Garencia, Florida
Today is my last day here.
Someone broke a window last night so it's a good thing, the only thing,
perhaps, that we can do. It's hard on my brother. But then I think: I
never asked him to come here.
I'm trying to walk around at night. My brother says that I should wait until
we move. He's afraid someone is going to try to hurt me.
Since the trial, nothing is a surprise. Who would have thought that, at
the age of forty-five, my entire world would be turned upside down by a
mere fever?
I had a fever that swung between 102°~ 109° for three days. People
have been turned into vegetables by less. Maybe there is something in us
that hates the sight of weakness.
I don't think, for instance, that I would have ever been considered a suspect
had I not had this sudden disability, lost my job, sat in front of my porch
day after day, doing nothing but staring at the trees. For the first month,
there was something mesmerizing in the leaves, the way they overlapped and
let in sunlight, how they touched each other.
Sitting there like that and shaking slightly, this, it seems, was the real
crime.
But I am here, free to walk around at night, free to leave this town if
I want,
and still it is of no use.
I cannot remember anything of importance. It is not a matter of jogging
my memory.
It's that I feel this vast absence, this indescribable texture of something
having been raked
across my mind. Nothing is going to come back.
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