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Personal Narrative-Who's To Blame?

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After my mother's head was blown off, her body axed nearly in two, people in Kinnakee wondered whether she'd been a whore. At first they wondered, then they assumed, then it became a loose jingle of fact. Cars had been seen at the house at strange times of night, people said. She looked at men the way a whore would. In these situations, Vern Evelee always remarked that she should have sold her planted in '83, as if that was proof she was prostituting herself. Blame the victim, naturally. But the rumors turned so substantial: everyone had a friend who had a cousin who had another friend who'd fucked my mom. Everyone had some bit of proof: they told of a mole on the inside of her thigh, a scar on her right buttock. I don't think the stories can be true, but like so much from my childhood, I can't be sure. How much do you remember from when you were seven? Photos of my mother don't reveal a wanton woman. As a teenage girl, hair shooting from her ponytail like fireworks, she was the definition of nice-looking, the kind of person who reminds you of a neighbor or an old babysitter you always liked. By her twenties, with one or two or four kids clambering up her, the smile was bigger, but hassled, and she was always …show more content…

I ended up running to the bathroom, pressing my face against the cold stall door to keep from swooning. What would the Day death house look like, if we reunited all its relics, and who would come to see it? How many bundles of my mother's blood-stuck hair would be in the display cabinet? What happened to the walls, smeared with those hateful words, when our house was torn down? Could we gather a bouquet of frozen reeds where I'd crouched for so many hours? Or exhibit the end of my frostbitten finger? My three gone

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