Opinion

Gyasi Ross: Sharing all those 'small stories' from Indian Country

Monday, September 19, 2011

"She triumphed over apathy.

See, nobody cared whether she ultimately won or lost. Nobody cared if she showed up late for school, or if she even went to school at all. Nobody seemed to care that she regularly drove her drunken mom around to the various bars around her tiny, little reservation town when she was only 12 years old.

Indifference.

Nobody cared if she ate meatball stew, loaded with tons of sodium and preservatives, every single night and guaranteed high blood pressure when she got older. Nobody cared if she fed that same meatball stew to her 4- and 5-year-old brothers every night because she didn't know how to cook anything else, and nobody else was there to cook. Nobody even cared that she spent entirely too much time with her creepy male cousin, older than her by 10 years, and that she began to live with that creepy older cousin when she was only 12. He, of course, understood that nobody cared and used the indifference and apathy as an opportunity to sexually experiment on her.

She tried to cry out for help, but she was scared of him physically and mentally. Plus, even though she hated the sexual and physical abuse, he was the only one that seemed to care."

Get the Story:
Gyasi Ross: Small Stories (The Huffington Post 9/14)