Silence of the flowers
By Virginia
Jasmin Pasalo
She sobbed. Her tears ran down her face and swirled
with the mucus that welled from her nose as she sniffed and snorted. For a
woman turning forty-five and having achieved so much in her career, this was
not the time to cry. Tomorrow, she will be awarded by her peers for the
contribution she has made for the protection of young children.
It was midnight when she told a friend. She
remembered the first time. It was a year after her father remarried that the
driver and two boys, ten years older than herself, alternated bringing her to
the nursery school. Her stepmother was young, and did not know anything about
raising five-year olds, or did not have the inclination to learn. At first, it
was the driver, touching her private parts, to which she reacted with fear. She
was told that if she told her father, he would stab him. The image of her
father oozing with blood alarmed her, and the reality of losing him etched in
her fragile mind, having lost her mother so early to heart attack. That was
when she learned to be silent.
The two boys who ran errands for her father
accidentally caught the driver’s right hand inside her skirt. He told them that
there is nothing wrong, he was just massaging her legs. Eventually, the two
boys also did the same. Her whole body responded with more silence.
It was after two years that the driver left for
another employer. One down, she said, and begged God to take the remaining two
boys. But her stepmother retained them, being sons of poorer relatives. She did
not have the courage to tell her father. The specter of his lifeless body
sprawled on the floor haunted her. The touching progressed deeper into her
flesh and bore scars. When the two boys finally left their house, she started
to grow seeds in the garden, something she had never done, and for the first time,
she felt the warmth of the earth, that quietly ushered the birth of flowers.
But she never told her father. Or anyone. Until today,
in the middle of the night, while having a relaxed conversation with a friend,
on the eve of her forty-fifth birthday. There was no plan or prompt, except for
the wine that ran through her whole body, relaxing her muscles, in an
atmosphere of cosmic trust. The universe listened to the articulation of things
it already knew.
Through the years, she transformed her pain into a
successful political career, becoming in the eyes of many, an exemplary woman,
raising the bar of excellence several notches higher in public service. While
she focused on this goal, she was also gathering strength to avenge her own
abuse.
“I saw the
driver a month ago. He is very old now, toothless and bald. He is almost blind
because his family cannot afford an eye operation. He did not even recognize
me. He lives in a shack beside his son’s house. And to think that I wanted to
hire someone to end his life.”
“Christ! Why
would you want me in a position to visit you in jail?”
“One of the boys
who was with him during that time, works as a stevedore in Manila. His skin is
so scorched it looked like the sun slowly burned inside of him. He limped on
his right foot. That one, I thought I would strangle with my bare hands.”
“What about
the other boy?”
“I spoke to
his wife while we were distributing relief goods for typhoon victims. He lives
in a separate dwelling apart from his wife and children. He has leprosy that
grew around his eyes, and made his hands appear like bubbles of restless worms
threatening to crawl out.”
In the silence that ensued, she stood, still
misty-eyed, carrying her glass of wine, and walked barefoot on the carpet of
moist grass, guided by her nose towards the intoxicating scent of the Arabian
jasmines, gardenias and dama de noche, swirling
in the night breeze, drying her tears away.
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