October 2, 2002 ~ Detachment of the Wind *fiction*
Wednesday.
When I start to develop a character, I let him sit in my head for a while until he comes to life on his own. Sometimes two characters meet up in my head and start talking. The following story, written a while back, is the result of just such an occurrence.
And, the obligatory warning: Several professors have seen this work as it has developed, so I have proof of copyright. Please don't steal.
Detachment of the Wind
"It's places like this that remind me why I don't believe in God," Sandy whispered, gesturing toward the building she had just left. She stood with her back to me, and the wind nearly stole her words. She kept her face turned away, and I suspected that she was crying.
I looked back at the house. The windowpanes were reflecting the overcast sky, matching the gray paint. The swings rocked in the wind as if ghost-children were playing. "What happened in there?"
"It's Tammie..." She trailed off.
I thought of the waifish girl with the mocha skin, wispy black hair, and deep brown eyes. The day before, Tammie had instinctively cringed when I had raised my hand to her face to brush a crumb from her cheek. Her cringe had brought a lump to my throat. I wondered what repeated actions in her past had caused such fear of a quickly moving hand.
"Sometimes I hate this job," said Sandy. The wind made her voice sound hollow. It carried her words away before they could sting me. "I can't believe..." Softer this time.
I wanted to question her, to force her to tell me what had happened, but I restrained myself. I knew the words would come; she was always open with me.
Sandy was breathing heavily, floundering for control. I watched her clench her hands into fists and then drop them to her sides. "Someone has taught that little girl..." She stared at the pavement. I could see one side of her face now, tense and frowning. "She thinks that she has to... to... Oh, Michael, it was awful."
I touched Sandy's shoulder, and she turned away again. "She... tried to touch me. My breast, my thigh. It was terrible. She was offering. I told her not to do that, and she ran away." Sandy made an exasperated noise and hit the brick wall in frustration. I cringed. She cradled her hand. "How could someone teach a child to do those things?"
I knew that her question was not directed at me, despite her steady gaze.
"I can't believe God would ever let some bastard do that to a child," she said, wiping at her face, her words catching in her throat. "God can't exist. Not if that does."
It always came to this. I didn't want to defend myself again; Sandy needed me to listen, not to argue. I realized that I had been holding my breath, so I slowly let it out, wishing the tension would dissipate like my stale air. Silence hung stagnant between us, despite the wind.
"How can she be helped?" Sandy nearly shouted, startling me as she suddenly whipped around to face me. "There is no hope for a child like that! She thinks that... that what they taught her is the only way to love. We can't just fix that. No one can fix that. And for every child we do help, there's another, and another, and another. They are a long chain that never ends. A chain of broken links."
I felt sick. I couldn't find words to interrupt, though I wanted to disagree. I knew from the look on her face that this was far from over. I wished that our ideologies were not constantly coming to blows. It all came down to the same central disagreement, cloaked with a thousand different contexts.
"This world is meaningless," said Sandy, pacing. "It is sick. We do things to heal it, but all of our actions never matter in the end."
I realized that my face had slipped from my cover, and I was letting the ache show. I was glad that her back was turned.
"I can't heal Tammie," she continued, "No one can. And even if I could, there will always be another broken Tammie to take her place. I will keep working, trying to heal the Tammys, but it really doesn't matter that I do." She made a dismissive gesture.
"I still believe in God," I mumbled. Why did I say that? Was that my eloquent defense?
"How?" Sandy thundered. "How can you, Michael? How can you believe that something is out there, something benevolent, watching all this happen, allowing all of this to happen? If your God is the cause of those children's shitty lives, then I don't want to meet that God."
I shuddered. "I do not blame God for the suffering of those children," I said. "I blame the individuals who abused them." I took a deep breath. "I would never blame God when the blame should rest entirely on the individual choice of each and every aggressor, each and every person who caused all the collective pain in that building. God can't be blamed for the weak and broken nature of certain cruel human beings."
"But God can be blamed for allowing it to happen, for not intervening!" She struck me sharply with a withering glare.
Certain expressions travel and never miss their mark, no matter how strongly the wind tries to lead them astray, supernatural arrows.
I inwardly recoiled, trying to keep my voice soft. "If God were to intervene... What would we be, then? Puppets? No will of our own, every single action dictated by a tyrant God. We make our own choices. God does not make them for us. I would not be surprised, though, if God weeps constantly for all of the sufferers."
"Well, you stick with your weeping God," she said in a voice soft but full of scorn. "Let your weeping God be a comfort to you, for such a God is good for nothing but comfort, if that God can't save all the sufferers from their suffering."
A thousand retorts floated through my head, but I stifled them. "Why do you work here, if you think it's all meaningless?"
"This is my job," she said coldly.
"Well, yes..." I said.
"I must do my job. It is the responsible thing to do."
She was shutting me out. "But you don't believe that the work you do does any good, right? Why do you do it if it has no purpose?"
"I didn't say it had no purpose. It is meaningless, on the larger scale, but it does have a purpose on the small level."
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head.
She sighed and stood contemplating an ant on the ground. "I could squash this ant," she said matter-of-factly. "It would be meaningless on the larger scale. It really wouldn't matter at all. If I squashed it, another ant would take its place. On the smaller level, however, it matters. It matters to that ant." She paused and watched the ant disappear into a crevasse. "I could ignore Tammie, or I can help her. It doesn't matter on the large scale at all, for there will always be an infinite number of children who suffer just like her. On the small level, however, there is a chance that my help will matter to Tammie. So I help her. Overall, the large scale balances out. There are the sufferers and the aggressors, the ignorers and the healers. I choose to be with the healers. That is my job. That is my dignity. Even though the scale will never tip to one side."
I stood silent for a while. We both shivered in the wind. "I think the main difference between you and me, Sandy," I said, "is that I think the scale can tip. I think it matters that I help the sufferers, that I am a healer. It matters, not just to Tammie, but to the larger scale as well. Maybe that larger scale is God, holding it all together."
"There you go with your God again," she said, shaking her head. "You are so full of easy solutions." She said 'easy solutions' just as a betrayed wife would say 'the other woman.'
Anger welled up in me. I tried to stop it, but stopping such anger is like trying to stop a rising bubble with a finger. The bubble is sure to pop. Especially with Sandy. I had let her in, and that always made me defensive. "Sure, go ahead, just write me off as if I have no depth!" I yelled, seething.
Her eyes widened, her lips parted slightly, and she let out a short spurt of breath. Her shoulders shrugged slightly, as if she were ridding herself of some dirty garment. She turned away and walked slowly back toward the building.
"No, no wait!" I cried. "I didn't mean to imply... I'm sorry. I... You have more compassion than that, I shouldn't have accused... You know... I have a reason to work here too... Do you want to hear it?"
She slowly turned and walked back toward me, her eyes expectant. Forgiven, they said.
I never learn. I always let her farther in. I suddenly felt oddly trapped. I had promised a story, and it was there, beautiful in my mind. But it went in a thousand directions and I didn't know which one to take. I sat down on the curb and took a deep breath. "I know, personally, what it's like to be one of those children." There. It was out. It was started.
Her face melted into concern, "Oh..." she muttered. "I had no idea..." Her eyes communicated her lack of words, but the compassion was there.
"It's okay," I said quickly. "You see, my parents... Oh, but does the story really matter? There are a hundred more of the same stories in there," I said, gesturing toward the building, sighing. "I suffered. I retreated into a shell. They took me away from my parents; then a few good people pulled me out of my shell. I learned to live, to love. I wanted to give something back, so I work here."
She nodded.
I took a guilty breath. "But that's not all..."
She cocked her head slightly, a frown crossing her forehead. "What?"
"I can't discount those experiences as wrong and evil. They hurt, yes. They made me suffer, yes... But living through them, working through that pain, getting past the blame... all of those things made me who I am today. The pain is a part of me. I cannot separate it from myself. Not only do I believe that good actions, good experiences, have both a lower and a higher, more universal purpose, I also believe that bad actions and experiences have a higher purpose too. They work into who we are. The world would be a very boring place if it had no suffering. There would be no point to it, really. But there is suffering. So there is meaning and a higher purpose."
She looked at me for a long moment with an odd expression on her face. Actually, her face had no expression at all, but her eyes were confused. They looked as if they didn't belong with her blank expression. "I don't quite buy it," she said slowly. "It is all random. There is suffering, and there is also joy. The existence of the two proves nothing. If anything, it makes me think even more that it is all chaos. Neither side ever wins."
"But we grow from experiencing both," I said.
"Yes. Some grow for the good; some grow for the bad. That doesn't mean anything," she said quietly but firmly.
"Look," I said, trying to find words. "I can't help but believe that some force has been helping me along the way, has been pushing me toward where I am now. That is all. Call it fate, call it synchronicity, call it God. My God is not just a comfort, as you suggested, only a weeping presence in the sky. God gives me opportunities to learn and grow. There lies the meaning in my life, and from there everything else make sense." I looked down, feeling somewhat embarrassed.
When I looked up, I could tell from her eyes that she didn't agree, but she understood. "It all sounds very beautiful..." she said, trailing off, "but--and I'm sorry--but that is all, a beautiful dream. A comfort. If God's plan includes suffering, then I think it needs some revision," she said, with a sad smile. "It all seems so meaningless, so ultimately pointless to me."
"But you," I said slowly, "You don't seem entirely believable to me either. Working for what you believe to be a hopeless cause. No, there is more to you than a meaningless duty and responsibility. There has to be something more than duty driving you. I think you have hope in there somewhere." I gave her a sideways glance.
"I swear to you," she said, "I don't think it will ever get any better, no matter what anyone ever does."
"You don't think that, if enough of us worked together, we could tip that scale just a tiny bit?"
"Nope. There will always be someone on the other side of that scale, equaling of all our weight."
"Really?" I said, smiling ironically. "What causes that perpetual balance to your universe, then? Could God fit in there?"
"Nope," she said, shaking her head. "Only chaos. Chaos seeks equilibrium. If you flip a coin several times, you always end up with just as many heads as tails. You should head back in," she said softly. "Back to the scales; time for some balancing."
"Some tipping," I corrected her.
"Whatever," she called after me, as I walked toward the house. I looked over my shoulder to see her contemplating an ant.
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