Maya sat on her aunt and uncle’s porch in a rattan armchair.
She stroked the red velvet fabric of a tiny box on her lap, a gift for her 18th
birthday from her aunt and uncle, well mostly aunt. She let the seconds pass, a
firm grasp on the soft box, until she allowed her fingers to unhook the latch
and open. Inside, she found an exquisite set, an arrangement of diamonds and
emeralds on a necklace with matching, teardrop earrings. Tucked under the
sparkling lace, she found a note. Her aunt wrote that the set belonged to
Maya’s mother and she had loaned it to her. Maya picked up the delicate piece,
lacing it in her fingers as she brought it closer to her face. She smelled the
arrangement, as if hoping to pick up any lingering scent of her mother. But a
whiff of mangoes from the neighbor’s porch mudded her fantasy and she travelled
back to ten years ago. She tried many times to conjure up memories of her
parents, the happy years, but her mind never travelled past the day her life
altered forever. She couldn’t see past the blood splatter or feel beyond the
sticky liquid as her parents’ faces faded from her memory and numbness assailed
her heart. Even tears abandoned her as her crying eyes remained dry. In these
moments, desperate for tears, she felt her body stiffen and for several hours
she lost blood circulation in three of her fingers of her left hand. It always
returned to normal eventually, but she struggled to bring back feeling to her
cold digits.
Maya tried to evoke memories of the past decade, the years
in her aunts home, but there again she failed. A fog had taken hold of her. She
feared everything – her uncle’s loud voice, losing her aunt and even the train
that whistled past behind their house several times a day. She constantly felt
obligated to her uncle, for taking her in even though she could sense his
annoyance with her presence. Maya was quite sure that he didn’t know about the
necklace, otherwise it would have been sold years ago. Maya also lived with
perpetual guilt – for surviving while her parent perished, her mother taking
the bullet and Maya escaping it. Her guilt extended to her aunt, who fought
with her husband daily to protect her niece and suffered his wrath alone. His
anger boomed through their bedroom nightly and Maya noticed a new purple mark
on her aunt to outshine the fading ones. Maya chose to drift through her
tearless, finger numbing fog as the decade passed.to be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment