I decided to read a short story named ”Full Stop” which is written by Alecia McKenzie. The short story is in Open Road 5 and reading and writing about it is part of our course.
Full Stop is a story about old Grandmother Scottie who has raised Carmen and her little brother Richard. Carmen thinks that Grandma is her mother because she raised her. And relations with her mother (whose name is not given) is ice cold.
The story is told by letters. 73-years old grandmother Scottie and her grandchild Carmen are writing short letters to each others. They are telling about their living. The letters include just basic stuffs, like things about relationships and how they have been doing. Grandmother writes without any punctuation; commas or full stops. In every letter she sends greetings to Carmen’s husband Normy and concludes them with ”God Bless you”, because she is a Christian.
Along letters Carmen regularly sends her Grandmother money for specific purpose. The money is intended for paints, painter and burglar bars. Carmen wants to take care of Scottie because she thinks she’s her mom.
When Carmen was born, her parents were so young that they couldn’t take care of her, so that’s why grandmother has raised her. In the story Carmen is almost thirty years old and she haven’t ever seen her mother. So her mother is a complete stranger to her. Nevertheless, Carmen’s mother is continuously trying to contact her daughter by letters. Carmen isn’t happy about that because she doesn’t consider her as a mother.
Women have totally different versions of what has happened. In Carmen’s real mother’s opinion they made an agreement which grandmother has broke. The intention was that Scottie would have been kept Carmen for only a while until her parents get enough money to take care of her and her brother. Carmen’s mother thinks that Grandmother had been hiding children, because she don’t like their nonmember father. In Grandma’s point of view Carmen’s mother is a snake in the grass. She urges not to believe anything Carmen’s mother says.
I do believe that grandmother is right. Carmen’s real mother is clearly not have been interested about her children. Right after she had had her baby, she moved to another city and left Carmen to her grandmother. Though she was young and poor, its not normal to leave newborn just like that. I think she does’t have the right to keep in touch after such a long time.
Overall the sort story was quite simple but still interesting. It was easy to follow the text even though grandmother’s letters does’t contain any punctuations. It was a good story and I would recommend to read it.