A/N: I wrote this for a creative writing class as an open response. The village tradition and that whole situation wasn't my idea, for anyone accusing me of being morbid. Well, maybe I am still morbid, considering that all the characters (except Mr. Summers) and the characters' relationship and situation are completely mine. Pretty much all I took was the setting. Oh, and breaks in time are showed by:
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because I couldn't make them work any other way. Anyway, just wanted to make all that clear before you read my story…
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Maricela leaned against the wall of the bank, the only stone building in the little village. Leaning next to her, Alaris wiped her hands on her rich skirts and talked away.
"I just know it won't be me. Daddy gave Mr. Summers a lot of money last night when he was doing the slips—you know how the black coal dot signifies who gets the lottery, and everyone who's safe gets blank papers. I'm sure that you must know about how the system works by now. I mean, after all, we are fifteen, and neither of us has won the lottery yet—who knows, we may yet make it to old age. But I do get so bored during these procedures; I cannot imagine where I get the strength to stay awake. I mean, first Mr. Summers goes through all the names of everyone in this town so that everyone can draw their slip of paper, and that's slow enough. I do enjoy watching that boy cross up to the box to get the slip for him and his mother—poor thing, he lost his father only a few years ago—that boy is so dreamy. But other than him, the whole thing is rather dull. After we watch everyone come up, it takes such a long time for the family who got the black slip of paper to get up there that I almost die of impatience. I just want to see who will draw the black dot the second time. Oh, I do hope it isn't that poor boy. I do feel so badly for those who aren't as well off as we are. Not everyone can be a banker's daughter, you know."
Alaris was looking over with distaste at Maricela's brother, who was being bullied into carrying all the other boys' rock leads to the pile. Maricela gripped the folds of her apron and twisted them. Her knuckles were white.
People slowly gathered in the square. Maricela could see them from where she stood. Her head swept the crowd and searched each face. Alaris talked on. She paused for a moment and glanced at Maricela, observing her inattention. Then she started her speech again, louder this time, so Maricela would listen.
"Looking for your family? Where's your mother?" Maricela's insides clenched at Alaris' taunt coated with innocence. "Oh, look, there's my daddy. See you later."
Maricela's apron was so twisted it looked like rope.
" 'Cela? 'Cela!" Maricela's brother, Toran, raced through the crowd. When he found her by the wall, Maricela brought him close. She noticed his arms were slightly bruised from bearing the weight of so many rocks. She held him tighter.
A few families away, Aunt Lucanda locked eyes with Maricela. She gave her a stiff nod before bending down to doctor one of her children's needs. Maricela sighed. She would never find who she was looking for. The force of the village stones had much more than bruised the lives of her family members.
Mr. Summers made his way to the center of the crowd. Maricela didn't even crane her neck to see from where she stood in the back. She softly brushed through Toran's hair with her fingers.
Maricela didn't hear Mr. Summers' timeworn speech. She had it memorized, like most others in the village. The majority of the crowd listened as if it was their first time hearing it. Instead, she stared at Alaris, who had already given her three haughty looks that had not caused Maricela to move.
A man of twenty-five or so slipped unnoticed beside the fifteen-year-old girl and slid his arm around her. Toran backed away quickly out of Maricela's absent-minded embrace.
Whispers clustered in small groups at the man's arrival. People glanced quickly at the three people standing away from the crowd, against the wall, and then glanced back into their circles again.
"So that's her husband. Poor thing."
"Well, she had to marry. The only kin the children had left—their aunt—wouldn't take them in. Their just-dead mother's sister! Imagine that. Leaving a girl to marry a grown man—if you can call him that—to survive on her own."
"Besides, how would she have managed on the lottery day? There wouldn't have been anyone grown, let alone a grown man, to come draw the paper slips."
"Poor thing. She was so lost this year. Having no adult to help them might have been better than having her husband, if you know what I mean. But she just up and married him. Quietly. And has been suffering ever since. And it's not like she hasn't had her share of suffering in her young years."
"I feel worse for the boy. How does he feel, seeing all this? He'll have no proper home to grow up in, and him being only nine!"
"Well, the girl did the right thing. Anyone in her place would have done it."
The whispering stopped as Mr. Summers began calling up families to draw slips of paper.
Maricela did not move, gazing straight ahead at where Alaris stood. The man looked into Maricela's face and waved in front of it, grinning with abandon at his cleverness. Maricela's eyes remained fixed on Alaris, the emotion in them closed off from the world like a shutter over a window. The only part of her that moved were her fingers that twisted the cheap copper wedding ring around and around her finger. Toran, huddled against the wall, noticed her hands tremble as they curved around the ring.
Toran remembered that he and Maricela's family had always been the fourth family called upon. They had been the Baxters every year before this; now Maricela had become a Williams. They had always looked at the paper before they were supposed to, at least after the first death. He remembered their mother's conspiratorial gaze with the nervousness hidden just underneath. Toran remembered the way she clung to all of them every time the black dot had appeared, whispering words of love and appreciation into each of their ears. Only just now he remembered how she had acted during the first two stonings before her own. In their father's, she had thrown the rocks with anger in her eyes. In their little brother's, she had held his hand the whole time. Her arm was broken at the end. He remembered the way she strode to Mr. Summers to receive their paper slip. It was a straight stride, and she stared straight ahead like Maricela. He remembered her eyes most of all. Last June 27, her pupils were like the two black dots she had drawn from the box that day. Like Maricela's today on the anniversary, they were shuttered shut—at least for the crowd. When her gaze fell upon the children, they showed desperation. Maricela held her mother's hand through it all. She was covered in bruises and her mother's blood when they got home that night. Later, Aunt Lucanda had come to help Maricela clean up, but the girl had finished hours before.
"Williams," Mr. Summers called. The man slid his arms from Maricela's unresponsive body and swaggered forward, swerving a little from side to side.
When the man returned, he pulled the paper open unceremoniously as the last person received their slip. He grinned with brown teeth at the lack of coal on the sheet and tossed the paper to the ground.
Mr. Summers told the families to open their papers.
"Who is it? Who has it?" Alaris loudly started the chain of whispering.
"It's Mr. Calvin. The Calvins got it."
"Aunt…" Maricela whispered. "It's Aunt Lucanda…" The man grunted as a way of asking what she had said, but Maricela shook her head.
Aunt Lucanda looked quickly back at her niece and nephew, and then followed her husband and children to the center of the crowd. She wanted to apologize to the poor child for having left her on her own—willingly, unlike her sister—and leaving her to marry such an old man at such a young age. She had much to say and she wondered if it would ever be said. She guiltily asked herself whether she would prefer it if she never had to speak.
Each family member drew out a sheet from the black box. Like a bright light shining through a cold fog, Lucanda Calvin saw the slip in front of her. The black dot bore into her eyes. She showed her paper to the village. A whisper ran through the crowd like water coming towards her, water that started far away and ended up roaring and engulfing her.
And then they were upon her. The crowd of people had turned into a wall of stones—stones that were all raining down on her. Somehow she pushed through them to the wall. Maricela stood there, passively watching her husband join in the killing, clutching her brother tight. Lucanda spoke. Blood flowed out of her mouth when she opened it.
"Child… I'm so sorry… for everything…" her voice sounded gargled. "I never was as good as your mother." Maricela's aunt coughed. Blood coated Maricela's wrinkled apron.
Lucanda could see pictures of other stonings flash in Maricela's eyes. Then the girl picked up a stone that had already been thrown and hit Lucanda's eye. Grinning maniacally like so many others before her and so many today, Maricela bent down for another stone. She hit Lucanda's hand, a hand that was holding her brother Toran's. Not even looking at him, keeping her eyes on Aunt Lucanda, she reached for another stone.
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After it was over and she pried Toran's hand from her aunt's dead one, Maricela started walking home to clean up the blood that was on her. Her husband had crushed her in an embrace right after the stoning and then gone off to the bar. Maricela looked down at Toran. He was gazing shutter-eyed into the distance, limply holding Maricela's hand.
Alaris sashayed by in her clean, swishing skirts. She beamed, but Maricela noticed that her eyes did not smile.
"Well, that was fun, wasn't it? I do feel so bad for those who have so little family left."
Wiping a bit of blood from Toran's arm, Maricela continued on her way home.