The Martyr System - Ampersand
Content
Ampersand ‘There are listeners and talkers, slitherers and stalkers, for the flim and the flam of the witchitygrubs would never find an end.’ Blatantly, it made no sense, none at all, but no matter. It would serve its purpose well enough, which was to go towards completing the creative writing assignment that Dr Morrison had set her the previous week. “Five thousand words” she had said, “lucid, coherent and full of the real you. This time I want you to really commit, okay? Try and reveal yourself a little, hmm?” That had been on Wednesday, a week ago tomorrow. ‘Funny how time flies…’ Amrika thought wryly. Since that day last week in the good doctors classroom ‘fun’ had been the last thing she had been having. She and her best friend Julietta had spent the time mainly in the company of their deadbeat, soon to be ex, boyfriends. Most of that time had been spent in the mall. In the beginning they had to drag Kanye and Thomas to the mall, as left to their own devices they preferred to shoot hoops on the makeshift basketball court that lay behind the garage of Thomas’ father’s house. Thomas occasionally played as the ‘Phoenix Suns’ the team from the town his late mother had grown up in, but mostly as the ‘New York Knicks’, the team from the town he had been raised in until the age of ten, and which he still regarded as home. Kanye always, but always, played as the L.A Lakers. Home team advantage all the way. Amrika remembered that back then, two months ago, the struggle to get them to come to the mall had been half the joy, cajoling and funning them whether or not they thought they were too ‘manly’ to be seen at the mall with girlfriends, and asking them if they preferred to stay together playing homoerotic sports. That always seemed to do it. But nowadays they put up little to no resistance and accompanied the girls zombie-like to their destination. Where was the enjoyment in having two boys standing timid and compliant in the corner of shop floors whilst they shopped? It was like being middle-aged and married when what they wanted was a pair of difficult Alpha Males, who, if not quite bad boys, at least had some sense of self determination. Why didn’t they refuse, so that then, alone, the girls could curtail their shopping trips early and rush eagerly home to spend quality time with their men? Truly, the life of a modern thirteen year old girl was harder than could be imagined. She counted the words she had written. Twenty three. Only four thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven to go. Despair. And then all at once, it came together and she realised that what she had written was not nonsense at all, that it was in actuality something that emanated from a place she had hitherto barely been aware of. Dr Morrison was sure to be impressed, if only she found what Amrika had written half-way intelligible. Light from the late afternoon sun plummeted icarus-like into the classroom and onto Dr Morrison as she picked up the last of the classes’ text books. Broken spines. She tired of telling the pupils about the cost of books, the value of a good education and the correlation between the two. Unlike some of the other teachers she never tired of the students themselves, but then her path into the profession almost precluded such a reaction. She had been a practicing psychotherapist for 8 years, and that, added onto the years of training meant that a significant portion of her adult life had been dedicated to the welfare of others. But she had felt something missing, and after coming to the conclusion that there was something futile, contradictory even, about her chosen profession, the role of therapist somehow becoming part of her patients’ problems, she decided personal change was necessary. Approaching forty she was still childless, partly through circumstance, partly through choice. She hadn’t met the right man, and her second boyfriend apart, loved none of them. To her mind, to bear a child without love or without a partner (this being society’s age of choice due to sperm banks etc ) was wrong and so she would not. Any child of hers deserved two parents who loved each other and hence she was prepared to wait. They would get a mother and a father, not a mom and dad. Yet despite her cussedness her biological clock felt like it was a stroke before midnight. She still retained the psychotherapist she had used when she herself was a quack, and was required to see one as part of her emotional de-briefing. This was what helped her to feel confident that her decision to go into teaching was not motivated by some sort of ‘child-replacement’ syndrome. The irony of being bolstered by a practioner of a trade she felt unable to herself ply was not lost on her. Yet she was clear that she wanted to go into a profession where she could quantifiably see results on a week to week basis, and the growth of young minds. Hence, she never tired of these kids, and one in particular; Amrika, A thirteen year old colored girl (she was shamed that she still thought in the historically loaded term ‘colored’ rather than the new ‘African-American’) she had encountered outside of her normal duties. Amrika was neither a student in any of her subject classes nor was she Amrika’s home-room teacher. Therefore both scholastically and pastorally she had no natural contact with the girl which in effect meant no contact whatsoever. That was until she was asked by the principal of the high school if she would mind having a ‘talk’ with Amrika and see if everything was ‘alright’, as it had been ‘brought to her attention’ that it appeared there was ‘something wrong’ with her. These referrals occurred on a fairly regular
basis from the Principal, as knowing Morrison’s background she thought that Morrison would know how to ‘get through to’ the kids. Dr Morrison didn’t mind, not really, even if she knew that they were over-estimating her and her former profession. None of her teachers had been able to furnish Dr Morrison with a precise reason for their concern. Instead they had talked in terms of the popularity Amrika enjoyed amongst her peers versus her indifference verging on antipathy towards these peers. She was one of those kids who was popular not only with her own age group and below, but with the older kids, too. Even without the patronage of an older sibling at school to vouch for her she was accepted by many of them and known by all. This in itself, to be known by other kids, was an achievement. In other words, she was cool. The teachers also spoke of her consistently good grades despite apparently nominal effort. She was averaging A- for the year and whenever they told her that even though her grades were good with more application on her part they’d be better, they could of swore by her reaction that she was proud to not be at the top of the tables. So, there were anomalies by the usual standards, in both her standing within the school and with her attitude towards schooling. But the thing that they all mentioned, the actual reason for being referred to Dr Morrison, was what they could only describe as her ‘Blankness’. It seemed to them as if she wasn’t there. Another broken spine. These books made Dr Morrison muse on Amrika even more. It had been difficult thinking of a reason to give to Amrika for these weekly meetings she had instigated. In the end she had simply said that it had been brought to her attention that Amrika seemed to have a talent for English Language and would she be interested in a private tutorial once a week. Amrika had said “Yeah, would Wednesdays be okay?” immediately, even if she did so without any hint of enthusiasm whatsoever. The speed and uncomplicatedness of her response seemed to suggest that she had been expecting the request, or was at least expecting to be singled out at some point on some pretext. Dr Morrison had no doubt that Amrika had not been hoodwinked by this ruse despite the actuality of Amrika having a talent for manipulating the written word that was uncanny for someone of her age. It was this talent that had made her the main suspect for part of the graffiti that had appeared all over the school in recent weeks, and had also in some strange way disturbed the entire faculty. Funnily enough ‘graffiti’ seemed hardly the right term for it as it was of a completely poetic nature. It said, ‘They cannot rewrite my soul, don’t let them rewrite your soul.’ The faculty all agreed amongst themselves that they much preferred the usual brand of stupid and aggressive graffiti that proliferated everywhere else, but did not discuss with each other why they felt so. Privately though, they knew. This simply line had filled them with an incredible sense of loss. The Los Angeles Geese Every morning she was awoken by the cacophonic racket of the geese of Los Angeles. From outside of her bedroom window and across the silken lawn Amrika could hear their mad chatter as they waddled, skipped and jumped down the sidewalk. At least they sounded like geese to her ears. In truth, they were the happy children of class 2b from Valley Rise Kindergarten, and they formed a procession that trailed Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) over to the annexe building of the school. Once upon a time Amrika had been one of these geese, and, yes, she too had been unmistakebly happy back then. She lay there in her bed and thought about how funny it was that she would be brought all the way to kindergarten only to be trooped back right past the front of her house less than twenty minutes later. Her left cheek was wet. Damn. She’d drooled onto her now sodden pillow in her sleep again. Not very lady-like. It was a sure sign that her nightmares had returned. Back in kindergarten she wasn’t known for any of the things she was known for now like being bright or weird or anything like that. Back then she was known for being happy. The happiest, naughtiest little star of her class. Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) was unmarried then, and without children of her own treated Amrika like a surrogate daughter. But that was the past and this…wasn’t. And as she had heard Principal Murphy say to the school every year at the first assembly ‘we can’t live in the past’. This would be before he swiftly went on to say ‘…so that is why we’re ALL OF US gonna work towards making this the best academic school year EVER’. Yeah, right. It wasn’t as if she wanted to live in the past anyway she just didn’t want to live in the present and it was impossible to live in the future. It wasn’t fair. It was like being told you were moving house and were gonna end up living in either London, New York or Utah. Guess which one the present would be. Guess which one you would always end up in. Mormons here we come! She remembered when Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) had brought them all to the park to collect bugs. That had been so much fun. They had each been given a little plastic jar with two transparent (rubber) tubes going into the top. Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) showed them that the trick to using them was to suck on the end of one tube whilst holding the other tube just above the insect that you wanted to collect. Then one big inhalation later and, whoosh, the bug was sucked safely up and trapped inside the jar. It took a little while for all the children to master but once they had, wow, what fun! Amrika didn’t collect the most bugs for as usual the boys were the most competitive and maniacally vacuumed up as many as they could. But she did collect the most beautiful and interesting ones. Whereas the others in her group, boys and girls, all seemed to have more than fifty of the same type of ants and spiders she had only
about fifteen but each one different from the others. There was one bug that had what must have been a hundred legs and another whose eyes you could see peering back at you as clear as day. But her very favourite one was the one whose back glowed a green so iridescent it was a case of nature at its most un-natural. . 2
The song ‘Two-way Street’ by Duel blared from the speakers of Amrikas’ stereo system at th same time as their video played on MTV. She turned the stereo up. The storyline of the video involved the four members of the boyband at a club all trying to pick up girls. For one reason or another (one girl already taken, another that talks too much, etc) the boys all appear to go home empty handed. The twist was that they pair off amongst themselves and, thus, the happyending. The promo for their third single, it was the first to be aired on MTV. Bisexuality was not something MTV had ever endorsed (unless it involved a guy and two women who didn’t mind a bit of girl-on-girl action as well. But now, well, times they truly were a-changin’. Or to be more precise, the cd buying patterns of young girls of pocket money age was changing. ‘Duel’ had caused a furore across the nation. The Bible belt were apoplectic, the Republicans were talking about ‘implementing a new hardline’, and what’s more, the Democrats were listening. Moms and Dads all over the U.S. were at a loss, especially those who had hitherto considered themselves liberals. But most of all they had caused a furore with the young girls. Here at last was something that was ‘theirs’. Apart from it defining them as other than their parents, it also gave them superiority over the boys of their age who, obviously, recoiled from such things. If Amrika had known the effect that her sudden urge to deface school property had created, she might of thought twice about the next piece of graffiti she was to create. Maybe she would have thought of something equally delicate and subtle, created another original that would slightly shift the world of those around her. Unfortunately the only reactions she had heard were from the other kids when they mentioned it in passing conversation. The sum total of these reactions could be summed up in one word; Weirdo. Of course, they were unaware that it was Amrika who had written the graffito so she had the opportunity to listen to their unvarnished views. What they would have said had they known she was the author was not something she wished to explore. Maximum impact, zero exposure – that was her motto. She was pissed about their reactions, for sure. And the fact she was pissed about it just made her more pissed. Why the hell should she care what they thought? The first offspring of her temper was that she resolved to do more graffiti but to this time use someone else’s words. She decided to paraphrase a line from that old movie she had seen last week, Network – ‘I’m mad as hell and I ain’t gonna take it anymore…’ The ellipsis was her addition. Her second resolution/child was that there was no way she was going to elucidate on the opening of her essay. If her graffito, a genuine attempt to say something, had been so badly received by the kids then there was no way she was going to open up to Dr Morrison. She would have to prise her open like an oyster shell before Amrika would willingly yield pearls. It was a shame because Dr Morrison seemed like a pretty nice lady who had somehow got it into her head that Amrika needed help. Up until now Amrika had figured that it would be pretty easy to throw the metaphorical dog an equally metaphorical bone. But not now. It would be a clear day in L.A. Amrika was honest with Dr Morrison. But then, maybe that was the answer, maybe she just had to throw the doctor a bone of a different flavor. She would lie. In general she hardly ever lied. Not for any high-minded moral reason, nor even because her parents had told her as a small child that lying was bad. It was just because she couldn’t usually see the point. On occasion she lied in order not to hurt somebody else’s feelings or sometimes she lied to avoid having to deal with somebody’s hurt feelings, which was so boring. But apart from that, nah. This could be different though. Not only would she be keeping Dr Morrison happy but she would also be able to show how much cleverer she was than this adult, this doctor, no less. She would never be able to let Dr Morrison in on the joke but that was okay because she would know within herself, which would suffice. She rolled across the bed, reached over, and turned the stereo off. It was time to give this essay her full attention. The beginning was good, she thought, no need to change it, it was cute. The rest, she could go to town on. This was gonna be fun.
Death and the teenage years The body had hung for what they reckoned to have been a full six hours before discovery that Monday morning. By rights it should have been the school janitor who found it, as where it hung, taut beneath the south hoop of the basketball court, was on the route that he was meant to
patrol. It was to be his bad luck that that morning his wife had relocated her oft-misplaced libido. It was the kind of opportunity only a fool would spurn, and James Anthony Etherbridge was certainly nobody’s fool. His morning glory was to soon turn to disaster for as he fucked Mrs Etherbridge little did he know he was being fucked over by the body formerly known as Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett. For his oversight he would lose his job, be denied the job reference his labor deserved and warrant a fleeting yet disparaging mention in the following weeks copy of the local newspaper. They had come to the conclusion that he was partially to blame, for if he had been there when he was supposed to be (a full five hours after the body had originally hung itself) they reckoned he could somehow have saved her. As he wasn’t and he didn’t then clearly he was complicit and culpable in the matter of her death. The body formerly known as Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett Anthony Panucci and Chad Roberts were the boys who’d discovered the body. They had headed to school early with the intention of smoking some dope out on the football pitch before classes began. Again, Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett intervened. They stood and stared at this girl they had both only vaguely known, and shared the same unspoken thoughts. They thought how pretty she had been when alive, and whether or not it would be right to still use her as a masturbation fantasy now that she was dead. Thinking about dead movie stars was one thing, but someone you actually knew? They weren’t so sure. They each wondered about how in death her prettiness had changed to full-blown beauty but struggled to articulate this thought even within their own minds. And finally they wondered whether or not they would still have time to smoke a joint on the football pitch before reporting the dead body of Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett, or if in doing so they would miss out on the glory by someone else discovering her in the interim. This last thought they did talk about and a compromise was reached. And so, with Cindy’s sneakered feet no more than six feet away they quickly built a joint and sat on the basketball court and considered the fame that awaited them in school as the kids that found ‘that girl that hung herself’.
basis from the Principal, as knowing Morrison’s background she thought that Morrison would know how to ‘get through to’ the kids. Dr Morrison didn’t mind, not really, even if she knew that they were over-estimating her and her former profession. None of her teachers had been able to furnish Dr Morrison with a precise reason for their concern. Instead they had talked in terms of the popularity Amrika enjoyed amongst her peers versus her indifference verging on antipathy towards these peers. She was one of those kids who was popular not only with her own age group and below, but with the older kids, too. Even without the patronage of an older sibling at school to vouch for her she was accepted by many of them and known by all. This in itself, to be known by other kids, was an achievement. In other words, she was cool. The teachers also spoke of her consistently good grades despite apparently nominal effort. She was averaging A- for the year and whenever they told her that even though her grades were good with more application on her part they’d be better, they could of swore by her reaction that she was proud to not be at the top of the tables. So, there were anomalies by the usual standards, in both her standing within the school and with her attitude towards schooling. But the thing that they all mentioned, the actual reason for being referred to Dr Morrison, was what they could only describe as her ‘Blankness’. It seemed to them as if she wasn’t there. Another broken spine. These books made Dr Morrison muse on Amrika even more. It had been difficult thinking of a reason to give to Amrika for these weekly meetings she had instigated. In the end she had simply said that it had been brought to her attention that Amrika seemed to have a talent for English Language and would she be interested in a private tutorial once a week. Amrika had said “Yeah, would Wednesdays be okay?” immediately, even if she did so without any hint of enthusiasm whatsoever. The speed and uncomplicatedness of her response seemed to suggest that she had been expecting the request, or was at least expecting to be singled out at some point on some pretext. Dr Morrison had no doubt that Amrika had not been hoodwinked by this ruse despite the actuality of Amrika having a talent for manipulating the written word that was uncanny for someone of her age. It was this talent that had made her the main suspect for part of the graffiti that had appeared all over the school in recent weeks, and had also in some strange way disturbed the entire faculty. Funnily enough ‘graffiti’ seemed hardly the right term for it as it was of a completely poetic nature. It said, ‘They cannot rewrite my soul, don’t let them rewrite your soul.’ The faculty all agreed amongst themselves that they much preferred the usual brand of stupid and aggressive graffiti that proliferated everywhere else, but did not discuss with each other why they felt so. Privately though, they knew. This simply line had filled them with an incredible sense of loss. The Los Angeles Geese Every morning she was awoken by the cacophonic racket of the geese of Los Angeles. From outside of her bedroom window and across the silken lawn Amrika could hear their mad chatter as they waddled, skipped and jumped down the sidewalk. At least they sounded like geese to her ears. In truth, they were the happy children of class 2b from Valley Rise Kindergarten, and they formed a procession that trailed Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) over to the annexe building of the school. Once upon a time Amrika had been one of these geese, and, yes, she too had been unmistakebly happy back then. She lay there in her bed and thought about how funny it was that she would be brought all the way to kindergarten only to be trooped back right past the front of her house less than twenty minutes later. Her left cheek was wet. Damn. She’d drooled onto her now sodden pillow in her sleep again. Not very lady-like. It was a sure sign that her nightmares had returned. Back in kindergarten she wasn’t known for any of the things she was known for now like being bright or weird or anything like that. Back then she was known for being happy. The happiest, naughtiest little star of her class. Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) was unmarried then, and without children of her own treated Amrika like a surrogate daughter. But that was the past and this…wasn’t. And as she had heard Principal Murphy say to the school every year at the first assembly ‘we can’t live in the past’. This would be before he swiftly went on to say ‘…so that is why we’re ALL OF US gonna work towards making this the best academic school year EVER’. Yeah, right. It wasn’t as if she wanted to live in the past anyway she just didn’t want to live in the present and it was impossible to live in the future. It wasn’t fair. It was like being told you were moving house and were gonna end up living in either London, New York or Utah. Guess which one the present would be. Guess which one you would always end up in. Mormons here we come! She remembered when Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) had brought them all to the park to collect bugs. That had been so much fun. They had each been given a little plastic jar with two transparent (rubber) tubes going into the top. Mrs Hassenthaler (nee Perkins) showed them that the trick to using them was to suck on the end of one tube whilst holding the other tube just above the insect that you wanted to collect. Then one big inhalation later and, whoosh, the bug was sucked safely up and trapped inside the jar. It took a little while for all the children to master but once they had, wow, what fun! Amrika didn’t collect the most bugs for as usual the boys were the most competitive and maniacally vacuumed up as many as they could. But she did collect the most beautiful and interesting ones. Whereas the others in her group, boys and girls, all seemed to have more than fifty of the same type of ants and spiders she had only
about fifteen but each one different from the others. There was one bug that had what must have been a hundred legs and another whose eyes you could see peering back at you as clear as day. But her very favourite one was the one whose back glowed a green so iridescent it was a case of nature at its most un-natural. . 2
The song ‘Two-way Street’ by Duel blared from the speakers of Amrikas’ stereo system at th same time as their video played on MTV. She turned the stereo up. The storyline of the video involved the four members of the boyband at a club all trying to pick up girls. For one reason or another (one girl already taken, another that talks too much, etc) the boys all appear to go home empty handed. The twist was that they pair off amongst themselves and, thus, the happyending. The promo for their third single, it was the first to be aired on MTV. Bisexuality was not something MTV had ever endorsed (unless it involved a guy and two women who didn’t mind a bit of girl-on-girl action as well. But now, well, times they truly were a-changin’. Or to be more precise, the cd buying patterns of young girls of pocket money age was changing. ‘Duel’ had caused a furore across the nation. The Bible belt were apoplectic, the Republicans were talking about ‘implementing a new hardline’, and what’s more, the Democrats were listening. Moms and Dads all over the U.S. were at a loss, especially those who had hitherto considered themselves liberals. But most of all they had caused a furore with the young girls. Here at last was something that was ‘theirs’. Apart from it defining them as other than their parents, it also gave them superiority over the boys of their age who, obviously, recoiled from such things. If Amrika had known the effect that her sudden urge to deface school property had created, she might of thought twice about the next piece of graffiti she was to create. Maybe she would have thought of something equally delicate and subtle, created another original that would slightly shift the world of those around her. Unfortunately the only reactions she had heard were from the other kids when they mentioned it in passing conversation. The sum total of these reactions could be summed up in one word; Weirdo. Of course, they were unaware that it was Amrika who had written the graffito so she had the opportunity to listen to their unvarnished views. What they would have said had they known she was the author was not something she wished to explore. Maximum impact, zero exposure – that was her motto. She was pissed about their reactions, for sure. And the fact she was pissed about it just made her more pissed. Why the hell should she care what they thought? The first offspring of her temper was that she resolved to do more graffiti but to this time use someone else’s words. She decided to paraphrase a line from that old movie she had seen last week, Network – ‘I’m mad as hell and I ain’t gonna take it anymore…’ The ellipsis was her addition. Her second resolution/child was that there was no way she was going to elucidate on the opening of her essay. If her graffito, a genuine attempt to say something, had been so badly received by the kids then there was no way she was going to open up to Dr Morrison. She would have to prise her open like an oyster shell before Amrika would willingly yield pearls. It was a shame because Dr Morrison seemed like a pretty nice lady who had somehow got it into her head that Amrika needed help. Up until now Amrika had figured that it would be pretty easy to throw the metaphorical dog an equally metaphorical bone. But not now. It would be a clear day in L.A. Amrika was honest with Dr Morrison. But then, maybe that was the answer, maybe she just had to throw the doctor a bone of a different flavor. She would lie. In general she hardly ever lied. Not for any high-minded moral reason, nor even because her parents had told her as a small child that lying was bad. It was just because she couldn’t usually see the point. On occasion she lied in order not to hurt somebody else’s feelings or sometimes she lied to avoid having to deal with somebody’s hurt feelings, which was so boring. But apart from that, nah. This could be different though. Not only would she be keeping Dr Morrison happy but she would also be able to show how much cleverer she was than this adult, this doctor, no less. She would never be able to let Dr Morrison in on the joke but that was okay because she would know within herself, which would suffice. She rolled across the bed, reached over, and turned the stereo off. It was time to give this essay her full attention. The beginning was good, she thought, no need to change it, it was cute. The rest, she could go to town on. This was gonna be fun.
Death and the teenage years The body had hung for what they reckoned to have been a full six hours before discovery that Monday morning. By rights it should have been the school janitor who found it, as where it hung, taut beneath the south hoop of the basketball court, was on the route that he was meant to
patrol. It was to be his bad luck that that morning his wife had relocated her oft-misplaced libido. It was the kind of opportunity only a fool would spurn, and James Anthony Etherbridge was certainly nobody’s fool. His morning glory was to soon turn to disaster for as he fucked Mrs Etherbridge little did he know he was being fucked over by the body formerly known as Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett. For his oversight he would lose his job, be denied the job reference his labor deserved and warrant a fleeting yet disparaging mention in the following weeks copy of the local newspaper. They had come to the conclusion that he was partially to blame, for if he had been there when he was supposed to be (a full five hours after the body had originally hung itself) they reckoned he could somehow have saved her. As he wasn’t and he didn’t then clearly he was complicit and culpable in the matter of her death. The body formerly known as Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett Anthony Panucci and Chad Roberts were the boys who’d discovered the body. They had headed to school early with the intention of smoking some dope out on the football pitch before classes began. Again, Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett intervened. They stood and stared at this girl they had both only vaguely known, and shared the same unspoken thoughts. They thought how pretty she had been when alive, and whether or not it would be right to still use her as a masturbation fantasy now that she was dead. Thinking about dead movie stars was one thing, but someone you actually knew? They weren’t so sure. They each wondered about how in death her prettiness had changed to full-blown beauty but struggled to articulate this thought even within their own minds. And finally they wondered whether or not they would still have time to smoke a joint on the football pitch before reporting the dead body of Cindy Hackensaw-Tippett, or if in doing so they would miss out on the glory by someone else discovering her in the interim. This last thought they did talk about and a compromise was reached. And so, with Cindy’s sneakered feet no more than six feet away they quickly built a joint and sat on the basketball court and considered the fame that awaited them in school as the kids that found ‘that girl that hung herself’.
