Ella, Indeed
A Story for Hailuta’s Daughter

At half past dawn Ella awoke and sprang from bed--feet first, of course. She had hoped to catch the moon, high and bright, before it gave in to the power of daytime light.

"Goodbye, Mr. Moon!" she cried and cried and finally said her last good-byes.

"For tonight we shall meet again!” she sighed, "be strong and oh do not cry!"

Ella was, by nature, a curious and cheerful lass with long thick hair, bright eyes and a warm, welcoming laugh.

"You can't get by on your looks alone!" again and again she was told and so her future was foretold.

"Ella, Ella, you silly thing," shouted the passerbyers in cars, buggies and other moveable things.

At first Ella thought it was her looks that made others so mad.

"Am I so displeasing?" she would ask her mother as she cried.

Then she thought perhaps it was her curiosity and the way she was always eager to meet a new face. So she started to show up to school late and sometimes not at all. Still things didn't seem to change! The teases went from occasionally and every so often to a regular thing.

"You think you’re so smart!" people would cry, for no apparent reason and at the worst of times.

On her way home from school it was always the same:
"You’re ugly!"
"You’re nasty!"
"Oh you stink!"
“You look so bad!”

Soon the sounds of their voices all seemed as one and Ella was convinced that she had done great wrong and even some miserable harm.

“I am not very interesting”, she would say to herself, “and too short and too fat and too uppity-up!”

Soon she needed no prompting to dislike herself and so the stage was set for the play of her life. Once a happy and excited girl she became a sad woman—alone and fearful of her once beautiful self.

To EF: my godess, my siren.