Bella Schmit: A Narrative Fiction

She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house. After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall. Here we finally realize that all her fears were coming true and he life was coming to an end and there was no way of her stopping it. In these moments Connie realized all that these were her last moment and the first thought was of her family and how she thought of all the time she wished. "My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was

Turning on the tv she was surprised to see on the news that an avenged murderer was on the loose. The lady on the news said it's best if people secure all windows and doors as a safety hazard. With the dog by her side, the young girl locked the front and back doors. She went from window to window and locked each of them one by one. She kept reassuring herself that she would be fine with her trusty dog and that her parents would be home shortly anyways. So Lily had a pleasant, peaceful evening, and finally decided around eleven o'clock that it was time for her to go to bed.

The person who she once was is almost entirely lost and she knows that her life will never be the

She began to feel disheartened; when she says her ‘heart sank further and further’. This tells us that she was feeling disappointed and felt that she should give up but by telling herself that one day life would ‘feel life was approximately a hundred times better’ it kept her going because she thought it would be over at some point and her life would then improve.

She is unable to cope with reality and she escapes back into her fantasy world of old records and glass figurines.

“It was December and the weather bitterly cold. She was a tiny mite, the size of five years, though, as afterward appeared, she was then nine. From a pan set upon a low stool she stood washing dishes, struggling with a frying pan about as heavy as herself. Across the table lay a brutal whip of twisted leather strands and the child's meagre arms and legs bore many marks of its use. But the saddest part of her story was written on her face in its look of suppression and misery, the face of a child unloved, of a child that had seen only the fearsome side of life. These things I saw while seeming not to see, and I left without speaking to, or of, the child. I never

She is hiding in this house away from society, scared to say what she feels or what she wants. In my opinion, I think that this is one of the things that led to her depression, if the narrator was able to express herself from the beginning and not let her husband or anyone control her, as a result she may be in a better condition.

She illustrates that had it not been her mother that obstructed her “I wouldn’t be livin’ like this, you bet. ”(81) and that her dreams could’ve came to fruition. She tells him next how lonely she gets and “I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely.”

Her whole world was crashing down. It what seemed like only a split second, her best friend’s father had been condemned to death. Someone who she considered to be like a father was going to be taken away, ripped away from her.

So she had to move to South Carolina with her mother and stepfather. Once she moved her she felt like her life had took a tragic turn. Her stepfather was abusive to her mother and he really didn’t want her to live with them. She felt out of place and she really missed her father and the way she was use to growing up.

to accept as her home, to the history she hated, to the loneliness she had become used to, and she

She stood there, a tall, thin steal gray fluffy haired figure on the top step for a second. And then looked down at the fair-haired children and smiled widely revealing a large gap between her two front teeth. She laughed cheerfully and declared, "Pay no mind to her. She's not so bad once you get to know her." Anna wondered about that. She seemed as if she were pretty good at being furious. "Come on, follow me." The lady said as she opened the door and allowed them to pass, "My name's Miss Margot. Now come along, there's no time to dawdle." She said in her sing-song voice and led them down a long, dark, narrow hallway that was lined with solid wood paneling. As we walked, she tugged at their arms to quicken their pace. Eventually she stopped and pressed on a spot in one of the boards and a door popped open. She and the children hurried into the cold, damp lopsided little basement storage area that was filled with spider webs and smelt dank. Once inside the room Anna noticed that a single light bulb on a long cord swayed from the ceiling and an old broken folding chair and a chamber pot leaned against one of the walls. And that in the back of the room there was a tiny, grimy window that permitted a sliver of evening moonlight to pass through. "That's yours." Miss Margot said and pointed her

During her rebelling, she stayed in a women’s shelter thinking about how much she missed being at home even though her parents are control freaks. We as teenagers know the feeling, being so mad at our parents until the breaking point of wanting to run but knowing that soon you will

The ending of the story reflects how she finally understands how lonely she really

She ran to the middle of whatever was still standing in her house and started to cry. She got on her knees and thought that everything that was once hers was gone in an instant. She cried and cried, until she found no more use. Then, once her eyes started to clear up, she spotted something.