Shocks, Straitjackets And The Mercy Of Gideon

20th Century Girl

Suddenly I am 9 years old again, a strange memory to pair with the one of my Fathers first brutal attack on my Mother, I will make it clear that this was not the last of my Fathers drunken rages nor would it be the last. I remember being nine-years-and-four-months-old and being proud. It was new years eve, 1909 was going out and we were welcoming the new year in. 1910 almost a decade had passed since

I was born and almost a decade since the turn of the century. A century unlike any other, my Mama told me,

"Your life will be a very different one, things are changing for women now, by your death you will have had a very different life. You are the real type of twentieth century girl that will hang the way our world is forever." I remembered those words when, as a special present,she gave me my first diary. I believe now it was a bribe, by this point her body was heavy and swollen with the new child she carried. She was trying to say ' please be good when the baby comes and stay out of trouble when your grandparents arrive'.

I remember what I printed into the little White notebook with a printed Trojan horse on the front in my nine-year-old idea of stylised handwriting, I wrote:

Name: Mary Alice Brandon Aged: nine years and four months. Adress: number three, Grovers road, Biloxi, Mississippi.

I an writing this book on the last day of the year that is called 1909. Tomorrow it will be 1910 and the start of my tenth year of life, but I won't turn ten for a long time yet since I was born in 1901. My Mama calls me a twentieth century girl. I asked her if my sister, who is still living in her belly, if she will be the same but my little sister won't because she was born too far from the start of the century. I told her I want to live till the next century but she says I would have to live a very long time. She is right for a century is a hundred years long. She said to me I should write about the things in my life that I like and know about and each year she will give the book to me and I will keep doing it till I am an adult when I will look at what ibused to like doing. My best friend is called Bertha Collins, she has a baby brother called John and another brother called William and another brother called Teddy. Her Mama is going to go mad with so many boys in the house especially as Bertha is the eldest and little John is only three. I told Bertha I might get to take my little sister out in her pram when she is born and we can play families with her. She said I was funny and that only god knows if the baby will be a boy or a girl.

My favourite color is yellow, it's like the sun and the sun makes me happy so I like them both. My favourite food is my Mama's chocolate and orange cake that she sometimes makes. My favourite book is Alices Adventures In Wonderland because she has the same name as me and because it's exciting imagin having a pet cheshire cat it would be fantastic. The biggest word I know is choreography- it's the word for all the moves in a dance, and I like dancing, all types. The biggest bit of arithmetic I can do is my eleven times table it goes, 11,22,33,44,55,66,77,88,99,110,121. In my spare time I like to play with Bertha and Molly and I like to be outside. I enjoy exploring and climbing trees, some of my friends call me Alec and say I should have been a boy. I'd like to be a boy, just so I could were pants and play in the mud without getting told of for having muddy, blood covered knees. I'd also like to have short hair, so I didn't always have to tie it up.

Though I do love wearing pretty dresses and hair ribbons, I have black hair, which is never considered pretty against pale skin but tanned skin looks so dirty on a girl.

Yes, I remembered the day I wrote that. Life was so simple when I was nine years old, why did the world have to change. I tried to find the source, then and there it became my mission to find the source. The day my world went upside down, and never, ever turned back up.