First Creative Writing Class Assignment

A mother and her daughter are walking in crowded mall. “Keep up,” the mother says and looks back down at the shopping list in her hand. The little girl widens her stride, putting her feet down heel to toe so that her white tennis shoes make a clip clopping against the pale beige tile floor.
“When can we go to the toy store?” she complains, in the typical fashion of seven year olds who are forced to spend hours looking at clothes, appliances and posh knickknacks.
“We don't have enough time to go to the toy store, I've got to get home and make dinner.” The little girl's mouth pokes out a bit but she doesn't say anything. Then the woman slows and the little girl is a few steps in front of her before she looks back. With the look of someone who has just forgotten something and then remembered it, she asks, “You know how you told me that Renee in your class got her ear's pierced?” The little girl makes a face at the sound of her enemy’s name, but the mother doesn‘t notice.
“Yeah, so?”
“Have you thought anymore about getting your ears pierced?”
“Ugh, Mom! I really don't want to!” she says as she arches her back and sticks out her neck in frustration. She had thought this conversation was over. The choice between beauty and needles was an obvious one to her.
“It doesn't hurt like a real shot, I've never seen anyone cry about it.” The little girl looked up at her mother's face.
“It doesn't?” she asked quietly.
“No, and I've been with dozens of people to get their ears pierced.” She stopped in front of a store with a lurid pink canopy. “Come on, you can at least look.” But the girl takes a step back
“No” she says looking pleadingly up into her mother's eyes.
The mother sighs, “You don't have to get your ear's pierced if you don't want to but at least look around before you make your decision.” The child however, doesn’t move.
“You promise?”
“Promise what?”
“You promise that I don't have to get them pierced if I don't want to?” The mother rubs her eyes.
“I promise. It's your decision. Just at least give it a chance, okay? This store will pierce your ears for you if you want, and you can see all the cool earrings you could wear if you did.”
The girl hesitates for a second and then nods. The two walk into the store. Towers of swirving shelves crowd the center, and plastic jewelry, in every color but pastel, covers the walls, stopping only at the borders of posters where young girls sport the jewelry in livid colors. To the daughter, the poster girls look tall and adult. Her eyes follow the contours of their unnaturally skinny eyebrows.
The mother, however, glances up at the posters and frowns. The models look like children to her, sporting breasts too big for their thin frames. She looks down at her own daughter, a crease between her eyes “Remember, you don't have to do this if you don't want to.” The daughter nods but her eyes are fixed on the colorful walls. She runs her fingers through the rainbow of beads and walks down the wall as the mother bites her lip. Everyone was getting their ears pierced at a young age now but maybe…
Another mother and daughter, both with frizzy red hair come in and walk to the center of the store. The girl climbs up into the red velvet chair, her arms quivering. The red headed mother speaks to the teenager behind the desk. The skinny teen nods and pulls out what looks like a hot glue gun from under the desk. The mother looks away from the two red heads back to her own daughter but she is still looking at the walls. She hasn't noticed them yet.
The mother watches as the red headed girl has her ear lobes cleaned, as the teen clerk, looking nearly as scared as the child, marks the spot with a felt tipped marker. Then the clerk puts the gun to the red haired girl’s head and pushes the button. It makes a loud crank and the little redhead jumps. For a split second there is silence. And then the red head begins to cry. Breathing hard the mother looks around for her own daughter. There she is, standing horror stuck at the thin trail of blood that had traveled down from the red head's ear onto her white shirt.
The clerk, with her hands shaking, is saying they had to try again, and the red headed mother is nodding with her sobbing daughter in her arms. But her own daughter is running out of the store and she has to follow. She catches up with her outside, her thin chest breathing hard.
“Don't take me there again.” the little girl says. The mother nods, and looking nearly as relieved as her daughter, puts her shopping list into her pocket and takes her daughter's hand. “Come on, we're going home.”