The Light

 

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Prelude

    It comes to me in flashes; when I sleep, when I blink, when I walk, when I sit, when I eat. I can never forget that day. Something happened that I cannot explain, at least not with logic. This whole time, my mama has been telling me that I should be grateful it wasn’t me; that I was blessed; that it is what my papa would have wanted. But I don’t feel grateful and I don’t feel blessed. My father was killed by a random mugger and I survived the attack, there is nothing to be thankful for in that. Something saved me that day, but it didn’t save him. I’ve kept what I saw that day in so long that I’ve begun to question what actually happened the moment he died.

    I saw a white light the day my papa got killed. All my Catholic teachings would tell me that it was clearly “la Virgen” who had come to intercede on my behalf. If I had told mama about that light I would never have heard the end of it. Seeing something so unreal and surviving what I know was a direct gunshot should have made me an honest to God, pardon the pun, believer. But the fact that my father, a devout man, a man who never forgot to pray before a meal, who thanked God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit every day for everything that ever happened to him, was killed so callously; well it only solidified my doubt.

    For years now I have kept this to myself because everyone in my family is like my papa. They believe without a doubt that any good thing they come across, any good thing that happens to them is because of God. Never mind that these “blessings” are far and few between the many terrible things they’ve had to deal with lately. What I find most infuriating is that when bad things do happen, they believe either one of two things: They weren’t devout enough or we are all too simple to understand the greater “plan”. What happened to my father falls under the latter. Mama says that I just don’t understand the plan; and she is right in that. I have no freaking idea what the “plan” is. But if it meant my father’s death, the plan sucks. I saw a white light and that white light made it so that the bullet meant for my head hit my father instead. If I told my family about it they would make that day something it wasn’t. It wasn’t a day to be commemorated or glorified, it was just a tragic day that I want to forget.

    Memory can be a bitch. I have tried to find an explanation for what happened for so long that the memory has begun to lose its meaning. I both remember that day vividly and hope to forget it. The parts I hope to remember forever are not the parts I can’t forget. There are three things about that day that I can remember so well that it feels like they happened yesterday: The gun that killed my papa, the killer’s eyes, and the light. That light I saw could have been the sun glare. I had rationalized that maybe it was the sun reflecting off the bullet as it shot in my direction, but it wasn’t. After all these years, I can’t deny that the light came from me.

    I think about my father’s murderer often. He was just a boy, probably around my age today when it happened. If he is still alive, he is a man now. Did I ever find out who he was? No. Did they ever catch him? No.  Did anyone besides us care? No. It was all part of the “plan”. The police here follow that same plan which means if someone you love gets killed all you can do is mourn. There is no justice and as much as I hear people talk about vengeance, no one here is brave enough or stupid enough to actually pursue it. We are powerless here and were supposed to believe that for the majority of us there will never be an escape. That this is just our life, that this will be our death. It’s not what I want for me.

    I used to hear about how bad the city was getting. I would hear my tias and tios mention it to my parents all the time. I would hear as they gossipped with each other about who was now in a gang, who was having a baby when they weren’t even out of primaria yet, and who had just been killed. I didn’t understand or care, I was nine. But after that terrible day, everything I had heard in the years before made sense. It was the first time I understood that I should be scared of the city I lived in. I should be scared of its people. I should fear for the lives of the people I loved. And so I've lived with that fear for the last 8 years; fear of death and fear that the light that saved me at the expense of my papa would take another family member from me.

    My hermanita Paloma is just turning 12 now, and mama wants her to have a future where she isn’t pregnant or dead before she gets out of secundaria. My mama doesn’t want this for us. She doesn’t want us to live with fear and even she, with all her belief in God and his plan, knows that there is only one way we could have a real chance at a future. The day I turned 17, mama told me her plan. She was going to get us out of the city.  I couldn’t say for sure if my father would have wanted us to leave here, but I’m pretty sure he would want us to be happy and living here has made none of us happy. Mama said she prayed a lot to get to the conclusion she reached and I don’t doubt it because escaping this life can be just as dangerous as staying here to live it.

    For me leaving here was two-fold. Not only are we getting out of this place to assure ourselves a future, but I am determined to move past what happened to my papa and put the memory of the light to rest. But the light is following me. I am seeing it more and more these days. Some days I think I may be going crazy, and that may well be the case. But I’m putting all my hope into this move, to move past that day, get past the light, and into a better life. 

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