I was ambushed, twice, once when I was a kid and more recently, by memories that opened a door shut tight for sixty years.
In the early
1960’s, my family spent a few Summers at the Institudo Allende in San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico. An artist retreat and
school, we spent time with teachers who mentored us in sculpture, painting,
silversmithing, and leathercraft.
Revisiting San
Miguel several years ago, proved to be a fascinating walk back in time, to a place I only recognized in brief flashes.
Sitting on a
hard granite bench in that damp stone room, facing what is now the gift shop, I
was waiting for my ladies to return. Looking up, I surprised myself, suddenly
remembering those images, those faces that I hadn’t spoken with in over sixty
years.
Started in
1959, the mural was only a couple of years along when we first visited. It was
still a work in progress, but of course, so was I.
Little of
the Institudo was recognizable to me as I wondered around, but when I sat down
to wait for the girls to come back out of the gift shop, it hit me hard.
Those images
washed over me like a tsunami, jumping out from the wall, ferocious with color.
Sixty years
prior, I had hidden in the sanctuary of that cool stone room, an echo chamber
that magnified the sound of the blood pounding in my ears, panting back at me
with each rapid exhalation, I was sweaty from running, racing away from a patch
of dry scrub in a distant field, where I had been attacked.
Walking
quietly, alone on a dirt path, I had been hit hard from behind. Some kind of
animal struck my lower back and beat at both sides of my head. A guttural
screaming in my ears matched the savage whipping at my face and eyes.
Screaming
inside with fear and surprise, scared and adrenaline loaded, I turned to face
my attacker.
A huge black
and grey goose with a wingspan wider than I was tall. He was pissed and coming
back at me for a frontal assault.
Without
forethought, as I spun around, I picked up a thick piece of tree branch lying
at my feet, striking that goose one time, viciously, squarely, on top of his
head as he flew in to attack me once again.
Wack!
He dropped
like what he was, dead weight. God’s marionette strings were cut abruptly the
second I landed that club.
Frightened
and immediately remorseful for the beautiful body that lay still at my feet,
ashamed of taking his life, I had started running, full speed, all the way back
to the Institudo. Finally stopping to catch my breath in that quiet stone sanctum,
breathing hard on that very stone bench where I was sitting.
It all came flooding
back to me. The adrenaline dump that spawned such violence, followed by deep
regret. Shaken and sweat cold, I replayed the scene, thoughts of how I could
have better handled the attack. It was his territory, not mine. I should have
just started running. Having learned about the fight or flight response that
very school year, I wished I had chosen flight.
As my
heartbeat began to slow and the echo of my rapid breathing quieted, a familiar
flash of blue glided past the stone archway into the courtyard, silhouetted in
bright sunshine. I knew that blue dress with its billowing pleats of cotton,
that young girl, my age. I knew her sweet smile that she had flashed like a laser
beam directly to me from across the dining room, shorting my circuits and
wobbling my knees.
She kept a
secret hidden in the folds of that dress. She thought I didn’t know, but I did.
I had instantly spotted her arm, the way she shrouded it, her insecurity,
tucked under those blue waves of flowing cotton.
She kept her
truncated left arm, her shame, concealed from the judgement of prying eyes.
My first
girlfriend.
Blond
sunshine, the daughter of another American guest. Birth had shortchanged her in
only one way, and had been exceptionally generous in every other. Keeping that
arm hidden from view in the pleats of her full dress, it was her big secret.
Everything
else about her was perfect.
That shy
smile when she caught my eye in the hallway electrified me, head to toe.
When I saw
her pass the archway that day, I jumped up and left the cold stone chamber and
the trauma of my encounter with death, to trail after an angel wrapped in
vibrant blue.
By the time
Summer rolled to a close, before both of our families were to leave Mexico and
return home, I sat with her there in our special spot, one last time, on that
same stone bench, under the watchful eyes of those shrieking visions. Two
twelve-year-old kids, whispering like conspirators to keep our words out of the
mouth of those crazy images that parroted our words back in that stone echo
chamber. It was there that she timidly revealed her left wrist to me, pulling
it slowly from under folds of blue cotton, trusting me with her deepest secret.
I already
knew, of course.
She thought
that I would care, see her differently, somehow damaged. If anything, the
opposite was true. I told her that nobody who mattered in this world would ever
think badly about her because of it. Anyone who did was a fool.
She
lightened as she realized that I had known all along but it made no difference,
in my eyes. I thought she was perfect.
In turn, I
trusted her with my own dark secret. The goose, my shame. She was sitting next
to a murderer.
She
comforted me, told me that I did what I did out of fear. I simply reacted. Not
my fault. I needed to let it go.
She said I
was brave.
At that
moment, in that holy place of heaven and hell, I like to think she saw herself
in a better light for the first time, bright and untarnished.
That seemed
fitting because there and then, in that same cold sanctuary, all those years
ago, I was forgiven of my sins, by an angel.
