Found in Translation

by Roger Bruner

  I was slight enough already.

  This piece of glass glittered so brightly I thought it might be a mirror fragment. After working my way to a spot near the front wall of the church, I leaned against the rotten tire and pulled out my treasure.

  The old necklace was remarkably intact. It was in far better shape than anything else we’d come across. I thought it was toy jewelry at first, but the chain was too long. On closer examination, I recognized that it was too precious to be a child’s, anyhow. It looked like an antique.

  An unusual gold setting held a colorless jewel firmly in its claw. The stone itself perplexed me.

  I’m unusually good at recognizing gems—I’d spent months of my life window-shopping in jewelry stores—but I was clueless about this one. It wasn’t a diamond, although the cut looked similar. The small stone’s reflective power astounded me. No wonder I mistook it for mirror glass. As I turned the necklace this way and that, a rainbow appeared on the ground in front of me. Ah. So some unknown jeweler had fashioned the stone into a prism.

  I wasn’t sure at first whether the chain and setting were real gold, but a few drops from my water bottle and a little buffing against my pants leg made the necklace shine like my fourteen-karat class ring. If I was right, its worth was beyond my ability to estimate.

  The necklace must have been strong to survive its frenetic trip to the churchyard without major damage. The chain and setting contained only a few tiny nicks that gave them character. Although one facet of the prism had a slight scratch, the stone didn’t appear to be in danger of cracking or falling out.

  Any fashionable woman would wear magnificent jewelry like that with pride. How the owner must have grieved her loss. A necklace like that was probably a family heirloom—priceless and irreplaceable. No matter how much I wanted to find its rightful owner and return it, I had little hope of doing so.

  I wondered if the owner had survived the tornado. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve as I considered the irony of an inanimate piece of jewelry outliving its owner.

  Lord, please bless the owner if she’s still alive.

  Anjelita had gone for water a few minutes earlier. I was dying to show her my find. She’d be thrilled that one of us had finally found a real treasure.

  When I put the necklace on, I felt regal. Had it ever belonged to royalty? Perhaps this wasn’t just a family heirloom, but one small part of a larger treasure. No matter how wild my imagination ran, I’d never learn the real story.

  My necklace—yes, it was mine now—was heavier than I’d expected. It was … substantial in its feel, although exquisitely feminine in appearance. I wondered if its previous owner had been as petite as me.

  A smiling Anjelita appeared a few yards away. She had an open, half-empty bottle of water in her hand and an unopened bottle under her half arm for me. She’d spilled water on her pale blue dress running to see what I had. I stood up just as she reached me, the necklace dangling handsomely against my filthy T-shirt. I might have been royalty out slumming.

  I’d seen Anjelita happy many times that week, but her smile and eyes brightened more than ever now, and she squealed a number of times with delight.

  But then she started crying so suddenly I thought she’d either cut herself or one of Santa María’s abundant creepy-crawly critters had bit her. I checked her legs and bare feet for cuts and bites but didn’t see any blood or signs of injury.

  Sometimes even another woman can’t interpret the mood of a female who’s in the midst of a crying jag. I looked into Anjelita’s face but saw no trace of pain or sorrow. Neither did I see anger or frustration.

  She simply looked—how should I say it?—less happy than when she first saw the necklace. Her reaction was illogical. Why would a necklace make her cry? Did it remind her of some trinket she’d lost in the storm?

  Her tears insisted that there was more to it than that.

  Just as suddenly as she’d begun crying, she quieted down again. I could hear an occasional sniffle, but her initial joy at seeing the necklace had vanished. She looked baffled. Uncertain.

  Beyond that, I couldn’t read her. Her battle appeared to be personal.

  “Anjelita, isn’t it beautiful—uh, es bella?”

  What a pathetic use I’d made of the few Spanish words I’d mastered. I heard too many to write down more than a few of them. Would a more committed effort—or at least a more disciplined one—have helped now? And would it have made my God-assigned task any easier?

  Then again, if God expected me to do more than make a fool of myself, I’d need all the faith I could muster and let Him do the real work. I would just be His mouthpiece.

  But I wasn’t going to be Aaron speaking for Moses. God would do the speaking as if He were a ventriloquist and I His dummy. I’d feel like one, anyhow, and I still chuckled at His plan.

  But that didn’t solve this problem with Anjelita.

  “Es bella?” I asked her once more.

  She didn’t seem to be listening. The necklace held her complete attention. She extended her hand toward it but withdrew it again as if the necklace was too hot to touch. After she did that several times, I took her small, soft hand in mine and—with the gold chain still hanging from my neck—I let the pendant touch her fingertips.

  Her eyes sparkled. “Una collar,” Anjelita whispered in a tone I can only describe as awestruck.

  “Ko-YAR?”

  “Sí, mi collar, mi prisma.”

  She bent down and wrote collar in the dirt. That must have meant “necklace.” Prisma sounded like “prism.” She must have assumed I understood mi. Unfortunately, I ignored that most important word.

  My little sister’s fingers explored the necklace as if caressing the face of someone her family has just found after giving up hope. But heartbreak tainted her smile.

  Since every discovery belonged to the finder, the necklace was clearly mine, and I looked forward to taking it home as a souvenir. Whether I would wear it, time would tell. I questioned whether its elegant beauty would look appropriate on a frame as petite as mine, though.

  Then I realized how badly Anjelita wanted the necklace. She didn’t care that I’d found it, not her. The selfishness in me wanted to scream, “This isn’t yours. Don’t you dare ask for it.” The self-righteousness wanted to preach, “Don’t covet someone else’s belongings. I’ll keep this trinket to teach you to be satisfied with what you have.”

  With what you have?

  I lived in a spacious house with a garage that was roomier than Rosa’s new cottage. Even my bedroom was bigger. I owned so many unneeded clothes I didn’t have room for more. A number of trinkets—some fairly valuable and most of them unused—crowded three jewelry chests on my dresser. How many purchases had I never even removed the price tag from?

  I had abundance—overabundance.

  And standing before me was a pretty, young child with nothing to call her own but the clothes on her back. She fondly handled a pendant I had no earthly use for. She acted like it was important to her. Immensely more important than it was to me.

  Melting in shame at my selfishness, I bent my head forward so I could slip the chain off and let it fall around Anjelita’s neck. Bowing before Jesus couldn’t have been more humbling.

  Anjelita’s mouth dropped open in shock.

  She threw her arms around me, said, “Muchas gracias!” over and over again, and took off at full speed. She ran only a couple of yards before coming back and giving me the tightest hug imaginable.

  “Mamá! Mamá! Mi collar! Señorita Keem … mi collar!” she cried out as she started searching for Rosa.

  Less than two minutes later, Rosa arrived at the churchyard with Anjelita’s hand in hers. Her smile was radiant, and she threw her arms around me and started talking in the most excited Spanish I’d heard since coming to Santa María.

  I wondered if she was praising—or at least thanking—me for giving Anjelita the necklace. She may have been trying to explain something. Unable to listen fast enough
to catch any of the familiar words she used, I had no idea what was going on.

  But I’d definitely done the right thing.

  chapter forty-seven

  We completed the churchyard cleanup around two o’clock that afternoon. I was especially indebted to the senior adults and the children. Both groups put in nearly full-time hours after becoming involved. I went to each individual and expressed my thanks the best I could.

  Even though everyone else had only helped part-time, we wouldn’t have finished without them. I thanked each team member personally. I didn’t know who’d helped and who hadn’t, but that didn’t matter. Any victory in Santa María was a team victory.

  “I understand a little how Jesus may have felt when He wept over Jerusalem,” Neil said as only he could. “I’ve shed the tears of a lifetime in Santa María, but I’ve smiled the smiles of a lifetime, too.”

  It was almost time to begin my special assignment, and I still giggled at the thought of it. I didn’t have the confidence or imagination to come up with an idea like that, and the Devil—whether personal or conceptual—wouldn’t have suggested it.

  But I needed to do one small thing first. I hoped God wouldn’t mind.

  Acres of wildflowers grew on and around the girls’ field. After borrowing a hand tool from Rob—I don’t know what it was, but it had a pointed tip—I led Anjelita to a lush concentration of flowers. I knelt on the ground and maneuvered the tool blade gently to free the root ball as well as the flower. I dug up several more while Anjelita supervised with a look of curiosity.

  Although she looked glamorous in her necklace, the chain was so long the prism nearly reached her waist. After motioning for her to bend down, I doubled it for her. I didn’t want her to lose it now.

  I just needed a flower or two to demonstrate what we were going to do. Then we’d dig up as many as we needed.

  Anjelita’s face lit up when she saw that the hole I was digging in the churchyard was big enough to plant the dirtball in. I should’ve known how quickly she’d catch on. Against my better judgment, I let her use the pointed hand tool to dig spots for additional flowers. My hand hovered just inches from hers as if I could move fast enough to prevent accidental injury.

  I shouldn’t have bothered, though. She’d been careful picking up litter, and she’d been careful near the flames. She treated the sharp digging tool with similar respect. Together we pressed the ball of roots firmly into place and covered them with dirt.

  The wildflowers seemed hardy enough to survive in their new home if we could just help them recover from being transplanted. Because the rubbish had helped prevent moisture from evaporating, the churchyard wasn’t as dry as the ground surrounding it. The flowers still needed water, though. At home, I would have unreeled the green garden hose or filled a plastic watering can, but I didn’t have those options in Santa María.

  “Rob, may we pour some bottles of drinking water on these flowers? They may not survive if we don’t.”

  His apologetic look tore me up. “I’m sorry, Kimmy, but we need to leave as much water for the villagers as possible. I don’t know where they got water before the storm or whether that source will become available again. They may have to survive on this bottled water for a while.”

  So many questions. So few answers.

  Once people saw what we were doing, though, water for the flowers flowed in a steady trickle of abundance. Whenever someone drank a bottle of water, he left an inch or two and poured it on the thirstiest-looking flower he saw. With help like that, the wildflowers would soon look as vigorous as they had in the field. I sang praises to God at the top of my lungs for the way He clothed and cared for the least of His creations.

  We lined flowers along the front wall of the church and defined a wide pathway to the door with others.

  Then Anjelita got my curiosity up. She somehow slid her hand beneath a flat, five-inch rock that would have been too heavy to grasp from the top even if her hand had been big enough. She managed to lift it to her chest. She let it drop on the pathway side of the flowers, but I still couldn’t figure out what she was doing.

  But when she picked up another rock—there must have been mega-tons of them in the area—and dropped it a foot or so from the first one, I understood. She was making a rock border to separate the walkway from the surrounding churchyard. Her sense of aesthetics fascinated me, for she was purposely zigzagging rocks and flowers in parallel rows, creating a closer—yet still an uncrowded—look.

  Although my hand was slightly larger than Anjelita’s, she must have been stronger than me after years of doing everything single-handedly. My eyes burned from sweat by the time I wrestled another rock up, and I thought my hand and arm would fall off by the time I dropped it in place.

  We completed the bordering in less than an hour and collapsed in the churchyard with several bottles of water each.

  Before I finished my first bottle, I jumped up again—if anyone could describe such an exhausted motion as jumping. But no amount of fatigue would keep me from testing an idea.

  I maneuvered a rock into place on the yard side of the flowers, including those that fronted the building. Anjelita squealed. She must have loved the idea, even though it meant moving more rocks.

  But she and I barely had the energy to force ourselves to move. I considered using the blanket, but by the time we could roll a rock onto the blanket, drag it where we needed it, and kick it into place, we would die of premature old age.

  Only God’s strength enabled us to finish. After admiring our handiwork, we dragged ourselves to the mess tent, got supper, and collapsed. Almost too exhausted to eat, we stared at our food for a number of minutes.

  Various guys and gals congratulated us on our churchyard beautification, and we were elated over our accomplishments. God’s accomplishments. Those flowers were His, and so were the rocks. The whole idea was probably His, too. His idea, His materials, and His strengthening of our weak, worn-out muscles had created something gorgeous and glorious. More important, though, the ancient, unused building now looked worthy of being used as a church. If my new assignment accomplished its goals, maybe it would be.

  Although I hadn’t seen anything of Geoff the past several days, he stopped to comment. I wondered if his heart had softened any.

  His first words answered my question. “Why the blue blazes did you waste time building a rock garden? The litter cleanup was dumb enough.”

  After everyone else’s compliments, he might as well have slapped me in the face. “Why do you say ‘waste,’ Geoff? Beauty is never a waste.” I hadn’t intended to sound defensive; but Geoff was treading on holy ground, and I was too exhausted to put up with any of his mess.

  “Those flowers won’t survive,” he whined. “They may last until we leave for home, although I doubt it, but what’ll happen after that? The villagers won’t water them. It’s not like that building you foolishly refer to as a church means anything to them, anyhow. They used the yard as a junk heap before the storm. You may have gotten rid of the debris, but the yard will be overgrown with weeds and more rubbish soon enough. It’s going to go back to looking like, uh …”

  I knew what four-letter word he wanted to use. I’d used it often enough in the past. Maybe he would’ve said it if he hadn’t been so afraid of Rob sending him home. No matter how much the thought of bad language offended me now, I wouldn’t have told on him. I hadn’t given up on him yet, although this conversation wasn’t raising my hopes.

  I’d never noticed how opinionated Geoff was. And every opinion came across as if it were a well-known and indisputable fact.

  But I knew—or at least I had my own opinions—that he was wrong about everything. “Yeah, Geoff, I know. Anjelita and I took a chance. I don’t know about the water, but I’ll bet Anjelita tends the flowers as much as she can. She’s quite proud of the churchyard, and I think the other villagers are, too.”

  “Anjelita!” he said under his breath.

  “Don’t pick on her, Geof
f.” I couldn’t have gotten much angrier if he’d slapped Anjelita. Although I was proud of myself for not cussing him out, I yielded to a stronger temptation.

  I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. I didn’t hit him nearly as hard as I’d meant to. But I did the best I could left-handed. My assault didn’t even leave a red mark.

  I was ashamed of myself, but Geoff did his best to humiliate me more. “Woo, baby!” he said in an exaggerated tone. “You’d better watch that temper. It’s not very becoming to the Christian Judith thinks is the finest one she’s ever known.”

  Has Judith bragged on me to everyone who’ll listen? And did she have to say something to Geoff of all people?

  He was laughing. Laughing hard. He’d won a strategic victory, and he was awarding himself an imaginary trophy.

  Somewhere Satan was rejoicing, too. A more personal Satan than I’d believed in before.

  I couldn’t respond at first. I could justify my anger, but I couldn’t rationalize hitting Geoff, no matter how puny my punch. What had Pastor Ron told us repeatedly? Anger isn’t sinful, but acting out inappropriately is.

  Geoff’s attitude made me sick. I wanted him to go away and leave me alone. That little voice inside disagreed, though. God wasn’t finished with me for the evening.

  But what could I do when Geoff was so good at battering my most sensitive spots and bringing out my worst? Jonah tried running away from God because he didn’t want to obey Him. It didn’t work. And I didn’t even have the option of trying to run.

  If I avoided witnessing to Geoff—or failed to be nice to him—God would get my attention some other way and turn it in Geoff’s direction again. As impossible as it sounded, doing the right thing willingly would be more comfortable than provoking God into making me do it.

  “Geoff, you’re right.” I was trying to work my way to a painful apology. “As perturbed as I was—”

  “And you still are, aren’t you, Kimmy?” He trampled on my words as if they’d been flowers.