{"id":5729,"date":"2019-04-08T15:30:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T20:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=5729"},"modified":"2019-04-08T15:30:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T20:30:02","slug":"broken-arm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2019\/04\/08\/broken-arm\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Arm"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week we had a guest artist in our class. Mrs. Steele is a wonderful photographer, journalist, oral historian, and professor. She gave us the assignment to interview someone in our community, record it, transcribe it, and then write a creative nonfiction story based off that interview. Well, here it is.<\/p>\n

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Nell Forbes, a sixty-six-year-old woman from Magnolia, Mississippi, has one of the most\u00a0beautiful, terrorized souls that I have come across. She\u2019s a loving mother of four and\u00a0grandmother of ten, but she has carried her scars from a very young age. She had her daughter in\u00a01969 and spent the next decade suffering and doing her to best to be a good mother.<\/div>\n
\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/div>\n
It\u2019s six-thirty in the morning when I walk up the ramp to her glass trailer door. She\u2019s sitting in a\u00a0recliner with her legs crossed and the nail of her index finger between her teeth. Ronnie Forbes,\u00a0her husband of thirty-six years, is sitting next her and staring at the television. Our eyes meet and\u00a0she waves me in. Upon entrance, she stands from her chair and gives me a one-armed hug.<\/div>\n
\u201cHey baby, I wasn\u2019t expecting you this early.\u201d I smile at her, knowing full well by the make up\u00a0on her face and the hairspray in her short, blonde hair that she was prepared. \u201cWhere are you\u00a0wanting to do it at? In the bedroom? The kitchen? Bay, turn off that T.V. so we can do it in the\u00a0kitchen.\u201d Her husband does as he\u2019s told with a vague roll of his eyes. He looks up at me and\u00a0smiles.<\/div>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some apples in the \u2018frigerator if your hungry. I can make you something hot if you\u00a0want.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo Sir but thank you.\u201d He nods his head and stands from his recliner. \u201cBay, I\u2019m gonna go to\u00a0town.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAlright.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cLove ya.\u201d He gives her three quick kisses before making his way outside. Mrs. Forbes and I sit\u00a0at the kitchen table. With a deep breath comes the scent of cleaning supplies; I look around and\u00a0notice that not a single thing is out of place.<\/div>\n
She goes on to tell me about her parent\u2019s split, and how her father kidnapped her and her siblings\u00a0from school just to throw her into her aunt\u2019s home. She speaks about an older man and getting\u00a0pregnant at fifteen. She would later marry an abusive drunk.<\/div>\n
\u201cOne night my husband beat me. I was two weeks from having my son. He jerked the telephone\u00a0cord out of the wall and left me. My daughter decided to climb up in a cabinet while I was\u00a0washing my hair, and she fell and broke her arm. I won\u2019t ever forget it. I was terrified. I broke\u00a0and run to a neighbor\u2019s house. Then I realized that I had left her at the house, and I turned around\u00a0and run back. My hair was wet and dripping. The neighbors helped me get her to the hospital and\u00a0she had to have surgery. I was there all night by myself. Well, until later when my husband\u2019s\u00a0brother showed up to stay with me. My husband come back. It was probably the next day, but I\u00a0can\u2019t remember for sure. Anyway, I would up having my son early. He still didn\u2019t change.\u201d My\u00a0heart breaks as I hear the sniffle in her voice. I reach out and touch her hand.<\/div>\n
I think about the love she must have for her children, and how despite all the times she was\u00a0shoved aside, she put her all into her kids. It kind of just hits me as she goes on about the abuse\u00a0and how she got out of it and remarried. Her eyes light up at the mention of her children. This\u00a0woman loves with everything in her because no one loved her.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This week we had a guest artist in our class. Mrs. Steele is a wonderful photographer, journalist, oral historian, and professor. She gave us the assignment to interview someone in our community, record it, transcribe it, and then write a creative nonfiction story based off that interview. Well, here it is. Nell Forbes, a sixty-six-year-old … Continue reading “Broken Arm”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5730,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5729\/revisions\/5730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}