Town Hall Meeting

/ Liz H-H

Woman, early 50's, in a pillbox hat, intense eyes

She perched, edge and center, on the metal folding chair, ankles crossed and angled toes barely touching the floor, her SoftRose painted lips pursed, her eyebrows raised even higher above their normally penciled boundaries, a single vertical line deepening between those brows, but slightly favoring the left, while two small circles of color heated each cheek, as if they’d been purposefully applied with a sable brush. 

Her pale blue twinset and matching skirt sedately complemented her conservative white pumps, and the pillbox hat, with its wisp of floral lace and placed just so on her blued and carefully-styled hair, trembled with emotion; something was disturbing her normal reserve, or as we kids might’ve said, back in the day “harshing her mellow.”

We knew it was wrong, but we snickered from our seats in the back of the auditorium when she stood up, her metal chair uttering a single distressed shriek, and strode in her ladylike way to the microphone, heels clicking staccato in the surprised silence that filled the school gymnasium.

Few outside the immediate family had ever witnessed Mary Ellen Mabrey’s temper, but they were all about to get an historic first-hand view at this town hall meeting.

The microphone squealed as she stepped up, then it, too was silenced  as she said in carefully controlled, barely neutral tones, “If you think you’re going to keep that monstrosity of a sculpture in the center of our town, you are out of your ‘effing’ minds. That man was an unapologetic racist and misogynist, and it will not stand, even if I have to tear it down with my own two hands!”

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2021)

 The challenge? Write a story in 6 sentences, no more & no less, and if you’d like, share your creation or just visit and comment on others’ ideas, with GirlieOnTheEdge, Denise. The prompt is “RESERVE”, and here’s where you join the party: Six Sentence Stories

25 thoughts on “Town Hall Meeting”

  3. Your character is wonderfully detailed, Liz. Makes for easy visualization and while we’re busy imagining Ms. Mabry and the atmosphere within the auditorium, we’re not quite aware just how tense the situation is… Until the very end!

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  8. Freaking awesome discription of the main character. I felt like I knew her before she spoke. And “an historic.” THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Even Time magazine gets that wrong. So proud that you got it right. God save the English Language! I’llget off my soap box now.

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  10. ” …two small circles of color heated each cheek, as if they’d been purposefully applied with a sable brush.”

    To paraphrase Whitman, ‘I read the Six envious’
    Two words; yow!
    Not too visual, right?

    It’s an open secret that I participate here as much for the opportunity to better my skills. This is one of those that, from time-to-time, I think, ‘Lets try going all-out on the description of physical appearance.’

    …and, nice hook at the end.

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