Abby's Tale

OK, writing short stories, I guess. Anyway, this one came about after I looked through some old pages of In The News, when I came across this story about a girl who dies due to an infection in her leg, but mostly because her guardians (two nuns) didn't take care of her. Based on that. By the way, I am not a Christian, so if you'd like to correct me in any of that stuff, please do. So, yeah, sorry if anyone is offended.

EDIT: Also, come on, I was ten years old years ago. Am I expected to remember everything about how I wrote back then, or keep every assignment I ever wrote in order to get a good idea of what a ten year-old's writing looks like?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was always told fairies and witches didn’t exist. All those pictures in the storybooks became false, lies, in an instant. I didn’t want to believe that they didn’t exist, but the Sister told me that I shouldn’t be a silly girl, that I’d have to grow up sooner or later. I wanted to be able to tell her that I wanted to grow up a little later, but she would have put me in the naughty corner. So instead, I sat down with a book and kept my trap shut, hunched up over a book. I was seven years old.

Three years after that, I still loved the stories about fairies and witches. I practically worshipped Harry Potter, which led to Mary saying to the Sister that I loved stories about a wizard boy more than I loved God. I went to bed without food that night. Even though it was a bad thing to do, that night, rather than pray for guidance from the Lord in all that I did, I prayed of a day when I could grow up, when I could write stories,

I loved to think that, maybe when I was grown-up, I could get another girl to think of fairies, someone who wouldn’t snort and tease me about the ideas I had. None of the girls would listen, being obsessed by make-up that looked stupid on their kid faces, the boys that were only interested in video games, the music that was all about boys, make-up, and being a woman of low reputation. If someone did hear me, they always laughed. I just stopped talking, preferring to sit on the school steps to read.

The Sister told me to thank the Good Lord, for I would remain unsoiled by sin so long as I prayed to him everyday and cleared my head of impure thoughts. I tried as hard as I could. When I coveted the parents of the kids at school, I would think of how I was lucky to have a roof over my head, to have food in my mouth, to have an upbringing centered on the teachings of the Lord rather than on the bright lights and loud noises from what the Sister called the Devil’s box. When I felt anger at the others in our foster home, I would remember that they were just the same as me, but without God to guide them.

When I tripped at the school Sport’s Day, cutting into the skin behind my trouser leg, I remembered all the pain that Christ had to endure on the cross, that to cry about this mere scrape was ridiculous when the Son died for all our sins. The pain grew as I limped home; the nurse at school had asked if I needed anything, but I shook my head.

“Where have you been?” the Sister asked, once I got home. I looked up at her. She seemed taller than usual, as if I had shrunk or she had grown.

“I’m very sorry, Sister, I hurt my leg,” I said, waving my hand over the leg. She sniffed in, trying to think of a suitable punishment.

“Because you have not come back in the time I have set down for you, you will be escorted by one of the older girls. I will also suspend your shower privileges. Clearly, your vanity believes that a mere scrape on the leg merits a highly exaggerated limp. Only when you repent for this exaggeration, for thinking that this will excuse your coming home, when you see what life is like when your cleansing is taken away. Away, child.”

I tramped upstairs, after taking care to wipe my shoes. Two of the boys, Mark and Luke, were playing some game involving making the shape of a gun with their hands and pretending to fire at each other. I yelped as they knocked me over, onto my cut knee. Once I stood up, I gasped as soon as I saw the orange-brown blot on the blue carpet.

I hobbled over to my room, taking the box of tissues, before limping as fast as I could to the bathroom, wetting the paper. I got back to the carpet, and crouched, rubbing away at the stain, trying to rub them out. It became a light yellow-ish mark, which I hoped would be unnoticed by the Sister. I lurched back to my room, trying to wipe away the blood on my knee, but there weren’t enough wet tissues left.

***

The next week, the first week of the summer vacation, my knee hadn’t gotten better. The Sister, seeing that I was still limping, kept up with the no showering rule. She told me to take some fresh exercise out in the yard with the other children, that that would help if I really did have something wrong with my knee.

“Ew, what’s up with Abby’s leg?” said Anne, pointing. I was sweating in the hot sun, trying to do the jumping jacks we normally did for the Sister. The other children surrounded me, faces scrunched up at the sight of the yellow goo dripping from my leg. I tried to keep my face hidden as they all walked away, discussing it in hushed tones.

That night, over dinner, after saying Grace, the Sister made an announcement to all ten of us, clinking her glass with a fork. She told us that I was making it all up, that the yellow was probably the sweat and dirt. I almost cried into my plate of peas and sausages as she told them not to talk to me.

The week after that, as I tried to get out of bed, I just collapsed into a heap on the floor. The tears of pain rolled down my eyes as I tried to get up. I nearly managed it, when my leg buckled underneath me. There I stayed for the morning, as the Sister had no time to look after me, as she did have to look after the nine other children.

An hour of sitting on the floor, and the Sister did not come up. I felt my bladder urge to go to the toilet, then and there. I started to drag myself out of the door, see if I could get to the bathroom in time. I’d just gotten to my door, where I sat up, trying to reach for the doorknob, when the first trickles escaped. Once I had opened the door, I tried to think of a desert, the one I had read in a book at school, where I had thought of the Sand-Fairy. I tried to think of how the fairy, her wings made of sand, would ride a miniature camel that ran on the wind, but it wasn’t dry enough for me not to pee in my pants again. The Sister came up the stairs, her shoes stomping like they were made of iron.

She looked down at me in disgust. “Oh, for the Good Lord’s sake, your theatrics are going too far. Please remember what we use the toilet for.”

She went back downstairs again, muttering to herself. I crawled back to my room, looking for a book on the lower shelves. It was about unicorns; I could remember reading it back when I was seven and told that fairies, witches, and anything like that didn’t exist. I put it back in the shelf, contenting myself with something I’d read last month, a thing about an uppity rich girl who mends her awful ways at the end of the book. I fell asleep right in the middle of a sentence, into a dream of unicorns in limousines, of fairies with wings of sand riding camels, of learning how to do spells in a magic school, of writing words that came to life as fairies and witches.

I woke up as I was being dragged down the stairs. I could hear the Sister raving about how I was a bad child, that I ought to go out in the yard and play, that I was perfectly fine. In my blurred eyes, her black dress seemed to grow scales, wings, fire with each word she said. She hauled me into the yard, before stomping away.

I dragged myself to the edge of the fence, propping myself up. I blinked, opening my eyes to dozens of fairies dancing around, their petite forms doing perfect pirouettes, waltzing with partners, some of them simply springing around. The other children were running around, but the fairies avoided their stamping feet with fluid grace.

I blinked again, and opened my eyes to night. The moon had the silhouettes of people on broomsticks soaring across the sky. They started passing a ball to each other; I wanted to see how this would go, but I was too tired. I closed my eyes again.

I opened them again. The fairies were back, the witches like the nice ones out of storybooks with them, a unicorn galloping over the fence into our yard, a limousine parking up. Some of the other children were there, some of them staring at me. Their mouths were moving up and down, but I couldn’t hear them. The most wondrous thing of all was happening.

That was when I saw Him, the fairies, witches, and unicorns moving out of his way, standing to His attention. I smiled, as the edges of what I could see faded away. I saw the light, and it was beautiful.