The Story of Imelda Talljamah Which

Hullo there. My name is Imelda, Imelda T. Which. Not to be confused with "Witch", it is "Which". Although, there are numerous people who would tell you otherwise. However, there are those who are insistent on calling me by that misnomer. How did this "nickname" get started? Well, I could tell you the short story, but since you have obviously taken such pains to break and enter into my domain, I might as well tell you the long story. Go and take your restroom and snack breaks now, this story is quite long, I'm afraid.
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My infancy and early childhood were rather normal by the standards of the time. The family in my home consisted of my parents, my sister, my brother, my cousin (who was only four months younger than me) and I.
As far as I was concerned, my cousin might as well have been my twin sister with how we got along. (People still confuse us for sisters to this day.) We were each other's shadows. It was said that we were the "terror twins", what one didn't think of, the other did. What was the name of my "twin"? Oh, silly me, I forgot to mention it. Her name was Chareena D. Dovesbowe.
What? How did Chareena come to live with my family? Well, her parents had gotten an annulment of their common law marriage within a month of her birth. Chareena's father, Dollard D. Dovesbowe, demanded full custody of her on the basis of his ex-wife's (my aunt by blood on my Mother's side of the family) uncontrollable alcoholism and abusiveness. His wish was granted. However, he had taken ill within five months of the matter and had to be hospitalized. Chareena came into our care, for what we had thought would be a temporary time. The fateful event that made her stay permanent was her father's simply walking out of the hospital upon being deemed fit to go back to work and his never reappearing again. Being the closest relatives, she was given to my parents' permanent care.
Chareena and I engaged in the average toddler activities: tormenting our babysitter (my elder sister) by "running away" to the nearby park, making mud pies, getting into mud-and-berry ball fights (often while we were wearing our Sunday clothes), rolling down the stairs, making messes and of course, watching cartoons at every given chance. Life was decadent, life was good. Well, as good as it got for children in the three to six years of age range.
It was Christmas day of my seventh year that brought all that to a change in one fell swoop. For some odd reason, my Mother had felt compelled to wake me up in the middle of the night on the eve of Christmas eve. In the middle of the night, she took me, packed our overnight bags and we headed off to my Grandmother's home several hundred miles to the east. We spent Christmas eve with them and then headed for home that evening. It was the following night, Christmas proper, that brought the bolt that shattered my small world.
It was late at night, wrapping paper was strewn about the living room from the gift massacre (i.e. the opening of the gifts) earlier that day. I was using the exercise bicycle that I had gotten (what had processed my aunt Martha to give one to a seven year-old, I'll never know). My Mother came into the room, her face red, puffy and wet. Barely able to speak, she came close and looked me into they eye.
"Imelda, I have some awful news. Last night, while you and I were at Grandma's house, your Father got killed on the job. I don't know how you'll take this, or if you're even old enough to understand but, it wasn't an accident. He was murdered."
He was murdered. That stuck in my mind. I knew what that had meant. I may have been only seven years old, but I knew alot of things. What hurt the most was the realization that my Father would never be coming home, ever. Part of me wanted to scream and cry. Another part wanted to scream out, "WHO DID THIS?!" and begin searching for revenge. Neither part won, I just sat there, feeling as if a ton of bricks had fallen on me.
I fell into a haze that didn't lift until about nine months later. All I had remembered happening that time period was my cousin Chareena being taken away from my family due to my Mother being declared "Unstable". She had been forced to live with her Mother. It was like having part of myself ripped away. My Mother had to flee the state to keep my siblings and myself. Other than that, I couldn't remember anything else.
Life had become vastly different. I had to attend a new school in a new state, I had no friends, my Mother was in therapy, and my siblings become moody and withdrawn. The world had gone from being a sunny place to some dark and gloomy forest I couldn't recognize in any way, shape or form.
I probably would've followed my mother's example, but crying her eyes out had gotten her into therapy and she didn't seem very stable at all. So I did what seemed logical to me at the time, I bottled up my emotions. I thought, "if I act like everything's fine, everything will become alright." Ha. Big mistake.
If anything, it hurt twice as worse. When I thought no one else was around (which was easily the case in our new tiny two bedroom apartment), I crawled into my sister's and my room and screamed and screamed until I couldn't make a single noise. I hurt, badly, nothing made sense. My world was effectively turned upside down and inside out. I didn't like it and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt powerless.
It was during one of these fits that something happened that would be like the opening of a door. I was in one of my "screaming fits" when I saw something that scared me. I had been screaming my lungs out when I had seen one of my sister's porclen dolls float up into the air. Then it smashed into the wall, without anyone touching it. The next scream was one of fear. I ran out of the room and then woke up several hours later.
I didn't tell anyone about the "episode". I tried to tell myself I had never happened. I tried to get on with life. The other students at school weren't helping me any. They enjoyed tormenting anytime they could. I was called all sorts of names. I was different in appearance from most of the other children. Being half gypsy often does that to you. It was obvious that my dusky skin, green eyes and black hair were not welcome amongst their sea of peach, blue and orange. I kept to myself. If they didn't want anything to do with me, I sure wasn't going to have anything to do with them! Try as I might, they always enjoyed using me to get a cheap boost in the opinion of the other students of the school by attempting to put me down or make my life miserable.
I had once attempted to confide in my sister, but she was less than sympathetic. She had a slight advantage over me, taking after our father (who was not of gypsy decent), she appeared paler and thus, "more normal". Her words were sharp and biting. I could hardly reconcile this behavior with the sister who had once thrown knifes at a felon to save me. My brother looked more like I did. Trying to talk to him was next to impossible, as he was always "out" doing "stuff". However, I knew that he wasn't as cruel as my sister. I had seen him crying when he had thought no one was around. So I was left to deal with things on my own.
One thing that I had found to occupy myself was playing the oboe. At school, students in my grade were eligible to join the school band. The oboe was not an instrument that was normally allowed for a beginning student to play. However, something just clicked when I had seen one and I determined that I must play it. It took much persuading of the instrumental teacher to allow me to play it. I think she finally let me play it so I would stop pestering her.
I found an escape in playing my oboe. The teacher said that I showed much talent and potential in playing it. I was the youngest oboe player in the history of the entire school. I enjoyed every minute of it. In music class, instead of put downs showering me, I was complemented and encouraged. I was eventually upgraded to the intermediate class. Even in there, I was the best player, which didn't make me any dearer to the hearts of the older players ranked below me. They stared baleful glares at me whenever they saw me and put me down. However, I had managed to find a way to ignore them and continue enjoying myself.
One day, as I was going to the school building to my first class of the day, a couple of older students blocked my way to the doors. They were from the band class, in fact, they were some older players who were ranked below me in the oboe section. I didn't care for the way those girls were scowling at me. They had hatred etched in their faces.
"Hello, you little dirt bag.", one growled.
"Where do you get off on being in the band, let alone in the higher band, you scuz ball?", the other snarled.
Before I could reply, the taller one with red hair, freckles and pale blue eyes snatched the oboe case out of my hands.
"Well, we'll have to just have to fix you now, won't we?", she cackled.
With all the malice I had ever seen up to that point in my life and then some, she opened the case and stroked the black instrument. She taunted me, calling me all sorts of things that I'd rather not repeat here. I was screaming in fear that she would do harm to my then most precious possession, begging her to give it back. She just got joy out of my distress. The other girl, with almost white hair and paler than chalk, took the opportunity to punch me in the face while also calling me all sorts of obscene things. After apparently getting their fill of sick glee, the freckled girl assembled the oboe, stroked it one last time and slammed it into the brick wall, as if it were a baseball bat.
The oboe was shattered into tiny black bits. I looked up at my tormentors, angry tears in my eyes. How could they do that to me? What had I done to them? Just because my skin was dusky and my eyes were green and theirs wasn't?
They were laughing at me, thinking it was one of the funniest things in the world that my heart had been shattered to pieces along with my instrument. I looked to my instrument they had destroyed, I looked at the laughing hyenas. This wouldn't stand!! I felt a burning sensation in my body that I could only describe as liquid hate.
I screamed a phrase I had never heard before. To my amazment, the jackals' hair had been set aflame!
The beasts screamed in terror and frantically tried to put out the flames as they ran away. I looked on in amazment, mouth wide open despite the stench of burning hair. A commotion stirred up around the two girls with "flame hair". Somehow, I knew that I had been the cause of the blaze.
I thought back to awhile before, to an event when I had been in a fit and a porcelain doll had shattered. I came to a shock as I realized that I had been the one who had shattered it! A pang of fear hit me head on. Who knows what I might do next? Kill someone?
Fear gripped me with icy, sharp claws and spread throughout me. I did what my instincts were shouting out at me to do: run. I ran and ran until I had reached my house. I went to my bedroom, slammed the door shut and cried into my pillow. My world was very changed, even beyond the amount of change my father's death had brought about. I had screamed something in a fit of rage, not knowing where it had came from and set hair on fire! Who knew what would happen the next time? The thought sent a convulsive shudder throughout my body and more fearful tears came.
I was what the other children at school had called me: a monster, a freak. I continued to cry until I had fallen asleep.
My mother was not happy to find that I had run away from school. She probably would have said more but she had seen my black-eyed, tear puffed face. When I had told her why I had run away, she got an enraged look and slapped me as hard as she could.
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