My Story

It was a Monday night. Through the first-floor window of a large colonial home stood a mother, hands gesticulating wildly, hurling, spitting syllables at the girl who stood before her. The daughter looked on her mother with shoulders hunched, a somber and exhausted glare darkening her face. Encouraged by her daughter's discouraged countenance, the mother indulged further in her irrational fury as she claimed what she knew was true, and that was that her daughter had been doing something behind her back, and that something was what only "white trash girls" did. The mother's eyes widened further and flashed with a demented fervor. Her sense of righteousness could not cool her ranting now. Finally, in an exasperated gesture, the mother's frantic energy seemed to dissipate, and she was almost satisfied. She stood propped against a table corner, hand pressed palm-down across her forehead in a false expression of pitying remorse. She mouthed a few more words, and a pair of incredibly strong arms wrenched the girl backward out of view, so that she could await her fate. Her mother had to think of a way to make an example of her. The girl was maybe seventeen.

A few weeks later I walk by the same house. The lights are on; no one appears at the window. The quiet suburban street seethes a summery sedative. I breath in the thick, humid air and admire a street light's soft beam falling onto...a figure lying partially in the road. I approach with heart thumping but without anticipation or surprise. The girl lies slumped awkwardly on her knees. The ropes which had bound her to the lamp post curl furled around her, having been eroded by weather. One fair cheek lies pressed against the pavement, one intelligent eye stares outward, thoughtfully, down the street. The girl had to be made an example of. And no one from the rows of houses on either side had dared to unbind her.