Please rate the TITLE of my story? And the 1st page? PLEASE? 10 points! :)?
Question:
Its a South African story- partly based on my childhood. Its long, sorry but I hope you enjoy. Its about breaking free from our pasts and realisng that we make our future's by choosing to embrace it.
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Here's the opening page: IS IT WORTH CARRYING ON???
It had begun. Running up the road towards the orange, rocky-bedded path that led to the trees beyond we distance ourselves further and further away from all that attempts to define us by our pasts. Jelly legs, pushing on with a somewhat trivial but determined manner, I finally wrought victory when I reach the large stone on the right side of the bend at the foot of the prickly demeanor of the pines. The thickening mist attempts too, to blanket my need to breathe a little deeper and sweat more distinctly. Like kittens cowering on a porch beside a door, the rain begins to pour as we nudge ourselves closer to the trunk, my arm imprinting itself further into the bark, my hand brushing the tiny stones off my shoeless feet. The humidity of the air and drizzle condenses the scent of earth and leaves dropping a heavy dizzy spillage in my head, and slowly, these two 10 year-old athletes sink to the floor. After 20 minutes or so, in silence, perhaps knowing the criminality of our race we start for home. When we arrive, beaming, I look down and see mud-layered coldness amidst a middle toe that is slightly longer than the first. There they are…witnesses of my triumph! But my feet had already begun to dry and itch a little, and cracks appeared around my heels.
“I am now honoured to pronounce…” she was cut from bequeathing me with the wreath of Mount Olympus which was picked up in the drive-way hedges outside Aunt Lalita’s house at the front of the Lane— as we glazed the carpet on the porch the towering wooden doors thrust open and in vain, as I am being dragged into the house, harshly too, (she had picked up this kitten by the scruff) I attempt to peel off the earth of the run I had just won against Selina. She remained outside, this time rooted to the spot.
“What did I tell you about running around with no shoes eh?!” I rarely heard her speak but when I did I was instantaneously reminded of why I never complained. Why do adults confuse us by asking questions that are really statements of the obvious? I only catch phrases, ‘...a filthy Zulu child…same!” of her slur of words amidst blows from a fair, thin, elegant but leather-sounding hand. Her blue veins throb through her skin like snakes upon glass. My mother was always a vile paradox. She continues to list my crimes, most simply traits she marked off as “unruly,” a term loyal to her insipid contempt. But the only thing that I am capable of registering is that I was now forbidden from playing with her niece, Sli, again. When this happened, it was not as you may think a rare incident; merely a habit of rules that went against nature placed upon a child that was all together obedient despite the aforementioned, aptly titled “barefooted revolt”.
Sli did not even get a chance to say goodbye to me but I watch her from the bathroom window upstairs, she wipes her eyes with her sleeve encompassing an arm far too short for its length. I crane my neck further and I see her curled black locks, like a spring, hop into the car. I turn to Lilly and sit on the edge of the bath. She isn’t even looking at me. She takes a facecloth and some soap, picks up my leg and scrubs, hard. It’s as though she is upset with me. I had failed to assert my innocence, but then I see in her dark panda-eyes that it is not my innocence that is in question. She seemed far away, having an argument in her head perhaps. Picking up my other leg she mumbled something that sounded like “Miss’s…not right.” To think that she was here through my first tooth, feeding me, changing me for school, teaching me how to knit and after sweeping the stairs and seeing how miserable I was sitting under it, poking myself with the needles she had even made my hut-patterned bookmark and turquoise teddy bear for school. But nevertheless the dynamic of our relationship, at present is a docile one. She goes by her day but is always close in case of trouble. She is by no means herself docile. Vivacious and yet in built not so old, the edge of nearly all her sentences buffed by laughter, or at the very least polished with a sweet tone which, upon diagnosis, would grant a peculiarity but with her it came naturally. She was as I like to call her, the Lady of the Lane, after all.
TITLE: "I Am Apart"
What do you think???
Answer:
Title is okay. Much of the text is good, although I would break up the long paragraphs. First sentence ("It had begun") must GO! Terrible way to begin. Just start with your second sentence.
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