The Whipping Girl

My Dad walks in am, “get up!” “Them fields ain’t gonna plant themselves.”

“We got corn, potatoes and beans we got priorities in this life an here you are lazin’ in that bed, yo wasting’ yo life girl.”

He walk out the room mumbling and fuming about goddamn no account ungrateful kids.

I roll over in my bed, an stare at the white wall for awhile. I been so insulted I don even care no more, it dont mean nuthin, to me. I look at the lump under my mattress, my hidden book that I might get a good thrashing for but worse I don want it burned.

I have to consciously adjust my verbal attitude so that one of the other girls, my sisters don't go to thumping on me, for- "puttin' on airs, thinkin' I'm better than they are. A few years ago when I still cared, i would have tried to tell them that I didn't mean nothin' by it.

Now though, I know I am.

Better than them.

I get up slowly, my back aches.

The sisters are already outside in the fields. Faces shining, hair golden and oh so sweet and happy, they are laughing until I appear.

I am met with silence, features that turn cold and snickers and good mornings. I ignore them like I always do. I work until noon, until the sweat streams in rivers and the callouses on my hands sting. Then I am in the house for cleaning and supper preparations. Thankfully, I will use some time in the cool and dark house after I make it gleam and shine like its supposed to sneak chapters of my book.

"I bet that Cassie don't even got dinner on" he was on the front porch talking and laughing and at just the mention of me his voice changed in octaves.He spoke my name like a curse.

It was quite a different world than the one I actually grew up in. Sometimes I guess it goes like that.

Anyways I remembered him, my dad, before the others. My sisters.

But that being neither here nor there, I spat my thoughts into oblivion and made the plates as beautiful as I knew how.

They hated me for it.

Of course, it was good and compliments but it wasn't hers.

Or theirs, they could do better.

Well I thought to their looks, why didn't you?

That summer I spiraled into madness. The descent was inevitable.

They had a new girl on the farm and she was way bigger than me and hate. My god. I felt that I had been everything but branded.

She began snarling, demanding, and violence came to be somewhat of a routine. I began to wish for the simple hard work and quiet that won me freedoms in former times.

There were no more books, no more quiet moments, no more simple and separate moments for me.

I began to see her, this new girl, this tall Amazon foreign to my family as an enemy. She was too smart to hide from. And too ignorant to appease. And one more thing, she was to tall to run from. She told me, she was more evolved than me, that was a lesson I would have to learn.

I wasn't even about that.

I mean planting corn and being a verbal whipping post was one thing but being told that this violent girl thing was more evolved than me was quite another.

Totally foreign to me was the knowledge of an attitude that blonde hair and white skin with pure blues eyes meant superiority to me with rights and entitlements to everything even my own skin it seemed.

Everyone in the community loved her, she was the shining light, the freshest thing, the delight of the world, the apple of God's eye, the most graceful temple ever.

I thought she was a mean bully, biggest person I'd ever seen, saggy tiittied broad hipped flat assed jealous atrocity to a humans bein.'

I began to question everything then. I had nice ones, an ass an curves and hips and bones and petite. And she followed me around whipping on me. I don't care much for ignorance or violence.

So I went kinda mad. Without the books and my own minutes. I questioned the whole world and everything in it. It weren't no longer worth it, my life here but I didn't see goin' no wheres else.

Then came the true turning point.

One day my nephew came home with her hand print bruised into his lil six inch ass. I lost my mind, when he cried for her I picked him up and spanked his ass, reddened it. He was better for a minute.

But get this; I got my ass beat for it, and I mean beat. He beat my for a half an hour. I nearly suffocated under the weight of him, And he knew it he held me breathless until I submitted.

And get this; my boyfriend nearly killed me as well, later that day. He punched me so hard my whole world went black and I saw little pin pricks of white that brought the life back into focus.

To me it was madness, they had all gone mad.

If I cared about anything it was the kids.

But they loved her, they loved him, she was fit. More than me.

So, there came into my mind a little more madness.

I determined then that I would kill her.

The next time she came after me I would do it. I got to carrying rocks around with me because she was 6/5 and I 5/4. She would eventually attack and at said point, well then she would die.

I spent days summoning the courage to pull it off,the will to and the strength. I like built my mind to accept it in pieces and thoughts and self talk like I learned in them books. But only in reverse you know, I had to shed my care for this life by telling myslef all the bad and how it wasnt worth it.

It was night and the stars were high in sky. On the dirt road in the dark I stood and she lunged at me. Time stood still as I watched her come at me in a kind of start and stop slow motion as I considered the options of killing and time.

I held the rock firmly in my hand making my mind strong to hold the cold piece of earth in a hand that became as vice and melded with. My mind and body became stone in the resolve of my will. I stood silent.

When she jumped, fists held high. I reached inward and pulled then I went inside of her largness and slammed the rock square into her temple. She staggered but didnt fall and then she came again. I did it again. And again. I lie on top of her as I felt her life go.

I heard them, the others; crying and screaming but it was as if it was from somewhere distant.

I stood then and was there standing on that dirt road, bare foot, clothes ripped and bloody when the police showed up and the sirens colored the road and the trees and the dirt and the night in red, whites, and blues.