Small Town Running
Small Town Running
As the days go here in Somerville, most are spent with the people sitting outside under the shade of a tree. Kids running around outside wildly, though not to far from ear-shot from a mothers call. Boys at the football field playing flag football, girls at their best friend’s house playing paper dolls.
This particular summer afternoon, Maggie decided to take a walk down to the corner store. Now, Maggie is nine years old and when she gets a nickel, her first thoughts are penny candy. So off she goes to the store owned by another Hispanic family that her Mom is always telling Maggie, “You’re making those people rich with all your money you buy candy with.”
Though, this afternoon her mother had come home from work yet and her grandparents were taking an afternoon nap – so off she goes. At the store she meets up with two boys that are friends of her brother Joe. They start to tease her about something and she decides it’s time to go. As she starts off, one of the boys says, “Come on well take you home.” Being a child and trusting these boys she decides to get in the car – then she notices that instead of heading towards her house, the car is going to the opposite side of town.
“Where are you taking me,” cried Maggie, “I want to go home!” But her cries were being muffled by the strong hand of one of the boys. Within minutes the car came to a stop and before she knew what was happening, Maggie was on the ground and her clothes were being pulled off of her. She started to bite the hand that was covering her month and started kicking and scratch as hard as she could.
After what seemed like an eternity, the older of the two boys says, “Let’s go, let’s go!” Maggie lays still, waiting for the last of the car sound is gone before she starts to move, to get up and to dress herself as well as she could.
She starts walking back into town, down the street where this ordeal started. Hurt, thirsty, and scared she is walking very slowly thinking that she is going to get spanked by her mother for sure. Walking very slowly, she realizes that she doesn’t want to go home, she’s so scared. At that moment a car comes up beside her and it’s one of her grandfathers’ friends, asks her what she doing out there by herself and takes a good look at her and realizes that something is not right. He gets off the car and helps her into the front seat. As he pulls up in front of the house she notices that nobody was waiting for her, nobody knew that she was even gone. As Mr. Garcia gets off the car, she tells him, “I’m going to get into big trouble.” This is all she could think of, not of what the boys did to her, but her getting into trouble with Mom.
Maggie’s grandfather comes out of the house and Mr. Garcia tells him that he found me on the side of the road outside of town. Grandpa keeps asking what happen and Maggie didn’t know what to say. Finally she reveals what happen. Her grandfather and grandmother then rushed her over to the doctor to get her checked out; he said that everything seemed to be ok, but it wasn’t.
They called her mother at work, but she couldn’t take off then. Though when she got home, Maggie did get the whipping that she knew she was going to get.
