Frogs and cicadas colored the darkness with their music.
Maya sat on the swing on her porch, its squeaky staccato interrupting the
music of the darkness. She swung her short legs and swayed her body back and
forth to move faster. Her mother seated in a rattan chair next to her told her
to slow down, but Maya ignored her. She started a chant of the song she had
heard on the radio earlier that day, repeating the one line she knew, as if a
broken record needle, until it drove her mother to yell out, “Can’t you just be
still for a minute?” Maya stopped the singing and swinging, looked at her
mother and asked after her father. “He’ll be home shortly”, she responded as
she checked her wrist watch.
Just then her father’s car pulled up onto the driveway and
Maya jumped off her swing. When he got out of the car Maya stood in her place.
He was not alone. His hair was disheveled, a shirt tail untucked and his hands
held up to his shoulders, palm facing front, arms bent at the elbow.
Her mother grabbed Maya and enclosed her in her arms, as if
they were chain links to protect her within. Maya stared at the strange men who
were shoving their father from the back to move forward. Her father straggled
up the porch, mumbling, “Don’t hurt them” over and over. All three shuffled
indoors as the strange men followed close behind. A whiff of mangoes swam past
her nostrils as the bigger of the two men ran up the stairs. The smaller man
directed them to sit down on the floor in their foyer. Her mother burrowed her within
her folds, as a Kangaroo does to her young, with Maya’s tiny head sticking out
just enough to watch the scene unfold.
Maya noticed the shiny object the ugly man pointed at them
with an uglier hand scarred with burn marks. His other hand remained in his pant
pocket. His voice was raspy, as if it was a great strain for him to talk. The
man from upstairs shouted, demanding to know where the jewelry was. Her mother
said that there was nothing. He came down mad and yelled that they better not
be lying. He threatened to shoot them all. Her father swore they were telling
the truth, just like he had tried to tell them in the car, that they didn’t
keep any valuables at home. Now the ugly man got mad and pointed his gun to her
father’s head.
Maya shut her eyes tight as the shrill of sirens pealed
through their open window. In the midst of all that, she felt her house
reverberate with the man yelling, her father shouting at the man, “go ahead, do
it” and just as he did it, her mother let out a piercing scream. Maya opened
her eyes, but nestled deeper into her mother’s bosom trying to cover her ears
as she inhaled her mother’s familiar scent. Her eyes took in the bright red
splatter on her father’s wrinkled, white shirt, and the ringing in her ears wouldn’t
go away. And then another bang. She felt
sticky liquid trickle down her back as her mother sat limp continuing to hold
Maya in her grasp. Maya’s eyes were now looking down the dark hole of a gun
barrel and she waited for another bang. Refusing to lose her eyes, she stared
right into the eyes of the gunman. His scarred eyelids blinked, hesitating for
a second. That second is all she needed as just then another blast and her eyes
closed.
Maya felt no pain, no sticky liquid oozing out of her body.
She looked up at the ugly man and saw his eyes roll to the back of his head
before his legs gave way. He stumbled to the floor, his gun dropping beside
him. The big man tried to run up the stairs to escape the uniformed man behind
him, but they caught him by his legs and he stumbled down.
To Be Continued
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