Unknown

A plain girl stood before the crowded gym holding a check that may have weighed almost as much as she did and she forced a smile. The check read: "Pay to the order of: Charity Nolan in the sum of Twenty Thousand Dollars." A flash ran through her mind as she stood there petrified of what people really thought of her. She had won more money than she ever dreamt of and didn't even understand exactly how. Three weeks earlier a news reporter came to her hometown of Watchakee, Illinois and interviewed potential writers for a seminar that the city was supporting in hopes of expanding their towns revenues for the local library. The local library was a staple of the town. Children gathered around the library all year round, it was kind of the hip place to be as a kid Charity's age. Well, Charity always reveled herself a writer but was not sure if she met the criteria to be a member of the writing seminar and listened closely as the reporter told the crowd what was needed in order to even be considered for such an honor. See the writer's of the seminar would compete for a portion of the grant given to the library by Congress to expand their book collection to be used by the winners however they saw fit to expand their abilities to become writer contributing to the future of our reading spectrum. Charity was only 17. She was at the age of wanting out of the house but not being able to live on her own. She used writing as a way of getting out of her own head. Inside her head things happened that no one knew about. No one ever really took the time to get to know Charity because she was always so quiet and meek that no one really noticed she was even there. It often happened that Charity was left standing in the corner by herself lost in her own thoughts. She found that in these types of situations it was best for her mental health to write down the things that went through her mind as to not make much noise about these thoughts but not to the point of ignoring them entirely. She lost herself in thought often and amongst all of her books she always carried her diary around so she could write whatever she was feeling. Her diary was a small tattered book that looked worn and tattered. It was definitely read again and again and again. But the honest onlooker may not have even noticed Charity's little black book amongst her pile of daily books. Another flash of the crowd broke up Charity's flash to the newspaper reporter and then she was caught in a downward spiral of events flashing in her face that led to the winning of this contest to participate in the writing seminar. First Charity see's herself standing with her feet five feet from the wall and her face smashed against the wall with a pain rushing through her face as she supported her own weight with her own face against the wall. Tears were streaming down her face and she was afraid to move. Why was she standing there like that, what had she done so wrong. Oh she quickly remembered. She had said "gross" at the dinner table and her father came unglued. He punished her this way often but this night was different because he left her there for what seemed like hours. Next Charity flashed to a dark room with only a tv to light it. She glanced around the room and there was her father sleeping on the couch naked. She tip toed past in hopes not to wake him and make it to the bathroom unscathed by him. She hit the floor board in the room that creaked and up he sat, "what the hell are you doing?" Her father boomed this question as he jumped up out of his drunken stupor. Charity raced to the bathroom quietly expressing her need to use the restroom. Her father followed her to the bathroom and watched as she urinated. She quietly sat there in shock wondering if he was going to spank her for waking him. She finished using the restroom and went to leave the bathroom as her father grabbed her arm softly and said quietly, " we can spend some quiet quality time together." He directed Charity to the couch where he took her innocence from her. He touched her where he never should have, that was her dad. What was she to do. He told her every child's worst nightmare, that if she was to repeat what had happened between them that they would all be separated and never see each other again because DCFS wouldn't allow it. Charity was only six at this moment but she knew that she could never tell anyone about it. This was when Charity asked her mother for a diary. She wanted an escape of sorts and needed an outlet and her mother got her a little black leather notebook for her to use as a diary. It was a used book, pages were missing but there were lots of blank pages left and at the time it seemed like the best thing ever but the thoughts that she would write in them were the worst any child could conceive of thinking. Charity started writing that day she was around seven years old when she knew what had happened was wrong but she didn't understand why. She vowed to herself that it would never happen again. Never again would her father touch her in ways that made her cringe. It felt wrong. It felt dirty and Charity felt shame. Flashing back to the crowd of onlookers Charity saw her sister Margaret standing there. Margaret was Charity's older sister and Charity idolized her for every reason you could think. Charity owed a lot to her sister Margaret and would never forget it either. Margaret cried as she looked at Charity and Charity felt a tear roll down her cheek. Charity had another memory flash in front of her and it was her at age 8 or 9. Her and her family had just moved to town and she was outside playing with her new friend. Charity's mother came to the side door of the house and yelled for her daughter to come to her. Charity came as told and went in with her mother where she was terrified at what happened next. Her mother asked her to sit down at the kitchen table, "I have something very important to ask you. You are not in trouble but I need to know the truth." Charity glanced around wondering what she could possibly be talking about because after the "incident" Charity coined it as, she had completely thrown herself into a protective bubble so to speak. She never allowed herself to be alone with her father again. She never went to the bathroom in the middle of the night again, also meaning she had a questionable phase of bedwetting that she got beat for but never abused like that single night not long ago. What could her mother be talking about, what did she know? Her mother looked as though she had been crying which wasn't a new look to Charity because her father drank a ton and hit her mom often to the point of a need for a doctor's visit but never did he get into any trouble for these offenses. No one ever told. Her mother then said something Charity would never forget, "has your father ever touched you in a way that made you uncomfortable?" Charity felt the blood drain from her face and she didn't know what to say this was her mother after all and her father had made it perfectly clear not to tell anyone about what had happened, however Charity couldn't lie to her mother. She proceeded to rehash the "incident" to her mother's dismay. She cried and cried as she told her mom everything. Charity's mother then asked if she would go get Margaret from across the street that she needed to talk to her it was important. Charity wondered what she wanted from Margaret but didn't ask she just did as she was asked. Margaret was asked the same question and to Charity's surprise her sister too had been abused in the same way only multiple times over a period of 6-8 years. Her mother was horrified. How had she allowed this to happen to her daughters. Charity didn't blame her mother she loved her because she believed that now they would be safe from this monster of a man. Flash to crowd as Charity received her check and there stands her mother Michele, a wonderfully kind woman that was known now by the community as a mental health advocate and one of the most kind hearted people you could ever meet. Charity saw the tears in her mother's eyes. She then fast forwarded to her and her sister in their new room at their new house and their father was in there with them asking them to forgive him. Promising that he would never do it again, that he was sorry, could he please stay. Neither Charity nor Margaret said a word. He started screaming and for the first time Michele came to the rescue screaming at him to leave before she had him thrown in jail. He left quickly. Charity remembers the look in his eyes and glanced out to the crowd only to see the same glance looking back at him. Still no one knew what had happened to her and her sister. Michele couldn't press charges because if their father lost his job they would all be forced into shelters and she wasn't allowing her ex husband that right to tear us apart. So no charges were pressed and he remained in their lives still. Present day and he still continued to abuse the entire family physically, mentally, and emotionally. He used his words best against Charity so she learned to use hers. Charity was a straight A student and an excellent athlete. She threw herself into school activities to stay away from the horror as her sister did the opposite becoming sexually active and threw her life into partying and drugs. Different roads for different souls but all the same circumstances. A middle level income white family in rural suburbia life and no one had a a clue of the "incident." So for the seminar Charity decided to use her life as her inspiration. She took the evil heinous thoughts she put on the pages of her little black diary and put them into a story no one would ever believe. Who would believe this young meek and mild daughter of the town's kindest woman ever went through these life altering traumas. The book read as a thriller. Charity was able to paint the picture of poverty she came from that chilled the readers to the bone. She spoke of cracks she could see through in the walls of her childhood home. She wrote of nights they all slept in their heavy winter coats and mittens and hats because they had no heat. She remembered going hungry because her father needed alcohol or he was too drunk to drive them to town for groceries. She wrote of the horrific incident and of the outcoming of the unspoken secret that went unpunished. She wrote an entire novel that appeared to a first time reader just as that an act of fiction. That is why she found herself in front of this town wide gathering receiving something she never deemed possible, monetary recognition for her writing. Her parents knew this was no work of fiction. Her sister knew that this was all truth and not made up to entice readers. They watched in amazement as Charity received an award of $20,000. College was now possible, maybe. What would she do next? She graciously accepted the award and quietly left the grand stand to join her family that was walking on pins and needles because they didn't want to ruin her moment but they didn't want her moment to ruin their lives. They had all gone on with their lives as if nothing had ever happened and kept it all swept neatly under the rug, that was until that reporter came to town to announce the competition to be in the seminar. One week until the seminar and people were fact checking all the submitted writings just to be sure they truly were fictional and original. As this week of scrutiny went on Charity worried that someone may find her diary and realize this was actually a writing of autobiographical form and not fiction. This in fact could ruin everything she worked so hard to achieve. She hid the diary in a hole in her wall behind a poster. The week of fact checking ended and Charity went on to be an expert go to at the writing seminar. She was making a difference in her small town and people were noticing her now. She went 17 years without being noticed or talked about much. She was blending in to the back drop of all occasions hoping not to draw much attention to herself because she suffered from such horrible trauma it left her feeling like an outcast. So she was quiet and shy until she finally had an outlet. The summer ended and it was her senior year of high school. She walked with her head held high into her school on the first day and everyone knew her name. She was popular in a nerdy kind of way. Everyone knew her but still she was in the back ground. There was a newspaper article with her picture next to it in the trophy case at the front door for being a pivotal member of the town's library expansion and for sharing her creative writing with all that were willing to read. Wrapping up all the details into a nice neat bow Charity finished her high school days with her head still held high and her name always remembered.