Hal nestled Valentina close against him and cocooned her in the warmth of his arms. When she burrowed herself deeper against his shoulder and let out a long sigh of contentment, he felt a sudden burst of something so wondrous and powerful that it stilled his heart for a moment.
This is what it must feel like to be in love. Hal had the fleeting notion before rational thought took over because he was not that guy.
Definitely, not that guy.
Still, there was something about the two of them together that was strong and binding and good. Something that Hal wanted to— needed to—explore. But there was a whole lot of shit that they had to navigate through together before they got there. Stuff that Hal was sure that Valentina would rather have her fingernails pulled off one by one than tell him. But he was determined to push her through it, because Hal had seen that poison too many times not to call it what it was. Torment—it wrapped around Valentina in thick vines, stretching across time and space and reason. Whatever this was, whatever was eating at her, was deep and dark and would eventually snap and destroy her.
“Talk to me, baby.”
“Hal, please…I can’t.” She went to move away from him.
He pulled her back tight against him. “You think I haven’t heard and seen and done the worst things possible?” He whispered low as he smoothed her hair. “Jesus, look at me, I’m scarred from head to toe, and that’s only what you see on the outside. Whatever there is to say, I want to hear, whatever you feel, I’ll understand, and baby, whatever you’ve done, I’ve done a hell of a lot worse.” Then he tipped her face towards his so that she could see the truth in his eyes. “And, Tia, there’s nothing you can tell me that will ever change the way I look at you.”
Hal watched on in quiet helplessness as tears fell from Valentina’s eyes in thin rivulets of deep despair. Her lower lip quivered as she pushed the hesitant words out of her mouth. They hung in the air like a trapped lion shaking the bars of its cage.
Her voice was no more than a whisper when she posed the heart-wrenching question.
“Hal, have you ever killed a child?”
Instead of answering, Hal pulled her deeper into his arms and held her tight. “It’s time, Tia. It’s time to let it out. Tell me baby, tell me what happened to you.”
It took a while, but eventually Hal felt Valentina relax in his arms. When she finally began to talk, her voice was no louder than a whisper. “A group of volunteers came to my college senior year and gave a lecture on Haiti— Haiti a small, poor country with a big, generous heart—that was the name of the presentation. It was honest and brutal and beautiful all at the same time. And I had been living in such a sheltered environment, such a world of privilege, that I wanted to— I needed to— do something to give back.” Valentina looked at Hal with blatant honesty. “In my eyes, my father is a perfect man. He is protective and loving, generous and loyal. I could not have grown up with more love, attention, or kindness. But having said that, I am not a stupid woman or a blind one. I know that my father is also a man who has done and commanded others to do unspeakable acts of brutality. I love him and I worry for him. I worry for the redemption of his soul. I think a part of me wanted to go to Haiti for him. I guess I thought if I did good, if the daughter did good in this world, it would help to save the father.” Then she gave Hal a small smile. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but I guess all those years at Catholic school left me with more than a hatred for plaid, pleated skirts.”
Valentina smiled sadly at Hal then went quiet for a long moment. She sighed heavily and slumped her shoulders as if she carried the weight of the world, then she began again. “Even before the quake, things were already bad in Haiti. The living conditions were and continue to be terrible. I guess in one of the poorest countries in the world, you would expect that. Being a teacher, my concentration—my concern— was focused on the children. So many of them had already been orphaned by past disasters. Prior to the quake, the country had already endured so many natural catastrophes—all of biblical proportions. There is almost yearly flooding, the deadly storms in 2004 and 2005. that horrible hurricane in 2008, all left hundreds if not thousands of children orphaned. I won’t even get into the waves of political exile where dissidents were forced to leave their country and their children behind. Honestly, Hal, the only thing that is missing from their recent history is plague and pestilence. The infra-structure is weak to begin with, and there is no quality of construction to any of the buildings. The schools are really nothing more than framed walls covered with cardboard and curtains, and the orphanages are not any better. They had warned us all about the conditions, and I was prepared for that— I was. I was prepared for the hopelessness and the anger and the apathy that I imagined I would find instilled in the children growing up in that kind of grinding and extreme poverty. But what I found instead were little heroes. To live with fear and uncertainty of what the future holds, yet to get up every day with a smile on your face, eager to learn, and strive to be better, to do better…to try to make something of your life, it was an honor and a pleasure teaching those children. I loved them and I like to think they loved me in return. I had just finished up a counting lesson with my first-grade students when this horrible noise thundered out all around us. It sounded like a bomb explosion, and it just seemed to come out of nowhere. We had no warning. No warning. Then that same sound came blasting up from underneath us and shook and shook and shook the ground in these violent waves. The tables and chairs were jumping all around us like they were under some sort of macabre and horrible voodoo spell, and the ceiling began to fall away in chunks. My students—those poor little children—they were so scared—so confused—so quiet in their terror. They didn’t scream or yell. They barely breathed. They just stood there and looked at me, waiting for me to help them, trusting that I would help them. Their eyes pleaded with me to do something. Anything. But I didn’t. I couldn’t make myself move. I froze and hell came raining down all around us.”
Valentina pulled away from Hal then and sat up in bed with her arms around her knees. Her eyes brimmed with tears and the words came out now were in low mournful whispers. “One moment I was looking at their sweet little faces and the next, the earth just opened and swallowed them whole. They were less than five feet away from me, and I couldn’t reach them in time. Then the rest of the building collapsed. An enormous slab of concrete came flying towards me and knocked me on my back. It stopped just inches from my nose. I lay straight on my back like that for days. It was like being trapped in a coffin. Everything was so dark and close. I was entombed in this pocket of air all by myself. Those thick slabs of concrete separating me from my students— but I could hear them. I could hear them crying and pleading and dying. I could hear them dying. Then slowly the screams began to fade one by one and god help me, that was worse. When the last cries stopped, there was nothing but total emptiness. Nothing but a black void. I didn’t know the world could be that dark. Or that quiet. And it was so hot. I felt like I was boiling from the inside out. My throat and nose were as dry as a desert and my tongue had swollen so that it was hard for me to breath. When I felt that first trickle, that first stream running down my face I was so happy. I thought that it was a sign, a sign that I would survive. Only that stream wasn’t water.” Now Valentina placed her cheek on her knees and turned her face from Hal. Her voice strained with the struggle of telling. “What was seeping down through the rubble was raw sewerage and it just kept coming and coming and coming. It streamed down on my face for days. And I drank it. I drank human waste to keep myself alive.”
Valentina turned her tear streaked face to Hal. “So, you see, when it was me—when it was my life at stake, I did anything I could do and needed to do to save myself. Anything. Even it meant ingesting the vilest thing imaginable and lying in a concrete coffin for days on end. I survived that. But I didn’t do what I had to do, what I needed to do, to save those little children. How can I live with that?”
Valentina bit down on her lip and let out a long, mournful sigh.
“Close your eyes,” Hal said to her.
“What?”
“Just close your eyes, Tia.”
“Why? Hal, didn’t you hear anything I said…”
Hal frowned at her. “Tia, baby, close your fucking eyes.”
Valentina closed her eyes, and almost instantly Hal commanded her to open them again.
Valentina’s sad brown eyes met Hal’s determined iced- blue ones.
“What was that all about?”
“That was all about time. Twenty-five seconds to be exact, honey.” He pulled her into his arms again and laid her back with him against the pillows. “That’s how long that earthquake lasted. Twenty-five damn seconds. Fucker was an eight on the Richter scale and you said yourself it came with no warning. Twenty-five seconds is all it took to devastate a country. You didn’t freeze baby, you took a goddamn breath. By the time you made sense of it, it was over. You couldn’t have saved those kids, Tia. You didn’t have the time. No one had the time. That’s why so many lives were lost. I’m just really, really, glad that yours wasn’t one of them.”