Salt Slow: “Mantis” by Julia Armfield
By: Olympia LeHota
“Mantis” is an interesting short story that keeps the reader wondering what was to come of the flaky, otherwise ugly young teenager. Though the title gives us a clue to what we should expect at the end of the story, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “what on earth does this poor teenager look like?” She spoke of her shedding problems and bondage around her hands, and how her skin would fall off nearly every night creating a hollow mold of what yesterday looked like. This to me, felt like a transformation of its own. Only to wake up to her mother tending to her appearance once again and restarting the process day after day. Could these transformations be an abstract way of describing those awkward years we all go through? Facing the growth spurts, new smells, the oil that now extrudes from our skin causing it to break out. As questions run through my head, I ponder more about how the mother kept saying that this kind of situation was common within the female line in their matriarchy.
Whatever this young girl looked like, it never once felt like she was ashamed of her appearance. In fact, this character is placed in public and social spaces without any type of ostracization: in the living room of their neighbor, in school halls, with friends, at lunch, in church, and even at a party where she is sought out and swept away by some boy who is still understanding how to manage his sexual urges. The story spent so much time on describing the process of becoming “red-carpet ready” with assistance from the mother but fails to fill in the relatable hole that the readers need in order to connect with the high schooler. We get a glimpse of this behavior as the girls to talk negatively about themselves as we all do at one point in our lives, but they do it without consequence, and it reads as normal behavior. At times, I felt that the main character understood her transformation once it finally occurred in those last few sentences as she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. But where the story finally took a turn was when the boy reacted differently once she showed her new form. At last, the reader is given something that makes sense. A reaction. Still, the reader is left with wanting more information compared to observation.