Kim Addonizio: Virgin spring

It’s a terrible scene, the two men talking to the girl who foolishly lets
them lead her away
from the road she’s taking to church, the men raping and killing her,
the young boy with them
watching, then left for a while with her body. But the film’s next scene
is more terrible
in some ways, the men and boy arriving at the house where the girl’s
parents live, but not
knowing, and the parents not knowing either, offering a meal, all of
them sitting together, breaking
bread at a long table—Is that the most awful, or is it when one man
tries to sell the mother
her murdered daughter’s clothes? — and she takes them, pretending to
consider. Though how
could she pretend at that moment, how control herself? Yet she does;
she goes outside,
locking them in the barn, and runs to her husband, to whom the task
of killing them falls.
So it goes on — rape, betrayal, murder, not even the boy is spared. And
what about the father,
swearing to build a church on the spot his daughter was killed, and the
miracle of water
gushing forth from the ground when they lift her body — Is that
enough, is there some sort
of balance now, good following evil, revenge annulled, the family
cleansed? What about
the other, dark-haired sister, the pregnant one, who had been a few yards
behind on the road
to church that morning, who had followed the men and watched from
a safe distance
while they erased the girl, her prettiness, her spoiled ways, her stupid
innocence —
I don’t know what to make of the sister. She’s the one who knows the
world is brutal
and goes on, scattering seed for the hogs, the one who says nothing,
the one who survives.