WITNESS-Part III

WITNESS-Part III

Intense blue met my startled gaze.  Then a smile like sunshine radiated from a beautiful face.  I smiled back.  My innermost being understood that this friend had been sent by Papa Dios to help me endure the scorching loneliness that I had felt since my siblings had disappeared from my life.  An angel; he or she was an angel to bring me hope.

My friend spent a lot of time with me each day.  I couldn’t tell if the angel was a girl or a boy as he or she was dressed in a gown of searing white.  It didn’t matter.  My friend had time to hear what I had to say.  My friend would play with me when my mother was so sad that she couldn’t get out of bed or my father came home late, tottering on his feet as if he were just learning to walk, scaring me with the noise he made as he knocked things over until he could fall into bed.

I told my angel all my hurts.  I shared stories of my hometown and my life before the soldiers came.  I told my angel about my brothers and sisters and about our neighbors; about the little park in the town square where we were allowed to play after dinner each night.  About the sweet man that owned the dime store next to our house.  All the little details of a way of living that were fading away day by day. 

My angel friend would listen patiently and would always tell me that God loved me very much.  I would see my brothers and sisters again, but I needed to be patient and very good, obeying my parents, even when they weren’t acting like themselves. 

One day a visitor came to see my father.  I almost didn’t recognize him as it had been so long since I had seen him.  He looked old, much older than my father and yet he was younger.  Tio, Papi’s younger brother, had come to have a talk with my father.  He greeted my mother in an odd manner and rubbed my head.  Before I would have run to him and he would have thrown me in the air, but now I felt a chasm between us, all of us and him.  I looked at my angel friend.  Sad blue eyes looked back at me.

The two men went into my parent’s room and shut the door.  Arms crossed my mother paced from window to window.  I could hear the men whispering and wondered what this new development could mean for us.  Finally, the door opened.  Tio nodded to Mami, gave me a long, piercing look and then went out the door.  I turned to see my father wipe tears from his eyes.