This is Molly:
When Molly was young, she loved winter. She could go outside, running around in the rain, trying to catch rain drops in her mouth, and playing in all of the puddles everywhere. Then when she’d finish playing, she’d go back inside and have a lovely warm bath her mother would get ready for her.
But then, things changed. Molly would get in the bath to get warm, and wash off all the mud, like before, but her father would come into the bathroom and just look at her, not saying anything. His breathing would go funny, like he was running a race while standing there. Then he would start sweating then suddenly rush out of the room.
It took any joy out of having a bath for Molly, having her father there doing such strange things. As she got older, she began to understand what was happening, and Molly would only have a bath if she know her father was out, and wouldn’t be home until after she was out of the bath and dressed.
So that was one of the reasons why Molly lost her love for cold wet winters, having her own father staring at her naked body. But after Molly left home, when her father began lusting after her, as she realised later, she found more reasons to not love winter anymore.
Molly didn’t have a house to live in, once she’d left home. Sometimes there were houses she stayed in, when it felt safe to do that, but the best houses came with rules, and the worst houses came with men who would be like her father, lusting after her body, and doing things to her she didn’t like or want to have happen.
So if things were like that, with rules Molly couldn’t understand or like, she’s go, out on the road, and try to find places to sleep where she could make her own rules. But her own rules weren’t the proper ones, the legal ones, and Molly would often have to move on again and again. Molly didn’t like living with other people, she didn’t like talking about herself, she didn’t like the ‘interventions’ other people said she needed.
Molly got used to carrying her own things to keep herself warm no walls or heating needed. Molly lived on the streets, in holes, in empty places, staying as long as she could then moving on again when she had to, because other people arrived there to stay, or new building managers or owners came to do something with their building, fix it up, rent it out, and there was no room for Molly or others like her.
Winter with shelter in Australia, in particular in southern Australia, that is a nasty time, being rained on, unable to get dry, or to keep all of your things dry, sometimes, often really. When you’re homeless, making your own food is difficult without a kitchen of your own, and without the ability to store your food to keep it fresh. Sometimes Molly ate with others who lived on the streets, but she didn’t like it if people asked questions.
Molly had a story, but she didn’t feel the need to tell her story to anyone. She wanted to keep the shame of her story to herself. And freezing in winter, catching colds and worse, these things were part of her ongoing story. Walking around, carrying her bundle of blankets and other items she had, this was a way to get warmer, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. There wasn’t really anything much at all Molly enjoyed. There had been a cat, for a while, in a place Molly stayed at for a while, but the cat disappeared one day, and then Molly got scared by a newcomer, so she ‘disappeared’ too.
So Molly hates the cold and wet weather, Molly hates winter and so do many other homeless people. Winter is only good if you can get warm, and stay warm …
and that image spoke deeply to a part of my heart, myself, and I felt connected to her, and her horrid life. And then, I heard of the awful murder of a young woman, Courtney Herron, and I shuddered. This young woman’s life could easily have been the life that my fictional character has been living.
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 