I'm Just Sayin'

It was hard to breathe. We had turned off the fan in the corner so the rattling wouldn’t be on the video. The moment we switched it off, the air grew heavy and thick. Flies buzzed around our heads. The men all clutched handkerchiefs, wiping the sheen of sweat off of their faces every few minutes. Sweat formed at my temples, dripping into my eyes.

The father who sat before me quietly answered our questions. He told us about leaving their home at 5:30 in the morning to go to his job as a driver. How he spent half of his salary each month on the rent of this 10×10 concrete room. How he could only pay for food one week a month, charging the rest.

And then he told us about his wife. Visibly, he shrank before my eyes. He told us about her death five years ago. His shoulders slumped. He stared at the ground. His voice was so quiet, I had to lean forward. More flies flew in through the open door.

His heartbreak was a presence in the room. It was heavier than the heat. It settled over us. A knot the size of the limes growing on the trees in the front yard formed in my throat.

My eyes darted around the room. I so badly wanted a distraction. It was too much. So I counted the flies that crawled on our arms as he choked out memories of his wife.

1, 2, 3…

She had been walking home with their 8-year-old daughter.

4, 5, 6, 7…

Screeching tires, a spray of dust and gravel.

8, 9, 10, 11, 12…

So quickly, as only a mother can react, she shoved her child aside, a tumble of bright fabric and red dirt.

13, 14, 15, 16…

And then, she was gone. Instantly, her husband became a single father, raising four children, including a month-old son.

17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22…

He had never remarried. The grief was too much. The responsibility too great. The loss too profound.

23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

“She left me,” he whispered.

I looked up at those words. Stared into a face that had seen too much. I wanted to touch his arm. Tell him that it would be okay. But we were all frozen in place. So I simply reached out and swept my arm through the humid air, scattering the 27 flies.

They buzzed in the air, joining the heat and the grief. I waved my arm again, shooing them towards the door. A few flew out. I waved harder, trying to clear the air, but knowing the cloud that hung there was not composed of flies.

And no amount of arm waving I could do today would bring relief to the broken man sitting before me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under Compassion, Togo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.