The Witness
“The Witness” Photo & Essay by Dora Leticia ©
The holidays have come and gone now, and, with them an onslaught of memories dating back to my childhood and early teens come knock some dust off the memory shutters just for kicks.
They are not memories of mistle toe and christmas carols that pay the visit. I don’t even know that I am a Christian, not in a New Testament kind of way anyway.
They are memories that make my chest tighten just a bit. One memory in particular is of a boy’s pale and dirty silhouette as he shivered in a December chill outside of his Texas shotgun home.
He was a lonely kid from the neighborhood, fairly new on the street. My bedroom window faced his home, with clear view of his small front porch.
He never knew that his presence always accompanied me as I painted or tapped away on my old typewriter.
I had the habit of opening all the curtains in my bedroom when I painted – to let in the natural light. And when I did – along with the natural light came the vision of him, his defeated posture and tear stricken face framed by my bedroom window.
What more could I write or paint? What is the perfect shade of suffering and shame? Perhaps it’s brown…with a little bit of red…or maybe the color of…none.
One night, I awoke to his mother’s drunken screams. I ran to my window and peered outside.
The mother had thrown the boy out. Shivering in the cold, he curled up into a ball wearing nothing but his dingy white underwear. I watched him through the window and the memory of him showered by moonlight was etched in my soul forever.
It’s not a cliche or some sentimental kind of shit. It’s real. It’s the 80’s. It’s now and long ago.
I quietly called the police to inform them of the incident. I pulled up a chair to my window and - in the dark – I waited for someone to rescue him. In some dark places, where not even the media shows interest, being a silent witness becomes the norm. Unless…
No one came to his rescue and his mother eventually told him to get his ass back in the house, knocking him in the back of the head as he scrambled past her. I didn’t call the police again. The fact that they didn’t come…in a world like this, when you cry for help, any chance of survival can come down to one night, one chance.
I am not referring to the obvious survival, food and clothes, you know, but, the one hidden beneath the attempts. The chance that trust will thrive in this boy’s heart…trust, it’s slim to none. Unless…
Trust, this is a word that carries a whole lot of weight for us as children and as adults. How many times has a child suffered because of abuse and rejection?
We need not look at third world countries for examples. These examples are right outside our door if we care enough to notice.
I stared blankly at his front porch – small, dark and vacant. My stomach hurt.
I felt the burning sensation of anger spread across my face. The knot in my throat begged me to swallow the disappointment and pain, but, the only thing that provided a bit of release and loosened the knot, were the tears that fell down my cheeks and stained my face.
He’s not the only one. How many?
Should I have done more? I was a kid myself, but, that tightness I feel inside my chest every time I think of him tells me no. I helped the only way I knew how – by witnessing – just in case things got really bad.
When you are a kid yourself, in situations like this, you think – if things get bad enough…someone will notice, right? Wrong.
This reality soon sinks in and you get lost in the shuffle if you allow yourself to become a statistic. What good are statistics? They are nothing but a way to categorize the pain and pretend we are making a difference. Unless…
What would I have done? Back in the 80’s, nobody really gave a damn about a barrio kid with a drunken mother.
Help rarely went beyond the charitable goods you might collect at your local neighborhood mission center. But, what good does a can of cream corn and a box of Frosted Minnie Wheats do when the violence begins and you are left outside? An outsider…
Barrio kids might go a bit hungry, but, starvation is not the real threat – it’s violence and lack of love and support that debilitates and strangles this strange and lonely breed.
You can’t swim where there is no water and the neighborhood pool a few miles away wreaks of urine.
On Christmas morning that year, I bought some junk food and raided our cupboards for anything I thought he could eat without much preparation: Hostess cupcakes (gotta have the Hostess), carton juice boxes, canned vienna sausages and some cheap toy. I placed the items in a box, wrapped it and placed a big damn bow on top.
I didn’t want him to be embarrassed by my gesture, so I waited until he left home. It’s enough to feel the sting of shame that comes with poverty, but, worse, to have someone rub your nose in it. To me, he wasn’t poor, he was just dealt a shitty hand when it comes to the mother card.
The boy finally came outside when a neighborhood kid came over to show off his Christmas gift – a shiny toy gun, how surprising.
“What did you get?”, the boy asked him. “Nothing…” he said as he kicked the ground lightly. They chatted for a bit and went for a walk.
He always wore those old brown pants, high-waters actually…with no socks. He was a dancer to me. A dancer in an unknown ballet spinning in a slow and painful way, his feet sore and hungry for a nice cotton blend.
Once I saw them disappear around the corner, I dragged my gift to his porch, placed a note on top and went back home to paint.
A short time passed and he returned with his friend to find my gift. His friend excited, begged him to open it. “Who is it from? Who gave it to you? Man, open it!”
My simple note read “Merry Christmas” (with no From: or To: attached). The boy refused to open the gift outside. He asked the boy to help him take it inside before his mother got home.
That day at dusk, I went to my window and there he was, barefoot, wearing his old brown pants and a flimsy t-shirt. He slowly savored his Hostess cupcake and sipped from a juice box, tracing the edge of the porch step with his toe. A lock of his dark, unwashed hair lay on his forehead. I could taste the white creamy filling inside the cupcake as he ate. I could feel the numbness in his cold red feet.
Things don’t make sense some times. Not a drunk that abuses her kid. Not the men that enter her revolving door without much as a glance at her unkempt son.
Not much…not much…unless…
I don’t know where he is. I think his name was David. But, I can’t say for sure.
Did he make it? Does he have children? Does he abuse them?
Somehow I think he wouldn’t, even though they say the cycle repeats itself more often than not. But, then again, who said so? The people who never came that cold December night? People much too far from the reality of these situations to really know the depths of innocent dispair?
He seemed so frail and lost…
In addition to the junk food and the cheap toy I put in that cardboard box so many years ago, I would like to send him this…it’s just a couple of photographs…and a message…
He should know, that at the exact moment I captured the image of the boy…I thought of him. And I think of him every year come December. He is more than a memory, he was and is real.
He should know, he wasn’t alone.