Good things come in small packages - Day 340: 5 Minute Freewrite
Day 340: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: small package
"Good things come in small packages"
was Julie's quick retort whenever anyone called her Short Stuff or made fun of her four-foot-eleven "height." She wore six-inch heels to compensate. With denim cut-offs, with blue jeans.
Sister Lori was five-foot-six AND skinny. "There is no justice!" Julie would exclaim. She was not only short but never thin, always just a wee bit pudgy, but in a good way, according to the guys. And in those days, the guys were awful. The terminology wasn't in our lexicon, but sexual harassment was rampant and unpunished.
Julie's high school memory book was full of hand-written comments from boys predicting she'd star in a new version of "Deadly Weapons," or that she made the classic and quintessential size 36B look like a training bra, or that there would someday be a shirt that's baggy on Julie.
When a girl is under 60 inches tall, a size D bra isn't as desirable as those ladies paying for boob jobs might think.
Being short and well-endowed, quirky and enthusiastic, talkative and fearlessly opinionated, a lot of energy was generated from that small package known as Julie.
Like little dogs who bark ferociously at much bigger dogs, Julie stood up to everyone who ever challenged her or laughed at her big ideas. And she dreamed big! She'd be an actress, a rock star, a dj, a racecar driver, but no matter what, she would be somebody, and she was going places. Like millions of small-town girls who wanted to see the world and live large.
She also believed herself to be really tough, and kept telling our dad nobody could take her in a fight. She'd throw a punch his way, and he'd have her flat on her back on the floor in less than two seconds. Every time. But like the old commercial for the toy that couldn't be toppled, weebles wobble but we don't fall down, Julie always popped up again, always came back for more.
source
Indomitable!
None of us imagined
Julie's toughness would be put to the test the way it was. She fell off the face of the earth two weeks before her nineteenth birthday. It was the day after Thanksgiving. For months, I expected her to pull a Nancy Drew and outwit whoever must be holding her hostage.
We knew she was small, but small enough to be stuffed into a culvert under a dirt road? That's a tight squeeze.
Her body washed out of the culvert in March, no clothing, no jewelry. The coroner declared she had been strangled, and her skull fractured. She must have put up a fight. If she had a chance to use her fingernails, there would have been DNA evidence, but small-town cops in 1976 didn't even look for that sort of thing.
Julie, Julie, your big spirit came in a small package,
and someone just snuffed it out
and disposed of a young woman's body like roadside trash.
It'll be 43 years, come November 28, 2018, since her life was stolen, and nobody was ever arrested, much less tried and found guilty and locked up.
If I could know, know beyond all doubt who had killed my sister, I would probably leave a small package at his door, something that would detonate when he opened it. Maybe this is why I've never KNOWN whodunnit. There is no evidence or forensics or eyewitness testimony sufficient to make an arrest, but if there were, I'd probably end up in jail myself for administering vigilante justice.
FIVE MINUTES turned into ten. I declare myself done now. I'll add some photos, maybe, and leave this as is.
Maybe.
Y'all know I can't resist revising, and revising, and revising.
At age 15, she wrote an eerily prophetic short story about a crime-fighting heroine who dies young:
Brave as they Come - by Julie
High School Seniors and Memory Books
were a thing, back then.
Sadly, I didn't think to photograph each page before years of humidity took their toll, and some pages got glued to each other. But the iconic Homecoming bonfire, burning an effigy of the rival team, survived. Hey, in 1974, "politically correct" was no closer to being part of our lexicon than "sexual harassment" was.
Looking back at our teen years, reading what we thought and said back then, revisiting familiar scenes in old photos, we realized that all of that is past, gone, not possible to recapture.
But to be old and gray now, and sounding like our grandmas and grandpas when we go on about how it was "back in the day," we've at least gotten to see what the future would bring.
Julie is frozen forever in time at 18. Never got to New York City or Los Angeles, nor London. Never got into an airplane. And a lot of our classmates are dead - on average, at least three out of every class of 25 students in our hometown has perished before the age of sixty - but only one of them was murdered.
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You depicted her in such a lively way that I soon started feeling such sympathy for the little, strong Julie. When I read of her horrible death my eyes became watery.. I'm so sorry. This world sometimes is simply shit and I understand the feeling of revenge that you still harbor. I would feel the same. It happened years ago with a friend.. we used to do karate training together.. he was always smiley and a happy soul. He's been found belly down in a river..the police did NOTHING. He was an immigrant, maybe that's why.. what sadness my God. I'll pray for Julie, a hug.
Aw, thank you so much! I love it that you see "the little, strong Julie" - and I feel for your friend. Immigrants, low-income people, and anyone judged unorthodox or unimportant just won't get as much attention as victims of a crime. When I became a mother of two daughters and a son, it hit me for the first time how HARD for a parent to lose a child, and in such a terrible way. All the years spent nurturing, teaching, changing diapers, driving to school events, paying bills... to have someone kill and cast aside this person like trash... it's the most heinous of crimes. Even an arrest and imprisonment would make little difference. There's no bringing back the lost loved one. If there's an afterlife, I hope your friend is still smiley and happy (Julie was too!) and they meet in the great beyond.
What a heartbreaking story and a fantastic tribute to your sister. This is eerily similar to what happened to a friend's older sister when she was 17. I wish these tales weren't so common.
Indeed, there are far too many of these tales. Thanks for reading and commenting. :) I feel for your friend and the loss her family suffered.
An incredibly heartbreaking story. I wish she had been a weeble wobble or Nancy Drew and that all was just a short story one of you had written.
I am so sorry for your loss and for the trauma you and yours have suffered over the years, some things are indeed ripped away and can never, ever be the same.
Thanks, @kimberlylane - honestly, I should just stop writing about it and stuff it all down, like my parents and sisters did, but there's too much in me of Inigo Montaya and his lifelong quest to find the six-fingered man ("You killed my father. Prepare to die!"). There are no answers, no solutions, no reparations, no justice, but I keep agitating for the impossible. Let it go? When I die. I know, I know. Thanks again. :)
Wow very nice friend @carolkean
Thank you - and thanks for reading it!
I think I remember you writing about her before. I do hope there's some sort of justice, someday. :/
I write about her ad nauseum - too much, too often - but if there is an afterlife, she has found an audience with me. She's agitating for something - justice, or just to be remembered. thanks for reading and for the kind words, Caleb. :)