Oaths And Blurry Memories

• Hannah Smith, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2018

When I was eight years old, my mother warned me about the walking track near my home. “It’s not safe down there, all hidden by trees. Don’t ever go alone, okay?” With golden hair in curly pigtails and my favourite cherry hair bands, I nodded, peering at the track as we drove past on the way to school. I remember looking with childish wonder at the wildflowers sprouting before the track entrance. Then I would look past it, at the twisting, steep path, the overgrown trees and dappled light, and remember her words. For years I heeded them, practically the definition of a mummy’s girl. I may have walked the path once when I was very young, blurry memories of a winding bush track leading out into a clearing by the busy highway- or was it a dream? To this day, I’m not sure. Even now, when I see young women and their dogs step around that striped sign and towards the mysterious bush, my heart stutters for a second, recalling mother’s words once more; this time with more accounts of assaults and broken limbs, and I wonder why those women didn’t heed their mother’s warnings.

When I was fifteen years old, my mother told me about the murders in my own hometown. She seemed surprised that I’d never heard of them but I was adamant I hadn’t- I would have certainly remembered something like that. It seemed impossible, that a town as sleepy as mine; the place where children grow up cynical, lusting for the great adventures of city life, could have endured such horrors. Even after so many television shows featuring graphic gore and criminal themes, I’m sure that my tired eyes widened as I sat listening, in a scratchy mustard and navy uniform with golden ringlets tied up in a strict ponytail. A dark part of me wonders about the details she spared from me, while the rest of me is glad that I don’t know. The murders took place just down the street from my grandmother’s house. I know that everytime I drive past that corner, I’ll cast a thought to those bodies lying unknown in the bush for days, and the stagnant, silent house holding the secret of their deaths.

When I was fifteen years old, I wondered what else I would hear, what details would sear themselves into my memory for the rest of my days. As more and more gruesome news stories fill my day to day life, I wonder how terrible the act would have to be for me to give it such precedence in my mind, amid thousands of tales of muggings, rape, bombings, terror attacks. What places would make me shiver as they passed through the grimy windows of a bus, golden curls falling loose down my back? What alleyways would be as dark as the circles under my eyes, hiding stories as blue as my weary eyes?

When I was fifteen, I decided that I didn’t want to know.