NiMoWriMo Novel
Life is never enough for Jez. Dissatisfaction is the predominant influence on her state of being. I guess one could say, it’s what keeps her going. It hasn’t always been this way, but it seems she’s stuck in a rut, and this one’s one hell of a rut. Like every classic Freudian, she blames it on her mother, and why not? It seems she’s the perfectly logical scapegoat.
The difference between a boy and a girl: A girl can get pregnant, whereas a boy cannot. A girl is sensitive, where a boy is not. A girl is soft and sweet and sensitive, a boy is not. Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, whereas boys are made of and and puppy dog tails.
A Prologue
A young girl growing restless of life as it is, the predictability of daily life tirelessly drones on mocking her boredom, her dissatisfaction, her curiosity with its routine sounds and familiar practices. Accustomed to life as it is, Amelia spent her prayers wistfully masking desires as true needs and wants. And before long, with enough thinking upon it, desires become reality. As it is said – be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. So as you may have guessed – this girl asked for change and change is what she received a change so dramatic that it would alter her life forever. Eternally alter the footprint of her life and the lives of those surrounding her – or as she put it - stifling her.
Fine linen folds crystallize remote edges of the pond in the late days of January, months after the last of the waterfowl headed south. Rough yellowed stalks rustle slightly from the movement of air. A back door slams – in part from the breeze but mostly in anger – and a high school freshman is granted access her rite of passage by a boy twice her age.
With God in her heart and Jesus nowhere near her mind, she goes to him, allows him to undress her; she succumbs to what many later decide as her greatest weakness. Long before she realizes the implications of the act she committed and had been a willing and eager participant Thom returned to his wife, leaving Jezebel. Alone, she cried. For the loss of her innocence, for her youth - forever altered but the magnitude of the decision before her.
Instilled with her grandmother's love for God - a God whose teachings still ring in her ears, whose touch is a cool dip on the tips of her fingers and padded, creaky plastic pressure beneath her knees both Wednesdays and Sundays. Made to feel she had committed a sin and not knowing what else to do, she agrees - though it was not enough to keep her from the furor.
A child is born in Bethlehem – not of an innocent, all-encompassing love but of childish want, curiosity, discovery, and desire; a departure from what is good and right.
The truth is, this mass of cells exists and Rowe vs. Wade has not yet come to be - though would not present a viable option if it had - seeing as though this was a sin, the greater sin would be to dissolve the mass without thought or talk of sin. So out of fear of creating a sin of God, she allowed herself to commit a sin of man and without a ceremony she bore a child who she unceremoniously then shoved off from the reeds by the edge of a cooling pond in the days leading up to Halloween.
But that’s not were the story begins – at least that’s not where I think it begins. Though for as long as I have been conscience of a story, that is where it has always begun – in my head – then again I have never been able to get it outside of my head. So let’s wind it back a bit and take a microscope to uncover the facts, to discover the nuances of the character that led to the pushing off of the baby in the reeds.
Growing up in Pennsylvania allows a girl a certain freedom that growing up in say New York City doesn’t. Suburban living prophesizes small town living – a town with only one stoplight is something to be coveted as it implies the need for only one stoplight, which as we all know that reality and necessity are not often the same. But all the same, she proffered change; here is how that change came about.
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