Echoes

Weariness dries the bones. You only learn that in its whole truth by the time you're as old as I am. Baba's 72 and still workin'? Don't know who woulda' ever
thought that one possible my Aya would say. Funny girl her, she didn't understand.

Driving down the dark highway now, all I have time to do is think. I
remember who i'm doing this for and take content in those sweet orange burnt
memories that kept me going. Little Mary was all grown up and had to care for her
own little bundle of tangerine sunshine, my angel granddaughter Aya. I remember when
her own eyes used to shine as brightly as hers. But those memories are old now, just
as I, and they have been replaced with worry. . .

In times when she was too young to tie a shoelace, she was my everything.
Now she had her own daughter to take care of. Fate struck in the way that it always
had, slamming the words "Terminal" all over her frail body. With no way to pay for
the treatment, everyone that could had to help out, and I was the only everyone.

I took this trucking job, I'm responsible for transferring deliveries from the factory to the stores. Quite the hiedy-ho job if I do say, it's not much to stare at the road all dang night The only lights around now are from the poles passing by quickly and the red lights of the cars ahead. Seeing it from night to night is such a tiring sight. . .  I'm more than happy to do it. For Mary, my Aya, my family.

Life is a funny thing when you have sad things. They keep a'puckerin' in
your face like a big ol' blow fish, telling you to play simon says: pout and cry.
Bet it didn't expect an old man to pucker out his dentures instead of his cheeks.
That one would always make Aya laugh, it sure would. That saliva is the only liquid
coming out of my face today, yes sir. But I really tell you, and I will all day, that
everyone goes through their own things. People have thrown around their hands with
fate until they are bruised and bleeding. (I speak from experience.) To try to
change what is done will not help. I can only tell you it will get you more charlie
horses then you can count, and you'll still be crying.

Even thinking for too long in this truck can be tiring, I stop to take a think break. (Aya tells me she needs those all too much, silly thing. I agree with her.) The night is booming with heavy metal pods with wheels going 80 miles an hour, hurrying on either side of the divide. The sound is familiar and tiresome. It's the last thing I think of before my cellphone bell rings.









12 . . .

It's dark on the highway, I'm glad that it is. It hides my face from the
mixed things I'm feeling. My father and. . ."mother" are driving in the front
silently. A cold chill creeps from the windows, but it's not the weather.

11. . .

My little sister plays with her unicorn on the seat next to me, at least she was here to keep me company. She notices my staring eyes and smiles at me. "Look he can dance pretty good can't he?" she whispers. I give a creeked smile and small nod. She continues on.

10. . .

Why are we doing this now? It's midnight for gods sake. I don't want to go
live with her. . .she wasn't my Mom. She doesn't care about us, she makes Yuna cry
and takes her toys from her whenever she's angry, she calls me names behind his
back.

9. . .
All she does is complain about him and all he does is take it. She thinks she can do whatever the hell she wants, and because of me she almost can. . . I feel
hopeless. Suddenly I see years spanning of sadness after this night, endless misery,
wanting to escape but the empty regret will never come to him. I look back at Yuna
I think about running with her, she wasn't her child, she won't have her. . .But
I don't care if I am her child. . .She's NOT my mother. We could try to make the
best of it, we'll fight fate. We'll fight it until we can't take it anymore, and
everything will be okay.

8. . .7. . .6. . .5. . .

I calm myself from my thoughts so I don't startle Yuna. I calm down because I know I can do it for her. If it is horrible, i'll stay. I will make sure nothing bad will happen to her. And if it does, I will-

4. . .

There is a loud screech and the semi in front of us and it starts to spin to the right oddly. "John!" my mother gasps and looks to him, worry on her face.

3. . . . .

Some unlucky car crashes into its base, it starts to lurch on its side and tip slowly. I imagine the screams of terror, shielded behind plastic shells. I see Yunas face turn to mine in hours, her face a mix of confusion and fear. Mother tries to reach her hands to the back to shield her children, they go for Yuna and not for me, my heart falls with the truck. Dad turns his hands as he tries to steer the wheel, the car is a merry-go-round.

2. . . . . . .

The car turns too fast and it skids sideways, gravity grabs and launches our heads and bodies relentlessly around the car. The only thing my mind can think of now is why, why, why. As our speed throws us directly sideways into a direct crash course with the truck, it leaves me and my father to be the ones to meet the crushing weight of the truck. I throw my hands up over my head in panic and scream so loud you'd think the it would break the windows if they weren't breaking already. The heavy semi starts to come down on the roof in slow motion. . .

1. . . . . .

0. . . .

Echo

The girl on the glowing TV screen was cryin', and I was too. She held her unicorn stuffed animal tightly as she wailed for a family that she would never see again. Paramedics comfort her and give her one of those blankets as a news reporter tries to say how she was the luckiest, unlucky girl in the county. She got by with merely scratches, but everyone else in the car perished unmercifully.

". . .one of the worst accidents we've seen in Maden county in a very long time, with 4 casualties and leaving this poor girl nowhere to go. Police say the accident was caused by a semi truck driver who appeared to have suffered a sudden heart attack." The screen jumps to a young police man who had been the first to arrive on the scene. "We looked for anything that might have indicated what had caused his sudden incident, his last phone record was a call from a hospital, and obviously it wasn't very good news. . ."

The subway station was dimly lit and bustlin', my children on either side of me waiting for our train back to the city. I hope they didn' see my tears. The last thing they needed was to see their big black daddy breakin' down. It wasn' just this that I was crying for, It was th' hardship. The one that everyone seems to have to suffer. Why did it have to happen everywhere? With myself not even being sure if I can feed my kids tonight, not having a car to get around. Where's the food t'night Papa? Oh, I don' know sweet plum, maybe in the morning we'll find some. I prayed to god that that girl would have a nice warm secure place to stay tonight, one with family and not with cold strangers.

"Papa this's takin' too long, I'm tired." My son groaned with impatience. My daughter nodded with big swoops of her head in agreement, her beads chiming with her. We sat together in silence, they knew that complaining about it wouldn't make it any better anyways, and they knew my lack of an answer meant that.

"I hope that sem-EYE driver goes straight to hell!!!!" a large colored woman with a large floral pink hat exclaimed. "He wasn't paying NO attention!! I hope he pays for what he did, god help that little one." she raved.
"That poor poor girl. . ." Another elderly Caucasian woman grieved.

It was truly a story you don’t see on the news too often, I noticed quickly how it silently devastated everyone waiting at the subway station. Almost everyone had their head down in sadness or a pained glaze in their eyes, feeling all the sympathy in the world for the little girls whose own was destroyed in seconds.

“Someone should start a fundraiser.” A spanish woman suggested, and with that nearly all the strangers at the stop started murmurin’ and talkin’ about the girl and how they could help.








It was a special kind of amazing. The kind that enveloped your heart and wove it around a ribbon of soft silk laden elation. Thousands upon thousands of people had come, much more than the expected outcome, as it had been.

The support for Yuna Asami roared with cheers for the third day of The Walk For Home fundraising event. The growth of the young girls support had grown rapidly over the week and a half after the accident. It warmed my soul to see so many people come together, to fight the hardship that everyone will experience at a point in their life.

My uncle had said something about that once before, that it is useless to fight fate, that all it would bring is more hardship. I think that if he is seeing this now he would be proved wrong. I’d never had a close relationship with him, but I still grieved, and even more for Mary. I hope he found her up there in that big blue sky.

“Aya, go put our flowers by your grandpa’s picture.” I pointed to where it was with the other memorials. She ran her way over to it and set it down. “I love you grandpa” see whined. She kissed the picture and quickly wiped her tears away with awkward hands. It almost made me cry to see the lack of flowers at his memorial.

I looked around to see some of the people that decided to come. I saw a black man with his daughter and son, all wearing T-shirts for the event and excitedly talking amongst each other. A large woman with a big pink hat talking with fellow activists, a group of teenagers and others with their families. A sweet quiet elderly woman that looks like she came alone and a Spanish woman with her husband. I took comfort in the company as we started the long walk.