Angels

Come on Papa, faster! We squealed and urged Father to overtake Uncle and our cousins in the row boat next to ours. The boys are splashing water towards us and we splash them back equally. Mother and Aunty are sitting on the picnic blanket. Black sunglasses frame their faces and they are laughing. Kat is wobbling on her feet in an attempt to walk while Mother holds her tiny hands. Gerome is only a couple months older than Kat, but sleeps contentedly in his mother’s lap.

Liza and I are wearing identical purple sundresses. Though we were born almost 2 years apart and looked nothing alike, Mother thought it more convenient to use the same pattern and fabric to dress us. Even Monica sometimes wore a bigger version of our clothes. It’s the start of the summer season. The Chateaux of Versailles is our destination when we want to escape the city for beauty and quiet without having to drive very far. I don’t remember who won the boat race. I’d like to think we won. We’re hungry and run over to our mothers demanding food and drink. They chastise us to wash our hands first.

Liza, like always, sits close to Father and slowly devours her sandwich. I chat with our cousins, at the same time chewing a mouth full of food and chuckling at Julien’s joke. At 5 years of age, Veronica, two years younger than Julien and I, makes cheeky remarks and earns her a dirty look from her younger brother, Oliver.

Monica takes Kat for a walk close to the edge of the palatial waters we had just been on. Mother calls out and reminds Monica to be careful. We clean up our picnic and walk towards the gardens of Versailles. Mother loves it there; the expanse of meticulously planted, cared, healthy flowers makes Mother look happy. She tells Father to take our photos among the beauty. We all pose, despite the fact that we would much rather run around the garden, pebbles and dirt flying behind out pattering feet.

Mother is an admirer of flowers. She wants an entire garden cultivated with flowers and I want to give her that someday. She wants to be able to sit in the backyard, unhindered by the sight of light poles, cars, and buildings. She wants to relax, talk to her angels, and enjoy the simple beauty of flowers.

Mother is special. She has an angel who watches over her. And because we’re her children, he watches over us as well. Though he doesn’t like Father very much, since Father is Mother’s husband, he watches over Father too. I used to think I had an angel too. I even gave him a name. I talked with him. I cried my heart out to him. But I don’t have an angel, at least not like Mother’s angel. I don’t dream of things to come. I don’t have premonitions. I don’t simply know things I didn’t know. But Mother does and at first, it scared me to hear her talk of her angel.

Initially I thought Mother was going crazy - telling us about the voices, the shadows, her dreams, her sickness, her foreknowledge. There were days she lay in bed, pale, sickly, barely able to utter a phrase. No amount of medication, doctor’s visits, could explain why she was sickly. Since modern medicine couldn’t help her, Mother turned towards herbal medicine, but even that didn’t seem to ebb the sickness that seemed to grow daily.

One winter afternoon, Mother accompanied Aunt Kali to see a woman who divined. Aunt Kali wanted to know about the state of her marriage – was she and her roving eyed husband stay together? As they entered the diviner’s home, Mother started to shake, like she does when her condition worsens. She is feeling the chills and forces her body to stay still. She trembles but she doesn’t ask to leave. After all, she came to be Aunt Kali’s moral support. She lasts through the end of the divination for Aunt Kali and decides to ask the diviner about her sickness. The diviner said Mother already knew and it was unnecessary for her to divine. They came here with you, she tells Mother. Beside, they won’t let me see anything anyway. Mother was confused. What do you mean I brought them along? The diviner was getting annoyed with Mother and could not believe Mother didn’t know she had angels. You can speak with them, like I can speak with them, she tells Mother. Mother shakes her head and gently explains she doesn’t know how to speak the tongue of spirits. The diviner slowly began to understand that maybe Mother was speaking the truth and sat Mother down. Do you sometimes feel like there’s something watching you, and when you turn, you see a shadow disappearing quickly? Do you sometimes walk and find yourself looking at plants and saying, oh this would be good to treat this and this? Do you dream of flying and being taken by someone during the night? Do you hear a voice calling your name clearly, but when you look around and ask people around you if they called out your name, no one has? She pauses. All those are signs that they’re with you. If you don’t know that yet, then it would explain why you’re sickly. They’re trying to communicate with you, but you’re not accepting them and because of that, it’s making you sick. It dawns on Mother that the explanation, though it seemed almost unrealistic, made sense. The diviner seems to be listening to something. She looks at Mother and tells Mother that Mother’s angels are unhappy with Mother. Accept them, she says, and you’ll be better. I can’t help you, but you’ll have to find someone who can help you accept them. You’ll see, once you do, everything will be fine.

Mother walked out of the session in a daze, but resolved to pursue the explanation that had been set forth before her. After confirming the diviner’s words with Aunt Say and my cousin who can divine, Mother has accepted the angels into her life. Though the transition has not yet been complete, Mother is no longer as sickly as she once was and as long as her angels are content, Mother is stable and no longer wavers on the road of “crazy” my sisters and I once thought she was on. Her angels have a home now in our home and slowly, but surely, Mother is getting healthier.