(An excerpt from Plain Jane along with my feelings on the subject)
Mr. Stanley knew that something was wrong, so he checked up on me…on October 28, he called me to his desk at the end of class. I assumed he had an errand for me to run since I was his aide, but instead he asked me to hang around after school because he wanted to talk to me. Mona Hampton overheard his request.
When the last bell of the day rang, I hung around to find out what Mr. Stanley wanted to speak to me about. He waited until all the students left; then he shut the door. I noticed that Mona was the last to leave. Mr. Stanley told me that he knew I was barely passing all of my classes. He quizzed me about what was going on in my life to cause such a drastic change in my grades. I quietly stood with my head hung low.
When he was finished, he permitted me to leave. I left the room knowing that I had messed up my life. I shut the door and looked up to see Mona standing at the end of the hall; the shame was so heavy on me that I quickly shifted my eyes to keep her from seeing through to my failures, but what she saw in that was something totally different.
The following day I woke up with a determination to change the path I was on. I set my mind to focus on my schooling. Ray picked me up as usual and walked me to my first class. As we walked through the hall, girls began to whisper amongst one another. Occasionally one would break out in a snicker. Guys started looking me up and down like they were checking out my body or something; then a girl named Abigail walked right up to me and asked, “So, how’d you do it?”
Perplexed, I asked, “Do what?”
She laughed, “Oh, come on, for a teacher he’s hot. How’d you get him to sleep with you?”
“What! What are you talking about?” I belted.
“Everybody’s been talking about it since last night. The whole school already knows; don’t act like little Miss Innocent. Mona saw it with her own eyes.”
The name Mona was all it took for the light bulb in my brain to turn on. What Mona had suspected when I couldn’t look her in the eyes was guilt. It was not the guilt of being a failure but the guilt of sleeping with a teacher. I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if I was in a small room and the walls were closing in on me, and there was no escape. Once again words were unleashed as weapons into my life, but this time there was no lone assailant clothed in white with tiny horns hidden beneath a thick head of hair; this time almost the entire student body had gathered to unleash my demise ─ words that came together and formed a heinous rumor! (Plain Jane, pg. 220-222)
The previous excerpt is from the chapter of my book titled “I Heard a Rumor.” I want to share a small portion of Plain Jane as well as a tiny piece of my heart.
Words form weapons in the lives of many young people. Sometimes that weapon is a knife that stabs straight through the heart leaving the recipient with a deadly wound. The blade is often serrated with gossip and rumors.
While writing Plain Jane, I felt led to place tiny pieces of myself within my character. That chapter was one of the most difficult for me to write because it tapped into a place within my soul and my past that I wanted to never reopen. While revisiting the time in my life when I was viscously attacked by my peers through a heinous rumor, I found an opened wound.
As I expressed Aralyn’s pain and emotions when one of her peers saw an innocent situation and twisted it into an ugly monster, I was truly conveying my own floodgate of hurt that surged to the surface of my heart as I typed. My heart pounded, my chest constricted, and tears flowed as I bore my soul; consequently, it was healing the lacerations left by my attackers.
I made sure to form the weapon that shattered Aralyn’s life in a very different manner from the one that had been used upon me, yet I could not escape the similarities. Both weapons were sharpened by rumors and gossip leaving the victim to bleed out. Just as her rumor was not the same as mine, the placement in her life was different as well. For Aralyn it came during a time of misery and pushed her closer to the edge. For me it was the catalyst into the black abyss of depression that follows me to this day.
You may be asking yourself why I am sharing a small portion of this chapter as well as this side of me. I think it is because I feel that people need to understand the consequences of gossip and rumors. I was fifteen years old when I was stabbed repeatedly in the heart by that blade. I was thirty-seven when I wrote Plain Jane and received my healing. Although I no longer have an opened wound, I will forever carry the scar; unfortunately, there are those young people who never have the opportunity to heal.
Schledia Benefield
Mr. Stanley knew that something was wrong, so he checked up on me…on October 28, he called me to his desk at the end of class. I assumed he had an errand for me to run since I was his aide, but instead he asked me to hang around after school because he wanted to talk to me. Mona Hampton overheard his request.
When the last bell of the day rang, I hung around to find out what Mr. Stanley wanted to speak to me about. He waited until all the students left; then he shut the door. I noticed that Mona was the last to leave. Mr. Stanley told me that he knew I was barely passing all of my classes. He quizzed me about what was going on in my life to cause such a drastic change in my grades. I quietly stood with my head hung low.
When he was finished, he permitted me to leave. I left the room knowing that I had messed up my life. I shut the door and looked up to see Mona standing at the end of the hall; the shame was so heavy on me that I quickly shifted my eyes to keep her from seeing through to my failures, but what she saw in that was something totally different.
The following day I woke up with a determination to change the path I was on. I set my mind to focus on my schooling. Ray picked me up as usual and walked me to my first class. As we walked through the hall, girls began to whisper amongst one another. Occasionally one would break out in a snicker. Guys started looking me up and down like they were checking out my body or something; then a girl named Abigail walked right up to me and asked, “So, how’d you do it?”
Perplexed, I asked, “Do what?”
She laughed, “Oh, come on, for a teacher he’s hot. How’d you get him to sleep with you?”
“What! What are you talking about?” I belted.
“Everybody’s been talking about it since last night. The whole school already knows; don’t act like little Miss Innocent. Mona saw it with her own eyes.”
The name Mona was all it took for the light bulb in my brain to turn on. What Mona had suspected when I couldn’t look her in the eyes was guilt. It was not the guilt of being a failure but the guilt of sleeping with a teacher. I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if I was in a small room and the walls were closing in on me, and there was no escape. Once again words were unleashed as weapons into my life, but this time there was no lone assailant clothed in white with tiny horns hidden beneath a thick head of hair; this time almost the entire student body had gathered to unleash my demise ─ words that came together and formed a heinous rumor! (Plain Jane, pg. 220-222)
The previous excerpt is from the chapter of my book titled “I Heard a Rumor.” I want to share a small portion of Plain Jane as well as a tiny piece of my heart.
Words form weapons in the lives of many young people. Sometimes that weapon is a knife that stabs straight through the heart leaving the recipient with a deadly wound. The blade is often serrated with gossip and rumors.
While writing Plain Jane, I felt led to place tiny pieces of myself within my character. That chapter was one of the most difficult for me to write because it tapped into a place within my soul and my past that I wanted to never reopen. While revisiting the time in my life when I was viscously attacked by my peers through a heinous rumor, I found an opened wound.
As I expressed Aralyn’s pain and emotions when one of her peers saw an innocent situation and twisted it into an ugly monster, I was truly conveying my own floodgate of hurt that surged to the surface of my heart as I typed. My heart pounded, my chest constricted, and tears flowed as I bore my soul; consequently, it was healing the lacerations left by my attackers.
I made sure to form the weapon that shattered Aralyn’s life in a very different manner from the one that had been used upon me, yet I could not escape the similarities. Both weapons were sharpened by rumors and gossip leaving the victim to bleed out. Just as her rumor was not the same as mine, the placement in her life was different as well. For Aralyn it came during a time of misery and pushed her closer to the edge. For me it was the catalyst into the black abyss of depression that follows me to this day.
You may be asking yourself why I am sharing a small portion of this chapter as well as this side of me. I think it is because I feel that people need to understand the consequences of gossip and rumors. I was fifteen years old when I was stabbed repeatedly in the heart by that blade. I was thirty-seven when I wrote Plain Jane and received my healing. Although I no longer have an opened wound, I will forever carry the scar; unfortunately, there are those young people who never have the opportunity to heal.
Schledia Benefield
