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Sin of Omission |
| Written by Joseph Galea | |
| Monday, 18 February 2008 | |
“I’ll kill you if you hurt mummy again!” The words were shocking coming from a little boy who could not have been more than five years old. He stood there, a small stick held in his right hand, looking at a man, passed out on the sand in a drunken stupor, his bare feet and rolled up trousers being lapped by the breaking waves. Several cans of beer and an empty J&B whiskey bottle lay spread around him. ‘Mummy’ sat a few feet away, in the shelter of a rocky outcrop, with a towel round her slim body, looking small and forlorn.
I recognized ‘mummy’ as Teresa, a young, pleasant, Hispanic lady who worked as a cashier at the supermarket where I shopped. I never knew that she had a child. I had never seen her, if fact I hardly ever saw anybody, along this deserted stretch of beach, where I came for a walk whenever I needed to be alone with my thoughts. My first instinct was to keep on walking and mind my own business, but there was something in the intensity of the boy’s look and his violent words that made me stop. The serious little boy had not realized that I was there, so intent was he on defending his ‘mummy’ from the unconscious man on the sand. “Hello”, I said, “what’s the matter?” Startled by my voice, he raised his little head with its shock of black hair towards me. I could see there were tears in his large, deep brown eyes. He looked at me for an instant, then turned and, still clutching his stick, he ran towards his mummy. By now I felt committed, and I walked up to Teresa. “Hi,” I tried to sound cheery, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your young man defending you! Has that man been bothering you?” She stood up, gathering the towel tightly around her body. I could see she had been crying, and was rather embarrassed by the situation. I suddenly felt as if I was intruding. She said nothing. “My name is John, John Graves, I know you from Brown’s supermarket. I was just walking along here when I heard your little boy threaten that drunk there! Has the man been bothering you? Do you need any help?” I was repeating myself. Teresa spoke, almost in a whisper. “No, thank you. It’s all right. He’s my husband.” “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I heard your boy …and assumed….” I left the sentence unfinished. “Well then, sorry I intruded, I’ll be on my way.” As I turned to go she touched me lightly on the shoulder. “Please, do you mind staying for a while,” she said. We sat down on the sand. The boy was watching me carefully, stick at the ready. She smiled at him. “Pablo, come and say hello to Mr. Graves.” The boy came up to me. He was solemn beyond his years. “Hello, Mr. Graves. Will you help mummy?” he asked. Teresa intervened quickly, “Go and play now, Pablo. We’ll soon be going.” Pablo picked up a little bucket and went to play at the water’s edge.
We watched him in silence as he filled the bucket with sand and attempted to make a sandcastle. “Can I be of help then?” I asked. Teresa looked away, and the only reply I got was her sudden outburst of sobbing. “What’s the matter?” I asked. As I put my hand out to comfort her, the towel slipped from her shoulders. It was then that I noticed several dark, purply-blue bruises on her back. I realized I was getting myself embroiled in something I didn’t need, but now I couldn’t just walk away. “I know it’s not my business,” I said “but if you need help, you have to tell me.” She continued to cry silently, looking at her little son playing by the water, and occasionally casting a glance at the prone figure of the man sleeping face down on the sand, the water now up to his knees. Then she turned to me, and her fears and frustrations came pouring out. “He beats me. I’ve had five years of hell with him. If I didn’t have Pablo I would have killed myself. I work to give my son all he needs but that beast there,” and she spat towards the man, “takes my money and spends it on liquor or beer. He has not beaten Pablo yet, but I feel it’s only a matter of time.” Her anger scared me but her vulnerability made my heart go out to her. “But why don’t you leave him?” I asked. “He told me that if I ever did that he’ll find me and kill me and take my son. And I know he will.” “Don’t you have any relatives?”
Her relatives, it turned out, were all in Mexico. She had met Bill, that was her husband’s name, when he was on holiday in Gudalajara. They had fallen in love and after corresponding with him for a while he had proposed to her and, against her parents’ wishes, had married him and came to the United States with him. They were very happy during their first year together, she said, but he had changed after Pablo was born. He started to drink, lost his job and sometimes also did drugs. He was not stupid. Even drunk, he never hit her about the face or visible parts of the body, so nobody could tell. I realized why she chose this secluded beach to come to. She was ashamed and afraid to reveal the bruises that her swimsuit revealed to others. After a while she fell silent. I felt hopeless. I wanted to help her but how? I just sat there sharing her silence and watching the setting sun and the tide coming in. Soon Pablo came over. “I’m cold mummy. Can we go home?” “Yes, dear,” she said, as she pulled out his tiny clothes from her beach bag and started to dress him. When he was dressed, she kissed his sandy cheeks, and said softly, “Wait here, dear, I have to wake up Daddy.” I noticed that at this, Pablo picked up his little stick, which he had dropped while his mother dressed him. She made to go and wake up Bill from his drunken sleep. Suddenly I knew how I could help her. I reached out to her. “Teresa,” I said, “you take Pablo home. I’ll take care of Bill! Tell me where you live.” She hesitated, then looked at the prone figure of her husband lying in the sand with his shirt off and his pants wet from just above the knees from the incoming tide, with the beer cans and whiskey bottle around him. His state must have disgusted her, as it did me. She gave me her phone number and her address, an apartment complex not too far from where I lived. “Thank you,” she said “but be careful. He can be very nasty when he drinks as much as he did today.” “Don’t worry,” I assured her, “now go.”
The sun was setting fast. I saw her and her little protector walk up the beach away from the setting sun, their long shadows preceding them. One time she stopped, as if questioning her action. She looked back to where I was sitting. I saw her look down at Pablo. Then she waved at me and went on. She never looked back till they disappeared behind a large sand dune at the far end of the beach, where, I knew, the parking lot was located. I sat there waiting in the shelter of the rock outcrop where I had heard Teresa’s story, looking at Bill. I wondered what I’d do if he woke up, but I was confident that with the quantity of booze he had taken in, there was little chance of that. The minutes passed by. I did nothing, but I knew what I was doing. My mind was a blank. I watched the tide come in slowly but surely. It was up his chest, and still he did not stir. I don’t know how long I was sitting on that beach. I may even have nodded off to sleep for a while. It was dark, the beach and sea lit only by the silver rays of a half moon. All I know is that when I left, the water was at my feet, and I had been sitting a good fifteen feet away from where Bill slept. He was still there, face down, with the waves breaking about him. In the darkness I walked away through the surf, down the deserted beach to my own car. I did not look back.
When I got home I called Teresa and told her to go to bed and not to worry. Everything was going to be all right. I went to bed myself. Surprisingly I slept well.
Two days later while having my breakfast I read a small news item in our local paper, about a man found dead on the beach. An autopsy found large amounts of alcohol in his blood, and concluded that he had died from drowning. The coroner had returned a verdict of accidental death by misadventure. I smiled. I put the two air tickets to Guadalajara, which I had bought the day before, into an envelope and walked out of the house to mail them to Teresa. Copyright 2008 Joseph Galea |
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