Muriel

Elizabeth O’Brien

 

Muriel’s ten. Her hair is braided by her mother. Muriel’s mother has enough of many things, but not patience for Muriel’s hair. So it’s in twiggy braids every morning.

Muriel has stockings on and, we’ll decide, she’s pretty cute. Look how she tugs her skirt.

She’s walking home from school, pretty cute, when she sees something in the little grocery. The shopkeeper-lady—someone’s pointing a knife at her throat.

Muriel watches her open the drawer and hand over money.

The guy runs out.

He grabs Muriel’s arm.

Now, this guy’s no Magwitch, he’s got no repentance likely in his future. But he feeds her the Magwitch line, “tell anybody what you seen and I’ll kill you,” and Muriel, shaking, goes in for it. She won’t say a word.

At home, she goes to her room. Wedges herself into the niche between her bed and the wall.

And though her mother eventually gets her down to supper, this fear doesn’t switch off.

What can we do?

Nothing: watch it play out. Muriel’s no Keeping Our Streets Safe poster-girl. Muriel won’t say anything, remember? She just wants what we all want. Just to know what’s coming. What’ll be taken next.

 

Elizabeth O’Brien lives in Minneapolis, where she earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of Minnesota. Her poetry and prose has appeared in New England Review, The Rumpus, Diagram, Wigleaf, PANK, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, “A Secret History of World Wide Outage,” is available from Diode Editions.