In the eyes of a child! (monosyllabic)

By Jing Villamil

WHEN she leaves our home for a long, long time, my Mom brings the two girls and I and Gran with her. I wish my Dad would come, too. But he would not. And they would not tell us why.

We take the big black van that seats more than ten. We have huge fat seats for beds and yet so much room to run and play and hide and be puke-sick! Mom says we have to calm down and sit and not move a lot. But there is so much road and fields and trees and hills to see from right to left to front to back! Mom tells us, when she was young, the roads rolled through towns! That must had been fun! Now, I see no town. Each must had been tucked and hid from sight. But why? To clear the roads to speed fast on? But I love small towns! I come from one.

It takes us two-and-a-half hour to reach the last of the toll gates. It will take us more of that time to reach the end of the trip. Same time back days from now. So much time to waste on our b_ _t! Mom says time has wings; time has shrugged its wings off past the last toll gate!

Mom says where we are to go is where the malls stand tall and big that a small child like me can get lost and not be found for days, months, years! Why would kids go to a place where they may get lost and not be found? The girls and I swear not to leave Mom’s side and she smiles and turns her eyes up to the sky as if to say “Oh my; I pray so”. Thus, for the rest of the four days, we have to stay and be nice and quiet at the back seats of halls where Mom and her friends hear a lot of talks and see a lot of ills on the screen. But, at least, we get to eat a lot of grown-up spiced-up food. And Mom takes time off to show us the malls where there are kids’ stuff and toys and food to fill us plump. We get to go home each day with bags of books and toys! Mom must have a good job here! She and her friends sit and look to the stage and hear words that scare us to no end. Like death, plague! Back home, she does not sit; she stands, moves, sees, hears and tries to heal lots and lots of the sick. We could not kiss or hug her till she bathed at the end of the day. Here, we crowd her on her chair, and she smiles she taps our heads and says Shhh! and we drop off to sleep on her lap. Nice sweet life.

Here, no one begs for coins to buy food. They get shooed by guards. Or they are too weak to walk the mile from one mall to the next. But I saw a crazed man; he bids me come near and share him my cone of ice cream. How can my cone fill him up? He needs warm meat, and rice, not cold ice!

At night, on the way to our temp home to rest and sleep, we pass by kids on dark streets with their Moms and Dads. They wear not-so-clean clothes, with swipes of coal on their face. Mom says it is not coal. It is dirt and oil grime. They all grab food from just one plate with their hands and as we crawl by, they look up to see their selves shown clear on the side of our van. They smile at their selves. Through their smiles, I see us, too – my sis, my Mom, my Gran – as we smile at our selves through the glass of the big malls.

The street kids and their folks, and we and my folks are the same. We are bound as one by our needs, our wants, our love. God sees us all.

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