... Professor Alexei suggested I create a memory log for my thesis. I guess I should. Memory has never been something I could boast about. In fact, I think my shitty memory is the cause of most of the detrimental ruptures in my relationships. I think theres something noteworthy about the relationship between trauma & memory that psychologists love to theorize about. But I'll start trying to remember. then hopefully I can forget?
I'm lying in bed with abuelita. I love her warmth. She smells like roses and her skin feels like a leathery couch. The covers are over the both of us and our bodies are parallel to each other, like two little sardines tucked into a tin bed. The blanket is flowery and pink, because pink is for girls abuelita says. We sleep together every night, I don't mind it. My sister is on the other side of the room, I wonder what she's thinking. I wish I could do this with her too.
Jehovah es mi pastor, nada me faltara,
en lugares de delicados, pastos me hara descansar,
Junto a aguas de reposo me pastoreara,
confortara mi alma
I don't know what it means. We say it every night but I don't know what any of it means. Every night I get closer and closer to remembering the words. Abuelita says that we have to say it so that Diosito remembers to take care of us at night. I hope my sister says it too so she can go to heaven with us. I love Diosito and I love papi Samuelito too.
I don't care that my grandma makes us say the salmo every night. She has a beautiful voice. At church, her voice sounds like beautiful bird. Chirp chirp chirp, she flies so high like a bird. She says I should join the choir so that one day I can be an opera singer. I hope Diosito likes that.
...
December 14, 2014
...
It is late at night when the event occurs. We've been here for a few days now, ever since Apostle Samuel's death. The air is cold, Guadalajara is dreary. The place which once felt like a spiritual refuge has now been overtaken by a hellish shadow. Tears precipitate from the faces of everyone around me as I watch the rain fall through this wrought iron-adorned window in the front porch of our home. I wonder whether God joins us in mourning, or if He holds the sky up as a mirror, reflecting our self-inflicted misery. I'm worried about all the days of school I'm missing. I reach down to touch my sore knees which have bruised from all the kneeling, my fingers graze its bony infrastructure and I remember this isn't a dream. There is a worm whose been living in my throat, getting bigger as the days go by.
We haven't slept for days; We've been told to just wait and pray while the universal consecrations continue, 24 hours, a new preacher replaces the last as the clock ticks at every hour. Our days are filled with melancholic mornings and painful nights, while the uncertainty of the future looms over us like a storm-filled cloud waiting to release its buildup and flood the streets of an entire city. The church has asked everyone to submit their dreams to the ministerial body, hoping it will provide the salvational puzzle pieces needed to make sense of this haunting jigsaw. God will reveal the next apostle, they say. Any day now.
"Turn on the T.V.!" my aunt screams as she runs down the stairs struggling to put her veil on and jerking me out of my state of existential limbo. Could it be? Is there news? We don't have time to run to the temple.
My family and I are gathered around the small cable T.V. whose antennas extend beyond the length of the frame itself. It's positioned liked an anchor at the center of the living room, it's stopped us from going adrift all day. I hear the scratch of metal dragging across the tile floor as foldable chairs arrange snuggly around this shabby little device that will soon become our makeshift portal to heaven.
I can see the reflection of the screen on everyone's eyes around me as I scan the room. I choose to experience this through their eyes because I don't trust my own. A flood of hope fills the living room when a minister on the T.V. takes the podium inside the temple and begins to recount a testimony that he said will reveal the name of the next apostle. None of this feels real to me. I look to abuelita, she's already crying uncontrollably and rocking back and forth in her seat. The worm in my throat just got bigger and it's hard to breathe, it needs to get out.
The world got silent as he began recounting, "I had a dream.." everyone's crying. "I began to see how the a cloud descended from the sky. And I stood up from the floor where I was praying to God. And with great necessity I looked towards the clouds and when that cloud got close to me, I saw that the servant of God come out of it, with his resplendently white clothes. I got closer to identify him... and when I saw him, I head a voice that said
Naason, is my chosen one."
Everyone in the room dropped to the ground, including me. It was as if some external force hit our knees and knocked us to the floor all at once. It was if that force hit us so bad that we all cried like helpless children. It was if that force had given us a wound so painful that we wailed and wailed, speaking in a language that was incomprehensible to anyone else. But there was no external force, no pain, and a whole lot of ecstasy.
No comments:
Post a Comment