#1

As she trudged out from her rented apartment with a packed bag in hand, she sighed and looked down at the snow. “Its whiteness and purity will soon be polluted with the dirt from beneath the shoes of others, and it will simply become a shadow of what it once was,” she said silently to herself as she recalled what her first friend had once told her. “People often mistake being nice with being a doormat,” he said, “there is an important difference between them, Rose, and you must remember: To be a doormat is to be the snow on the sidewalk, the kind that becomes polluted with the dirt that comes from the shoes of others and becomes a shadow of itself. To be nice is to be the snowmen that children love and treasure.” It didn’t make much sense, but she got the gist of what he was trying to tell her. He had found her in the corner of the janitor’s closet, and was about to chastise her for coming into his workspace when he realized that she wasn’t sitting in the corner. She was huddled there, shaking as tears poured down her face silently. “Are you alright?” he asked, slightly uncomfortable in the presence of a crying girl.

“I-I’m sorry, Mister-uh Mister Janitor,” she said after seeing his uniform, “ I’ll get out. Don’t worry, I didn’t t-touch any of your things.” She was rubbing the tears off of her face, trying to conceal the fact that she had been crying like a broken water fountain just moments earlier.

“Rose, right?” he said, pretending for her sake that he hadn’t seen her tears.

“How did you know?” Rose said, slowly taking her hands away from her damp face.

“I clean your locker a lot. There are some mean kids here.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that…I usually try getting rid of the things they write on my own, but sometimes they use permanent marker and-and it doesn’t come off.” She said, choking as she felt the tears beginning to fall again as she remembered.

“It’s alright. Don’t cry, please.” He said. And as she nodded and began to walk out of the closet and away, he said, “Rose. People often mistake being nice with being a doormat-”.

She stopped remembering as she felt a pang of pain deep within her. The janitor had been her only friend throughout high school, and had taught her that being kind to her bullies even after they ransacked her locker and ripped up all her books and notes, as well agreeing to do other people’s homework in a desperate attempt to make a friend even though she knew deep down that they were using her, made her a doormat. She had never really understood the concept of being nice, most likely because she never had any friends. Skipping two grades when everyone else your age was still learning about the alphabet kind of wasn’t helpful in the quest to make friends. She had tried in the beginning, but failure after failure made her an introvert, and being the only black female in her high school attracted all the racist bullies. She had graduated eventually, supposedly as valedictorian, but the parents of the white teens refused to have a black girl represent the whole cohort, so she was demoted to a normal graduate, even though her straight As had put her way ahead of pretty much the rest of her grade. She was still grateful for her life though. Usually, only white kids got to continue their education past middle school. Had it not been for the Morgans, an upperclass white couple who respected her intelligence, she wouldn’t have been able to graduate high school, or later, university.

After university, she stayed in the same town working as a teacher in a black school near her home. She had stayed because her only true friend, Marley Marshall, the janitor, lived there. Later into her adulthood, when her parents died in a car crash, Marley and his family had been there to help her through it. But now that Marley was dead as well, Rose no longer saw a purpose in staying in town.

She had heard of Eatonville from one of her colleagues, Pheoby. She had said to Rose that she was heading there with her husband, Sam, and that Rose should go with them. “Rose,” she had said, “this new Eatonville must be better than what we have here. An all black town! Can you believe it?” The idea was surreal to Rose, as someone who had spent much of her high school life sad because everyone else was white. But she had politely declined. Marley was in this town, and she didn’t need much else. He was practically family, after all.

“But he’s gone now.” She whispered silently to herself, taking one last look at the place she had called home for the last few years before taking in a deep breath and walking in the direction of the train station, towards a new life.
#2

Rose awoke to the rumbling of the train, and drowsily looked out of the window upon the expanse of green extending beyond the horizon. The sun was just rising, and Rose estimated that she was close to her stop. After asking a nearby passenger to wake her up before they arrived in Maitland, she closed her eyes and drifted off once again.

After getting off at Maitland, she began walking in the direction of the infamous all-black town. It was a rather strenuous journey, and she stopped to rest at a bar or two before finally arriving at Eatonville a couple of hours later. Walking into the small city, she was met by a few friendly Eatonvillers who asked her if she was planning to stay in the town long term. After saying yes, they then led her to a series of houses. She chose a small one and paid the rental fee for the first six months.
After settling in, Rose decided to set off and explore the town. She learnt about Jody, the town leader, and his wife, Janie, who was apparently distant from the rest of the people. She had walked around the whole area once and talked to most of the other residents before it was dinner time, and Rose realized that living in this town would be simple. ‘A small town with a small amount of people and small problems’ she thought to herself, happy.
But she soon later realized that there were other things going on in the town that the other people simply hadn’t realized. She saw the sad relationship Janie was in with Jody. She noticed how Janie was not distant from the rest of them, but was being held back by Jody. She saw this from the longing in Janie’s eyes as she stood at a distance every time there was a huge gathering of some sort on a person’s porch, and how her head dipped just ever so slightly every single time Jody came into the store. And when Janie finally spoke out against Jody, Rose was about to cheer for her, but was stopped by a massive ‘crack’ sound as Jody hit Janie. It was then that her dislike for Jody turned into full blown detest. She also noticed Jody’s manipulation of the people. The way he could speak in a certain voice and use a few choice words and have everyone wrapped around his finger. She saw his greed for power and wealth, even at the expense of the others, and she hated being under his rule.
And she wasn’t alone. After her first few years in Eatonville, she met Eli Jones, a man who disliked Jody just as much as she did. They both hated the way he treated Janie and everyone else, how he expected everyone to do just what he wanted, like the time where he forced everyone to dig a ditch, and how he didn’t value the opinions of others. It was this common dislike that made them friends, and later, after finding out that they shared many likes as well, brought them together as a couple. A few years later and they were married.
A few years afterwards, Jody died, and the two couldn’t be happier. Maybe, they hoped, they would have a better leader that would create some sort of democracy, instead of the manipulative dictatorship that Jody had implemented. However, this happiness was soon cut off when they saw Hezekiah, the delivery boy and assistant shopkeeper, begin to act the way Jody did. He walked around in the same fashion, smoking the same cigars as Jody did, and even began using some of Jody’s favorite expressions. They were worried, worried that Hezekiah would find some way to get to the position that Jody was in previously and lead everyone the way that Jody did. So they decided to do something about this threat.
They began planning and spreading the idea of a democratic Eatonville led by the two of them. So engrossed in their hope for a supposedly better Eatonville, they didn’t even notice when Janie began dating again, or when she left to get married with Tea Cake. But it was sometime after that when they held the idea up for a vote by the people. “Come,” they said, “and let’s vote on the future Eatonville!” It was a simple yes or no vote, but the people contemplated over it for so long that for the first few days of the vote, no one came. But later on, the people began flooding in, casting their votes.
Hezekiah was against it, of course, as he had been hoping to become the leader of Eatonville in the same way that Jody was. He had already spent so much time getting into the good graces of Janie after Jody’s death, only to have her run off with some poor man. “What a waste of time,” he said to himself, “all that effort only to have it come to nothing. How hard had I worked to make it so that she thought I was a harmless little fly?” But Hezekiah couldn’t do anything. After Rose’s first few years in the town, she became rather popular, and so had the support of all the women in the town. Eli, while aggressive, was rather favored among the people as well, and so had the support of most of the men.
So the vote passed, and Eli and Rose became the leaders of Eatonville. For the first year, everything went swimmingly. They upgraded the post office, made another well, put in a few more street lamps, and even got the newsstand that Eli had always thought would bring Eatonville closer to being a real town. They also implemented new rules, like that all important things the town needed must be voted on before any action is taken in order to achieve equality. Rose and Eli had never been happier, now that they no longer had to worry about Jody or someone becoming his replacement.
But after the first year, something frightening began to happen. Eli began to become Jody. In the beginning, it was something small, like smoking the same cigars the same way Jody did, but later, he started talking down to others because they hadn’t received the same amount of education he did. He expected people to obey him without question and would give them the same incredulous look that Jody used to give him before when they voiced their own opinions. This frightened Rose. She was not willing to have her husband become the man that they had once hated. She didn’t want to live with a shadow of her husband. But she went along with it. She let him push and boss her around in the hope that he might revert back to the Eli that she knew, because she knew that if she was to speak out against him, he would only lash out against her.
With Eli becoming the man they both once hated, Rose felt alone. She sought advice from one of her friends in town, Jonathan McDonald. Jonathan, a wise old man who became her confidant after Eli’s transformation, listened to all of Rose’s worries and advised her about it. “Jonathan,” Rose would say, “what can I do about Eli? I mean, he’s changing, and I know people change, but he’s not changing for the better. He’s changing into Jody, y’know?”
“I’ve noticed,” Jonathan said, “but right now, you can only be silent or lash out against him. And even if you did, what would that achieve? I don’t know Eli that well so I don’t know how he would react, but I know Jody wouldn’t react well. Look at the way he hit Janie in front of everyone!” Then they both became silent as Rose weighed her options.
But then came the day that changed everything. Hezekiah, upset that Eli was in the exact position that Hezekiah wanted to be in, went up to Eli at the bar that Eli had established a few weeks ago. “Hey, Eli!” Hezekiah called out aggressively. Eli turned and raised his eyebrow at him. “What do you want?” Eli bit out.
“I want to talk to you about how hypocritical y’all are.”
“How so?”
“How wha?”
“How am I hypocritical?” Eli said whilst rolling his eyes.
“Y’all go against me because y’all wanted to make yer all black town all democratic and stuff, but now yer jus like Jody was, jus like I wanted tuh be!”
“How am I like Jody? How dare you say such a thing!” Eli had never noticed his own transformation himself, and to him, being called similar to Jody was the largest offense anyone could ever commit.
“Yuh jus are! And-” Eli interrupted Hezekiah by lunging at him and grabbing him by the throat. And what began as an argument escalated into a fight. Fists were flying everywhere.
Rose, who was walking past the bar on the way home, saw the fight and rushed in, desperate to break it apart.
“Stop, please!” she called out.
“Go away, Rose.” Eli said as he pushed her away, using such force that she crashed into the wall nearby and fell to the floor.
“Go home.” Eli said, looking at her position on the floor. And Hezekiah punched him in his stomach, restarting the brawl once again. But this time, it escalated severely. The men were no longer looking to harm one another, they were looking to kill. And in the last moments of the fight, Eli grabbed a broken bottle and stabbed at Hezekiah’s head. And he kneeled and watched as the life drained out of Hezekiah’s eyes, as his body became limp and fell to the wooden floor.
Everyone stared. They no longer respected Eli, they feared him. No one in the town could imagine killing another person, and yet their leader had just done so. And after a while, Eli rose and looked at everyone venomously. “Let this be a lesson to everyone against me. This is what will become of you. And for those of you on my side, this will never be you. So choose carefully.” He bellowed. And then he just walked away, wiping Hezekiah’s blood from his hands onto his overalls.
Life in Eatonville was no longer simple. No one dared to say anything against Eli, in fear that it would be their head that had a broken bottle stuck inside it the next day. They feared him so much that no one had even given Hezekiah a proper funeral. They just dumped his body in a hole away from the town. The residents tried the best they could to pretend that nothing had happened. After all, if they couldn’t do anything about it, then what was the point in remembering? They all obeyed Eli’s every order, which only made Eli feel more and more powerful.
“I’m afraid of him.” Rose whispered to Jonathan. She had met him in secret that day, because she needed someone to talk to and who knew how Eli would react if he knew she was talking to another man.
“But he’s your husband.” Jonathan said.
“Not the one I married.” Tears began to well in her eyes. “This man who lives in my home scares me.”
“Then you should make him the way he was before, or leave.”
“And how would I change him? He no longer sees me as his wife, but as a possession he’s wanted to get rid of for a while. And if I was to try leaving and get caught, I might not even be alive tomorrow. And besides, I don’t have any money.”
“I can give you the money to leave. I don’t need it anyway, and your safety is important. You shouldn’t stay somewhere where you don’t feel safe, Rose.”
“I-I’ll think about it, Jonathan.” Rose said as she stood up to leave. If she was to get home too late, Eli might get suspicious.
#3

That night, as Rose lay in bed beside Eli, she considered her options. Was Jonathan right? Should she leave? She could always go back to Marley’s family, but was the risk worth it? ‘Do I want to leave that badly?’ she thought to herself. She turned over to look at Eli, and an uncontrollable fear came over her. She saw the manic look that was in his eyes when he pushed her away and when he watched Hezekiah die. She turned away.

Rose has always weighed the risks and rewards for everything. This was no different. Should she leave without telling him or go up in his face and yell at him for everything he did that hurt her? Her brain told her to just leave. If she went up against him, she might get hurt and never be able to leave not only the town, but their house, ever again. And so it was that she wrote a note detailing why she was leaving and was basically everything she wanted to yell at him for. There was one thing she didn’t say though: where she was going. She never wanted him to find her, never.

The next day, Rose arrived at the Marshall’ apartment. They welcomed her in with hugs and ‘how are you’s. Meanwhile, in Eatonville, Eli Jones was reading a note, becoming angry, and eventually throwing tables and chairs while growling with anger. But that was of no relevance to Rose, who was happier than she had been in years.