Clenched, part 13 Early on I knew I had to get him out of there, away from her. I was so afraid that if I reported her for abuse that the result would be the exact opposite: that I would be forced to leave. That he would be left alone with her & that scared me. For the rest of my life I will consider the impact she had on him & if I could have intervened successfully earlier. Sam has searched for positive mother figures. Jocelyn was a young woman, a cashier, a cajera, at a local market who Sam glommed onto. He called her his girlfriend. She was a wonderful person & understood what was going on. We would interupt our day at the store when Sam would say, “Let’s go visit Jocelyn”. So we’d put the “Back In a Bit” sign & go. Jocelyn got it. Sam would come to say “hi” & she always, always stopped what she was doing, get down on his level & hug him, tell him, “te quiero”. Sam was 3 years old, a prime number. We were walking back from visiting one time & he informed me that “Jocelyn is nice. She doesn’t say bad words to me or hit me on the head or anything like that”. Try not crying in front of your son on that note. Try being cool & saying, “Yeah, she’s nice.” I will never forget the day we saw her outside the market, walking toward the bus stop. When she saw us, she began crying. She was going to university. It was her last day at the market. She was brokenhearted. Sam consoled her, told her, “It’s OK. I’ll always love you, Jocelyn, you’re my girlfriend”. I was the one who had to keep it together. For the longest time, when it was just Sam & I, starting as the 2 bachelors, we slept in the same room. If I would wake up at night to pee, he would wake up, too. “Where are you going?” I’d tell him & he’d ask, “Can I go, too?” Walking down the road or in a quiet moment in the shop, he’d ask, “You’re never going to leave me, right, Dad?” At first, it clenched my throat, saddened me, but I learned to turn it into our motto. I’d answer, “Leave you? No way, we’re a team!” With time, he’d include that in his question, “We’re a team, right?” until he finally quit asking, convinced I was telling the truth. The pochote just outside our 2nd floor apartment walkway seems like the perfect tree for a Tropical Dry Forest region. Like the iguana, it appears to come from the Prehistoric Era & not changed a bit throughout millennia. It has gnarly spikes, something way beyond thorns, that would ward off a rhinoceros. In the summer, el verano, it loses all its leaves and passes for a long-dead thing. Then it flowers on the tips of its stark branches, thousands of light pink bursts, maybe 4 inches around, each with an abundance of stamens. The flowers look like they belong in the movie Fantasia, maybe with hippos in tu-tus dancing around them. They last a few days, then drop & almost immediately oxidize & turn a dark rust red. And the pochote returns to appearing as though it has been dead for 40 years.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:31:42 +0000
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