Cross-eyed Mary

I wrote this when co-facilitating a therapy session that involved creative writing. I strongly advise writing alongside fellow writers under time constraints. This took thirty minutes.

Going to school had always been difficult, the squint only made it worse.  Those awkward glances from other pupils who dared not poke fun lest Miss Cathcart launched a blackboard rubber in the blink of an eye.  Yet as much as Mary would have loved to have been invisible, she had to be seen.

The optician had taped a thick wad of padding over her NHS milk-bottles and given her strict instructions to persevere.  So, Mary shouldered the titters as she walked into the classroom and stared as fiercely as her uncovered eye would permit.

 

Under the piercing gaze of Miss Carthcart’s horned-rimmed specs the kids ducked into the desks and surfaced with a polite patter of cautiously closed lids.

 

Mary sat at the edge of the room baking by a radiator watching as a clock ticked brutally towards playtime.  Playtime with the lunch-hour louts and the blindspots by the coal bunkers. With her weak eye leading, would she circumnavigate the rough boys’ British bulldog as they charged through their killing zone?  And would she avoid the radar of the latest sucker, press-ganged into treating kiss-chase as some form of friendly fire?

 

Mary hunched over her book.  Fate in its cruelness had cursed her with height.  She reached into her pocket to run her fingers over the shilling she had pinched from her mother’s purse.  Just how many acid drops could she get to offer as bribes?

 

‘Is there something wrong, Mary McLellan?’  The teacher’s clipped Glaswegian sliced the silence. Mary shook her head.  ‘Then perhaps you’ll have no difficulty in opening your reader.’

 

The smirks were short-lived as a blackboard-sharpened stub of chalk whistled across the room. 

Mary felt for the dog-ear as she opened the book.  As her eye focussed lazily on the page pictures swam in a blur of print.  There were men turning into beasts, centaurs, she guessed, with woolly backs.  She resisted the desire to remove the patch drawing the bleary mess closer. They weren’t horsemen but sheep with warriors cowering under their bellies, strapped on tight with leather belts.  Behind them lurked a monstrous eye.

 

‘Well Mary, can you tell the class what you have learned about Odysseus, this week?’

 

The girl swallowed her spittle with an evil grin.  She scanned the room hoping all were watching. Then swelling to her full height, she said, ‘the cyclops may only have one eye but even the bravest know that he’s big enough to squash them like bugs!’

Reviews

[Tony]

That's pretty dang good for thirty minutes. I really like the descriptiveness in this. I could feel her discomfort as I too, sat in the classroom, watching as a clock ticked brutally......
Very clever you are with this.

[Jamie Fantasy]

Lol! That was cute! Great characterization! I love it when the underdog gets their shot.

I wouldn't change a thing. :)

[Lucinda Bogart]

Every dog shall have his day
They say
Some more than others
She took her's and her little brother's

She wrote with a wink and maybe just a little stink in her other good eye....

[Kay]

Oh wow... it has been awhile since I've read great writing such as this. I enjoyed the very descriptive detail, and I especially love Mary and how she found courage through Odysseus.

[Tally]

Great piece. Your desciptions were so fine tuned that I actually found myself in the classroom as well. I think that at some point in our lives we can all relate to the harshness of others when at school. I loved the length of it. It was exactly right for me as I don't get an awful lot of time to read an abundance of text.