tiny girls

We didn't know each other then, but we would. Our fathers were best friends and we followed. Photos of tiny girls in feet sleepy suits smiling up at the grown ups at her house. At nursery school with hair up in rubber bands like whales spouting. How I loved painting on a big easel with thick poster paint making fat brush swirls and sweeping long lines. Then kindergarten when she wore European seeming tights to stay warm when we other girls froze in high dresses and low socks folded over tucked into red leather shoes. Best friends. She skipped my difficult, college prep high school but came and stayed 2nd year to graduation. She was very smart, as you had to be to succeed at our school. I always was a little awed. And off she went to one of the "Sister"'s school in the East. I struggled with mental health and assumed was a failure at The "prestigious" art college. They truly falling apart, I began again at the local JC, doing very well in art and child development. Then marriage and children. Loved it, but again mental health dogged me, and by turn
the relations. Now, children in their 40's. She visits telling me she wasn't smart. Explaining bluntly, regaling how God was ruthless, I wasn't smart, children at my church needed chastising, crazy people were sane. I didn't notice her craziness til she left, having taken advantage of my hospitality, not courteously seeing about me. Left me a $10 tip.