esperanza

Hope

"Do you believe in God?" I asked quietly to her soft, two-tone, nearly straight hair.

"Until last night, no, not really. I dunno," she sighed and softened against me, tension flowing away. "I guess I believed in something, maybe Purpose instead of God. Not what most people mean when they say God."

"Yes. Well, if you believe that God did this to you, then you would have to believe there was some purpose to it. Right?"

"Uh," she said. Noncommittal, but she was listening. I stayed quiet a moment, thinking it through myself.

Finally, she asked, "What kind of purpose? What purpose could there be for such a crazy thing as this?"

"I'm not sure, I guess it is a cliche that we might not understand God's reasons for doing something."

Suddenly she seemed to realize what she was doing, where she was, who was cuddling her and she pushed herself away, quickly if not quite violently. "Um, I'm okay now."

"Sure." I undid my own seatbelt where the buckle had been digging into me. She looked at the cafe.

"I'm not hungry again." She took a sip of one of the sodas. "But do you wanna go in?"

"There is a phone in there." I offered. I didn't want a drink anymore.

"Who would I call? I don't know who to call?"

She looked like she might tear up again. "I already called my wife."

Her wife, oh the mind jibbered at that one.

"I don't want to put her through anything like this, she couldn't take it. She's been sick, cancer. And now she thinks I'm dead and how would the truth be any better?"

I couldn't think of any answer to that.

"I called twice, the first time, she wouldn't accept, I said the call was from George. The second time I said it was from someone who knew something about George," she stopped.

"You have to give a name," I said. "The operator's won't put through a call without a name."

She nodded, "I said 'Hope'. I said my name was Hope. It might even be true, that truck driver called me Esperanza." She paused again and a glimmer of something occurred to me. She went on, "I said, 'Margaret, you don't know me and I never met your husband before, but i was at the scene of the accident and right before he passed he gave me a message to give you. George loved you very much. Very, very much."

Maybe she had no tears left for her eyes were dry, but her voice cracked and broke up on the words. "Margaret said thank you and hung up. I added the bit about never having met myself cause I didn't want her to think I might be my own mistress calling." She widened the smile into a grin and hiccupped a giggle.

"Did you call her?"

"Who?" She wiped at her eyes with the soggy Kleenex she had used before.

"Your mistress." She broke up into real laughing then and I smiled and grinned and chuckled.

"What the hell is your name?" she asked after she stopped laughing.

I told her and added, "Don't swear; little girls, even ones who might be little boys shouldn't swear, gives people the wrong idea."

She thought about that and nodded.

"Yeah, I remember when I heard a girl swear I always thought, 'Well, she's easy.' Even if I knew it was wrong. Sorry. Is it Walt or Wally?"

"Actually, I prefer Walter but to you it's Mr. Dalton. You're not old enough to call me Walt and no one is old enough to call me Wally."

She made a face at me, realized what she had done and grinned. "Guess I had better get used to being a kid again, huh?"