photo by Sarah Mae.
The following is a short excerpt from Keith R. Potempa’s literary fiction novel-in-progress Goby and the Shrimp.
August 29th
Dear Diary,
They tease her because she’s a girl. She’s a girl and she’s not pretty—oh how pretty! kind of pretty—like what their daddies think is pretty, like what their wives looked like when they were six; with blonde-white curls and big, big eyes and athletic boyish bodies, but not what they look like now because the surgery and all… They make fun of her because her teeth are crooked and her hair is frizzy, but my mother always told me that crooked teeth build character.
And frizzy hair? Well frizzy hair. Frizzy, frizzy hair.
She’s not Abby short for Abbie or Abalia she’s Abigail. They tease her because she’s named after a grandma and she’s chubby and plain and simple and shy but that’s the way they taught her to be. She’s not pretty so she doesn’t have anything to say. She’s not pretty so we make fun of her. She’s not pretty so she lives her horrible life painfully aware of how not pretty she is, and knows that the reason her life is so horrible is because she is not pretty.
It’s cliché I know. Believe me, I know. She’s Abby, short for Abigail but she may as well be Petunia short for Petunia. And maybe because of that I feel like I can fix her, absolutely should fix her, like it’s my sole responsibility to fix her. And maybe in the process of fixing her I will fix myself. Not like there’s problems with me, but with my life, you know? Whatever.
Like, by fixing her I will have gone back in time and fixed the kiddy-Petunia fifteen years ago. And both six-year-old and twenty-one-year-old become strong, independent feminists, who, without glasses and frizzy hair turn out to be really attractive, and the cute boys they both had crushes on the whole time to notice them and ask them on a date. And everyone is happy. No scars. No abuse. Just smiles. And hair tossed back in knowing laughter when they pass one another; arm in arm with their boys.
Like a Lifetime version of Back to the Future.
It’s cliché I know. Believe me, I know. Petunias are ugly fucking flowers and I hate them.
They knocked her down. It probably should have been a foul if she had “called it” or if some other counselor who knew something about basketball was watching. Really, anyone but me. She just laid there, her tears welling. Tears that she did her best to fight so she wouldn’t have to hear the “stupid baby” and “wah, wah, wah!” and “crying again?” Her knees were red and raw. But she didn’t seem to notice. She was looking at the ground, strangely intent upon the rubber gym floor where this curved black streak pointed to the sole of her shoe.
“Here, here, here, passit, passit! Over here, here!”
She bit her lip and looked around, catching my eye. I walked toward her, feeling my white cotton skirt wave behind me.
“Abby?” I said, crouching down in front of her, “are you ok sweetie?”
“Yes Miss P,” she whispered, her eyes dropping.
“Don’t miss, don’t miss, oh! COME ON!”
She was looking at my thigh. My skirt had hiked up a bit, and following her eyes, I noticed the lowest scar on my left leg was visible.
One, two, three, four. The fourth one down the line.
There, a couple inches up from my knee, a pink bubble of scar tissue perched on my thigh. A pink reminder of “my first real boyfriend.” A pink reminder of that horrible night. A pink reminder of the next morning, in the stall of a public bathroom, razor on the blood stained tile, crying, bleeding to death. Wondering what it really is to lose your virginity. What it really is to have sex. What it really is to love. Wondering. Wandering. Alone.
My first reaction was to cover it up. To slip my motherly hands over her eyes in the movie theatre. But the scene I was seeing as the mother was more gruesome because I understood what it meant. Because I knew the story.
She stared. I fought for something to say, but she didn’t want or need anything I had to say. Her childish curiosity pushed her forward. What was normally a very shy, timid girl was now a shameless pair of eyes.
She licked her thumb.
Leaning forward, sniffing back tears, she pressed it to the pink scar on my thigh. She looked confused, perhaps from the texture, the way it was raised slightly above the rest of my skin. She hesitated and looked at me. My face said nothing, not “go ahead sweetie” or “don’t touch honey” or anything she could have expected. I simply stared back.
She licked her thumb again. She rubbed it now, first soft, then harder. She checked on it, maybe anticipating some change, what exactly I don’t really know. After a long moment of rubbing, alternating hard and soft, licking over and over, her face turned to a question mark. I had no answer. She took one last, sad look at the scar before taking up the hem of my skirt and lowering it to my knees, hiding what she and the world could not understand.
“Sorry,” she said with a sniffle.
“It’s ok,” I whispered, looking at the scuff through the blur of my own tears. “Go and play. But don’t let those boys push you around.”
“I won’t,” she said, pushing herself up with her hands.
If you like what you read, leave a comment, or check out more excerpts here.
All original fiction is ©2009 Keith R. Potempa and is not to be reproduced in any form without prior written consent of the of the author.
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