English News

Don’t Go Easy

Congratulations to Nalini Jacob-roussety (Year 10) who was awarded runner-up in the Queenscliff Literary Festival Secondary School Writing Prize. This is her story...

Treason. She laughed a sad, drained laugh and her head fell forward, her matted hair falling over her eyes. The guards were rough with her. They tied her blistered wrists with coarse rope. They pulled it tight and they pulled it tighter when sound escaped her lips. They shoved her into a van and they locked the door, locked her away from the world. She was free to sob; she was free to scream. They couldn’t hurt her now. Not any more than they already had. She fell into a perpetual fit of insane laughter, her eyes red and body covered in blood and scars. When the van stopped, it was less than thirty seconds before they were pulling her out of it. They made sure to shove her out of it so hard that she fell to the ground though she was submitting to their torture. She lay there, face in the dirt and they kicked her mercilessly. Still, she refused to stand on her own. So, they grabbed her again and they pulled her up and only then did she see the crowd. The entire village had gathered to witness her execution. Not because they wanted to, but because this was the government’s way of saying, “this will be you. This will be you or your brother or your sister. You’ll be next if you don’t surrender to us, if you don’t lay in the dirt before us and do as you are told. This is what happens if you show signs of rebellion. This is what happens when a peasant shows up to an academic selection exam. You know your class; you know your rules. Follow them.”

Follow them I did not. I was born with a mind.  My mother often liked to remind me of this. She also liked to remind me that a girl with a mind “should use it”.

I had nothing. We had nothing. They’d stripped us of everything and with nothing to lose, I decided to do something that only something as powerful as desperation could make me do.

For three months I worked extra hours to afford decent cotton, clothes that could pass as middle-class. I scrubbed myself raw, I braided my hair, I put on my best boots and new cotton. I strode into the exam hall with a cloak of artificial confidence until I was confronted with the administration process. Of course, how could I not have thought about it? Every hopeful lined up was required to have their finger pricked and blood sampled to confirm their identity. Mostly, they were interested in their district and social rank. It was how they filtered out the peasants like me.

Quickly, I slipped through the crowd and came around the side of the building, in an attempt to be inconspicuous. Guards stood by every entry and were directing hopefuls to the main doors. Thinking fast, I grabbed a stone from the ground and with careful I threw it at a boy about twenty yards from me, making sure to hit his leg. Enough to cause a scene, but not enough to cost him. (But for good measure, I then a silent apology to not only him, but the heavens).

Having mastered the art of invisibility, I looked around and was relieved to find no one looking in my direction. Only the sight of a girl dramatically leaning over the boy who fell to the ground, yelling out to the guard by the nearest exit. He looked conflicted, glancing around and at the door behind him, but decided to go to the boy’s attention. Seeing my chance, I slipped inside and placed myself in the nearest seat before anyone could suspect anything.

There was not a question on that exam I could not answer with full confidence. Thinking I had done it, thinking this just might be my chance to change my life, I blended with the mass crowds leaving the hall and quickly walked outside. There, I stood in the evening sun for a moment, sighing in contentment. Bu the happiness was short-lived, the hope gone from my chest. My breath stopped short at the sound of a gun clicking near my right ear.

That was only the first moment that led to the two days of hell that eventually brought me to that moment. The beginning of end of me. My mother had to come to watch.

Being led to the guillotine, I spotted her grief-stricken face in the crowd. We stared at each other and I narrowed my eyes at her, shaking my head. Please don't cry. Don’t make this harder than it already is. She seemed to understand my message, because she wiped her face clean of tears and stared forward numbly, placing her hand on her heart for me. I couldn’t return the action, but I gave her a slight nod before they shoved me to my knees. I placed my neck on the block of wood without needing to be told. They never asked me if I had any last words because that was a privilege and peasants didn’t deserve those. But they could not silence me.

Though it was uncomfortable in my position, I stubbornly looked up at the crowd. I saw the anguished faces of the people who knew me and those who didn’t. As peasants, we stuck together. We suffered together. We never left one of our own behind.

“Don’t go easy,” I croaked at them. “Do not go easy, any of you! They cannot silence us!” Some weakly stared back at me, others were too numb to watch. I couldn’t see my mother anymore and I was glad for that. Parents hid their children’s faces, turning them around, cradling their heads with pained expressions. I succumbed to the pain in my neck and hung my head. The blade fell.