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CHAPTER EIGHT:
Forgotten and Remembered
Roza was seven when I met her. We were both seven.
The similarities ended there.
They called her Rosie, Mr. and Mrs. Fallow, Ro for short. And she was beautiful.
She had these full, perfect, chocolate-brown, black ringlets that bounced when she walked, and eyes that were deep and soulful. And full of life.
She was joyous and happy and sincerely loved the entire world.
And I hated her.
Where she was short, I was tall; where she was bright, I was dark; where she seemed priceless, I was worthless. The difference was so extreme it might have been comical, had I allowed the joke without the bitterness that followed.
I had been told that her name was Roza days before she even knew my face, so it confused me a little when Mr. and Mrs. Fallow not only didn’t call her that, but asked me not to as well.
I saw her tat a few days later.
I never called her ‘Ro’ or ‘Rosie’ ever again. Except for now, in my head. Because now, to me, Rosie is that little girl from the past; Roza is a completely different person, one with many more scars than just the ink ridden one scratched on her ankle.
When Mr. and Mrs. Fall- when Roza’s parents were both dead, at first, they tried to keep us together, the Social Services people, I mean. It never worked but once.
With Samuel.
Sometimes I wish I could see her again, hear her voice; Rosie had a beautiful voice, not some amazing, stage-worthy thing, but a soft, lilting tone. When we were young and the nightmares got real bad, Roza would sing to me. She would brush the hair from my forehead after a particularly bad dream and would sing this sweet, foreign lullaby in my ear until I fell back asleep.
And the next morning it would be like nothing had happened; she’d come jumping into the room at 6am, shivering with excitement over an unusually large ladybug or a greatly exaggerated animal noise or something else equally enticing. Roza was just like that.
But Roza had stopped singing long before I lost my sight. Even before Samuel. And now neither were possible, even if she were here again.
And yet, somehow, in all my selfishness, sometimes, I wish she were.
All I have left are the memories. And the horrible, gut-wrenching pain of loss and fear and death.
Sometimes I wish for so much and sometimes so little.
And sometimes, if I’m very quite and still, I can hear that little voice.
~Sarah Bannel June 2012
*June 18, 2012*
The very air seemed hot as the sun beat down on the small town of Tulancingo, Mexico. The heat was angry and vengeful; the sun exuding pure fire, moreso even than it’s usual summer’s passion. Or so it seemed.
