She Was

A Story by Agape Montero

A short story of a young girl, wrapped in a tormented life.

She Was
By: G. A. Montero

She was seven years old. She had dark brown hair that fell lengthily down her back. Bangs were cut close to her eyes, nearly covering two caramel irises, framed by long lashes that seemed to slow down time whenever she blinked. She wore pink. A faded t-shirt that was so large it fell to her knees, swishing around her legs when she ran. Light blue shorts peeked from just underneath the shirt. She wore sandals. Worn from days of running, dirty from stepping in numerous puddles or piles of mud. She was homeless. Standing just by the entrance of an alleyway, large brown eyes blinking up at everyone who passed her. She had no mother. Died when she was simply three, due to a cancer no one even bothered to remember the name of. She had no father. He left home in order to pursue promiscuous women, interested in nothing but drinking and sex. She had a letter from her father, but she couldn’t read, for her father never bothered to send her to school after her mother had passed on. Perhaps it held an apology, an explanation, and a kiss goodbye. Perhaps it contained curses, and regretful wishes of ever having her. Either way, it had been discarded into a river in the middle of the night. This all happened at the age of six. She had a blanket. A worn, raggedy, tattered thing that patterned with clowns. She vaguely remembered clutching it to her chest as an infant, and now, it never left her side. She would walk the streets in her faded pink t-shirt that she stole from her mother’s room before her father burned all her possessions, her little blue shorts from her own closet, and her small sandals that she grabbed from the garage on the way out of the house. She would be asked questions. “Are you lost? Where are your parents?” She would answer with a lie, every time. “The store. On that bench. They’re coming to pick me up. It’s okay.” She hid in the alley during the rain, the water looking like tears, but in actuality, nothing fell from her eyes. She had no relatives, for they lost all contact with her family after her mother had died. They blamed it on her alcoholic father. She was alone. She was tired. She was the seven year child’s still body that the news only talked about for a few minutes after they found her a few days later, wrapped tightly from the cold in her little blanket.