Reminisce

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I was only twelve when I learned what really happened, or rather, when they finally told me. They said my parents died in a car crash. They told it to me like a tale. And that was what it became; another story, like countless others, till the day I saw for myself. The first time I visited the scene, I was seventeen and I had one more year standing in the way of my freedom.

That day, I sneaked out, walked down the busy street and turned right, into the narrow path where it happened. They had described the accident so vividly I could feel it. I imagined my father loosing control of the car, just before it shot off the road and crashed into a tree, with my mother seated beside him. I was two years old and in the back seat, unharmed.

I stood and studied the tree. The dents were still there, like it happened yesterday. It reminded me of the first house I lived in, before they took me away. The children had their names carved on the trees surrounding the house. Then, I noticed the strange stares. At first, I thought it was because I’d been standing on the same spot for so long, but then I remembered they were staring because of the way I stood; my right hand in the pocket of my jacket and my left hand placed at the back of my head.

It was a pose I learned when I turned five, after I fought with the biggest boy in our room. I had done it to hide my bruised and shaky fingers from them. That was twenty years ago. Now, I try to not remember the dirty floors and stinky bathrooms, or the high bunks and cracked ceiling, or the way other children looked at us and said “you’re as dirty as the group home you live in” to our faces.

I still walk to the scene every weekday and I still stand with my one hand in my pocket and the other at the back of my head, not to hide bruised and shaky fingers this time, but to remember everything I’ve been through.

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