by Roger Bruner
I hugged her. “You should go outside and play with your friends. They miss you and think you are upset with them.”
“I miss them, too. I’ll tell them I’m helping my momma. I’ll say it won’t take forever.”
She set down the book she was holding and ran outside to look for her friends. Because she was gone longer than I’d expected, I hoped she had decided to stay outside.
I couldn’t keep from laughing when I noticed that she had only worked her way through a ten-inch stack of books in the last two days. A small child’s definition of “won’t take forever” differed drastically from mine.
About the time I felt satisfied that Alazne was outside playing, she returned and resumed her work as if she had simply gone to the river to fill the old cracked water jug.
This won’t do. But how can I make her go outside and have fun if her heart is inside with me?
Then I had a brainstorm. No matter how anxious I had been to find Mother Chalina’s necklace, I had failed to do anything about it.
In the weeks following Tomás’s death, I had been too busy adjusting from visitor to resident to think about it, much less make it a priority. But the prism necklace was almost certainly still safe where I had hidden it.
And that’s how I would get Alazne to stay outside with her friends. Hopefully for a very long time. “Alazne, please stop for a moment.”
“Yes, Momma?”
“Have I told you how much I appreciate your help in searching for those four special words?”
“I love doing things for my momma.”
I wrapped my arms around her in a tight hug. Then I looked into her eyes. “Good. I need you to search for something else now. Something more important. I would stop and do it myself, but it’s not something a humongous pregnant woman like me can do very easily. The baby would get in the way.”
The excitement on her face was building. But she hadn’t responded yet.
Aren’t you going to ask what I want, baby girl? Perhaps it was time to play Tom Sawyer. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. The task is very large. I’m not sure you can handle it. Never mind.”
“Please let me! I can do it. What do you need?”
I grinned. Samuel Clemens, my friend, you are a genius. I wonder who first thought of the idea of killing two birds with one stone.
“A small treasure is buried—well, probably not buried, but hidden—somewhere in the village, and I need you and your friends to find it for me.”
Rarely had I seen her face light up that way. “A treasure? You want me to go on a real treasure hunt?” She wiggled in excitement. Like a little puppy who sees its master coming.
“I do. The treasure is quite small. No one else would consider it valuable, but it is precious to me. I have only seen it once in my life, and I was very young then. About your age. It belonged to Mother Chalina and to her mother before her.”
“Do you have a map showing where it’s hidden?”
I suppressed a chuckle. How many stories had we read together about secret maps and treasure hunts? “I do not. You and your friends must search everywhere. The hiding place is not exactly outdoors, but it’s more outdoors than indoors.”
I wouldn’t tell her I knew exactly where it was. But I was careful not to lie. I really didn’t have a map, and I wasn’t going to make things too easy by drawing one. How else could I keep her outside with her friends for a while? No matter how anxious I was to get the necklace back, I hoped this treasure hunt would take months.
“But what does it look like? How will we recognize it?”
“Ah! That is a reasonable question. It is a heavy gold-colored necklace—you remember what color gold is?”
“Yes, Momma. The color of Nikki’s hair, but darker.”
How Alazne’s perception astounded me at times. “Exactly. One thing makes this necklace different from other necklaces. Hanging from the chain is a stone that looks like a piece of cut glass. But when you hold it to the sun, it projects colors on the ground. When you find a necklace that does that, you will know you have found the lost treasure.”
“Colors? What colors, Momma?”
“Red, orange, blue…all the colors of the rainbow, including green and purple.”
“How beautiful! I can hardly wait to find it. I’ll get my friends. We’ll start looking now.” She grabbed her crutches and scrambled up off the dirt floor.
I hugged her. “Thank you so much, Alazne. You are such a good little helper.”
Never had anyone searched the village of Santa María so thoroughly. The children didn’t tell the adults what they were doing, perhaps because they were afraid their parents would interfere. So the kids made up a game and pretended to play it—a game that led them to every nook and cranny of the village.
Especially places that were “more outside than inside.”
Several weeks later, Alazne rushed into our shack. “Momma! Momma! We found it!” She held it up in the sunlight that shone through the open doorway and projected a rainbow on my hand. Great tears of joy dribbled down my face.
Alazne placed the necklace around my neck, and I admired it in the mirror for a number of minutes.
But then I took it off and slipped it over her head. “You found this priceless treasure, and you should wear it. That is your reward. This necklace has come down from my grandmother to my mother and from my mother to me. I now pass it down to you. I am not concerned that you will lose it, for you have proven that nothing remains lost when you are around.”
Shortly after that, I experienced the first of my labor pains.
~*~
The women of Santa María no longer delivered their babies without assistance. The Elders assigned Gloria, a still-childless younger married woman, to be my midwife.
Although her good intentions and desire to help were obvious, she didn’t have the smallest amount of training or experience. She had observed several births before, but she hadn’t assisted with them.
So the prospect of helping with my delivery probably terrified her as much as it did me.
I did not require any motivation except my instinct for survival to make me teach her the basics from one of Mother Chalina’s books—and to do it long before my due date. I read the text aloud and explained what the author meant, replacing his words with ones I thought she might understand.
Progress often lagged because Gloria found the book itself so interesting. She had never seen a book, much less had someone read to her from one.
I asked frequent questions to determine whether she understood what I was telling her. I also tested her periodically to see what she remembered. She proved reasonably adept at learning and applying some of my instruction, but not all of it. Because of that, I spent much of our time reviewing and clarifying points she had forgotten or misunderstood.
My delivery went more smoothly than it would have without her help—it made me miss Mother Chalina terribly, though—and we agreed that the book had been invaluable.
Once the delivery was complete, Gloria ooo’d and ahhh’d at first—like any other woman admiring a newborn. Gloria began cleaning Anjelita off so she could present her to me “officially.” She knew how eager I was to see and hold my new daughter.
Yes, Señora Valdes had been right about the gender this time, too.
As the baby I had once been so determined to abort, Anjelita would join her sister in giving me a future to look forward to, no matter what lay ahead. Ironically, the only certainty in my life was the knowledge that Tomás del Mundo would not impregnate me again.
Not without returning from the grave.
I would miss having before-and-after photographs of Anjelita, but this was Santa María, not San Diego, and no signs of civilization had appeared in the village during my absence. The villagers didn’t own even the simplest of cameras, a fact that was especially frustrating at times like this.
While I was waiting to hold my baby, Gloria grew uncharacteristically quiet. I looked at her. Her mouth
was open. Probably about to say something like, How beautiful she is, and how blessed you are. I hope my first baby looks like your little Anjelita.
Instead, her scream made me jump. “Rosa, your baby, she…she has no arm.”
“What?” I heard myself exclaiming, incredulous at the unbridled distress in my voice.
Although I had understood Gloria’s words clearly enough, I must have mistaken her meaning. Why would she have spoken those disturbing words? I stared at her. “What did you say?”
She looked away. She didn’t want to answer.
“Gloria, look at me. No, not that way. Look at me. Good. No, in the eye. Now explain once more what’s wrong.”
“I’m sorry I frightened you, but…I was cleaning the baby when I discovered—there is no good way to say this—her right arm ends at the elbow.”
Although she continued to babble, I quit listening and turned my attention to Anjelita. Gloria had thrust her in front of my face, so close I couldn’t miss seeing that, yes, her tiny right arm ended in a stub at the elbow. At such close proximity, I couldn’t see anything else.
I couldn’t physically or emotionally look past Anjelita’s single imperfection to see how beautiful and perfect the rest of her was. Not at that moment. As I took her in my arms and held her close the first time, my heart sank. I began crying—in quiet sobs at first, but then in earsplitting torrents. I didn’t think I would ever stop.
How could this have happened?
I had taken vitamins and folic acid throughout most of my pregnancy, and I had eaten as healthily as I could. True, the food hadn’t been quite as good for me as the food in San Diego, but it was healthier than the meager leftovers I’d had to be satisfied with in my childhood.
Dr. Morales had come down from the city with Nikki several times just to check on me. He said the baby and I were both doing well, and I believed him.
But he had cautioned me that the use of drugs and alcohol could cause extensive birth defects, even though the father had used them and not the mother. He didn’t have any idea how much Tomás had abused those substances.
I didn’t, either.
Although I knew how frequently Tomás left home and how long he stayed away, I had no way of knowing whether he had spent the entire time drunk or stoned. Until now, I had given him the benefit of the doubt. After all, the only time I had seen him under the control of alcohol or drugs was the horrendous night of Chalina’s death.
I had somehow managed to put Dr. Morales’s warnings out of my mind. Because Tomás had become a different person just prior to his death, determined to make whatever amends he could, I had foolishly assumed that his previous lifestyle would not harm my baby after all.
I had assumed it could not.
Although I had never forgiven Tomás for the many ways he had hurt me over the years, I was truly thankful he had changed so much for the better at the end, even though I hadn’t been able to understand how. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been willing to lie and say I would be his sweetheart again. And to give him those few brief seconds of peace.
But when I looked at Anjelita’s deformity, my feelings grew bitter once again. And more bitter the next time. And bitterer still the third. How I longed to take back my response to his dying request.
Instead, I would say, Tomás del Mundo, I will never forgive you for what you have done to my Anjelita. Because of you, she exists. Because of you, she is deformed. Because of you, she won’t lead a normal life.
Don’t seek my forgiveness even in death. I won’t help you find peace. I forbid you to have it. I will say anything…everything to make you more miserable in death, when you cannot stand up for your daughter and accept responsibility for her condition.
Still, I couldn’t let my renewed bitterness toward Tomás diminish my love for precious little Anjelita—no matter how badly blemished she was. I would just have to love her even more.
Perhaps someone—could it be this god I had been seeking?—meant for me to be the mother of a pair of disabled daughters. But why? And why should I keep seeking him if he took sadistic pleasure in my misery?
Surely Anjelita could cope just as successfully with the kind of life she was facing as her sister had done with her crutches. Once I set my negative emotions aside and considered the situation more objectively, I concluded that Anjelita’s deformity was actually the less severe of the two girls’ problems.
The way I had felt about Tomás at the time of his death and the way I felt now—those were not the real issues. What was done was done, and I could no longer help or hurt him. The way I felt about my daughters was not the problem, either. I loved them both, and I would love them as equally as any other mother.
I wasn’t overly concerned about Anjelita having to live with her handicap. If she was anything like Alazne, she would prove so adaptable that she would never view herself as disabled.
No, the real problem—I trembled at the thought of it—was the attitude a majority of the villagers might display toward Anjelita.
Although more than eight months had passed since we arrived home—yes, I was starting to accept Santa María as home—and Alazne was enjoying her acceptance in village life, no one would speak such fine words of welcome to my beloved second-born.
Her deformity would become common knowledge in minutes. And along with it the inevitable…
“Avoid her! She is maldita—she is cursed!” I would hear mothers screaming to their children even when they knew I was within earshot. They wouldn’t limit their admonitions to their own youngsters, either. They would caution every child they saw. How could anyone fail to hear their warnings?
Men and women alike would talk among themselves. “Rosa didn’t know what she was doing when she conceived the first time, so we don’t blame her for Alazne. But she knew what she was doing when she became pregnant the second time. Anjelita is a daughter of the devil himself. She is cursed.”
The Council of Elders might not officially condone such talk. But how could they change people’s attitudes and feelings? Such things were a matter of the heart, and I knew of no medicine to soften hardened hearts…
Yet even Tomás had begun to change at the very end of his life. In significant, unbelievable ways. How had he done that?
His final words—he must have thought they were important or he wouldn’t have strained so hard to say them—had proven to be an enigma, not an answer.
What had he meant when he said, “He has forgiven my sins”?
32
Time passes slowly in Santa María.
Yet before I knew it, I was twenty-four, Alazne was eight, and Anjelita was four. My girls were the greatest joys of my life, although their supercharged energy wore me out at times. I couldn’t keep up with them. But they were cheerful, obedient children, and they loved their momma so much they would do anything to help. Now, however, Anjelita was the one who spent too much time inside.
“Why stay here with me when you can enjoy being outside?”
“I don’t have fun by myself. The other children won’t let me play with them.” She drew a line in the dirt with her toes. “They say I am maldita—cursed.” My hands instinctively balled into fists. “I think their attitude is the only curse I have.”
What amazing insights my girls displayed at times. And how I lamented the lack of a solution to the problems people’s attitudes were causing.
Alazne was fond of playing with her little sister, and that helped some. They spent many hours talking and laughing together. For Alazne’s sake, I sometimes reminded her not to quit playing with the other children. She would have devoted her life to her little sister if I had allowed her to.
I often wondered what life would have been like if Tomás had changed sooner. If he had demonstrated a real love for his family before it was too late. I would never know. So I made myself quit thinking about it.
No matter how much Alazne used to like the other children, she resented their hateful attitudes toward her baby sister. She wanted th
em to treat her and Anjelita equally. They should love and accept both girls…or despise and reject both.
Alazne’s resentment made her uncomfortable around the village children, and the more she matured, the stronger her discomfort grew. The other children couldn’t understand her feelings—they didn’t try to—but I did.
And so did Anjelita. “Alazne, why am I cursed and not you?” she asked one day.
“Don’t be silly, baby sister. Neither of us is cursed.”
I leaned closer to hear their conversation better.
“They say I am. They say my arm shows that my father cursed me. So they won’t play with me. You can’t walk without crutches. You had the same father I did. Yet they accept you as normal. They don’t consider you cursed. What’s the difference?”
I turned away just far enough to keep them from seeing me weep as I waited for Alazne’s response.
“I’ve thought about that many times, little sister. Do you know what I think?”
“What?” A sniffle muffled Anjelita’s response.
I remained silent while handing her a clean rag to use for blowing her nose. Both girls seemed oblivious to my presence.
“I think the other children are prejudiced. It’s a condition they’ve inherited from their parents.”
My mouth dropped open in amazement. Alazne not only knew that word, she apparently understood its meaning better than many adults.
“They’ve let prejudice blind them from seeing the beautiful person you are inside.”
Alazne had done something Anjelita was too young and inexperienced to notice. She had avoided answering Anjelita’s original question while doing everything she could to console her. I couldn’t have done better—and probably not as well.
I began fretting more than ever about Anjelita’s emotional condition. I had to help her. But how? I didn’t know whether talking to her would help, but that seemed like the best thing to try. Maybe the only thing.
The big question was whether she would share her feelings with me. The mind can be a very private place, and not even my loving concern would justify probing beneath the surface unless she permitted and encouraged me to.
