ALL IS NOT FORGOTTEN by Wendy Walker

“The rape lasted for close to an hour.”

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“They say it is a miracle treatment–to have the most horrible trauma erased from your mind.

What I want to express now, at the beginning of the story, is that it was not a miracle for this beautiful girl.
What was removed from her mind lived on in her body, and her soul, and I felt compelled to return to her what was taken away.”

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“I had seen pictures of Jenny over the years in the local paper. I had recognized her walking in town, coming out of the movie theater with friends.
She had an innocence about her that belied the maturity she so coveted. Even in short skirts and cropped shirts that seemed to be the style these days, she was a girl, not a woman.
And I would feel encouraged about the state of the world when I saw her.

It would be disingenuous to say that I feel this way toward all of them, the herd of teenagers that sometimes seems to have stolen the order from our lives like a swarm of locust. Glued to their phones like brain-dead drones, indifferent to any affairs beyond celebrity gossip and the things that brought them instant gratification–videos, music, self-promoting tweets and Instagrams and Snapchats. 
Teenagers are innately selfish. 
Their brains are not mature.

But some of them seem to hold on to their sweetness through these years, and they stand out.
They’re the ones who meet your eyes when you greet them, smile politely, allow you to pass simply because you are older and they understand the place of respect in an orderly society.

Jenny was one of them.

To see her after, to see the absence of joy that once bubbled up inside her–it provoked rage in me at all humanity.“

Kindle, 2021