It took Maria days and days to finish her letter to Helen. She would rise in the morning, write a page, head off to work, think through what she had written, then come home, throw it out and start over. She thought she knew what to say, but the thoughts, when inscribed on the page, didn’t adequately express what she wanted to convey. Then she would sleep on it, regret her haste, and wake to re-write what she had edited out. After a few episodes of this, she disciplined herself to simply set the offending page aside, to be re-added later.
I do not know if you received my earlier letter; honestly, I did not expect a reply. I am writing to you again because I need to tell you what I know. Whether or not you do anything with it is up to you, but I owe you this information, and if it can help your child, I hope you can set your anger at me aside for a moment for her sake. In a way, this is as much your story as it is mine. Your father is the key to your daughter’s condition.
I have filed a report with the police here to find him. They don’t know if it’s possible after such a long time, and I know not to expect too much. If he is still alive, you may want to contact him and get him to meet with your child’s doctors. I am certain he suffered from the same problems she does.
Then again, I’m not sure that her doctors can really do anything for her. Your father’s condition was beyond the understanding of most people. I didn’t understand it myself until I saw the documentary.
Maria then wrote down what she thought Megan’s problem was. Looking at the words staring at her in the face, she realized that she sounded utterly insane. She went to cross them out, but saw that they would still be legible. She would have to re-write the page. Cursing, she crumpled the paper, tossed it aside, and re-did her introduction. There was a large blank space on the bottom of the paper, but she ignored it and grabbed a new sheet.
I think a little background would help you understand better.
She took a deep breath.
Did I ever tell you the story of how I met your father? Did you ever wonder how
somebody like him and somebody like me ever fell in love?
Even back then, I was working at the Sea Coast Villa as a cleaning lady. I had been there for almost ten years. I had left El Salvador to escape a bad marriage.
She had been an accountant in El Salvador with a college degree.
It was the summer when we had all of the hurricanes. We had been through three already when Lorenzo formed near the Bahamas. Luckily, Lorenzo missed us and never came ashore anywhere, but he still stirred up the sea. The beach outside the condo was pounded by huge waves. The surfers loved the hurricanes for this reason, although I always heard that you should stay away from the water when it’s rough like that, and I thought they were stupid, frankly. They were young, though, and that’s what young people do. I was nearly forty and no longer young, so I didn’t understand it.
One morning I arrived at work early and decided to go down to the beach for a few minutes to look at the surf. The tide had gone out and what was left of the beach was empty. (Like now, the people who live at Sea Coast Villas are all old and don’t really go near the water, so that wasn’t unusual.) What was unusual was the young man lying still on the sand. I hurried over to see if he was alright.
He was unconscious. The surf was still pretty strong, and I guessed from his young age and his condition that he had been one of the idiot surfers, and he had been knocked out by a wave. I don’t know how long he had been there. He had been there long enough to be completely dry. His surfboard was nowhere to be seen and had probably washed out to sea.
She decided to omit the detail about his clothes being washed away as well.
I managed to bring him around, and I tried to ask him what happened, but I quickly realized that he didn’t speak English. He looked Middle Eastern, so I figured that he was a foreign tourist. There weren’t many of those in Tarpon Beach. He didn’t really say anything, so I couldn’t tell what he spoke. I knew what it was like to be in a strange place and not able to talk to anybody, so I felt sorry for him.
He seemed to recover pretty quickly, although he was a bit dazed. I gave him some dry clothes from the condo laundry lost and found and bought him something to eat when my shift was over. I tried to figure out where he was staying or who his friends were, but again, he wasn’t really speaking. I gave him money for the bus and drew a map to the police station for him, hoping that maybe they could help. Then I went home.
A week went by, and then I saw him again on the sidewalk by the condo, still in the same clothes I had left him in. They were clean so I thought he had at least done some laundry. I tried to find out more about him, but he would only smile shyly and occasionally make a clicking noise with his tongue. I tried out some names on him that sounded Arabic (although I had no idea, really), and when I said ‘Ali,’ his face lit up. Eventually I figured out that his name was ‘Ali Hassan,’ but I still didn’t know anything else. I named every Middle Eastern country I could think of, but nothing seemed to register. I had no idea where he was living and neither did he.
I kept running into him like this, and although I thought it was weird, he seemed harmless and very sweet, and I pitied him a bit. I gave him more clothes. I bought him lunch. One day he surprised me with a large fresh fish from the seafood market, and although I had no idea how to prepare it or any place to put it in my little refrigerator, I was touched by the gesture. We would hang out together during my breaks and I would try to teach him Spanish or English. He struggled for a while, but eventually learned quite a bit of both.
I got him a job cleaning at the Sea Coast Villas. He had been there a while at that point, far too long for a tourist visa, and I gathered that he had come from a place he didn’t want to return to. He and I would scrub and vacuum and practice our languages, and as time went by I found myself thinking about him long after we had parted for the day.
He was very young. Not a boy, but much, much younger than me. I was older and plumper and starting to go gray, and I scowled at myself for having such feelings. But when I realized that he was sleeping every night on the beach by the sea wall, I foolishly invited him to stay at my apartment until he could save up enough money to rent his own.
As you are sitting there reading this, you can guess what happened.
We were very happy except for one problem: Ali started to disappear. For days on end he would vanish and not call or leave a note or anything. I covered for him at the condo, but I was annoyed that he would be so irresponsible and put me in such a bad position. He would return and not be able to quite explain what he had been doing or where he had been. He was always very remorseful, and foolishly I always forgave him. When I was shocked to learn I was pregnant, he was so delighted, but then left again, and again, and again. He wasn’t there when you were born, but returned soon after, again apologetic.
I tolerated this for so long because when he did stay around, he was the kindest, most attentive, most thoughtful man you could imagine. Quite the opposite of my husband. And he adored you. He would cradle you and smile at you as if you were made of starlight, and I would stare at him and forgive him for everything.
I don’t know if you remember the night I finally threw him out for good. You were nine, and by then you had the habit of locking yourself in the bathroom when he would stop by. He would ask to see you, and when you refused to even answer him, he was heartbroken. I was heartbroken too. By then, I knew something was very, very wrong. The condo had finally fired him for his ongoing absences, and nearly fired me for covering for him so much. His health was horrible too. His skin was so dry it was almost falling off, and he would tremble uncontrollably and sweat and wheeze. One time I noticed the track marks on his arms and asked him if he was using, and he denied it, but he was looking away when he did.
I had finally had enough, and I decided it was time to cut ties with him, for your sake and mine. We couldn’t go on living like that and I didn’t want a drug user and deadbeat in your life. I told him to leave and to never come back, and I think he could tell that I meant it, for he went into an absolute panic. That was when he finally told me what was wrong.
When Maria wrote out what Ali had told her, it no longer seemed so crazy. She hoped Helen would feel the same way.
She finished the letter with good wishes for Helen and Michael and especially little Megan, and prayers that her letter would help solve the mystery of the girl’s ailment. Then she collected the pages, read through them one last time, and with satisfaction she folded the pages and wriggled it into an envelope, pulling the flap as best she could over the straining letter.
In the morning, she took the early bus and stopped at the post office, not sure how much postage her letter needed. There was no line and she was on her way to the condo much sooner than she expected.
Writing the letter had been cathartic. She hadn’t felt this good in years. It was a relief to tell somebody else what she knew, and she wondered if her news would be the solution to the child’s illness, and that, perhaps, Helen would finally forgive her. Maybe they would come to visit her, or have her to their house. She wondered what their house was like, what Megan was like. She was almost giddy with the idea that she might have her family back.
She arrived at the condo, put her things in the break room, and decided to walk back to the beach. She had a few minutes before she had to get started on her round.
It had been a long time since Maria had spent more than a few minutes at the ocean’s edge. She smiled, slid her feet out of her sensible shoes and sweat socks, and wriggled her toes in the sand. It was still early, so the sand was still cool and somewhat damp from the long-receded high tide. She tiptoed into the shallows, the little waves rippling over her ankles, and looked over nearby to where the beach crested a bit. That was where she had first seen him.
I wasn’t a fool, she thought happily, wading in further. He loved me. He was trying everything he could to stay.
The waves washed over her knees, then her waist. My life hasn’t been a joke. I was loved.
Forgetting her shift, she ran and dove with glorious abandon into the next wave.
I was loved!
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