Her Name Will Be Miracle

Violet; Watchfulness

Hannah, with her head tilted to one side, stood in front of the rectangular, eggshell painted, gold detailed, French Provincial styled mirror (reproduction of course) that rested haphazardly atop the matching dresser. The mirror was meant to lie long-ways on a slightly longer dresser, but the mirror was positioned just ever so steadily the wrong way on Hannah’s shorter, less expensive dresser. You see the mirror, even though obviously meant for a completely different proportioned dresser was perfect for Hannah’s room, perfect for Hannah’s life. Hannah’s family was notorious for pinching pennies. Since the mirror was a bargain, her mom and dad could not pass up the deal.

The rest of Hannah’s room was pretty much typical for an eight-year-old girl. She did not really care for her room any more. She had grown tired of the decorating. Actually the only thing that Hannah really did like in her house was a needlepoint hanging that her mom had made. It read: "He, who plants a seed beneath the sod and waits to see, believes in God." She would spend many a thought on the words of this poem.

There was also a porcelain plate that had "The Lord’s Prayer" inscripted on it in silver lettering. It was really quite a pretty plate that rested in the wooden stained plate rack that Hannah’s dad had made for her mom. Hannah would run downstairs where the plate was housed and read the verses out loud line by line and then run back upstairs to her room to copy down the words on the three ring loose leaf notebook paper in her red vinyl covered cardboard folder. This was really a good way to remember something. She had to hurry though, so her mom would not catch her doing something. Her mom would probably ask her a million questions about what she was doing and why she was doing it.

Sometimes people, anyone really, it does not matter who you are, need to be able to do something without it being analyzed to death.

Her room was painted pink with one wall wallpapered in a stripped flower design. It was too much money to wallpaper the whole room, so the one wall wallpapering trick was the norm and expected for Hannah’s family. It was apparent all through the house that this was a tried and true technique. The bathroom was decorated like this. Hannah’s brother’s room was decorated like this. Not even the kitchen could obtain from knowing this experience of being defined in such a way by an understandably talented decorator such as Hannah’s mom.

Hannah and her family lived in a small town. Approximately sixty-five hundred people lived in this town. This was the type of town that everyone knew everything about everyone else. Or at least they thought they knew everything about everyone else. This was the type of town that the local police department, which had one sheriff and one deputy, would watch the license plate numbers of the cars passing by. If the license plate number indicated that the vehicle was from a different county than theirs, they would pull the car over. They never needed a reason. They just needed to know what the heck an outsider was doing in their parts. If there was any trouble with a vehicle that was from their county they would just let it pass on by. Drunk driving or not. Pot smoking or not. Wanted felon or not.

The mirror was like a one hundred-foot tall column that stands in an ancient Greek ruin somewhere, or though it seemed to the youngster. A pillow was tucked under her shirt. She was just looking, staring and caressing the lump that was so evident. At the time Hannah looked so small compared to the mirror, so minute compared to the mirror, almost unimportant. That is how she felt most of the time and especially when there were other people around. Hannah imagined what it would be like to actually have something growing inside of her. She imagined what it would be like to actually be a mother. A mother that she always said she would be. She imagined being the kind of mother that would do anything for her child. She imagined being the kind of mother that would not yell or belittle or slap or spank her child. She would be the kind of mother that would just simply unconditionally love her child to no end. Somehow Hannah knew, even then that this might be something that she would never, could never experience for herself. She did not realize it at the time, but she possessed a sixth sense about certain things. Sometimes an eerie feeling would cross over Hannah. It was an unexplained feeling of knowing certain outcomes of certain situations. Later in life she would have a knack for knowing just what to do and how to act and what to say in sticky predicaments so that no harm would come to her.

Hannah remembers one night not too long ago that she awoke from her sleep. She and her brother always were in bed by 8:00 p.m. every night. It was one of the rules in the house. Hannah woke up to the sound of crying. The crying was not coming from the house or from someone’s voice that she was familiar with. The crying was coming from outside somewhere.

It was the end of the summer and school was almost ready to start. Hannah and her family all were sleeping with their windows open. Hannah remembers looking out of her window. She could not see anything even though there was a full moon that night. Hannah tried to focus her eyes to see beyond her front yard. The light that was given off by the street light on the corner was not sufficient enough to make out any object that could have been just outside of her window where she thought the crying was coming from.

She called out into the night. "Hello". "Hello". She had to whisper as not to wake up anybody else in the house. She waited for a reply. She never got one.