Waiting

It’s 3 am as I wake to the sound of light snoring. I quietly tiptoe out of bed and grab the remnants of what I had been wearing. As I bend to kiss her on her forehead, I notice her arm peeking out from her covers. Instinctively I trace the numbers branded on her arm with my finger. I think about the strength of her arms wrapped around me just hours earlier as she rocked me to sleep. The power of her words as I struggled to make sense of this day. I am waiting for my justice.

Twenty years have passed marked by silent pain and a memory I dare not tell. Only one week ago I shared my story to a room full of strangers amidst cement walls and iron gates. Questions I could barely answer as the words froze on my tongue. I glanced at the pictures, my face not even recognizable to myself, but yet I remember every smell and sound.

I think back to the first time I sat on a couch barely able to tell my story. No eye contact as I watched my feet and the words leave my mouth. And even while I watched the letters escape, I felt a disconnect. The person in the story wasn’t me. It was someone else I used to know. I like who she is now.

I asked my grandmother how she has always been able to tell her story. She smiled as she moved the curl from my face. “Because” she says, “it’s a story about survival”. She reminded me of the time I climbed the jungle gym in school. I was only 5 as my older brother sat under the structure crying, unable to face his fear. She laughed as she recalled that she had to ask a stranger to get me down. She couldn’t climb it either.

Once home, I sit down to the glowing box to reread the long distance ego boost I received days before. I wondered how warm beer and spaetzle could trigger thoughts of me. I think about my friend the monkey man wishing he were up to share maker’s with me and the latest viral videos so I could laugh. And I remember a line from an Eddie Murphy movie as I think about the brand on her arm, “I’m a karate man, I bruise on the inside.”

Last week I was judge and jury. My ruling told, my sentence stated. But today I am waiting.