Lela
by
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Lela was nine years old. Life as she had known it had ended and something else had begun. The "something else" that left a frozen scream petrified and shrieking in her brain for forever. Habit moved her into the new pattern of living. Things seemed to float and stand apart. She moved, she spoke, she ate, and did all the usual things, except laugh. The things she didn’t understand loomed dark as storm clouds in her head. The scream was frozen and all around it the emotions tumbled with the fury of a hurricane. There were things out there in this chaos that Lela couldn’t understand, couldn’t believe, things that floated beyond her grasp. The shrieking went on, there were no words to it, just a horrible incomprehension. Everything seemed to go around the hub of that piercing scream. The world around her was that of shifting patterns like the colored pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope. Her brothers, her sister, aunt, uncle and all the people of her world formed and reformed about her. Lela moved in patterns and customs formed throughout her nine years of life. Her real world was in her head screaming on and on as she went through the motions of habit. Today Lela had to go back to school. No amount of begging could persuade Aunt Sarah to let her stay at home just one day more. One more day in the cocoon of the house. It would be worse than the first day she’d ever gone to school. A feeling of that day came over her. When Lela had started out for her first day of school she had been happy and excited. She had watched her brothers and sister go off to school for several years and had yearned for the mystery of "school" to be hers. She played school endlessly. The older children taught her various things they had learned. The first day she’d gone to school she was armed with more knowledge than the average first grader of that area. As the group of children walked the dusty mile and a half roadway to the school in the small town, Lela had skipped along with the antics of a frisky puppy. She’d been shiny as a new penny, bright-eyed with excitement. Her shiny lunch bucket swung from her grubby little hand. The wide sash of her best dress had slipped low and the bow hung at a rakish angle. Her dress was freshly starched and ironed. Her thick curly hair hung down her back in a smooth fat braid. She wove in and out of the group of children as they walked along. Four of the children were her brothers and sister. She was proud. She was a "big girl" now, just like her sister, Sissy. The dusty walk held many attractions. There were flowers to pick, stones to throw twigs to draw with in the dirt. Lela was joyful as she laughed and played, and got progressively more untidy along the way. She could hear the milk in her milk jar go slosh, slosh, as she swung her lunch pail. She liked the sound. "I wonder if it will make butter if I swing it a lot?" she thought. She sloshed furiously until she forgot to do it. Other things beckoned. Freddie, Brother Bob’s mean little boy, was beginning his second year of school. "Preacher’s kids always seem to have an extra measure of mischief," someone had said. Freddie was living proof. He dashed at Lela and yanked her pigtail. Lela wasn’t the youngest child in the family without having learned something of the art of defense. She caught him and delivered a kick to his shin with her sturdy brown shoe. Freddie ran whimpering to his older sister. Lela’s sister, Sissy, said, "Lela, you’re a big girl now, remember?" Lela walked beside her sister for awhile. "I can say my ABC’s," she called over to Freddie. And she proceeded to do so several times in a row. "I can count to a hundred!" Freddie called out. Lela shouted, "I can count to a thousand thousand!" "I can, too!" Freddie yelled back. A chorus of numbers hailed out as they competed down the road.
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About the Book
Reba was a wonderful mother. After her husband died she had raised her five children with her limited resources and some help from her sister and brother-in-law who were childless. When the youngest child was nine years old she saw her mother murdered. Three men raped and murdered her mother. All three of the men were prominent citizens. One of them was even the sheriff. When they realized the woman was dead the men sobered up. They agreed it had been an accident- an unfortunate accident. The woman shouldn’t have had her dress up showing her white little ass as she urinated there in the woods where she had been picking blackberries. They became concerned with trying to protect themselves and their families. When they found out the little girl had seen them they became obsessed with trying to stay out of her sight. The child ran into each of the men. Each time she identified one of the men as her mother’s murderer she was told she was wrong. The men were family men. They were prominent citizens. The uncle and aunt took the children to raise. After the child kept insisting she had identified the men correctly the uncle got a detective to investigate the case. The detective was murdered. The death was investigated by the sheriff and declared an accident. The child entered her teens and her mother’s death had still not been avenged. The system had let her down. She felt unbearable guilt that she hadn’t somehow been able to stop her mother from being murdered. When she was fifteen years old she began taking the punishment of her mother’s murderers into her own hands. Over several years the three men died. Each time she was present. After the death of the last man she collapsed mentally. The aunt and uncle realized she had been responsible for the deaths of her mother’s murderers. The girl had fallen in love with one of the men’s sons. It was never to be. The girl’s mind became that of the child she used to be. The aunt and uncle lived life day by day hoping she would never regain the horror of the memories that lay buried in her mind.
About the Author
Janis was born and raised in Arkansas. She attended several colleges in the U.S.A., Spain and Germany. She doesn't remember a time when she didn't love to write. She's published several newspaper articles, some poetry and done a piece on TV for an organization for battered women. She has worked with the elderly for the last twenty years and wrote in the precious moments she could seize to move toward her dream of being a novelist. She is currently working on another book.