A Hopeful Love

Chapter Five: Life and Death

Sapphire

I carried Mama towards the Bug.  Our progress was slow.  If I hurried too quickly she would moan in pain.  I wondered if something was broken.  Some rocks were on her legs when I found her.  I also kept stopping to wet her lips and wait while she slowly lapped up the moisture with her tongue.  Yesterday I had run from the Bug to the cave in a couple hours; this return trip drug on and on through the day.  The heat of the sun became so intense my clothes were wet with sweat, the muscles in my shoulders throbbed, and my calf muscles painfully cramped.

Still Mama seemed to be improving a little bit as the day wore on, slowly, with hydration, and hope gave me strength.  Her eyes had twitched like they might open, and once I swear I felt her move on her own in my arms. 

I decided to take a little break under a large tree.  There weren’t many trees around.  I knew I needed a few minutes of the shade’s offered escape from the relentless sun. 

I placed Mama gently on the ground, her pillow my backpack.  She finally opened her eyes and smiled when she saw me. 

Her voice was dry and crackly when she whispered, “You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I know you didn’t want me to Mama.  I had to.  I love you.”

“I love you darling.  Is everyone…” her words were cut off with a barking, dry, cough. 

Of course, Mama was barely clinging to life and she was worried only for her children.

I calmed her, “Everyone is safe Mama.  We found a Sawi woman who took us in.  We made it.”

She smiled again, and then fell to sleep.

On our next break she had me read the last chapter to my Daddy’s book.  It ended with her trying to escape the suffocating smoke, up as close as she could get to the hole in our room’s ceiling, to fresh air. 

When I closed the book, Mama whispered, “I need to… tell you the rest…”

“It’s okay Mama, you can tell me later.  Try to sleep for a little bit,” I said as soothingly as possible yet she just got more antsy and frustrated. 

She replied, “No, no!  I need to tell you the rest of it, now.”

“Okay, Mama.  I’m listening.”

She instructed, “Listen carefully.  Record…later.”

We had nothing to write it down and of course that bothered Mama. 

I tried to reassure her, as well as myself, “You will be there to tell me again.  Later.”

“Stop… arguing.  Just listen!”  She was angry.  Like I said, my Mama always had been fiery.  Mitch was very similar to her- shy and fiery.  People sometimes mistook their quietness for being laid back, assumed they would never get upset.  I’d just laugh and tell them that they didn’t know my brother or Mama very well.

I felt bad for causing her more stress.  “Yes, of course, Mama.”

As her tale of surviving the attack unfolded, I knew it would be etched completely and deeply in my memory.  It was one of those things you knew you’d never be able to forget, even if you wanted to.  I knew it would be there in my brain waiting for me until I could write it all down.

Mama started, “Okay.  I was just lying there, close to the fresh air coming from that ceiling hole in our cave room.  Something suddenly blocked the hole, and my oxygen.  Lower… all around smoke… swirled… seeping in from the library.  My head hurt.  My chest hurt.  Black closed in all around me.  I thought for sure, ‘this is it’.”