Excerpt from my short story, "Dear God?"

This is a coming of age story about a girl named Faye. It takes place in the seventies, its about losing innocence, a child's spirit, and gaining a voice strong enough to speak for herself and her younger sister Maribel...

Glass beads the size and color of lucid peas were strung together by thin hemp string, bound by an over sized knot at each end, hung as long as I stood tall. Columns loose like chains descended from the makeshift plywood frame that was painted a stark white to match the ceiling it was secured to, at the top of the stairs. The stairs, swathed in burnt orange Berber carpet reminded one of autumn and things of the sort like leaves and pumpkins, or Thanksgiving and its spices of nutmeg and cinnamon. It tickled my bare feet when I ran up and down the stairs or even walked slowly. My slender fingers caressed the hanging beads, playing with them. They made a clicking and clacking sound, the slight folds of air barely brushed past the edges of your face, each strand moving and shaking until they were perfectly still again and in place as if they had never been touched. There was paneling on the walls, a hue of dark brown. It was the seventies - the time of my youth. I use to pretend to be a runway model, passing through the hanging beads and sashay down the stairs, a towel draped on my head, swinging it left and right as if I had a head full of long flowing hair. I was the oldest, although only eleven or twelve around that time. My younger sister always followed suit, imitating my awkward movements and voice, her feet drowning in MaMa's big shoes.

In that house there was an unforgettable smell, a pungent odor of aged liquor and old women's perfume. It was always warm, which caused the air inside to be cutting. Because of the heat we often went baring our flat bellies beneath the tube tops and above the mid rise cut-off shorts that were once Jordache jeans. It was around that time that I hadn't quite grown into the bras MaMa bought for me from Woolworth's, but I stuffed them with toilet paper anyway. I had worn the plastic white peace earrings that I managed to afford for fifty cents at swap meet with MaMa before my first year of middle school. My legs were thin like ostriches, unassuming and plain, supporting the frame of a young girl nearing thirteen. A body that puberty was taking its time with to flower it with the changes a girl would live to see only once...