8. Diego
8
DIEGO
E very day passed the same, but that was both good and bad. On the bright side, I was adjusting to the injuries I’d received. My shoulder ached less. The cuts were knitting together with new scar tissue, and my head wasn’t as foggy. Dizziness ceased to hit me when I stood, and I was immensely grateful to feel clear-headed. I had been growing stir crazy sitting around and feeling overly idle. The need to sleep had passed, and I was more alert and eager to move.
This physical recovery was a blessing, and every day, I made sure to move a little more and stretch. Sitting around aggravated me, but pacing in the house helped to calm me down. Stretching in a series of calisthenics came to me with ease, and I had to wonder what I’d done to be this fit.
How? How can I not know who I am? It would drive me insane if my memories didn’t come back. I was stuck in this limbo, feeling like half of a person, a part of my soul incomplete.
With the blessing of regaining my physical strength, I accepted that my memories and identity were simply locked within me, and one day, I prayed I would come back to myself.
Even though I was stronger to walk and stretch, I remained in Sofia’s house. While she was at work and Ramon was at school or the neighbor’s, I acclimated myself to the rest of her home. I peeked out the windows, not recognizing the street outside. I snooped through her things, failing to feel a spark of familiarity with any of her bills and such. She didn’t seem to store much here. Browsing through books and rifling through odds and ends, I was stuck in this cluelessness.
For ten minutes, I stared at the calendar she had pinned to the wall in the kitchen, hoping the dates would trick me into thinking back. It didn’t work.
On the Dia de las Velitas, I heard someone coming in the front door when I was pacing in the living room, too antsy to sit any longer like a caged animal trapped in this home and in my mind. I could walk out, but where the hell would I go? Sofia had become my guiding light to not lose what remained of my mind.
I spun, watching the door open. Ramon came in, glancing at me standing.
He closed the door and smiled at me. “You’re getting better.”
I nodded. Partly.
“You’re walking around and moving,” he said.
This was the first time I’d been near him without his mother around, and the change in the routine stood out. “How come you are here?” I realized after I spoke how guarded I sounded. He was just a boy. He lived here, whereas I was just a confused guest. “I mean, where is your mother?”
“She will be home soon.” He shrugged as he entered, watching me cautiously. “Se?ora Vasquez is arguing with her daughter-in- law. Juan and I were playing outside, but I wanted to come home and see if I can find the candles before Mama comes home.” He raised his brows. “Do you know what the Noche de las?—”
“Noches de las Velitas. Yes. I remember that. All the candles, all the lanterns. It’s another Christmas tradition.” I rubbed the back of my head where the gash had healed over to thicker scar tissue.
I’ve always healed quickly. The thought popped in as a fact, and I brightened at this morsel of self-awareness. It gave me hope. I knew that about myself.
“That’s good.” Ramon smiled as he walked in. “It is good to remember.”
I shook my head and paced, making sure I didn’t invade his personal space. “But there is so much more I don’t remember. I don’t remember putting out candles. I don’t recall participating personally. Just that it happens.”
“Mama says not to force it, that it will come back.”
I shrugged. Will it? When? I couldn’t stay here and trespass on their lives.
“But you are up and walking around,” he commented as he set his school bag down. “That is good.”
“I get up and pace every day when you’re at school. I no longer need to nap all day.” Yet, I sat, sighing as I put my elbows on my knees. The shorts I wore were too big, but I appreciated that Sofia had found some in a donation bin near the clinic where she worked.
“Napping is for babies.” Ramon sat across from me, unafraid but cautious.
I smirked.
“Does that help you remember anything?” he asked.
“What?”
“The thought of babies.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You can’t remember any family?”
I shook my head again. He seemed insistent on ignoring Sofia’s advice not to push me where my memory was involved. And I welcomed it. “I don’t remember. My parents. A wife. Nothing.” A very faint hint of having a girlfriend wanted to poke into my thoughts, but it had to have been so long ago. Nothing… significant.
His brow lined as he glanced down. “Then that must mean you don’t have any.”
I blinked, surprised with how confident he sounded to guess that. “How so?”
“You would feel it in here, no?” He pointed his finger to his heart. “Mama helped a neighbor deliver her baby last summer, and I remember her telling her that she will never be the same again. That even though the baby is born, inside, the mother will always be changed. That the baby’s blood had come from her and mixed with hers. That the baby’s DNA had been with hers and genetically, the mother will always know she had a baby.”
Damn. The boy impressed me with how mature he seemed for his size, but it appeared he soaked up knowledge like a sponge too. I had no experience with children. Deep down, I knew that about myself, that before I was knocked out, I wasn’t someone used to dealing with kids.
“How old are you?”
“Six.” He arched a brow. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
He opened his eyes wide. So did I. I tipped my face up and gaped at him as he smiled.
“You said you’re thirty-three.”
I did. “It… it just came out.” Uncensored. I didn’t think it. It just popped out as an automatic reply, as if I knew that without effort.
He grinned wider.
Maybe this will help. I cleared my throat, more invested to talk to him about anything. Who knew what could trigger me to recall something else? “A mother is genetically changed after having a baby? Hmm.”
He nodded. “And I think everyone has that link. If something happened to my mama, I would feel it. Just like she would probably know if I was gone.”
“If you were gone ?” I frowned. “If you were dead?” Is that something she’s worried about?
He shrugged. “It’s also how I know I don’t have a father.”
Well, this was getting interesting. “How so?”
“There’s no bond. There is no connection in here,” he said, tapping his chest where his little heart beat. “I don’t feel like I have a father.”
“Has your mother told you who your father is—or was?”
He shook his head. “Never.” He didn’t seem to want to focus on that. “Do you feel anything? A connection? A loss?”
I grunted a hard laugh. “Yes, Ramon. I feel a lot of loss. I can’t remember who I am.”
“But you remember some things. You’re still in there. Do you feel like a part of you is elsewhere? A wife or a parent or a daughter or…” He lifted his hand and dropped it. “Do you feel like you’re incomplete without another?”
Fuck, is this getting deep.
“I… I don’t know.” The only heartfelt connections I could think back to led me to Sofia. Hearing her sweet voice when I struggled against the darkness. Vague suggestions of another lurked in the recesses of my locked mind, but it wasn’t her. If I had another woman further in my past, wouldn’t she look for me?
“What if someone is looking for me?” I said aloud, more to myself than him.
“Mama says she hasn’t seen anything yet.” He frowned. “She looks online and sees if anyone has reported a doctor gone missing.”
I shook my head. “But what if I’m not a doctor?”
He frowned more. “Then why would you look like one?”
Again, I didn’t know. The number of things I did know versus what I didn’t pissed me off.
“Do you feel like a doctor?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“How would a doctor feel?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Like it’s something that you would’ve done before.”
I didn’t. And now that he was speaking to me, I realized how much I’d been missing the gift of communication, even with an overly perceptive boy. Talking and having someone listen were helping me. Now that he’d said this, I could think back to when Sofia was checking my vision. “When your mother shone the light in my eyes, checking my vision,” I confided, “she said that I still didn’t show a sign of nystagmus.”
He furrowed his brow. “What’s that?”
Aha. So there was a limit to his braininess. “I don’t know. I didn’t know. I had to ask, and it’s something about involuntary rapid eye movement that can happen after a head injury.”
“Oh. Okay.”
What that term meant wasn’t the point. “I didn’t know what it meant, Ramon.”
“Neither did I.” He smiled, almost cheeky.
“But if I were a doctor, wouldn’t some of that medical or physical knowledge be locked in here too?” I tapped my head. “Like how I could automatically know my age?”
“I don’t know. I think doctors would have to know a lot of things and it could be easy to forget it for a while.”
I supposed that could be true.
“I wish you had a phone,” he said, changing the subject.
“How come?”
“So I could call Mama and tell her that you’re making progress.”
It seemed unsafe for him to be here without a way to contact her, but then again, he was usually at school or with the neighbor and his friend.
“I wonder where it is.” Everyone had phones. I knew that as a basic fact of reality.
“I bet if you had it, it would help us to know who you are.”
“I agree,” I replied, heaving out a sigh.
“Am I tiring you?”
“No.” I disliked that he’d see himself as a problem. “I appreciate your talking to me. Maybe you can help me remember more things.”
“I would love to help you.” He perked up, glancing at the back of the house. “Do you think… you could help me?”
I had no clue what I could offer him. “Sure. What is it?”
“The candles are in a box high up in the closet in my mama’s room. I can’t reach it, and she told me to never stand on her hamper to try to get to the things she stores up there. I fell one time. Do you think you could reach up there and get the box down? I don’t want to miss out on Noche de las Velitas. If I have the candles and lanterns ready, she can light them when she gets home.”
“I can do that.” My height was something I could rely on.
He led me toward the back, and I tried not to feel like I was trespassing. It smelled like her, sweet and citrusy.
“It’s way up there,” Ramon said, opening her closet door. He jumped up to tug on the low-hanging string. A single light bulb flickered on, showing shelves anchored up high with many boxes or bags sitting out of reach for the boy. I skimmed the labels, looking for the right description of candles or Christmas things when I heard the door open.
Ramon jerked at the sound, stepping closer and clutching my shirt.
That wasn’t Sofia.
I didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Sofia. She wouldn’t crash the door open so hard that it banged on the wall, then slam it shut just as loud. I didn’t know everything about her, but I was confident in knowing how she preferred to keep her home. She lived without any visitors, very private and secluded.
Ramon didn’t step away from me, instantly on edge. I lowered my hand to rest it on his back, keeping him close. Standing at the closet door, I would block him if these intruders came into this room.
“Where the fuck are they?” a man demanded.
“I don’t know, man,” another answered.
Crashes sounded as things were knocked over. I felt the vibration of their harsh footsteps as they hurried through the living room.
“Fuck. Where the hell is she hiding him?”
I froze, letting my blood boil hotter at his words.
Where was Sofia hiding someone? Him ?
He had to be talking about me .
As much as I was excited for answers, I was scared for the terrified boy trembling behind me.
I had no clue who these men were. Their voices weren’t familiar.
But my instincts warned me with an intrinsic sixth sense that whoever the hell had dared to enter my rescuer’s—my angel’s—home wouldn’t be good.
My muscles tensed as they trashed the living room, and without hesitation, I prepared to defend Ramon.