Canned Corn

It was a hot summer day in 1954 when a little town in Georgia was shaken.

As the story goes little seven-year-old Betsy Monroe was coloring at the kitchen table as her mother Sadie was making pancakes, her spatula in one hand and cigarette in the other. The air was full of smoke.

Betsy’s childhood was hard. Two months ago her mother kicked out husband number four, who was by far the nicest.

The phone rang, who the caller was didn’t even matter to Betsy; all she knew was her mother was busy laughing while the pancakes burnt and there wasn’t enough batter for more. Her stomach was empty, her red hair was filthy and her arms were covered in cigarette marks.  Sadie came back in, waving her hands, cursing due to the blacking smoke. “Well, now I need to throw these out!”  She yelled.

Sadie started dish water. The sound of the hot water rushing and hitting the sink put Betsy into the trance like state.  Sadie turned to her daughter as she lit another cigarette, “Sometimes I can’t believe how bad my life has become.”   Betsy turned her focus back to her coloring.

As Sadie started to clean the pan, Betsy slipped away from the table and into the pantry where she found one can… a can of corn. Sadie was still washing the dishes as Betsy quietly pushed a kitchen chair towards her mother’s hunched over back. She stood on the chair and took a deep breath. Then with all of her might she hit her mother in the back of her head with the canned corn.

Sadie fell to the black and white tile floor. Betsy jumped down, she looked at her mother for a while and then at the dented can in her shaking hand. Sadie started to move her hand; Betsy knew that she could not let her mother live if she ever wanted to be happy. She started to strike her as hard as she could, one bone cracking blow after another. No one knows when Sadie was really killed, a few days passed since any one heard from them and a neighbor Doris Wright came to see them. Doris was soon in shock and tears. Sadie’s face was deformed; cuts and welts made it look as if she was beaten by a team of men with brass knuckles. Her hair was a matted bloody mess. Next to her was a dented can.

Doris turned around to find Betsy coloring. There were hundreds of pieces of paper full of black swirls and zigzags. 

Since that day Betsy has never talked, she just sits and colors by the window of her room at the town’s mental hospital.