America, Someone's Nightmare?

 

                                   America, Someone's Nightmare?     By Julianna Rowe

 

I held my sister as she died in my arms.  Drive by shooting. Alesha stared at me with her deep brown dying eyes as life drained from her body.  I felt her bloodied flesh filled with terror turn to peace as her life stopped and her spirit ascended to a new world.  Mama wanted to take her from me and hold her but she didn't. She knew Alesha was right where she belonged in my arms.  Papa wanted to run into the streets and kill all the gang members that had hurt so many in our little town and now had murdered his sweet daughter Alesha.

The following day mama and papa decided it was time to flee our home country.  It had become unsafe to leave our house for food, work, and or any reason at all.  We were starving mentally and physically due to the fear instilled by the gangs.  Papa had saved some money hidden behind one of the bricks that held our lives safe from the elements but not safe from the thieves that had taken over our country.  Papa knew it was time to run for our lives.

We buried our sweet sister and daughter in the dirt that surrounded the home we had always felt secure in until recently.  Papa wrapped her in the blanket mama had made for her when she was an infant.  I begged papa to cover her face with it because I could barely stand to see the brown sand and dirt cover and fill her beautiful brown eyes.  For months my mind had the reoccurring thought of my sweet sister and best friend rotting under the dirt covered with bugs and worms.  It was nearly more than I could bare but I had no one to confide in.  There was no way I could tell mama or papa what my mind’s eye was seeing. As surely as their minds eye was seeing the same thing but my small time on earth didn’t allow me to realize that.  I had to deal with losing my best and only friend alone.

We had no choice but to leave Alesha behind. All I could think of was her under the ground and alone as we left the only home, we had ever known fleeing our once beloved country that had now been overrun with bandits, thieves, and murderers. In the dead of night, we moved as quickly as possible praying baby Huey wouldn't wake the evil men before we got far enough away to feel safe.

I and my infant brother followed my parents for over one thousand miles to find a better life.  Looking back on it now I can't imagine how we made it.  We took the clothes on our backs, each a backpack with water, some food, diapers, toothbrushes, soap, one change of underwear and only a blanket for myself and baby Huey.  No coats as the weather we were traveling in was very warm.  Oh, and the money papa had saved behind the brick wall was taking us to a new and safe life, in America.

The walking was treacherous.  By the time we had traveled halfway across dirt, rocks, and clay, our shoes had lost most of their soles just as we were losing our life souls as well. The walk was long, hard, and hot and the only thing that kept us going was hope and fear of not being murdered by the merciless gangs back home.  The land of freedom was ahead....no one shooting, robbing, and killing us in our own homes.  We had escaped Hell.  Not that the thousand-mile walk wasn't a Hell of its own but again faith kept us going toward the land of the free.

I was a young boy who was having to grow up fast in a cruel, dangerous, frightening, world.  I was surrounded by other children and grownups all of us physically filthy on a journey to somewhere better than where our lives had been.  Our only comparison was from what we knew before the raids on our homes began. 

Yet the death of my sister haunted me every step of my own personal small adult journey. I talked to Alesha what seemed like every minute of every step we took.  I worried about her alone in the dirt with the bugs.  Maybe they would comfort her?  All I knew was my bad scary life was over as I knew it but this wasn't much better even though my papa told me we were walking toward a new world of all good things.  A place where no one would hurt us anymore.  America.

Or, so we thought.