Happenstance Tragedies

The sane world had passed away into obscurity and come back again, Lauren was preparing for her morning shower; cleaning her teeth she stared at herself in the mirror wondering if the Chinese had also invented the toothbrush, this she thought possible because they had invented clocks, chess, gunpowder, religion, and now everything that was being used in America even her toothbrush was made by Chinese, cheaper, better and faster so why not equally assume that it was genetics, the Chinese were the inventors of that cumbersome morning task, a toothbrush was one of those inventions that could never be taken back or forgotten, just like perfume. Though the latter was most certainly invented by the French, the French wanted everything to look pretty and part of looking pretty was smelling pretty, but maybe the French were also a Chinese invention, so cutely intellectual they, a timeless receptacle of cute thoughts.

Lauren considered brushing her teeth time for mental chatter, and so these were her thoughts, but when she jumped into the shower, that was time for serious thoughts. “How many Jose’s in the Salinas Valley, how many lettuce fields are nourished by the happenstance tragedies induced by toiling under the hot sun?” And after her dutiful killing of Sister Bertha she sure wasn’t a convincing moralist, but still she thought to ask herself the tough questions with hot water running through her back, “Do I report this to the captain and turn the burden of judgment upon him? What would he do with Jose? The man is obviously a victim of circumstances, a hard life, maybe Captain wont look at it purely from a legal perspective, or will the burden of knowledge force him to charge Jose with involuntary manslaughter?” The noise of the water droplets hitting the shower curtain kept rhythm, Loki was outside the shower watching Lauren’s shadow flourishing through the plastic, his head moving back and forth with it.

Lauren turns the water off, and is met with fresh coffee by Antoinette, “eggs will be ready in a few.” Lauren looks at her lover with the anticipation of many beautiful years to come. Over breakfast Antoinette “Last night I realized that we are just puppets of the relationship being felt by our souls, we are mere reflections of it Lauren, you and I are a poor construct of the true love that our souls are experiencing, I felt our souls last night bonded, truly bonded.” Antoinette’s sincere remarks struck a truth within Lauren, just she too somehow felt that there was something that wasn’t complete here in the material between them, and yet that they were in separately together in the spiritual realm. But Lauren was definitely not ready to move on from the happenings in Salinas instead she reverted the conversation, “Babe, I don’t know if to report Jose, or to let it be, a child has been born, who knows if he was baptized or just had in some field of labor, and now this child has died, and no one has recorded his death, and how can I let that go, someone has to say something.” Antoinette pauses everything, “No Lauren you cant say anything this is not a matter for you or the authorities, let this man be, what ever happened to that child he has done nothing wrong but be a victim of painful circumstances.” “Even if that is true I cant ignore it, and the community needs to be aware of what can happen when they take their babies out into the fields, and that if it happens social services will take action to hold them accountable, Joselito did not deserve to die like that because of the ignorance or squabbles between his parents.” “No, your insane, your just going to punish him to serve a greater good that has no immediate benefit but to further destroy this already burdened man. Your not going to correct the ills of the world by hurting him further, only try to feel how devastated he is Lauren, feel him, please.”

Lauren finished her coffee searched for empathy within herself, “He has something terrible to live the rest of his life, and I might have to hold that within myself too without any resolution, a child has lived and died without record, a mother has abandoned him, a father has buried him in silence after a hot day of picking lettuce, I don’t know, were we put there by destiny, by his soul to let the world know what took place? Was it a coincidence that we met this tragedy, that we went out to the field with him was that a coincidence?” Antoinette placing her hand on Lauren’s heart, “Perhaps it is not a coincidence, perhaps Joselito guided us there to be with his father that had loved him all of those years and he didn’t want him alone in his only birthday a decade long, he brought us to Jose to be with him, that’s really what happened Lauren, Joselito did not want his father drinking his blood alone, and we were there to take him home afterwards, where else he might have stayed there and dry under the hot sun like his son.” Lauren didn’t know what to say to this, she hugged Antoinette, they both felt each other, with ten thousand times less sensitivity than there souls were hugging now.