Building Futures - The Book PT 1
She sat down on her couch and leaned back into its soft, welcoming comfort and breathed out a long sigh. A sigh of contentment. A sigh of accomplishment after a long Sunday with her two boys who were sleeping peacefully in a warm bed in the adjacent room. The soft glow of a lantern illuminated the entrance to their room, but beyond that, darkness. She could hear one of them snoring softly and she smiled. She knew which one it was. It was a comfort to hear him snoring; so sound asleep.
She sat up and reached under the couch and pulled something out and carefully unfolded the paper that surrounded it. It was the book. That’s what she called it in her head each time she thought of it. The book. She flipped open the cover and began carefully turning the pages; one by one until she came to one with a picture. Then she held it close and studied every last detail. The pictures were in color and although they were simple illustrations, they sparked her imagination so much, that to her, they came to life.
She had spent many hours flipping through the pages, studying every detail of every picture. She knew all of them intimately and yet she never tired of looking at them, as if one day they would change and become something new. But she did have a favorite and she had just turned the page that had revealed it.
It was a picture of men who had gathered for supper. They all wore long, flowing clothing, with oversized sleeves that cascaded with folds that overlapped one another. The table was filled with dishes and cups. Although there were several men seated around the table, one was obviously the center of attention. All eyes were on him. She knew who He was. But not until recently. Although she had heard His name spoken, she simply didn’t know who He was. She hadn’t known Him.
That very thought brought a tear to her eye. It rolled unnoticed by her; down her cheek and fell with a tiny splat in the center of the picture. It had fallen on Him! Her eyes went wide, and she inhaled sharply, carefully wiping away the droplet with the tip of her bony index finger and blowing on the damp spot through pursed lips as if trying to nurse a dying flame to life.
The book was a precious treasure to her now. A source of comfort. A source of hope and promises. But it hadn’t always been that way. Sitting there, she could still remember how mad she had been on the day she first received it. It had not been a good day to begin with. Terrible in fact. Like many days, weeks and even years before that. But that day was terrible indeed, because it was the end of a week in which she had failed every day to find food for her two boys. So, when the missionary had appeared in the space where a door should be on the mud hut she lived in, she had been in a foul, defeated and hopeless state of mind. He had an interpreter with him and introduced himself through that interpreter. Then he had proceeded, again, through the interpreter, to tell her that he was there to introduce her to God and give her a free Bible. As the interpreter had spoken those words, the man had extended his hand. In it, was a book, held firmly in his pale, thin grasp. She remembered looking down at the book in his hand and thinking about what she had been told. She remembered feeling the fire in the pit of her stomach that crept up her body, then her neck and her face. Her lips had trembled and she had spat out words like daggers in her fit of rage. “God? Who is this God and where is this God? I know nothing of your God because he has never shown himself to me a single day of my life. I am alone with my two boys in this filthy pit with no food for a week now. And you are here to give me a book? Am I supposed to feed my children with that book?!” She had paused, her body trembling in anger and even fear of the words that had come out of her own mouth. And yet she continued, with fire in her eyes. “Take your book and go! Take your God with you as well. There is no place for any of you in my home.”
She could still recall the look of sadness on the interpreter’s face. In his eyes. And she could still recall the pink that had painted the pale man’s cheeks. Anger? Embarrassment? She hadn’t known and she hadn’t cared. She had simply turned her back and walked into the utter darkness of her house made of mud. The men had left without another word. But a while later, when she ventured out to be sure they were gone, she had stumbled on something on the ground at the entrance. The book.
She had picked up the book and gave it a closer look. She had thought about using its pages to start her cook fires. But in the end, she took it inside and placed it on a shelf carved into the mud wall. She thought she would probably burn it later or find another use for it. She rarely threw anything away as a use could be found for most things.
She had slid down the wall and sat on the dirt floor under the shelf and pondered the interaction with the two men. They had made her so angry, but she remembers feeling guilty as she sat there against the cold, dirt wall. How could they have possibly known what she was going through back then? Or for that matter, most of her life.
They couldn’t have known, that she, like her own children, had grown up without a father. The memory of the day he left has haunted her.
He left on a warm and rainy summer day. He had returned from working in the fields and the look on his face as he stepped though the door was burned in her memory. A look of defeat. A look of total exhaustion and defeat. Her mother had been washing beans and stood up from the worn, wooden bench she was sitting on, wiping her wet hands on the skirt of her dress. She had turned to greet him with a smile on her face, but the smile had turned to a grimace when she saw the bottle in his hand. He was holding it like a bat, and she could see that it was mostly empty. She looked up at his face and then to his eyes. Bloodshot eyes. Angry, drunken eyes.
As her mother stammered out a greeting, he interrupted her with a terse “quiet woman!” He had continued in the same brutally condescending tone. “Do not even speak to me, standing there with a smile on that ugly face! I work in the sun. I work in the rain. On my hands and knees with my back bent for hours. I have to come home to this?” He swept the bottle around in an arc that incorporated the sum total of the tiny hut. “And to you two lazy and worthless females?” He had glanced at his daughter before turning his drunken gaze back to his wife. “You do nothing but watch after this one. And she is as worthless as you! Why couldn’t you have given me a son to help provide? And now you can no longer have children? Why should I work so hard to feed you two when I get NOTHING in return?”
That is when he had thrown the bottle. It had struck her mother in the chest and she had shrieked in surprise and her hands had flown to her chest. And then…her father had turned away and walked back out the way he had come. That was the last time she had ever seen him. Three days later, in the dark of an early morning, he was struck and killed by a truck as he lay passed out on the side of the road somewhere.
Sitting on the couch, the flood of memories had brought fresh tears to her eyes. She sobbed for a moment and then, once again, picked up the book. To be continued.