Reflection #3: The Story of Alma Bella

Reflection #3: ALL SHALL BE WELL 

The Surgery

Year 2004, Los Angeles, California

“I don’t want anybody to hold me. Not even you, Victoria…I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t need anybody now. Why is everybody circling around? Why the hassle? I’m just fine. Can you just leave me alone? Get away from me, you all! Leave me alone, alone, alone….” My mind was screaming at the many doctors and nurses hovering over my hospital bed, but all they could see was my “crying”. Don’t they know that I can’t cry? Don’t they see that I have no tears? 

The lights were painfully bright, streaming in a cold-white flow from above, exposing me to all those strangers. They shuttled between the armada of medical equipment and it made me sick. My eyes hurt, but I was afraid to close them. I was scared I would faint again. The surgery was over. I knew I was in the intensive care unit.

It was over! Why was I so scared? No, I was terrified. I dreaded losing my life. I was horrified that I might die. I didn’t care about my life, but not at that moment, not when my mama was on her way to see me, probably very close to the hospital. My aunt said that she had told her about my surgery. My aunt said that she herself would come with my mama to be with me at the hospital. I did not see my aunt when they took me in. Neither did I see my mama. My mama was not there when I woke up in intensive care. My aunt said she would come. Oh, mama…you didn’t come to be with me. 

“I don’t care about all of you here. I don’t want doctors. I don’t want nurses. I don’t want social workers! Even you, Victoria, I don’t want you now. All of you, just leave me…,” with all the strength of my mind I shouted in despair, “I don’t care if I die now. My mama is what I want…I want my mama…but she is gone. Where are you, Mama? I hurt so badly, Mama. It hurts, Mama,…it hurts…. Where are you to hold me now? Mama, hold me, Mama…. Tell me that you will never leave me again…. Come back, Mama…, I’ll be a good girl, Mama…. Oh, Mama…Mama…Mama. Where are you, Mama? Oh, Mama…Mama…Mama…, come back…!”

The one I wanted most at that moment had vanished from my life long ago. How much I missed her presence around that hospital bed! I wanted everybody to leave and my mama to come, to sit next to me and just hold me, just rock me in her arms, rock me close to her heart. If she could just have come and held me I would have been okay. But my mama did not come. She did not hold me. She did not rock me. She indeed had vanished. 

I was alone! A lonely leaf that had been taken by a sudden surge of wind and brought to an icy cold place. Like that leaf that had no chance of seeing the spring come, so was I with no chance to see a motherly love in my life. On that hospital bed, while I was lit by a powerful fluorescent light, my heart entered a long, pitch-dark night; while a multitude of people swirled around me, I felt painfully alone. Alone! I was alone! Alone in the cold, alone in the dark, without my mama…. Abandoned! 

All these long years, I had thought my mama somehow would come back and take us all home. For a long time, I had clung to the hope that she would finally relent and come back, after being away for so many years. There was no hope anymore. At that moment, then and there, the cold fact that my mama had abandoned me hit me with tremendous power. My heart sank inside my chest so deeply I was sure if the nurse had looked at me at that moment, she would have seen the ugly hole that formed under my thin hospital gown. Rising from that internal hole was a gigantic wave of pain. Deep roaring, “Alone! Alone! Alone!” set waves of uncontrollable trembling through my body. Cruel mocking, “Abandoned! Abandoned! Abandoned!” began to gnaw away at what was left of my battered world of sorrow.

“Mama…Mama…Mama….” I fought back the ugly tentacles of pain that suffocated me, but my attempt was like the effort of a single drop against a giant wave that ultimately absorbed it. My body was failing me, I could not move. My mouth was failing me, I could not shout. I willed my mind to scream and I heard the scream of my heart instead. A wild howl jabbed at my sides, my body cramping in two. Like a sleeping beast that had been hibernating for a long time, the pain in my heart awoke with the realization that I had been completely abandoned. So was the howling of my heart. I was sure that the attending nurses heard it because they all began panicking around me. More needles, more injections, more tubes, and the awful smell of antiseptic…until all began to fade. The nurses floated away, the noises grew distant, and the lights above dimmed. I fell into that blur of images and light and, along with everything around me, weightlessly floated away. 

Pain had been my companion since my birth. With my first cry, along with air, my lungs must have filled with the contempt my mother had when she first looked at me. On that first day of my life, my mother’s first touch was stamped with disdain, not love. I was her firstborn child but instead of joy, my aunt said, I had brought her only problems. My mother was sixteen then, and I had no legitimate father.

The bitterness that poisoned my mother’s life had also poisoned my life right from the beginning. Hatred consumed my mother and reduced her existence to mere day-to-day “moving along”. I remember the long hours watching her prostrate on the bare floor, crying, louder and louder. I would become so scared that I’d try to climb on her or just sit next to her, but she would angrily toss me away.

In time, I learned that just cuddling up in the darkness in the furthest corner was the right thing to do. So, I tried to be invisible. From the dark, I watched how those scary needles pierced my mom’s arm and then rolled on to the floor with a metallic clatter.

When her body had fallen in a heap, an amorphous mass in the middle of the room, then I knew it was safe for me to come out and be with my mama. It was dark and frighteningly silent, but I loved those moments when I could lie down next to my mama. I could touch her beautiful face and play with her soft hair. I would take her arm and put it around my shoulders, and I would kiss each of her small fingers one by one. When it was cold, I dragged out a heavy blanket and tucked both of us beneath its rough cover. I treasured those quiet moments with my mama and I would not give them up for anything, not even for a big, out-of-the-oven, hot slice of pizza that would have quieted the spasms of hunger rumbling in my empty stomach. 

Coming second time out of anesthesia was no better than the first. The grief that had exacerbated my post-surgical condition earlier threatened to overrun my fragile state of heart again. A familiar voice exhorted me to try harder to wake up, but that voice had less control over me than the pain welling up inside. The brightness of the lights still stung my eyes, but at least the hassled nurses were gone and the annoying beeping of the many machines around my bed had subsided. A lonely silhouette leaned over me as I tried to adjust my eyes to the blinding light. Victoria was standing next to my bed, saying something I could not hear well, but I could feel her fingers lightly stroking my hand. 

“Bella, Bella,” she exclaimed when she saw me coming out from the sedative influence of the drugs, “it is all over, Bella. The doctor said it all went well. My brave Bella! The doctor said that now we can go home.”

“Home? I have no home, Victoria. You know. I don’t want to go back to that foster home. Can’t you take me with you to your home? Can you? Please, Victoria, say that you can take me with you.” Victoria always had been nice to me, doing many things for me that a mother would do, and she was so beautiful and everybody liked her. If I could choose where I wanted to go, without hesitation, I would choose to go with Victoria. 

“My dear Bella, I wish I could take you home, but you know how many rules are there in the system? I don’t want to break them, Bella, and you don’t want me to either. What I can do is promise you that this weekend I will take you out. What do you say? Where would you wanna go?”

“With you, to your home,” I said dryly, cooled off by the fast calculations that were happening in my head. “It’s only Thursday night now, Victoria, and you wouldn’t come until Saturday, yeah? 

“That means only one day, Bella, just one day.” She unsuccessfully tried to provoke a positive emotion in me.

“One day and two nights, Victoria, a long, very long….” I was powerless and like a canary bound to a cage, so was I bound to lose her. I knew that very soon she would take me to the foster home and then she would be gone. 

“Nights we sleep, Bella, and they go fast,” she tried to reason, but her arguments did not cheer me up.

“You sleep, Victoria. I don’t. I am haunted by nightmares, you know. They seem to leave me alone only when you’re around. Take me with you, Victoria. Be my mama.” Tears ran down Victoria’s beautiful face. She did not try to hide them. She never did. When she first came to visit me at the foster home, she could not stop crying. Her tears just flowed and flowed while I told her what had happened to me. She had said that from that moment on she would cry with me when I was sad and she would laugh with me when I would be happy. And she did. There had been many times when we laughed together, but there had been more times when she cried alone. I couldn’t cry. I feel the pain squeezing me to death, but tears would not come out of my eyes.

“You need to rest, Bella. We will have time to talk about these things another time. You had a hard day today, but it’s all over now. I have a surprise for you, Bella. It is a little thing, but perfect for a brave girl like you.”

Victoria always found ways to route our conversations differently. But this time, I did not want to let her go. I had become very crafty in finding ways to make her stay longer at the foster home. No matter how hard I worked, though, to keep her with me, the time always came when she had to leave. Something very bright always left with her. Right then, I did not want to lose her bright presence, not after that treacherous day of my surgery. 

“Victoria, did I cry during the surgery or after that?” I asked Victoria, as the nurses pulled the long curtains at both sides of my bed, scarcely giving us privacy from the other two patients in the room. I wanted to know if I had cried while under anesthesia. 

“No, Bella, you did not cry. I saw no tears on your face, but I saw something much more painful.” Hesitance clouded Victoria’s face. She realized that she had said more than she had intended under the circumstances.

“What is it, Victoria? You know I can take it. What is it you saw?” I pulled her by the arm, making her sit next to me. 

“I saw your soul crying,” she said, almost whispering, slowly accenting each word.
 

”My soul?” I was puzzled by Victoria’s words. As with showing her tears, Victoria was not ashamed about her faith either. God, she had said, loved her and that same God loved me as well. I couldn’t understand how someone like God could love me and I don't feel it. When Victoria said that she loved me, I knew it was true because I felt it, she made me feel it. At that time, though, I didn’t know anything about the “soul” business. Simple logic kept my interest. If such a good person like Victoria was so keen about spiritual matters, I thought it worthy to find out why. 

“My dear Bella, your soul was crying. I saw all the sorrow and pain locked inside your heart, inside your soul. Your mama and Franky are gone, but the pain they caused is not gone.” When Victoria saw that I remained puzzled at her words she continued, “You see, Bella, the tears are like channels through which the poison substance of pain is released. When we cry, the poison leaves our hearts. We cry and the pain lessens. When we don’t cry, the pain remains locked inside, piling up like a huge mountain and the bigger it gets, the more poisonous it becomes.” After a moment of hesitation, Victoria looked at me with deep concern in her eyes and said, “When you came out of the surgery, I saw your mountain of pain. Bella, I saw your soul crying.”

I still couldn’t understand what Victoria was telling me. Many times during our therapy sessions, Victoria had kept encouraging me that crying was okay and that I shouldn’t feel embarrassed; but I told her that I just couldn’t cry. I had my own explanation for my inability to produce tears.  

“I guess a certain amount of tears is ascribed to each individual to use throughout their lifetime; and when all the tears have been released, the eyes just dry out.”

“And when do you suppose you have reached your lifetime tears limit?” Victoria had asked.

“When my mom left us with Franky. The belt in his hand felt much heavier on my back. Tears made him very mad, so I learned to hold them back.” I explained, but I wondered if Victoria ever could understand what life with Franky really had been like.

“Did Junior and Alicia learn that also?” Victoria asked about my half brother and half sister. She was sincere in her efforts to make sense out of the severe abuse we had suffered, but I doubted if it would ever be possible for her, or anyone else, to comprehend it.
 

”No, they were too little. Sometimes they cried so much and wanted our mama. But that made Franky so mad that he had his belt burning on my back over and over again.” I paused for a moment and added, “You know that Alicia and Junior are his children…but Franky is not my father.”

“His anger was more often directed at you than to them, yes?” 

“Yes, but he turned on them, too.” I couldn’t stand to watch how Franky hurt Junior and Alicia. They were so little and so helpless. It was after one of those beatings that a teacher had noticed Junior’s bruises and had called me to the principal’s office, as well. 

The nurse in charge poked her head through the folds of the heavy curtain. “It is time for you, Mama, to take Bella home.” She waved the discharge papers clutched in her hand, saying, “I need to give you some instructions, and I need some signatures, and you are ready to go.” The nurse took Victoria aside, behind the curtain. From my bed, I could hear the thorough instructions given to Victoria about my post-surgical care.

“I didn’t know you were a social worker,” the nurse said, after seeing Victoria’s signature on the papers. “We all thought that you were the mother,” the nurse’s apologetic voice muffled by the steady clamor in the room. 

“I am still family,” I heard Victoria say, and a hope swelled up in my heart. 

It was dark when they rolled me out in the wheelchair and helped me get in Victoria’s car. Twelve long hours had passed since I had entered the hospital for an outpatient surgery that morning. A wide bandage was tightly secured on my head.

“How am I going to go to school like this, Victoria?” I complained, pointing to the wide white bandage and looking in the car mirror, hoping to find a solution.

“You are not going to school until Tuesday, Bella. The doctor wants to change the dressing on Monday and he said that they would remove that big one and leave you with a very small bandage. It will be so small that it won’t be seen under your long hair.”

It had not been comforting for me to have even a small part of my beautiful hair shaved. I flaunted my hair before my friends in school. Since my detention in foster care, I had let it grow and worn it loose. It had been a good cover for the ugly bump steadily growing on the back of my head.

I had little concern for it, but it worried Victoria when I mentioned it to her. She said that it was probably connected to my fainting episodes. I had grown up with those episodes that could happen any time, day or night. Junior and Alicia were so accustomed to seeing me passing out and coming back into consciousness twenty minutes later that they had learned to patiently wait for me when that would happen.

Victoria, though, appeared very concerned and kept asking me if I remembered ever hitting my head in the past. I couldn’t make any connection between an old head injury and my episodes of fainting, but by Victoria’s reaction, I understood it was very important for her to know. At first, I couldn’t remember hitting myself, but later I told her what had happened once when I was very little. It was one of the stories Victoria had not heard yet.

I hated all those big men that kept coming to our apartment. Their shouts and loud laughter frightened me. I hid in the dark closet and from there my fear would grow into a nightmare because of all the scary things those men did to my mama. First, I thought that she was hurt, but then, that was the only time I saw my mama happy and laughing. The more she laughed, the more I cried. 

Once she dragged me out of the closet, very upset at me. With fists and curses, she threw herself furiously at me. Angrily, she stuck a threatening finger in my face and said that, if I wouldn’t stop crying, she would tell the men to do the same things to me also. I was terrified. I wanted to stop crying, but my mama kept pulling my hair and pounding her fists. I hurt so much that I not only continued crying, but I began screaming. The high pitch of my loud protest infuriated my mother further. She threw me against the wall and began banging my head against it.

I don’t know what hurt more then, the blows on my head or those words that she shouted at me. She said that I was her burden, and that she hated me and that she should have killed me when I was still in her tummy…. I didn’t want to hear all that, but I couldn’t run from my mama. Then, all at once, everything went quiet in my head. My eyes dimmed and my ears grew dull to her words. I didn’t know what had happened, but when I was able to see again, I was in my mother’s arms. She was rocking me, squeezing me tightly, and crying loudly, “My baby, wake up, baby, wake up. I am sorry, mijita, I am sorry, mi ninita, come back. I promise I will not do this again. I will be a good mama. I am sorry, baby. Come back, mi bella, mi alma bella…mi bellicima….” 

She continued sobbing for a long time, even when I regained consciousness. “What did I do to my baby? How could I do this to my child? Oh, damn me…I could have killed her…. Oh, no…I am an animal. No, even the animals don’t kill their babies. What am I? Sweetie, forgive mama, say that you forgive mama. I will try to be a better mama to you. Forgive my hands for bruising your little body. Forgive my mouth for saying awful things. Can you forgive Mama, baby?”

I was crying then, but not because my head was pounding with pain. I knew my mama loved me. I wanted my mama to love me. She hadn’t wanted to do all this to me. It was all my fault, I should have kept quiet. I should have been stronger and not cried.

“Oh, mama…I am going to be a good girl,” I said, but my voice was too weak to be heard over her loud monologue. “I love you, mama, I am not going to cry again, I promise.” I was not sure that my mama had heard me, so I repeated it, louder again and again, until her eyes finally fell fixed on me.

“Mi ninita, mi Alma Bella…I love you, I love you, I love you….” My mama kissed me all over, her hands probing up and down my body. With feverish eyes, she examined me for signs of visible damage. “You are okay, mi ija, yes? You look okay. Does something hurt you? Can you stretch your arms? Good….” She exhaled loudly in relief when she saw that nothing was broken. “Good…very good,” she laughed nervously. Then, with brisk strokes, she moved up my body to examine my head.

“Oh…” I cried, but my cry did not relieve the pain caused by her touch. Then, I saw her dark brows closing together high on her forehead. I regretted being such a crybaby. I knew she was not happy. I did not want to disappoint my mama, not then and there, not when she had just told me that she loved me and that she would not hit me anymore. “No, Mama, just a little,” I lied. “It hurts but only a little, mama, but I am a big girl now, and I will just not pay attention and it will go away. It will not hurt me anymore, mama.” 

My mother was not listening to me anymore. Her attention was entirely fixed on her outstretched hand, opened wide in front of her. It was covered with blood, my blood, smeared between my mother’s fingers. I was so scared when I saw the sudden disgust on my mother’s face. I was not sure what evoked it, the sight of my blood or the repulsion she felt for me at that moment. In either case, I was bound to lose my mama again. 

“I know that you are a big girl, Bella. It is a little scratch only, a very small thing. Nothing is broken, Bella. We don’t need a doctor here. Mama will take care of everything, mijita.” My mama kept talking sweetly while she cleaned the blood that had begun to dry, plastered on my hair.

Later, she went to McDonalds and got me a Happy Meal with a small toy inside. If a broken head could secure me another hour sitting on my mother’s lap and eating that McDonald’s Happy Meal, I would readily have chosen the same fate anytime again. I was thankful in my heart for that little incident because, for the rest of the day, it diverted my mother’s attention solely to me.

“We don’t have to tell others about our little incident today, Bella.” my mother whispered in my ear with an indication of great importance. And all the matters of that day became a secret to which we silently agreed.

My mamma did not take me to the hospital, then. She was already gone when the episodes of fainting began. Franky did not think that I needed medical attention, either. Victoria and the doctor, however, were so alarmed by the bump on my head that I was immediately scheduled for surgery. The doctor said that a scar tissue had grown at the place of my injury and had to be removed. I still couldn’t understand how that could be related to my fainting episodes, but I trusted Victoria and the doctor when they said it did. 

The Interview

Year 2004, Los Angeles, California 

“What is your name, sweetheart?” asked the young woman with the long red-painted nails who had been diligently writing my information on a large sheet of paper. Her scratchy voice grated on me like those fingernails of hers on that parched paper.

“Bella. My name is Alma Bella, ma’am,” I answered, as my agitation grew with each question she asked.

“What a beautiful name!” she exclaimed with the trained intonation of a person who had dealt with children a lot, but her eyes remained on the papers.

“That’s what it means. ‘Bella’ means ‘beautiful,’” I said, “and ‘Alma’ means ‘soul.’ A Beautiful Soul,” I added. My simple explanation always seemed to stir people’s interest, as it did with this woman.

“Beautiful Soul!” she exclaimed again, but this time she looked at me from under the thin-framed glasses that had fallen low on her nose. She studied me, repeating my name, as if trying to see if its sound and meaning befitted the appearance of the small, frightened child curled up on the chair in front of her.

“I can’t see your soul, but I see that you are beautiful. Everybody can see that,” she said, apparently satisfied with the results of her observations. “Well, Alma Bella, I think we have covered everything necessary. Mr. Walton and Ms. Gomez will be with you shortly.”

At the recognition of Mr. Walton’s name, my heart began racing. Victoria had told me that he was the dependency investigator assigned to my case and that he would be asking me questions about Franky.

“It won’t be any different from the time you first reported it to the school and the police, Bella,” Victoria had explained to me when I asked why I had to tell that man about Franky also. “He is not a policeman or counselor; he works with the court. The judge has sent him to find out what had happened to you, Junior, and Alicia. Are you afraid?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, but I lied. Deep inside, I was torn between telling the truth, as Victoria always urged me to do, and the promise I had made to Junior and Alicia.

Suddenly, I did not want to be there. I did not want to face another man again and tell him about Franky. I didn’t want to tell anybody anymore what he did to me. How could anyone ever understand? And what good would that do me when Alicia and Junior were unhappy? Maybe they were right! Maybe it was better to put up with Franky than to be in a foster home. It would probably not be that long before they treat us just like Franky did. 

“Hello, Alma Bella!” A bearded middle-aged man interrupted my thoughts as he greeted from the door, left half-open by the woman with the red-painted nails. “Alma Bella, yes? How do you like to be called, child?” he asked. 

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not care what he called me. I did not want him to call me anything, anyway. I didn’t want to be there. I did not want to talk to him. Why didn’t Victoria come with me?

“Hello! I am Ms. Gomez.” A short woman wearing high heels and a tight flowery dress followed the bearded man through the door and closed it behind her. “Bella,” she said, “I thought that you might be uncomfortable with some of the questions that Mr. Walton would be asking. So, I came along with him to help you answer them. I am with you now, not as a social worker, but more like girl-to-girl support. Do you understand?” She had come closer to me and had pulled down one of the chairs stacked up in the back of the room and sat across from me. When I remained silent, she added in Spanish, “If you are more comfortable talking in Spanish, mija, that would be just fine.” 

I did not want to talk! Not in English! Not in Spanish! Don’t they get it? I did not want to talk, and I was not going to talk! The woman kept coming closer to me, lowering herself to look at me at my eye level. I felt as if I were being pushed back against a wall. I panicked. What did they all want from me? Why don’t they go and ask Franky? For sure, he would not tell them anything. He said he would kill me if I did. I am dead-dead anyway!

“Do you remember, Bella, the time when your mom left Junior, Alicia, and you with Franky?” the bearded man asked when I remained silent. “What was life like for a young girl like you? You must have been like a mother to Alicia and Junior, yes?”

A mother for Alicia and Junior and a wife for Franky, I thought in my heart, but I said nothing. What did they know about a little girl forced to do all the laundry by hand instead of going out to play? I had to climb on a chair to reach the sink because it was too high for me to reach the faucet. What did they know about making a dinner for two toddlers out of a “Cup of Noodles,” two potatoes, and a carrot? What did they know about carrying baby Alicia, burning with a high fever, all the way to Tia Maria to get help? Franky was either gone or dead-drunk asleep. What did they know when, in his good moods, Franky would not beat me but pull me down alongside him on the bed, and tell me that it was time to love each other as a good family does. How can they tell me they knew? Do they know that Franky’s love hurt more than any of his other punishments? For Franky, it was a reward. Do they think of this as a reward also? Does this bearded man reward his children this way? How can he understand their pain then?

“I understand your intimidation, Bella. I understand your pain. You have the right to be angry and refuse to talk.” The woman in the flowery dress stroked my hand, but that did not open my mouth.

Does she really know my pain? Does she really know what pain is? I was boiling inside, but my emotional valve was tightly closed, refusing to let the steam of my pain, shame, and anger escape. Could she ever imagine what it was like for me, just a little girl, to be awakened during the night with yells and kicks, thrown in the bathtub, and ordered to stay there, my body submerged in cold water, until Franky’s fury subsided? It was freezing cold. At times I was losing it. My tears seemed to turn into icicles, crystallized on my bloodless cheeks. Everything inside turned dead cold. I felt like screaming my pain out, but Franky would have killed me before the neighbors heard my cry. I begged Franky. I begged him harder and harder but…that was my punishment, he said, for wetting my bed and wetting him while sleeping next to him. There were nights I was afraid to go to sleep because of those accidents that had begun to happen more often and not only at nights but during daytime, too. Does this woman really understand my pain? Does she really understand what the pain was? 

The man and the woman kept talking, but I was far away, in a place where the painful memories turned into haunting shadows. I felt as if my entire body was shutting down. My mouth was not responsive. Neither were my eyes, nor my ears. I could not hear what the bearded man and the woman in the flowery dress were saying to me. Their voices and figures seemed to fade away like the images of some distant characters in a slow-motion movie. My head was spinning. I wanted to run away from them. I wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Their questions hammered away at the strength of my will to resist the painful memories of Franky. Even the wall that I had first backed up against began to crumble behind me, leaving me with nothing to hold on to. I held on to that crumbling wall with the last traces of my strength, hoping that rescue would arrive.

But, when the door opened, not rescue but the woman with the red-painted nails came in. She left a tray on the table and handed me a glass of water, saying something to me. Her mouth, colored with the same red she had on her nails, opened in what seemed a distorted smile. Terrified, I realized that my inner world of perceptions was painfully distorting images and sounds, causing everything my eyes fell on or my ears heard of to appear ugly and distorted. 

I heard the bearded man say, “When was the first time Franky touched you inappropriately, Bella?” Sudden distortion of his voice loomed at me with frightening dimensions. His face began to swell, threatening to fill the entire room with its massive size and volume. 

First time? Was there ever a first time? Was there ever a life without Franky? My memories were filled with him, my body scarred by him. Couldn’t they see it? My soul was splintered with fear of him. Couldn’t they feel it? Suddenly, the face of the bearded man took the shape of Franky’s face, his voice began to sound like Franky’s voice.

Franky’s image came out fully alive from the dark closets of my mind where I had been trying to keep him locked since our detention. He was coming towards me, his eyes cracked open, looking intensely at me. He gathered my hair in his hand and pulled my head backwards. I froze in anticipation of another of his punishments for something I did or something I should have done. He lowered his face down to me, puckered his lips, and then backed up, laughing loudly. Toxic fumes of liquor and nicotine blasted from his mouth, making me hold my breath instinctively. I dared not show discontent. I just wondered why he had returned so early from work that day? Alicia and Junior were still with Tia Maria.

Franky, still laughing, took me in his arms and said he would show me how much he loved me. Franky had never before held me that way. His rough, stained with machine oil hands that had pummeled me that same morning were now exploring my body with unknown excitement.

“I will teach you, mija, something that is only for big girls. It is time that Franky teaches you something good. It is time that Franky shows you the sweet part of life. Now relax and you will see how you will like what I am going to show you today.”

Franky put me on his lap and feverishly moved his hands up and down my body. His touch was different from anything I had ever experienced before. Nobody, not even my mama, had ever shown me such affection as Franky did at that time. I stiffened in his arms, not knowing how to respond to his new “love.”

“Relax, mija, just relax. Relax, mi Linda,” Franky whispered huskily in my ear. “Give Franky a kiss, mija; show that you love me. I will show you how much I love you.”

“Like you loved Mama?” I asked.

“Yes, mija, like Mama. But Mama is not here now…but you are…I will show you my love….”

I had watched silently in the dark many times when Mama and Franky loved each other this way. I was happy because they were happy and, for some time after that, they seemed to quarrel no more. Franky was giving that love to me now. At that moment, I wanted Franky to love me. He was my family. My mama had left and had never come back. Probably, I thought, Franky was lonely too, and I wanted to give him my love.

I let Franky slip off my dress, my panty…and then…it seemed that Franky lost his patience with me. His voice sounded muffled, as if I was hearing it through the roaring of raging water, unclear and frightening. His breath quickened and his eyes closed. He was not laughing anymore. His hands were not gentle on my body anymore. I heard my chest cracking under the pressure of his heavy body. A sharp pain ripped me from inside. There was no sound in the scream I cried out. There was no breath left in me to form that scream. An unknown pain entered my body, that enormous pain jolted my body, that cruel pain crippled my body, that pain finally paralyzed my body. Franky was coming at me with full force with an ever-unceasing starvation, he threw himself at me.

“Mama…Mama…,” I cried out, but my mama was not there to take me away from Franky’s hands. She was not there to protect me. I couldn’t push Franky away from me. His face came at me, ugly and distorted, and took the shape of the bearded man.

“Bella…, Bella…,” the misshapen image that resembled partly Franky and partly that bearded man was coming at me, calling my name, a monstrous creature from the order of gargoyles was stretching its hands towards me. The images and the sounds became so convoluted that my mind set my body for an immediate survival response. 

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed, fighting the images. “No, Franky! No!” My mind drifted between the reality of the office and the dark times and places I had suffered not that long ago. The red-painted nails of the woman flashed before my eyes as she waved her arms to get my attention. Their color triggered memories of another red, the red of my blood trickling down from within me to the floor. I saw again those streams of blood that crawled down the drain and stained the bathtub with their bright red color, the same color as those red-painted nails.

“I am dying, mama, I am dying, mama…come, mama…I don’t want to die, mama…,” I cried, but Franky said mama would not hear me. Nobody heard me. Nobody saw the rivers of blood, of my blood. Franky, like my mama, said we did not need a doctor. He, like my mama, said it would heal like a scratch on a puppy.

“Mama, oh, mama…I hurt so much…why did you leave me? Mama… oh, Mama…come back….” I wanted my mama, nothing else but my mama. That day, the last brink of hope of having my mama collapsed. I was just a little girl, only six years old, all alone, against Franky and his horrifying punishments! I just could not understand. How did the adults ever think of such cruel punishments for little kids and still called it love? 

“It is okay, Bella,” I heard the woman in the flowery dress say. “We don’t have to talk today. It all seems very painful for you. You need to rest now. We can talk another time when you feel much stronger, okay?” Her words suddenly catapulted me away from the damaging memories of Franky.

“I lied,” I said while the woman was still talking. “I lied,” I repeated with a much stronger voice. They wanted me dismissed and I could not let that happen. What was I going to tell Alicia and Junior? I feared that I had failed them. I could not stand their resentment anymore.

Since I had told the school authorities about Franky, they had blamed me for our displacement. I could not understand why they would want to go back with Franky? After all the beatings they suffered? “I love him,” Junior had said. “I love him, too,” Alicia had said also. I guessed, Franky was our only family. Good or bad, but family. 

The life with the Gonzalezes was quiet and clean. We had our own rooms and beds. With Franky, there had been one bunk bed only. Junior and Alicia slept on the top, and Franky and I were on the bottom. With the Gonzalezes, we had clothes, shoes, and food - things we had never had with Franky. The Gonzalezes did not beat us, but they did not hug us either. At least on his good days, Franky had shown us some affection. Junior and Alicia missed those moments; I did not feel deprived of them at all. They believed that if I told the investigator I had lied about Franky, they would be allowed to go back with him. I did not want to go back. I hoped that Victoria would somehow keep me with her.

“I lied,” I said a third time, boldly looking in the eyes of the bearded man, the investigator. I became aware of other people who had filled the small office and had formed a tight circle around me. Their faces looked concerned, their voices sounded troubled.

“Are you saying that everything that you ever said about Franky was not true? Is that correct, Bella?” the bearded man asked.

“I made it up,” I said, barely holding myself together under the man’s searching eyes. 

Franky said that I was good at lying, that I had learned it from him. He lied to the school many times about the reasons I would not show up for class or how I got my bruises. For that whole week, when the blood would just not stop gushing out of me, Franky ordered me not to go to school. He told my teacher that I was sick with the flu. I lied to my teacher also when she asked me if I had gotten better. The bleeding never completely stopped because Franky never stopped. With time, the sight of my blood became a side effect of his “love” and nobody paid attention to it anymore. I learned to live with the pain and the sight of blood.

“So, it turns out that Franky never touched you and that he never beat you or your siblings. What about the bruises on Junior and Alicia? What about your own bruises?” the investigator asked, but I already had rehearsed the answers in my mind long before he directed the questions to me.

“We fight a lot. We hit each other, you know, like siblings do. Just sibling rivalry, Mr. Walton. This is how we play,” I answered and, with superficial indifference, looked away from his penetrating eyes.

“Just a rivalry uh-huh” He repeated my words, holding his gaze on me.

“That’s right. Just sibling rivalry.” I stood firm under the permeating beams of his studying eyes. The people who had filled the office left, and I found myself again seated in front of the bearded man and the woman in the flowery dress.

For a long time, they continued asking questions. The pressure on me became unbearable. Time and again they returned to the same questions, asked about the same things. I became confused by what they asked and how they asked.

“I want Victoria…,” I said, exhausted by their unceasing bombardment of questions. “I want Victoria…,” I repeated and vowed to speak no more.

The woman in the flowery dress trotted on her high heels out of the room and I could hear her talking to someone, asking, 

“Who is Victoria? Bella is very distressed and wants to see Victoria? Is that somebody from her family? Is Victoria here? Who is Victoria?” she asked some people I could not see. 

“Victoria is her social worker, not a family. And she is not here. The foster mother brought Bella to the interview this morning,” I heard somebody responding.

“A social worker? The child wants her social worker?” The heels of the woman in the flowery dress trotted back into the room. “They usually want their mothers, not their social workers,” I heard her mumbling to herself.

“Mija,” the woman approached me and put her arms on my shoulders, “we can call Victoria and you can talk with her on the phone, but she is not here, sweetie. Maybe we can call her and ask her to see you at the foster home. Do you want that?” 

“Yes,” I nodded and took some Kleenex tissue she had offered me. I wiped away sweat, not tears. What did she think? Doesn’t she know that I can’t cry? Doesn’t she know that I was dry inside and out? Those drops of sweat that she saw rolling down my temples betrayed my fears, not my weakness. 

“I will make sure to find Victoria and tell her to see you as soon as possible, okay?” The woman assured me and I nodded in silent agreement. 

On the way back, I sat in the back seat of the car and thought of Alicia and Junior. I was sure they would be glad to hear that I kept my word and didn’t betray them. I denied everything that I had initially told the school about Franky. I felt good about the ground I thought I had conquered back for Alicia and Junior. They could go back with Franky and cry no more. The bearded man and the woman in a flowery dress seemed to believe me. Did they? I wondered.

TASK: Describe your thoughts and emotions when reading the story of Alma Bella

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NOTE: At this point of the healing process, you should have experienced a degree of liberation from pain and suffering. The story of Alma Bella is a personal test to determine the level of recovery through a simple assignment: The story is to produce response of compassion and empathy. A presence of these emotions attests to a satisfactory level of healing, a spirit that has been awaken to the pain of others and arouse an adequate response of empathy. This is the fulfillment of one of the objectives stated in session one.