Nella

by Liz Rebholz, age 18, from US

The sweet little girl gazed up with squinty eyes at the tops of the
fluttering eucalyptus trees. They were full grown and had been in front
of the Johanson's house for as long as Nella could remember. She ,
herself, was not a Johanson and Nella sometimes thought that that was
what went wrong with her life. From the beginning, her life was
corrupt, she had not been born a Johanson. But the sweet little girl
was. The youngest of the three Johanson girls lay on perfectly mowed,
dark green lawn on her back. Her blond ciurls, which all the Johanson
girls were blessed with, were spread around her pretty little head. Her
cornflower blue eyes kept their gaze on the tops of the trees. The way
the round leaves shimmered against the baby blue, cloudless sky made the six year old think of her mother's silver sequined evening dress she
sometimes wore out to dinner.

Nella watched the sweet little girl through her small, triangle, attic
window from across the street. Despite the dusty, brown cobwebs
plastered to the glass and water spots caked on from rainy days over the years, Nella could see, clearly, the sweet little girls wonder in her
wonderous blue eyes. Surely this angel didn't deserve to be looked at
through such grit and grime. But, surely, Nella deserved to live behind
such grit and grime. Nella wanted to die.

The Gilmore children were destined ugly. Past generations of the
Gilmores were spared, it was only the eight children of the present day
Gilmores who the curse struck. Mother was dull. Not ugly, necessarily,
yet dull. Boring. Father was depressed. This didn't help his appearance one bit and though he was sought after by young girls in his youth, life had made him bitter and now, he was just lucky he was still married.

Everyone gets a little of their looks from their parents. A little from
one, a little from the other. But dull and depressing blends together to
make a potent recipe: "dang ugly". And all eight children were each a
serving from that potent pie.

Nella was not the youngest Gilmore child but she was the last girl
born. Mother had prayed this one would turn out beautiful. She prayed
God would bless this one, just this once, this last one. Nella wasn't
the last one. There was little Bobby, named after Father. But Mother
hadn't known and all she knew then was that she wanted just one
beautiful daughter who could love herself. Just to help it along,
Mother chose a name with meaning: Nova Bella, "new beauty", Nova Bell
for short. But Father wasn't fond at all of foreigners, being an
ignorant man, and both Nova and Bella sounded foreign to him, so it was out of the question. Yet Nella, a combination of both, sounded more
American, more midwestern. So Nella she became. You would think God
would bless at least one girl out of five.