats. He had often looked after us as we grew up as mum was always tired or busy.

The shopping precinct was full of Saturday shoppers rushing around buying things. We nudged our way through the crowd and looked in at a few shops. Mum had given Greg some money to buy us some things. Greg bought Paul a large toy ship he had been asking for for over a month now and I remember he bought me this really big floppy doll. I remember feeling a bit shy asking for a doll but Greg was as sensitive as always and told me it was a special doll to decorate my bed with. So we bought it and I was so happy to carry her home with me. I still have her.

After we bought out toys and a few CDs for Greg we went down to ice cream shop on the basement floor. Paul and I ordered large scoops of raspberry ripple and Greg ordered a shake. We sat down at the tiny round table on some impressively tall stools.

I remember playing with my doll and telling Greg I was going to tell dad all about our shopping trip and the doll as soon as he telephoned that evening. Dad was on yet another business trip, he was travelling so much since he had received his promotion a couple of years ago. Greg told me that perhaps I could tell him that I had a new doll but that it was best not to mention that I had been shopping without our mother. 'We don't want to worry him with little things,' Greg had told me. I asked Greg why we always kept things from dad. He looked at me for a while, then simply answered that dad was really stressed out with work, that this was normal, that all dad's were always stressed and that it was best if I just didn't bother him.

to be continued..