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although she was not one herself, helen loved beautiful people.
even as a little girl, she lived for love.
she did not wish to be a queen, but loved to look at their pictures in books.
in time, she graduated from looking at drawings of queens and princesses in books, to looking at real queens and princesses on television, and in photographs in the newspapers and magazines.
perhaps things would have gone on smoothly in this manner except for a curious incident that happened one day.
helen was bouncing a little red rubber ball on the sidewalk in front of the little house she lived in with her mother and brother and three sisters, when a long black limousine pulled up on the street beside her.
the most beautiful woman helen had ever seen in real life - a real queen, or at least a princess or a duchess. leaned out of the window of the back seat - she must be being driven by a chauffeur, helen thought - and asked:
excuse me, little girl, but my worthless chauffeur and i are lost. can you tell me the way to deforest street?
oh dear, helen thought, i wish i could help this beautiful lady, but i have never heard of forest street.
i am sorry, ma’am, helen said, but i have never heard of deforest street.
you have never heard of deforest street? but this is wilsonville, is it not? and wilsonville is not a very big town.
i am afraid you are mistaken, ma’am, helen replied, this is not wilsonville, but zanesville. wilsonville is two towns over, down the road apiece.
at this, the beautiful lady erupted with a stream of vile abuse that would have resulted in helen or her sister or brothers getting a good thrashing if they had uttered anything half as horrid. the invective was directed at the chauffeur - whom helen could not see behind the tinted glass of the front seat window - but even so, helen was quite taken aback and somewhat perplexed.
it messed up helen’s mind to think that so beautiful a person could speak in such an unseemly manner.
and yet… she got over it…
*
under a veneer of like who cares? helen’s heart beat with a thirst for love and beauty.
helen’s mother was named ursula, but all her friends called her cookie.
her sisters were named imogene, juniper, amd kiki, and her brother was named lawrence but everybody called him loopy, because he wasn’t very bright and kind of lurched to one side when he walked, but he had a good heart.
her father’s name was ken, and he was a worthless bum that cookie had only known for a couple of weeks before he vanished into the great unknown.
the other four kids were all older than helen, and had the same father, an even more worthless bum named walt, who had disappeared twelve years ago, but not exactly without a trace, as he had left cookie a very nasty note before leaving, and made a few even nastier phone calls to her in the weeks after he left, before disappearing forever.
at least the bum paid for the phone calls himself and didn’t try to call collect, cookie said to her sister veronica at the time.
helen had never heard anyone say a good word about walt, or excuse his behavior in any way, but sometimes she wondered about him.
if she asked the other kids questions about him, they would just laugh and say, what do you care anyway? he wasn’t even any relation to you, dufus.
soon helen stopped asking her half siblings questions, or even talking to them at all, except when they told her to do things.
it should not be supposed that helen was some kind of cinderella and that her mother and the other kids gave her a particularly hard time. they were all just folks.
nothing very exciting happened to any of them for a long time.
*
helen got a pair of scissors for her birthday and she began cutting pictures of beautiful people out of magazines. her mind became a kaleidoscope of images of beautiful people.
left to herself, she would happily pass the day in a dream of beauty.
but it just was not meant to be.
she was too young to realize how harsh life was.
a girl named jocelyn sat beside helen in school.
unlike helen, jocelym was herself exceptionally beautiful. even at a tender age, she drove the boys wild.
helen’s dreamy manner made jocelyn consider her stuckup and not properly attentive to her, jocelyn’s, queenliness.
someday jocelyn’s prince would come - boatloads of them.
it never to occurred to helen that jocelyn took any notice of her.
because of this, the long days in the classroom drifted by.
but finally they both got a little older and moved on.
eventually jocelyn, surrounded by admirers of both sexes and all ages, forgot helen and her improperly inattentive ways.
helen did not have so many admirers.
but she was almost quite content in her dream world.
helen got a job in a drug store which sold a lot of magazines.
she spent a lot of her paycheck on the magazines and took them home with her at night.
george, the manager of the drugstore, noticed that helen bought a lot of magazines, and resolved to keep an eye on her to make sure she paid for them all and did not steal any.
a girl named betty also worked at the drugstore.
betty did not particularly like to look at pictures of beautiful people, but she liked to look out at the rain.
roger, a regular customer at the drugstore - he came in regularly because he needed to buy a lotion for rashes on his feet - thought that life was all a joke.
on inheriting a little bit of money from his grandparents, george quit his job as manager of the drugstore.
although pete, the new manager, did not pay so much attention to helen, she continued to pay for the magazines she took home, and never stole any.
at the end of the night, pete would always say, all right, that is enough of this, before closing the drugstore.
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