Traumatize, By Akena

It was in 1997 when I lived in the Villa area. My story took place in Villa, Antigua. It was a place where you had to run instead of walk. My mother’s two bedroom house was located on Christopher Street. We used to live in a green rental house. During the middle of the night, we would have to dash on the floor if we heard a gun shot. When I woke up in the morning, I would have to get up and cart water from the public pipe to my house. I used to carry eight gallons and a small bucket of water, which was so heavy. My hands and back used to hurt like crazy. My mother could not afford a private pipe in her yard, so we used to have to go back and forth for our water. I always thought to myself, why do I have to wake up so early in the morning? I hated it when my mom had to wake us up to get water. Most of the time the morning was dark as night and I always imagined I was rich, so that we wouldn’t have to cart water from all those blocks.

Most people on the island would wake up with fresh air, but I woke up with the smell of weed, and herbs wafting in my bedroom window. In front of our gate, we would see butt heads, and cigarettes lying in the gutter and neighbors screaming and yelling good morning to the folks walking by. Miss Lana is a little old lady, maybe the age of 65 or more, who would look out for us when my mother was at work. She smokes like a chimney and always offered my brother and me a puff. Her hair was always a hot mess with three curlers on her head. My mother would pay Miss Lana money to watch over me and my brother. Lana would send me to the grocery store, to buy her a little bottle of vodka and a 2lb bag of weed, or sometimes a box of cigarettes. When I arrived back from the store with her goods, she would say “Put this quarter in your pocket for rainy days.” The best of Miss Lana would be when she was sober, and that’s the time she took good care of us.

I remember the days when my mother had to work twelve hours a day to make a living. She worked at Woods Pharmacy where she was a cashier. She went to work at 3pm to 11pm at night. I was only seven years old at the time and my brother was only three years old. We never had a good babysitter. My mother was a single woman and single parent. One night when my mother was at work, I heard people running and screaming. My brother and I shared the same room, but different beds. We both got out of bed and looked through the window and saw a guy lying on the street in a pool of blood, ten minutes later the street was clear and everyone ran because they heard the sound of sirens rushing through the town.

I took it upon myself and went outside. I tried calling for help but the guy was in silence. “Leave him alone,” my brother screamed from the front step. I was scared to see a half dead person lying in front of the house.

“Who could do such horrible thing?” I said. My brother kept yelling for me to get inside and leave the man alone. I thought I was going to be in big trouble so I ran back in the house, when I saw the police cars turn the corner. When the cops arrived at the scene, they first looked at the green house and thought that someone in this particular house had something to do with the stabbing of the guy. While I was peeking through the window, I saw a fat heavy weight cop walking up the way. He then knocked on the door.

“Open up! Open up!” he said. Me and my brother ran straight to the back room and under the bed. We were petrified and we were crying for our mother. Once again we heard, “Please open up. It’s the police.” I slowly walked out to the living room and saw his shadow piercing through window. I open the door and hugged him. He saw that there was trepidation in my face. My brother was crying so much that he lost his voice.

“Young lady is there anybody else in the house?” said the police.

“No sir. My mother is at work and I don’t know where our babysitter went,” I replied.

“Where does your mother work?’ said the cops.

“She works at Woods Pharmacy,” shouted my brother. A female police officer took me into the room and asked me a few questions. Some of the questions were real difficult to answer. I was too young to know what was going on about this tragedy. My brother and I were taken down to the precinct for questioning. They fed us and gave us candy and all kinds of little cute treats. What the cops wanted to know was if we saw anything that happened to the dead guy. My mother picked us up at the police station, but before we could go, the cops had very long talk with her in another room. As we were leaving, my mother burst out crying, whispering softly “We got to get out.”

Until this day I didn’t see what happened; I still don’t know what happened up until this day. All I know for a fact is that I saw a half dead man lying in a pool of blood in front our house. When I think back on that night, I felt as if I was in danger. Maybe if I had seen what happened I would be a dead person too, because the person who did the crime was very brutal towards his victim.

When the morning breaks, we woke up with the sound of smashing windows, stones, bottles pleating at our house, and in front of our house. There were a lot of people in front of the house making noise and cursing my mother out. My mother had to call the police to get rid of them. The neighbors were very upset because of what had happened to the guy. For some stupid reason, they thought my mom had snitched on the killer. The anger and frustration of all the commotion had my mother stressed out. My mother lost her job and she stopped talking to Miss Lana. My mother had to make some rash decisions about leaving out of the ghetto.

Two months from the incident, we moved to the village of Bethesda. My mother had to call up a few family members to see if she could get a place to stay. Bethesda is a place that is in the country side and most of the high class people live there. My mother was raised in Bethesda and when she got pregnant, her aunt who was raising her kicked her out of the house. That is why we ended up living in the ghetto area of Antigua. We arrived at my aunt Hyacinth’s house in Bethesda. I had the most dreadful time living there. She treated us like slaves, and she would talk down to my mom. My whole life felt as if I was a pariah.

When I look back at my past, I think of it as a lesson. A way I can learn how to act towards others. I also learned how to mind my own business when I see a scene. Now that I am all grown up, I tend to take a lot of things seriously. I always tell people I know where I came from, and how much I struggled to get where I am today. Today I can’t see my soul rest because of the incident of the guy who had been stabbed.