Enjoy this short story by City Lit creative writing student Clare Fallon, originally published in our Between the Lines 2021 anthology.
Between the Lines showcases the work of writers across the entire range of our provision, from introductory courses such as Ways into creative writing, right up to advanced courses in poetry, fiction, playwriting, screenwriting and life writing.
The Good Girl
Content warning: contains adult themes
I can’t even bring myself to look at Luisa; simpering, preening while Mama does her hair. Scrubbed from top to toe – even her fingernails are clean, that’s a first. There was no disguising her bump when she had her bath. I saw her looking to make sure I’d noticed it as she climbed into the water – the water I’d lugged from the fountain and heated on the fire. Who am I? Flaming Cinderella, that’s who, looking on enviously while my ugly sister goes to the ball. This was supposed to have been my wedding day, not hers.
Turn away, Marilena, concentrate on chopping the vegetables. I love the feel of this knife, the handle smoothed by Nonna’s hand, then Mama’s, then mine. It’s the sharpest, too – if I turn round I could plunge it into Luisa before anyone could stop me. Tomato-coloured blood staining her pretty, flowered dress. At least Mama put her foot down about a white dress – God's eyes would be offended, she said. Too right. And meanwhile my own white dress that Aunt Gianna and I took so many weeks to stitch is upstairs, folded and neglected in the trunk.
Ow, this blade is sharp. Babbo must have sharpened it again. Now I’m the one that’s bleeding. Well, let Luisa taste my blood in her wedding meal, serve her right. Carlino and I waited, didn’t we, while Mama and Babbo scrimped to give us a wedding. And we knew better than to have sex in all that time, to risk getting pregnant. Because I’m the good girl, aren’t I? I’ve always been the good girl, while Luisa does whatever she wants. Pregnant at fifteen and she’d only known Roberto five minutes! Mama crying, Babbo shouting – that slap he gave Luisa across the face! Well, she deserved it, selfish cow, but it shocked the little ones and then they were crying too. Never mind - Marilena was there to comfort them, as always, even though I knew, I just knew, that it would mean her being married first, stealing my wedding. ‘Marilena won’t mind,’ they all said. ‘Marilena never minds, she’s such a good girl.’ Well, look where being good’s got me. I should’ve just got myself pregnant like Luisa and then I’d have been out of this godforsaken hole. Now I’m stuck here while Mama and Babbo spend my wedding savings on her and off she swans. She’ll have an army of kids in a few years; she won’t be able to stop herself.
Carlino and I had it all planned – two kids, no more. So we could give them a good life. Lucky he knows where to get condoms. But still we haven’t risked it, just in case. All that crap Don Umberto preaches about birth control. Evil, he calls it. Evil, my eye! This is the 1970s, not the 1870s. How can it be God’s will for a woman to have eight kids, like Mama – ten if you count the stillbirth and the miscarriage? How can it be right for her to be worn out and used up by the time she’s forty? Poor Mama. She never had any choice. The men round here all think they’re virile if they have a load of kids – never mind that they can’t afford to feed them.
I suppose it’ll be one less mouth to feed once Luisa’s gone. Not that she eats much, not like Gianluca, the greedy beggar. I’ve seen him stealing food off the others’ plates. Mama pretends not to notice, but then he’s always been her favourite. ‘Five boys!’ people say. ‘How wonderful!’ Like we girls don’t matter.
Now for the onions – good, I can have a bit of a cry and no-one will know I’m really crying. ‘Cause I never cry, do I? Not when the boys get a bigger bowl of soup, not when I have to wait on them, not when my wedding gets postponed at the last minute because my stupid, selfish, careless sister gets herself pregnant. But if sex before marriage is a sin, like Don Umberto says, how come she’s getting rewarded for it? Tell me that, eh? I’m too furious to even cry. Not that anyone cares. ‘She never grumbles,’ Mama told Aunt Gianna and I‘m thinking: ‘Yeah, well perhaps I should. Maybe I should kick up a massive fuss and get my own way, just for once.’ But I won’t, will I? Mama’s got enough on her plate without that.
That’s the veg in the pot. Wipe the knife, put it away. Resist the temptation to hide it and whip it out in church, stab Luisa in her treacherous back. I can’t wait for her to be gone. Roberto’s village is miles away, I’ll hardly see her. Little Teresa is going to miss her though. She’ll have to come in my bed at night now. I worry about Teresa when I go, when I finally get my wedding. I’m worried Babbo will take her out of school, like he did when I was 12, to help at home. What future will she have then? Who was it decreed that women don’t need an education? That we’re skivvies, just here to serve the men? I don’t know that Luisa’s going to have it any easier living with Roberto’s family – him one of four brothers and no sister to wait on them. They’re even more backward in San Romano than they are in this village. Luisa won’t have any female company at all except for her downtrodden mother-in-law. At least Carlino and I will live in town when we’re married, in that nice extension his dad is building. White-tiled floors and geraniums on the balcony, that’s what we’ll have. Shutters that fit and a built-in bath, with hot water from the tap. Luisa’s life is going to be even worse than here. I wonder where’s she’s gone? Upstairs to put on her new shoes, I guess. I’ll go and see if she needs any help.
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