Read The Life and Death of Sophie Stark for Free Online Page B

at my heels.
    M Y GRANDMA AND MY GRANDPA loved each other, and when he died she cried for one whole day, my mom said, and then she went out and got a second job baking bread at the women’s prison. She was smart and fast, and soon she was promoted to line cook, then kitchen manager, and she was able to quit her first job at a factory that made wooden dishware, and she worked at the prison until she died. My mom and I visited her when I was four or five years old, before my sisters were born, and she made bread with a soft cheese baked inside it and I kept wondering what magic she used to get it in there. Another woman was staying with my grandma then, a lady named Elma who had been a prisoner. She had a big square body and a face that had seen a lot of sun, and I remember she taught me how to peel an orange in a spiral so you’re left with a bouncy, sweet-smelling snake. She also told me a story about her grandfather that I didn’t believe but that I loved. She said he was a sailor who was captured by pirates, and they were about to make him walk the plank when he made a special Masonic hand signal, and since they were Masons too, they not only let him go but taught him all their pirate secrets and codes and ways of avoiding the law. Elma had roundcheeks and deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and when she smiled, I thought she looked like Mrs. Claus, and I told her that, and she laughed.
    That night when my grandma was putting me to bed, I asked her what Elma had done to go to prison. My grandma didn’t believe in lying to children, so she told me that Elma’s husband used to beat her and her daughter, so one night Elma killed him. I was scared then—not because I thought Elma would kill us but because I was worried that the nice lady who I’d started to love the quick way little kids do was actually evil and I’d have to hate her.
    “Is Elma a bad person?” I asked my grandma.
    “What she did was bad,” she said. “But not as bad as letting somebody hurt you over and over and not doing anything about it.”
    I knew she was talking about my dad, which wasn’t fair, because he was just a screwup who never hit anyone in his life. But I remembered this forever, how bad she thought Mom was for taking shit from him. And I thought of it the day I packed up my stuff while Sophie was editing and moved to a new apartment across town.

BURNELL COLLEGE MONGOOSE

    Despite Flaws, Marianne
Makes an Impression

    R. Benjamin Martin, Class of 2005
    This weekend’s independent film festival at Bolcher Auditorium featured a number of worthy and wholesome efforts. Bogdan in particular, the story of one young boy’s triumph over astigmatism, will no doubt be a contender this Oscar season. But it is not of Bogdan , nor of Woolly Bear , the majestic tale of an annual caterpillar migration, that I have come here to speak. I want to talk about Marianne .
    Marianne is not a perfect movie. It is not beautifully lit, nor, it must be said, even competently edited. The sound has roughly the clarity of an expiring person shouting for help from the bottom of a very deep well. The supporting actors are occasionally embarrassing.
    And yet Marianne is by far the most interesting film this critic had the pleasure of seeing at the festival, and perhaps the most interesting one his editors have ever assigned him to review (though Death Slash 8 did, to be fair, have its moments). Many films try to convey the experience of being trapped in one’s hometown. I’m still waiting for the movie that shows everyone what it feels like when your mom comes home every night with another part of her body ruined from her job—first her back, then her eyes, then the hands that spanked and comforted you as a child—and your dad, already ruined long before, lectures you from the couch every night on the importance ofthe education that he never got and that he has no idea how to pay for, and all your friends cut class to smoke pot and talk about dreams