The price of beauty. .

By Kirsten Nour Namskau

Eva was in 3rd primary and came from a wealthy family. Her father was director in a big company and her mother was known for her outstanding beauty first of all, in addition to her participating in community work.
Eva herself used to be a polite and clever girl . . . . She used to come to school in a car with driver witch also collected her after school-time. Everybody knew, that she had a governess at home, helping her with the home-work and looked forward to that she always was neat and clean.
But regardless so much wealth and success . . . Lately, slowly her behavior changed.
At first no one really made any noticed of it. But as time passed, she changed more and more. She started to become impolite to the teachers, to that extend so her parents was called in to a meeting.
Her father came alone and listened to the teachers complain. He promised that he would correct Eva.
More and more often, Eva came to school with her school-bag full of sweets; she shared with the other children. Often did she come to school with expensive jewelry she also easy gave away to other children . . . . but she didn’t look happy. She didn’t laugh or play with the other children.

People started to look at her as an ungrateful, spoiled child.

One day she showed up at school with a new necklace of real pearls.
She fast got surrounded by the other children who wanted to look at the necklace and envied her.
This day, Eva behaved so badly so the teacher at the end gave her a hard correction, telling her to stand in the corner.
As she was standing in the corner, she suddenly tore of her necklace off and threw it on the floor so all the pearls were running around.
She started to cry very hard and shouted to the teacher: “It doesn’t matter if you put me in the corner. It doesn’t matter if my dad buys me all the sweets in the world or give me expensive jewelry. I don’t want it. . . I want my mom, but nothing can bring my mom back.”

After this outburst the teacher calmed her down and asked what she meant.

Then Eva told her, that her mother, few months ago, had discovered a fat-cyst in her forehead. It was not big and not dangerous and hardly anyone noticed it if they didn’t know it was there.
But her mom knew it was there and felt it disturbed her beauty, so she wanted to go to hospital to remove it.
That kind of operation didn’t use to be anything to worry about. The doctor had said; it was like removing the appendix.
But under the operation, something had after all got wrong. Something very serious had happened and her mother had got sever brain-damaged.
Her mother was transferred to a mental hospital, where she never had a chance to leave again.
She had asked her father if she could visit her mom, but her father had said; “It was best if she didn’t, because her mom had changed so much. Neither would she remember Eva and Eva would not recognize her mom since the beauty had left her. Her father rather wanted her to remember her mom with the beauty she had before she went to the hospital.”

Eva continued crying as she shouted with bitter voice: “Why did she have to do that operation? She was beautiful enough. Nothing could make her more beautiful. She didn’t have to . . . . “