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Literature Text
Some kids got singled out for a reason. Troublemakers. "Problem children." Problem parents. Black kids. Some kids just didn't feel right.
Most times the teachers had a reason. In the case of Marla Sanford, she didn't feel right.
The girl wore girls clothes, but they were always a more boyish cut. Had she elder brothers Mrs. Williamson bet the girl would have just worn their clothes. Getting her hair down out of its ponytail was a feat. Every year at pictures, fight, fight, fight. And boy, could that girl fight. She'd given the principal a black eye, and bled open both Mr. Peterson and Mr. Wier. They wouldn't let her play on the boys soccer team.
Marla wasn't funny, like queer, she was just different. No one could quite say why. She excelled at math and science, but would recede into a book or disappear into a painting just as easily. The girl had a penchant for trouble but did seem to try to avoid it. Trouble just found her is all.
The class picture of 1966 in Ithaca at our school was the last time anyone could recall seeing Marla. It was only eighth grade. High school was just ahead. Marla had just turned fourteen, but she was different from other fourteen year olds. Quieter. More mature. Dark.
That class picture day was the last time she was seen, until 1976 when her skeleton was pulled up out of the Stewart Park lake. Course in those days it looked a bit different. Less concrete paths, no carousel.
Marla's remains took eighteen days to identify, and still only had been because the forensic specialist just so happened to remember her disappearance ten years prior. He's the one next to her with the charming squint. Still squints.
Method of death was determined to have been blunt force trauma to the head, and the arms and the chest and the legs. Poor girl had to have been beaten to death. There was no other explanation. Course I know that. I saw it happen. I'm the scrawny one on the right with my eyes closed.
I wish I'd never opened them.
I was never singled out for anything. Never picked on, hardly ever noticed really. But Marla was nice to me. Marla was nice to me and someone thought she was too nice. Of course she wasn't. She wasn't queer, she was my friend. A friend that pecked me on the cheek after we'd walked my dog Charlie through the park.
My brother was dead now. Heart attack at forty two. I hadn't forgiven him and it seemed that God hadn't either. He'd exacted an unjust revenge on a child. A child that wore boyish clothes and had trouble trusting folks on account that her babysitter's boyfriend had tried to rape her.
Marla was just a little girl, poised on the precipice of maturity ready to fly at a moments notice. And my selfish, easily angered, insensitive brother ripped her wings from her amidst a cool April night filled with the scent of honeysuckle and lilacs and the silence of one single witness.
Most times the teachers had a reason. In the case of Marla Sanford, she didn't feel right.
The girl wore girls clothes, but they were always a more boyish cut. Had she elder brothers Mrs. Williamson bet the girl would have just worn their clothes. Getting her hair down out of its ponytail was a feat. Every year at pictures, fight, fight, fight. And boy, could that girl fight. She'd given the principal a black eye, and bled open both Mr. Peterson and Mr. Wier. They wouldn't let her play on the boys soccer team.
Marla wasn't funny, like queer, she was just different. No one could quite say why. She excelled at math and science, but would recede into a book or disappear into a painting just as easily. The girl had a penchant for trouble but did seem to try to avoid it. Trouble just found her is all.
The class picture of 1966 in Ithaca at our school was the last time anyone could recall seeing Marla. It was only eighth grade. High school was just ahead. Marla had just turned fourteen, but she was different from other fourteen year olds. Quieter. More mature. Dark.
That class picture day was the last time she was seen, until 1976 when her skeleton was pulled up out of the Stewart Park lake. Course in those days it looked a bit different. Less concrete paths, no carousel.
Marla's remains took eighteen days to identify, and still only had been because the forensic specialist just so happened to remember her disappearance ten years prior. He's the one next to her with the charming squint. Still squints.
Method of death was determined to have been blunt force trauma to the head, and the arms and the chest and the legs. Poor girl had to have been beaten to death. There was no other explanation. Course I know that. I saw it happen. I'm the scrawny one on the right with my eyes closed.
I wish I'd never opened them.
I was never singled out for anything. Never picked on, hardly ever noticed really. But Marla was nice to me. Marla was nice to me and someone thought she was too nice. Of course she wasn't. She wasn't queer, she was my friend. A friend that pecked me on the cheek after we'd walked my dog Charlie through the park.
My brother was dead now. Heart attack at forty two. I hadn't forgiven him and it seemed that God hadn't either. He'd exacted an unjust revenge on a child. A child that wore boyish clothes and had trouble trusting folks on account that her babysitter's boyfriend had tried to rape her.
Marla was just a little girl, poised on the precipice of maturity ready to fly at a moments notice. And my selfish, easily angered, insensitive brother ripped her wings from her amidst a cool April night filled with the scent of honeysuckle and lilacs and the silence of one single witness.
THIS IS NOT A TRUE STORY
This image is a small section of a larger class photo for my late Mother-in-law. The image of the one girl, inspired the story. If anyone knows these people as adults or WAS one of them, please understand it is only a fictional story, no offense is intended.
*sigh*
SO...also ignore any racial or bigoted insinuations as the story is from a characters point of view and in NO WAY represents what I think or believe about those who are 'different'....f*ck...I am different.
Now read.
This image is a small section of a larger class photo for my late Mother-in-law. The image of the one girl, inspired the story. If anyone knows these people as adults or WAS one of them, please understand it is only a fictional story, no offense is intended.
*sigh*
SO...also ignore any racial or bigoted insinuations as the story is from a characters point of view and in NO WAY represents what I think or believe about those who are 'different'....f*ck...I am different.
Now read.
© 2009 - 2024 kahl
Comments28
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Overall Vision
Originality Technique ImpactBeautiful and sad and cruel. Your writing is lyrical and smooth and yet I can see the shifts in tone and style, from conversational and casual to factual to a clinical, dry tone. That paragraph about the method of death sounds like it was from a coroner's report. It's a smooth transition from being more personal to being emotionally distant, but then you abruptly shift back to a personal tone again, like you're shaking the memory away.
You did that well here - understating the deep emotions while letting your physical descriptions illustrate the depth of the speaker's feelings. I can feel the horror, too, without you ever having to state it.
There isn't really anything I would want to have changed in your piece, although I do wonder at what made the speaker's brother fly into a killing rage. But if you had put that in the story, I don't think the story would've flowed as well.
Just one correction, unless you meant for it to be this way: The "a" should be a capital "A" at the beginning of the last sentence in the third paragraph. Or the period between "friend" and "a friend" should be a comma instead.
I loved this piece.<img src="e.deviantart.com/emoticons/h/h…" width="15" height="13" alt="
" title="Heart" />