rosalie visser / five. fin

Mama's always telling me that it's better to be meek than mighty.

I'm not really sure where she learned thing like that, but I think it's probably part of the reason that my entire life feels more like something that's happened to me rather than something I actually got to live, to have a choice in, to have agency. I don't mind it that way, really I swear I don't, but it really does feel like that sometimes.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would look like if the Visser's hadn't adopted me.

I don't even remember what my old name was, not that they would ever tell me even if I'd bothered to ask them. I don't much think that they would like that, me trying to figure out who I used to be before I came to this place where I could be molded into what they wanted me to be. That's probably going to sound bleaker than it really is, but it's the truth: coming here, I was this porcelain doll for Mama to mold and shape into whatever thing she wanted me to be, and all things considered, if I were a betting girl I'd say that I'm probably going to lead a better life being Mama's porcelain doll than I would have in whatever back alley I was going to grow up in if they hadn't adopted me.

No, I'd rather this life. Even if it means spending day in and day out being stuffed full of cotton and twirled up into something pristine, this is better.

It has to be.

Besides, I'm the favorite daughter. Every single one of us Visser girls knows it, even though I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of thing that your kids are supposed to know. I think it probably has something to do with the fact that my sisters are all wild creatures in their own ways, certainly in ways that frustrate Mama and Papa to absolutely no end. They all want to learn how to ride, how to run wild and free with the wind in their hair and the world at their fingertips. They're the ones who are always running into the barn when buyers come around, interrupting meetings.

I'm the one that will stand in the doorway, maybe on the front stoop if I'm feeling bold, and wave whenever Papa's buyers come to the barn.

I'm the one who worries about tracking mud through the house.

The men who come around the house always coo at me, smirk and smile. "What a lovely girl," they say, holding my chin between the soft pads of their fingers. I don't know what it is—my teeth are a little crooked and my sisters are always telling me that I look younger than I really am and I look in the mirror at my hair in the morning and know Mama is gonna have to spend thirty minutes trying to get all the tangles out, but still. Maybe it's because I always smile at them, bright and buoyant the way that Mama taught me to be. Or maybe it's because I'm the only one that didn't come running when they showed up.

I'm not sure exactly what that says about men, but I think I'd rather go on not knowing.

Sometimes it makes me think they wish they could buy me instead of one of Papa's horses, but he would never let that happen.

The men never stay for long anyway. They come, chuckle good-naturedly with father about the horde of girls he has running through the house, and Papa would take the brownie points his pretty girls gave him, and then convince his buyer to give him some more when he casually mentioned that they were actually all adopted.

Not that you couldn't tell just by looking at the lot of us.

Really, none of us look much like Mama and Papa. Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed at night, a part of me wonders if they didn't choose us for that very reason, like they wouldn't have wanted us if we weren't a flashing neon sign to the rest of the world saying that the Visser's had taken us in, taken pity on our poor, unfortunate souls and given us a place to call home.

But it's better to be meek than mighty.

And a doll doesn't question her puppeteer.