A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER V - Part 2
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
It was like standing on a cliff on a cold, windy night … looking up and seeing the stars … then looking down and knowing you have to jump or be turned into salt. I had to live my own life my own way from now on.
The same thing snapped years before when were stationed in Morocco. I saw how my friends, the Arab Beggars, went through the trash cans looking for things to eat, and how they went to the bathroom squatting in the empty field across the road. I wanted to help them, especially the beggar boy who brought his monkey to do its tricks for me for free. Being eight, I had nothing with which to help them … except Jesus. I love Jesus. If they only knew about him … that would make their lives a little easier. I had a vision one night. I knew what I was going to do for them.
I could hardly wait until morning to tell Mom of the plan. I was going to rewrite the whole Bible so simply that even the beggars would understand it. Mom just laughed good-naturedly when I told her of my mission. The Bible was already translated into Arabic. I’d better wait until I could write, until I had read the Bible. I got so angry because she didn’t take my vision seriously that something snapped, and I ran away from home. When she left the room, I slid out of my chair, rolling or dragging myself to the door, fought the screen door open, and rolled down the walk to the chalk white gate. The gate was open, and I could see the street beyond. Which way should I go on the street? Then Mom came out and carried me back into the house.
This time when the thing snapped inside, I would get through the gate and far down the road before Mom could come out of the house. I had to go places and do things … alone. I would now. I had a new freedom and a new loneliness, stripped of any guilt or sense of duty. If she didn’t believe in me, see me, then I didn’t owe her anything except to recognize the part, the very important part, she did play in my life. She did play … but no more.
“I’m free! I’m free! And Freedom tastes of reality.” But the doubt, the fear, the question, kept going through my head: was Mom right? Only sick girls would want me? Suzy wasn’t any proof. She was in her own little, insane world. Only sick girls … sick in their head. Another question followed. Had Mom known before my bladder operation five months ago what the side effect would be? I had found out by myself a couple months later that I was now ninety-five percent safe … thanks to the bladder operation, I couldn’t have kids.
No one told me. Maybe no one saw me … maybe everyone was playing a game on me, making me think that I was something, that I was doing something, when they were just playing with me. Either I could curl up into a ball and let them play their games, or I could show them I was working with reality.