Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of small finger nails tapping softly on the car
window hunt me at night.
Shadows I ignore or try to, using the very veil that I
reject to hide my shame. I cannot look at them in the eye and say no. I cannot
look at them at all because I have nothing to say. I feel empty of words and
excuses. Their misery is so vast that just looking at it gives me vertigo. A
nine year old without a hand “tap, tap, tap” I pray she does not make it to my
window, all the glass in the world is not enough to keep her out. I look the
other way and find some hands, which have no legs and therefore cannot reach
high enough to look right at me. And yet I feel naked under their gaze.
I cannot give them something because nothing will ever feel
enough. How much? to whom? I cannot make a difference so I look away, away from
the masses of ripped old clothes , from
hardened skin and black teeth, and beyond them probably a harder and blacker
soul, because for the one that has
nothing, for the one that has no power, he at least has her. He can at least be her master. He can at least take it out on her.
she……she can’t do anything. She can raise his children and then
from her son demand a bride price, so that a new she can end up destitute and forgotten.
“Tap, tap, tap” drips the water from the walls in a shelter.
The children watch TV in a bare room next door. “Tap, tap, tap” drip the tears
I thought I did not have. I thought I was immune. And here I am in a dirty
bathroom wondering “why not me?”
but also: why was I spared only to be made a witness to that
which I cannot change
the “Tap, tap, tap” continues
I give one old lady a bill. Her eyes become watery , she
touches me while raising her tired eyes to the sky thanking it for answering her
prayer. It’s but a dollar, and I feel my heart is worth about the same
amount.
Another woman asks us to pray for her and I say yes, I
will. I lie. I lie because I cannot believe that if there was a god that could answer
a prayer he would not have already
answered hers. But I do not have the heart to tell her there is not even
that.
“Tap, tap, tap” this time it’s my subconscious knocking,
telling me to look away, to close the door, to let them go on dying without me.