Mara pressed her palms together, sweating profusely, focussing all her mind and thought into this one prayer: Please, help Momma get some food. She had been told by the man wearing the cape that God would grant wishes to good girls and boys. She asked if God was like Santa, but was hushed and sent to the back of the congregation clutching her mother's hand. It didn't matter if He was like Santa; Mara and her little brother Tommy never got anything from Santa.
She wanted to try. School dinners were hardly enough, and Momma was never home, always work, work, work. Mara wished she would come home more often – Daddy would sometimes come and upturn our furniture and yells about paying him. Momma says he's just being a man, and that he has a temper, and when he comes over we should go to our neighbour's. So Mara did all her homework and began giving some of her food to the kids who looked hungrier than she felt, and she smiled at everyone she saw.
She was so hungry. When she looked at the other girls, their hips didn't stick out, and their joints didn't look large and out of proportion with her body. They didn't look like they were nothing more than skin stretched over bones. God said that one day He would feed the hungry, and Mara was waiting for that day, and hoped He would remember her family. She didn't want to be selfish, she just hated seeig her Momma sigh, and hear her little brother's stomach grumble all afternoon. When they had dinner she tried to make him eat some of her's – He was getting thinner, and she was so worried.
"God," she whispered, clenching her eyelids together, "can you hear me? If you can, could you please get us some food. I'm trying my best to be humble and unselfish, just like Momma and the man in the cape says, but I'm so hungry. I did all my homework and I'm trying to smile at everyone. Also, there are some girls in my class who tease me about the holes in my shoes. They have nice shiny shoes and new clothes and they bring their food in pretty lunch boxes. Why do they get that, especially when they're so mean? I hope you don't mind me asking. You don't have to tell them to stop – We just need a loaf of bread." He tummy finished her prayer with a groan, a small pang of pain shooting through it, and she unclasped her hands. She was drenched in sweat, and her knuckles were white from being held so tight. She crawled underneath her blankets, inhaling the smell of mothballs and dust, and drifted off to sleep, listening to her brother's contented snores.
"Mara's a saint!" Mara looked up from her notebook to the teasing whisper directed to her by Monica Strait, a girl with curly brown hair, who had a cellphone and talked a lot. "I'm a saint?" Mara whispered back, not wanting to be yelled at by the teacher, but too curious to ignore them. "Your clothes are holey. D'you get it? Holey? Ha, ha." Monica's eyes glittered sadistically as Mara's face flashed with hurt. "Mara, Monica. Back to work." She turned back to her maths, struggling laboriously through writing out a story. A Nar-a-tive, as the teacher called it. Her's was on a girl who died, and went to heaven. She asked God if He could help all the poor people. She glared at her paper, the words she write coming out illegible, misspelt.
"Mara, this is atrocious." The teacher tapped her book with his red pen and looked at her through his thick glasses. "What I can make out of it looks like an excellent story, but your penmanship, your spelling... There are others in this class who are moving onto cursive writing. You have not yet mastered printing. I am disappointed." He shook his head at her, then turned to his desk to write something down, and then handed the note to her. "I want you to show this note and your story to your parents, okay? Get them to sign it and bring it back to me." She took them and walked out, tears in her eyes. She knew some people were already writing beautifully in cursive; She had seen the evidence in Monica Strait's book.
She walked slowly down to the school gate where she met Tommy, arms wrapped around her books in a lonely, desperate embrace. She heard a shrill cry, like that of a child, and she dropped her book and ran towards the small circle of people blocking the gate. "Stop it, please! Mara! Momma, help me!" Tommy had his arm twisted behind his back and his face near the ground. He already look as though he had been rubbed in dirt, and his tears made mini-mudslides down his face. Monica laughed and pointed while her brother, Andrew Strait, pushed Tommy's hand up further. "Eat the dirt!" He snarled, and Tommy whimpered and shook his head.
Mara didn't see anything. She was in a blind rage. She leapt forward onto Monica's back, scrabbling at her hair and yanking it upwards victoriously. When the girl pitched forward, screaming, Mara launched herself at Andrew, sending all her hurt, anger, and body weight into a right hook. He stumbled, his lip blleding, but it was Mara who got the worst of the fight. She howled, her weak bones nothing against the cheekbone of a young, strong boy. She couldn't move her fingers, and fiery pain laced up and down her arm, her knuckles pushed up further back than they needed to be.
Marcus kneed her in the stomach, and pushed Tommy over for good measure. He grabbed his sister by the arm and led her off. She looked over her shoulder in disgust, but, as Mara noted with satisfaction, was still rubbing her head from where Mara yanked out a chunk of her hair. God, she thought, her stomach and lungs not up to the task of talking aloud, why did you let that happen?
Tommy crawled over to her, tugging on her arm. "Mara, get up, get up. We have to get home." She got up carefully, trying not to move her hand, retrieved her books and they both walked home together. "Can you open the door, Tommy?" She asked, using her good hand to hold her books, but delighted to see her brother's face light up from being asked to do such a menial task. Before he could touch the doorknob, however, it was twisted and the door was yanked open. The stench of whisky and cigarettes wafted out, and Mara knew who it was before she looked into his face: Her father.
She was flying through the air before she knew it herself. She shrieked as she hit the decorative mirror set in the wall in the hallway and it shattered, sending the sparkling shards skittering across the floor as she landed, quite painfully on her arm. She saw his boots clomping on the floor in front of her face, so close he could have been stepping on her eyelashes, and drew her up by a chunk of hair, and she squirmed with discomfort. "Papa, stop, please." She whimpered, tears already flowing freely from her eyes. "Momma said God don't like it when you hurt people!" She was thrown to the floor, and howled. She heard a crunch as her arm gave out, bending at unnatural angle, and it felt like a million red hot splinters were being forced through her veins and oh, it hurt so badly...
"Mara?" Tommy sounded so young, almost inaudible over this annoying wail... That was her, Mara realised, her voice, her screams, her pain. "Tommy, run! Go to the police-" She was silenced by a sharp kick in the rib, and pain flared, her breathing ragged. She glanced hazily at the doorway, pleased to find it empty. "God says children are innocent Daddy. You shouldn't hurt children." She managed to wheeze, gasping desperately for air. He pulled her up by her injured arm and she screamed again. "Where's your God, girl? Why ain't he savin' you?" He threw her again, a throw used in cricket as a boy, and, later in life, plates and crockery and plates at his ex-wife, and she hurtled out the door.
The concrete path was hard and gravelly, and her head was soft. She remembered seeing posters at school about road safety – What did they say again? - Brains don't bounce. She did, however, twice, hitting her head twice more in the process. She didn't feel pain now, or maybe she didn't notice it as much. Red was closing in on her vision, and she could see her mother, flustered, screaming and running towards her, her purse flying off her arm, running to gently cradle Mara, to smooth her hair and sing her to sleep.
She never made it it. Red beat her to it, and the screaming noises in her mind stopped. She felt peaceful, at rest... But troubled. She hadn't finished her homework, and who would look after Tommy? She didn't want to die. Why would God have killed her if it meant Tommy and Momma would be hurt by Daddy?
She remembered her father's words, the last thing she did before the little light her consciousness made blinked out, 'Where's your God?' Where was he indeed? God had left her, stranded in the deep end, floundering for some help. Whatever had happened to cause her demise, God played no hand in it. With one last furious thought, her body cooled and she died. Why did God kill me? Why did he let me die?