Ilivethebeat

I remember wandering through the woods around my neighborhood when I was around five years old. Back then I lived with my mom in a multi-racial community of apartments on the west side of Alexandria. I saw a group of black guys with a spanish girl. I wasn’t sure what they were doing except that the girl was completely surrounded by all the guys and their pants were down. One of the guys spotted me and quickly let the others know. I knew the girl. She was the daughter of the pastor from the church my mother and I went to. She was also my babysitter. I always played in those woods, just getting lost and finding my way out. But that was certainly the first time that I had ever seen anything like that. I had certainly never seen my babysitter in the woods either.

The guys had all pulled their pants up and began lighting up their cigarettes. She came over to me and began asking me what I was doing out there.

   “I’m just exploring.”
   “Baby, you need to go home. You can’t be out here alone what if you get stolen by somebody?” I remember how much I loved looking at her, she was 15, much older than me, but even a 5 year old like me could tell you that she was very pretty.
   “What were you doing out there?” I asked innocently.
   “We was just playing. We weren’t doing nothing. Can you make me a promise?”
   “Ya I can promise…” She turned around and looked back at the big, black guys. They were looking over at us and I felt scared of them. None of them were smiling and they all looked like they wanted to hurt me.
   “Promise me you don’t tell my dad or my brothers you saw me here, ok? You promise?”

Me and her younger brothers played together all the time so I knew they would tell on her if I told them. I promised her that I would never say anything. I kept that promise, even until today I never told anyone what I saw that day. Once I hit puberty, and that memory floated its way into my mind, it all began to make sense and I began to understand what was going on that afternoon in the woods. I didn’t see anything to graphic, but I saw enough that my innocent eyes understood those kids weren’t playing, not with their pants down.

I can use this memory know as an analogy for the way things seem to happen in my life. As I wander and explore, I always seem to come across things that I just would never expect. Things that I don’t always comprehend until later. Sometimes I discover things that would have been much better off if had never found them at all. When I finally realized years later about my babysitter that day, it made me angry that she would subject herself to that kind of treatment. She was so pretty, so young, and she was a warm, loving, maternal latina who for some reason couldn’t love herself enough to stay away from those men. I remember how caring she was with me, and I always wished she was my older sister. I remember the way she would talk to me about her problems at school, about her dreams, all while she massaged her hands through my hair on her sofa.

The last time I saw her she was 17 and pregnant. Even though at the time I was seven, I didn’t understand why she would have a baby. As far as I knew she was still young and in high school and it didn’t make sense to me. I almost felt jealous. Wasn’t I just as close to her as anyone of those other guys? I remember one time, she took me into her room, and started crying and I held her hand and told her not to cry. It made me sad to see her cry. She picked me up and started kissing me on the lips. It wasn’t just a small kiss either, it was making out. And at five years old, I had recieved my official first kiss. How long ago that seemed when I saw her with her full belly, walking alone as I passed her with my mother.

It was the last time I would see her before my mother and I moved to a better neighborhood right by Old Town, but I think about her from time to time. Just a few months ago my mother apparently came across her at the grocery store. My mother came home exclaiming her encouter with my old babysitter Karina.

   “She’s huge. She’s gained so much weight!” My mother isn’t the most modest person in the world. “She has three kids! All with different fathers!”

No matter how I try I can not imagine her that way. The same jealous feeling even came over me alittle bit. Why would she let that happen? Where did her dreams go? To me, in my mind, she is always going to be the caramel skinned Salvadorean girl, with the poofy, wavy, black hair. I will remember her with her dark, black eye liner, cat-like eyes, and her thick, pink lips. She was thin, curvy, beautiful, and was my first real crush.

It’s memories like these that keep me wandering. It’s memories like these that keep me running. It’s also memories like these that keep me dreaming for better things. I would never let this happen to myself or to anyone else that I care about. It bothers me that I could not talk to her through those tough years, but I was only five. It’s these memories that make me who I am today, as odd as I am. But that’s life I guess. Karina if you’re out there I will always remember you as I do in my mind. You are always going to be beautiful to me and I thank you for taking care of me when no one else could.

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