And so was Victoria
a torn dark dress she wore, worn thin
with hanging threads, a black cord for a belt…
—walking
hastily here and there, often in the City’s square,
Plaza de Arms
She
was a lost ewe—her thin young face wind-burnt.
“Who’s that?”
“Victoria the Mad” they’d say; a tin can
in her hand, for soup, coffee or a handout
The
joy that once lived in her face was long gone, she walked
about as if she was deaf and dumb, with
forward eyes
And
a lifted head, delicate lips that seldom got fed.
It
was as if the devil himself coiled his horns into her brain!
And
those who saw her neither looked back nor
edged
forward.
And
this day as like many days, a child of ten ran by, she snatched at his
sandwich, she offered no threat
“Oh
please, oh please,” she begged meek as a ewe.
“You
let here alone, you’ll get hurt,” the mother wailed at the
boy, “she’s mad!”
She
thanked him, and her mind followed more quietly.
The
little black haired boy, said gently to his mother, “Remember the good
Samaritan?”
She
answered, “Her kind, work on your kindness, oh yes,
remember that!”
The
friendly boy and his mother moved out of the
Plaza de Arms, and Victoria
sniffing, talking to herself.
In
the evening she found a hollow opening, under a bridge,
it was summer, and the grass was warm.
She
laughed and was glad, she undid a bundle of this and
that, and shared her bread with some
mice and birds—Dividing it three ways, she kept the crust.
“I
can even eat grass,” she told the birds “I’ve done it before,”
and they came close and stood by her,
and she drank Water from the tin cup she had,
filled it from the creek
underneath the bridge.
“We
have to go on,” she whispered, sobbing with fear
as if talking to herself, or the birds.
“Why do I have to be like this?” she mumbled.
A
halved moon had arisen over the bridge, she touched her
knotted hair, a mist from the nearby
river came, up Stream.
She
stared at the old stones that held the bridge together,
she was restless, and heard noises,
awaiting dawn.
In
the morning—like so many mornings, little clouds drifted
overhead, sunrise, she lifted her thin
boned body up
And
followed the stream very slowly, looking for garbage in
canisters, nibbling on thrown away
chicken bones, left, Sucking the bones dry; leaving her numberless foot prints
behind.
She
made an inarticulate bird like cry, and the birds in a
Eucalyptus tree, scrambled…they dashed
over her!
She
eyed curiously a young man’s face, her parted lips
cracked by the sun and wind…she was
daydreaming!
A
woman looked out her second storey apartment window
Said:
“The poor thing,” and threw a piece of meat down to the
dog,
“there now,” she said, “find the food.”
and perhaps more, anxiously avoiding
traveled roads, And hiding herself from people, now and then, and in later
Years more often.
She
became a toothless tramp, with grinding pang in her
back,
Between
agony and before exhaustion, one day, she within
her habitual habitats, simply up and
vanished, disappeared…!
Note: This
story was inspired by a woman who actually lived in Huancayo , Peru
#3329
(4-22-2012)
