by Abraham M. Dela Torre
JILLIANE WAS TWO when life was snuffed out of her. She left behind her parents, five siblings of which she was second to the youngest and a dear chum, Angeline, of whom she was very fond.
Similar to Jilliane’s age, Angeline was born deaf so grew up mute. Their families are neighbors. Angeline’s folks live in a compound bound by a perimeter fence to keep the kids away expecially in the afternoon when the owner’s trucks come to the compound which also serves as their barn. Jilliane’s brood lives next door, a complex of four low-income households coexisting in poverty and peace.
Angeline has an older sister (impaired on both legs) and a brother. Of the many children in the compound and out of it, she often seeks out Jilliane and vice-versa. A strange chemistry seems to exist between them. Jilliane is not a loner but when she is with other kids, she throws temper tantrums which the neighborhood describes as legendary as well as natural for a kid with a condition like hers. So the children chose to leave her to her own devices. Jilliane, on the other hand, somehow noticed the ostracized isolation of Angeline and spent more time with her than with her old playmates. When other kids would foray into their twosome, and Angeline would seem to react to the intrusion, Jilliane would give her gestures that would put her at ease, either reassuringly or, when she appears stubborn, as a reproof.
Another story about the kindred kids involved sharing of not only games and toys but also food. Observers found it a mystery, the bond between them, that the absence of sound and speech could not break.
Until that Thursday afternoon of February 19. Jilliane was playing with her toys while her father read and her mother did somebody else’s laundry somewhere. It was a quiet, warm day. Children were playing on the street just outside their house. Probably enticed by the audible noise they made, Jilliane left her toys to peek at the players, silently so as not to disturb her father.
The children welcomed her, Angeline among them, who was happy to break free from the horde (and they from her) and keep Jilliane to herself. And then, one by one, all of them trooped to the compound. It has to be said here that, while the owner, also a councilor of the town, forbids children playing there, it is also true that what is forbidden usually gets broken when the cat is away. The compound, while cramped with delivery trucks before work day starts, becomes an ideal playground for kids, which they certainly prefer to the street. Ergo, the collective assent to scuttle there when somebody suggested it.
In the humid, lazy, otherwise nap-worthy afternoon, there was a commotion. “A truck had run over a child!” was what could be heard from the sudden screams that split the languid air. “Whose child?” came more shouts one after another. As mothers and fathers rushed out of their dwellings to check on their respective children.
Everybody was soon accounted for. Even Angeline. Except Jilliane. And there was a frantic flash to keep her father and mother from the accident site. Apparently, when the truck was on its way into the compound, the children were scurrying every which way to leave the place at once. All but Jilliane, who must have been slow and, upon nearing the gate, slipped, right in front of the oncoming truck.
No one saw exactly what happened from the confused variations of accounts that only confirmed mere speculations. Not the driver who did not see the child. Nor hear a squeak out of her.
What they all did see soon enough was that Jilliane was face down on the ground, her head squeezed flat by the truck’s front tire, her brain splattered on the concrete.
With the confusion magnified by panic, the driver took hold of his senses and Jilliane in his arms and quickly drove to the nearest hospital. At this time, her parents were no longer held at bay and got wind of what happened so off they went to where they thought she might be taken to.
It was a typical accident among the poor, made more atrocious by differing reactions, concern, assumptions, advice, all in the earnest hope of easing anxiety and calming naturally frayed nerves and shocked sensitivities.
More sober accounts ensued shortly. The driven driver drove from one hospital to another and found an accommodating doctor at the third. The medic shook his head but tried to pump life into the limp body of the child. But ultimately, she flat lined.
When her parents finally found her, after darting here and there, there was no describing their mutual misery.
And yet, albeit stricken with tragedy no man would wish on a worst enemy, they did not blame or curse or damn. The driver was quietly keeping to his personal guilt, imagined or otherwise. And, when he heard no fault-finding nor saw no finger-pointing, he mustered enough courage to apologize. It being the only solace he could offer sincerely, as the entirety of his tormented heart, He, too, felt their pain. Even as he carried their daughter’s moribund body with nothing more hopeful than intense prayer. And even before her parents came, he was already engulfed with dread and woe and sorrow of what might befall him, however he knew those well-wishing people, however he felt that, in his soul of souls, he did not with their little girl any harm.
There will be counsels ill- and well-offered. But the parents, from wherever wellspring they fetched the feeling, understood the poverty of the driver as like theirs. Despite appreciating advice, they have decided that no one can deliberately plan an accident as awful as that. And forgave the driver.
At the wake, on the Sunday that I visited, people seemed to be aware that Angeline had been scarce since the accident only when her name was mentioned in the telling and retelling of the tale. Her parents said she seemed like mourning, if a two-year-old were capable of that, and kept to herself. As speechless as ever but sorrowfully listless.
She emerged the next day, tentative, slowly moving towards the house where the wake was. And stopped at the door to look at the casket. The small, white, rectangular box that contained her friend.
We could only look at her because we could not dare to stare. The parents grieve over their child. Death claimed her too soon for them to even say goodbye. Angeline’s grief must be too deep for anyone to fathom. They were joined by an invisible umbilical cord, one that bridged the chasm between silence and sound. Jilliane was a friend, counselor, sister-in-sharing, protector. Why is she in that box and not with me?
Did she know that, compared to her silent world, made more noiseless with her friend’s demise, Jilliane’s now was just as deaf and mute? She may be wanting in two senses but Jilliane, before disappearing, had a cracked skull. And her soft, sweet face, however the makeover, was bruised. No, she does not know and does not have to. Her heart is already in the casket with Jilliane, and her grief is not silent, not anymore, but in peace. As only her soundless silence knows how.
