Ganondork
goo
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2010
Hey guys! I haven't posted any of my work in awhile, and I decided that this would be a good time to do so. This is some homework I had over the weekend, since my ninth grade teacher is cool and wants us to do creative writing. We were paired up, and they all felt I was the best writer out of all of us, so I was given the job of writing the story. It took me many hours to complete this - in fact, all day - and I'm quite happy with the result. I hope you enjoy this tale.
The alley was dark and unwelcoming. A small fire in the trash can near the brick wall that ended the alley offered very little illumination. On either side were run-down apartments. Broken windows were strewn throughout the apartment’s exterior. On the side of the buildings – inside the alley – a few people were slumped against the building, asleep. They wore clothes that were in poor condition; torn shirts coated in dirt and grease, ripped jeans and numerous cuts were present.
A woman living inside one of the apartments stared out of one of the very few intact windows. Her dark skin made her nearly impossible to see from the outside; she was completely in the dark. She scanned over the city with her watchful eyes; Memphis appeared to be in poor shape, but the rich seemed to still live in luxury.
She heard the door being unlocked, and someone stepping in. She quickly stepped away from the window, hiding herself in the darkness. She heard the giggle of a woman who was in her twenties, and a man speaking to her. The woman behind the curtain listened intently. The only noise that welcomed her was the sound of the two’s lips locked and separating repeatedly.
She fumbled silently for the lamp next to the curtain. When she felt it, she quickly pulled the chain, illuminating the room. The man looked around, shock staining his face. The woman – a Caucasian with blue eyes – looked equally surprised. The other woman stepped out from behind the curtains, a look of dread etched upon her aging face.
“Leslie?” the man asked, clearly at a loss for words.
“Anything you’d like to tell me?” she replied, her hands on her hips.
“I thought you were visiting your mother,” he growled, balling his hands into fists.
“I lied,” she retorted. “Get out – both of you.”
The man was speechless for a moment. He clenched his fists, his teeth gritted. Fury gripped Leslie as she watched her marriage with this man clearly be torn apart. After a moment of extreme tension, the man – and the woman he was having an affair with – turned and left, slamming the door behind them.
Leslie fell to her knees immediately, tears falling down her cheeks. She trembled as her cries turned to sobs. She felt her heart break as she held herself in her arms, her short hair hanging loosely in her face. She felt utterly alone.
“Tell me what happened,” a woman asked. The event had been a single day ago, but to Leslie, it felt like it was an eternity ago. Leslie looked forward, the woman trimming her hair with careful precision. Her dark brown hair fell to the floor silently.
The woman who was cutting her hair – like Leslie – had darker skin, but a lighter shade of brown in her hair. A look of worry was present on her face. Leslie said nothing for a moment, her eyes closed. “I caught Jim cheating on me last night. I told him I was visiting my mother for a week – I’ve been suspicious of his faithfulness as of late; he’s been coming home later and later each night – and I waited for him to come home. The first night, he came home with a white woman.”
The woman pursed her lips, shaking her head. “I hope you kicked him and the girl he came home with out.”
“I did, Bailey,” Leslie replied, tearing up again.
Bailey was silent for awhile; she only continued to cut Leslie’s hair absentmindedly. When she finished, she neatly put her equipment on the counter behind Leslie. She turned back to Leslie. “I’m really sorry.”
Leslie was quiet for a moment, her eyes trained on the floor. She finally looked up, and she began to tremble. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Bailey looked her in the eyes, concern the only emotion portrayed in her own. “There’s a purpose for all of this,” she said, “The Lord has something planned for all of us.”
“You’re right,” Leslie said. “I just hope that this stress doesn’t do anything to the baby,” she commented, rubbing her stomach gently.
Leslie sat in the chair in the living room. Its soft material comforted her, but she remained vigilant, staring at the door. Finally, the door began to unlock, the latches turning carefully. Jim walked in, clearly caught off guard by the darkness of the apartment.
“Sit down,” she commanded authoritatively. He fumbled around the room as though he had never been in the apartment before. His dark hands finally found the sofa, and he sat down. Leslie turned on the light, and he shielded his eyes, not used to all of the illumination that resulted.
“Care to tell me why you made me go through all of this?” Leslie asked, growing misty-eyed. She promised herself she wouldn’t do this, but the pain he had caused was a result of this mental fragility she was experiencing.
“I don’t know,” he breathed, staring down at his feet. The shame was evident on his face, but Leslie suspected that it was not because he cheated on her, but because he had been caught. He finally looked up at her. “But I do know that I’m sorry.”
She was speechless, unsure of the validity of his words. She was conflicted for a moment, wondering what her next course of action should be. She thought of Bailey’s words and about the Lord having a plan for her. She thought for a moment.
“Do you regret cheating on me?” Leslie asked tentatively.
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “If I could take back doing that, I would.” He stood up and embraced her. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel better, she felt hollow, for she had entirely lost trust in the one person that she thought she could trust most.
Leslie looked over her shoulder. She was nervous as she carefully opened up the drawer in her dresser. Underneath her clothes was a large stack of money. She hadn’t told her husband about the new job she had procured by doing the landlord an enormous favor. It had been a month since she took her husband back, and she still wasn’t sure if she could trust him with the knowledge that she had copious amounts of money lying around; he wasn’t used to that luxury.
Although she still worked at the bakery across the street, the landlord gave her errands to run for him every now and then. She was surprised at how generous he was with his payments, but she never complained. She knew in the long haul it would benefit her, Jim, and the child once it was born.
She felt something touch her shoulder. She bolted upright, fearing that it was Jim. When she turned around, she saw nothing. She was mystified. She felt something touch the tip of her nose, and she instinctively looked up. She noticed water coming in through a crack. It formed a drop and landed on her nose. She took money out of the stack and stepped outside, knowing she was going to have to hire someone to fix that.
It had been nine months since the roof had been fixed, and Leslie found herself in the emergency room. She had felt her water break an hour earlier, and Jim immediately took her to the nearest hospital. He seemed more worried about it than she was.
She was offered a gurney, if she couldn’t walk, but Leslie decided to just walk to the room that they provided her with. She was immediately dressed in a robe that didn’t particularly fit her correctly. She hid under the covers until the doctor came. It was then that she started feeling the first contraction.
It was nothing like she had ever felt before. It was excruciatingly painful, and she let out small moans of agony as she felt her child being pushed out of her body. Every now and again, she heard the doctor urge her, saying, “Push!” or, “I see the head!” but she was only concerned about getting it out and ending the pain.
Finally, with one final push – and one final scream – the child came out. Everyone anxiously waited to see the child. The doctor held it for a moment, examining it. Finally, he looked back at Leslie, concern in his eyes.
“Ma’am,” he began, sorrow in his voice, “I have bad news for you.”
Leslie’s heart leaped into her throat. A number of scenarios ran through her head; was the child going to have mental or physical issues, or even worse? She dreaded to guess what was worse than that. “Yes?” she finally asked.
“Your child is stillborn,” the doctor finally said with a sigh.
Leslie shook her head for a moment in disbelief. “No,” she stammered. “No. This can’t be true. This has to be a joke, right?”
The doctor shook his head. “I am so sorry, ma’am.”
Jim tried to console her, but she shrugged him off. “I want to be alone; please leave.” And so they did. Leslie buried her head into the pillow on her bed and sobbed for hours.
The funeral for the child, Marvin as they decided to call him, was full of friends and family, but Leslie’s eyes were trained only on the coffin. To Jim’s surprise, she had been able to afford an expensive coffin for their stillborn child. He was too filled with grief to question where she had acquired enough money to have such an expensive funeral service.
Leslie, unaware of her surroundings, didn’t pay any attention to the people around her. Many tried to speak with her, but she only stared at the coffin. Nobody spoke of the child’s unexpected death, but only of how the mother couldn’t seem to get a grip. She didn’t hear a word that the preacher said, but she still sent silent prayers to the Lord for her child.
Two months had passed before the festering thoughts in Jim’s head finally gave him the courage to ask his wife about how she had been able to pay for the funeral so easily and without hesitation.
“Dear,” he began, standing in front of her. She had been staring out the window like she had begun doing on a daily basis since the funeral. She looked up, acknowledging his presence, so he continued. “I was just wondering where you got the money for the funeral; your salary at the bakery could have never been enough.”
“I was given a raise,” she replied instantly. She had been waiting for this day, always rehearsing different lines for different situations.
“Why didn’t I hear about this?” he pressed on.
“You never asked,” she retorted.
That caught him off guard. “Why don’t you tell me things anymore, Leslie?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were cheating on me?” she demanded.
“I thought we got over that!” he shouted.
“No, Jim,” she replied, standing up and raising her voice. “We’ll never be over that. You shattered any trust that I will ever have for you, okay? Perhaps I would have told you if you had never cheated on m-“
Leslie was interrupted as Jim slapped her with the back of his hand. She was taken aback for a moment. She felt the sting of the slap on her cheek moments after he hit her. She was bewildered, unsure of what to do. She felt her instincts take over as her hands balled into fists.
Everything became red as she took a swing at him, catching him in the mouth. His head whipped back, caught off guard. She didn’t give him a chance to hit back as she punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, taking the moment to calm himself down. When he stood back up, his eyes only showed remorse.
“I’m so sorry, Leslie,” he began.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Don’t ever come back!”
His shoulders slumped as he walked to the door. She followed closely behind him and slammed the door once he was through the doorway. She didn’t feel sorrow this time. She didn’t regret her decision, either. For once, she felt like she had done the right thing.
It had been two years since she kicked Jim out. He had made many attempts to come back into her life – through letters, friends suggesting it, and even appearing at her apartment door – but she always refused each time. She felt less restrained without him, and she always had Bailey when the loneliness was unbearable.
She no longer believed in the American dream. The dream did not seem to be made for her when she thought of her ancestors being shipped in from slave ships. She no longer felt welcome in a world that always left her feeling empty and unhappy. And then she remembered what Leslie had told her nearly three years earlier; the Lord had a plan for everything.
She had heard of other African women going to France, and she decided that this was what she should do. She had the money. She had the time. She was entirely willing. She left America the very next month.
She was quickly accepted when she had arrived, and she knew that this was the best thing she could have ever done for herself. She dove into the language, the culture, and the history, and never looked back at all the misery that had happened during her life in America.
She lived the rest of her life in Champagne, France. She lived a comfortable life as a baker. She was careful about the remaining funds she had from running those errands for the landlord. She looked back at those days and sighed – they seemed so long ago. She lived the rest of her life happily. Indeed, there were her ups and downs throughout her life as a Frenchwoman, but she found more positives than negatives.
In her final days, she recorded every terrible life that had happened to her in America onto a single piece of paper; every space of the paper was filled with tales of poverty, cheating, death, and lies. When she was satisfied with the paper’s contents, she threw it into the flame in her fireplace, symbolically cleansing her mind. When she finally died, she did so without any regrets, and without any sorrow.
***
The alley was dark and unwelcoming. A small fire in the trash can near the brick wall that ended the alley offered very little illumination. On either side were run-down apartments. Broken windows were strewn throughout the apartment’s exterior. On the side of the buildings – inside the alley – a few people were slumped against the building, asleep. They wore clothes that were in poor condition; torn shirts coated in dirt and grease, ripped jeans and numerous cuts were present.
A woman living inside one of the apartments stared out of one of the very few intact windows. Her dark skin made her nearly impossible to see from the outside; she was completely in the dark. She scanned over the city with her watchful eyes; Memphis appeared to be in poor shape, but the rich seemed to still live in luxury.
She heard the door being unlocked, and someone stepping in. She quickly stepped away from the window, hiding herself in the darkness. She heard the giggle of a woman who was in her twenties, and a man speaking to her. The woman behind the curtain listened intently. The only noise that welcomed her was the sound of the two’s lips locked and separating repeatedly.
She fumbled silently for the lamp next to the curtain. When she felt it, she quickly pulled the chain, illuminating the room. The man looked around, shock staining his face. The woman – a Caucasian with blue eyes – looked equally surprised. The other woman stepped out from behind the curtains, a look of dread etched upon her aging face.
“Leslie?” the man asked, clearly at a loss for words.
“Anything you’d like to tell me?” she replied, her hands on her hips.
“I thought you were visiting your mother,” he growled, balling his hands into fists.
“I lied,” she retorted. “Get out – both of you.”
The man was speechless for a moment. He clenched his fists, his teeth gritted. Fury gripped Leslie as she watched her marriage with this man clearly be torn apart. After a moment of extreme tension, the man – and the woman he was having an affair with – turned and left, slamming the door behind them.
Leslie fell to her knees immediately, tears falling down her cheeks. She trembled as her cries turned to sobs. She felt her heart break as she held herself in her arms, her short hair hanging loosely in her face. She felt utterly alone.
***
“Tell me what happened,” a woman asked. The event had been a single day ago, but to Leslie, it felt like it was an eternity ago. Leslie looked forward, the woman trimming her hair with careful precision. Her dark brown hair fell to the floor silently.
The woman who was cutting her hair – like Leslie – had darker skin, but a lighter shade of brown in her hair. A look of worry was present on her face. Leslie said nothing for a moment, her eyes closed. “I caught Jim cheating on me last night. I told him I was visiting my mother for a week – I’ve been suspicious of his faithfulness as of late; he’s been coming home later and later each night – and I waited for him to come home. The first night, he came home with a white woman.”
The woman pursed her lips, shaking her head. “I hope you kicked him and the girl he came home with out.”
“I did, Bailey,” Leslie replied, tearing up again.
Bailey was silent for awhile; she only continued to cut Leslie’s hair absentmindedly. When she finished, she neatly put her equipment on the counter behind Leslie. She turned back to Leslie. “I’m really sorry.”
Leslie was quiet for a moment, her eyes trained on the floor. She finally looked up, and she began to tremble. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Bailey looked her in the eyes, concern the only emotion portrayed in her own. “There’s a purpose for all of this,” she said, “The Lord has something planned for all of us.”
“You’re right,” Leslie said. “I just hope that this stress doesn’t do anything to the baby,” she commented, rubbing her stomach gently.
***
Leslie sat in the chair in the living room. Its soft material comforted her, but she remained vigilant, staring at the door. Finally, the door began to unlock, the latches turning carefully. Jim walked in, clearly caught off guard by the darkness of the apartment.
“Sit down,” she commanded authoritatively. He fumbled around the room as though he had never been in the apartment before. His dark hands finally found the sofa, and he sat down. Leslie turned on the light, and he shielded his eyes, not used to all of the illumination that resulted.
“Care to tell me why you made me go through all of this?” Leslie asked, growing misty-eyed. She promised herself she wouldn’t do this, but the pain he had caused was a result of this mental fragility she was experiencing.
“I don’t know,” he breathed, staring down at his feet. The shame was evident on his face, but Leslie suspected that it was not because he cheated on her, but because he had been caught. He finally looked up at her. “But I do know that I’m sorry.”
She was speechless, unsure of the validity of his words. She was conflicted for a moment, wondering what her next course of action should be. She thought of Bailey’s words and about the Lord having a plan for her. She thought for a moment.
“Do you regret cheating on me?” Leslie asked tentatively.
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “If I could take back doing that, I would.” He stood up and embraced her. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel better, she felt hollow, for she had entirely lost trust in the one person that she thought she could trust most.
***
Leslie looked over her shoulder. She was nervous as she carefully opened up the drawer in her dresser. Underneath her clothes was a large stack of money. She hadn’t told her husband about the new job she had procured by doing the landlord an enormous favor. It had been a month since she took her husband back, and she still wasn’t sure if she could trust him with the knowledge that she had copious amounts of money lying around; he wasn’t used to that luxury.
Although she still worked at the bakery across the street, the landlord gave her errands to run for him every now and then. She was surprised at how generous he was with his payments, but she never complained. She knew in the long haul it would benefit her, Jim, and the child once it was born.
She felt something touch her shoulder. She bolted upright, fearing that it was Jim. When she turned around, she saw nothing. She was mystified. She felt something touch the tip of her nose, and she instinctively looked up. She noticed water coming in through a crack. It formed a drop and landed on her nose. She took money out of the stack and stepped outside, knowing she was going to have to hire someone to fix that.
***
It had been nine months since the roof had been fixed, and Leslie found herself in the emergency room. She had felt her water break an hour earlier, and Jim immediately took her to the nearest hospital. He seemed more worried about it than she was.
She was offered a gurney, if she couldn’t walk, but Leslie decided to just walk to the room that they provided her with. She was immediately dressed in a robe that didn’t particularly fit her correctly. She hid under the covers until the doctor came. It was then that she started feeling the first contraction.
It was nothing like she had ever felt before. It was excruciatingly painful, and she let out small moans of agony as she felt her child being pushed out of her body. Every now and again, she heard the doctor urge her, saying, “Push!” or, “I see the head!” but she was only concerned about getting it out and ending the pain.
Finally, with one final push – and one final scream – the child came out. Everyone anxiously waited to see the child. The doctor held it for a moment, examining it. Finally, he looked back at Leslie, concern in his eyes.
“Ma’am,” he began, sorrow in his voice, “I have bad news for you.”
Leslie’s heart leaped into her throat. A number of scenarios ran through her head; was the child going to have mental or physical issues, or even worse? She dreaded to guess what was worse than that. “Yes?” she finally asked.
“Your child is stillborn,” the doctor finally said with a sigh.
Leslie shook her head for a moment in disbelief. “No,” she stammered. “No. This can’t be true. This has to be a joke, right?”
The doctor shook his head. “I am so sorry, ma’am.”
Jim tried to console her, but she shrugged him off. “I want to be alone; please leave.” And so they did. Leslie buried her head into the pillow on her bed and sobbed for hours.
***
The funeral for the child, Marvin as they decided to call him, was full of friends and family, but Leslie’s eyes were trained only on the coffin. To Jim’s surprise, she had been able to afford an expensive coffin for their stillborn child. He was too filled with grief to question where she had acquired enough money to have such an expensive funeral service.
Leslie, unaware of her surroundings, didn’t pay any attention to the people around her. Many tried to speak with her, but she only stared at the coffin. Nobody spoke of the child’s unexpected death, but only of how the mother couldn’t seem to get a grip. She didn’t hear a word that the preacher said, but she still sent silent prayers to the Lord for her child.
***
Two months had passed before the festering thoughts in Jim’s head finally gave him the courage to ask his wife about how she had been able to pay for the funeral so easily and without hesitation.
“Dear,” he began, standing in front of her. She had been staring out the window like she had begun doing on a daily basis since the funeral. She looked up, acknowledging his presence, so he continued. “I was just wondering where you got the money for the funeral; your salary at the bakery could have never been enough.”
“I was given a raise,” she replied instantly. She had been waiting for this day, always rehearsing different lines for different situations.
“Why didn’t I hear about this?” he pressed on.
“You never asked,” she retorted.
That caught him off guard. “Why don’t you tell me things anymore, Leslie?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were cheating on me?” she demanded.
“I thought we got over that!” he shouted.
“No, Jim,” she replied, standing up and raising her voice. “We’ll never be over that. You shattered any trust that I will ever have for you, okay? Perhaps I would have told you if you had never cheated on m-“
Leslie was interrupted as Jim slapped her with the back of his hand. She was taken aback for a moment. She felt the sting of the slap on her cheek moments after he hit her. She was bewildered, unsure of what to do. She felt her instincts take over as her hands balled into fists.
Everything became red as she took a swing at him, catching him in the mouth. His head whipped back, caught off guard. She didn’t give him a chance to hit back as she punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, taking the moment to calm himself down. When he stood back up, his eyes only showed remorse.
“I’m so sorry, Leslie,” he began.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Don’t ever come back!”
His shoulders slumped as he walked to the door. She followed closely behind him and slammed the door once he was through the doorway. She didn’t feel sorrow this time. She didn’t regret her decision, either. For once, she felt like she had done the right thing.
***
It had been two years since she kicked Jim out. He had made many attempts to come back into her life – through letters, friends suggesting it, and even appearing at her apartment door – but she always refused each time. She felt less restrained without him, and she always had Bailey when the loneliness was unbearable.
She no longer believed in the American dream. The dream did not seem to be made for her when she thought of her ancestors being shipped in from slave ships. She no longer felt welcome in a world that always left her feeling empty and unhappy. And then she remembered what Leslie had told her nearly three years earlier; the Lord had a plan for everything.
She had heard of other African women going to France, and she decided that this was what she should do. She had the money. She had the time. She was entirely willing. She left America the very next month.
***
She was quickly accepted when she had arrived, and she knew that this was the best thing she could have ever done for herself. She dove into the language, the culture, and the history, and never looked back at all the misery that had happened during her life in America.
She lived the rest of her life in Champagne, France. She lived a comfortable life as a baker. She was careful about the remaining funds she had from running those errands for the landlord. She looked back at those days and sighed – they seemed so long ago. She lived the rest of her life happily. Indeed, there were her ups and downs throughout her life as a Frenchwoman, but she found more positives than negatives.
In her final days, she recorded every terrible life that had happened to her in America onto a single piece of paper; every space of the paper was filled with tales of poverty, cheating, death, and lies. When she was satisfied with the paper’s contents, she threw it into the flame in her fireplace, symbolically cleansing her mind. When she finally died, she did so without any regrets, and without any sorrow.
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