The PRL Event: Darker Resurrection 4
“What kind of mother abandons her only child?”
Isabel is dead now. She had been standing on the rickety front porch of the dilapidated cabin where she has lived for months, and then she collapsed and her body tumbled to the ground, bruising and bleeding along the way. It was a sad end for the woman who had struggled against adversity to become something, to be more than the victim of harsh circumstance.
“What kind of woman questions sound decision making?”
In her life, Isabel had faced a lot of doubt, but this was not her fate in death. In death, she was fully prepared for what came next. There was a bright white light and she saw the dark skinned woman who had emerged from the trees in front of the cabin, and then Isabel joined a chorus that had a place for her. It felt that this is where she was always destined to be, where she had always been when things got very hard and she needed a reprieve from the struggles of her present. Flashback to childhood, huddling under covers and shaking at the stories of the Dudu Aje, she would find solace in the vibrations of her own voice deep in her chest, her hum that connected to something outside of herself that pulled her to sleep against the fears that her mother had tried to instill in her. Flashback to exile, on the sorry excuse for a raft that she clung to for life as she fled Cuba pregnant and petrified, Isabel would grab her stomach with one hand while the other gripped whatever there was to hold onto and the hum would vibrate her body and reassure her that they would make it to their destination safely. Once in the US, Isabel seemed to forget that source of comfort and she has never been the same since.
“Did we do this to her?”
“Do we do this to any of them?”
“If we are responsible for the good, then we have to be responsible for the bad. Isabel, what do you think? Is this our fault?”
“Do you blame your sisters?”
She was happy to realize her purpose among the chorus and from that position among them, she could feel that her daughter, Maria was under real duress that would only worsen.
Before Isabel fell dead, she was interrogated by the warriors, the large doves that stood next to her. They seemed hostile at first, they seemed to shout at Isabel, until she screamed and told them that she would not be harassed, she did not deserve it. And then they congratulated her and their interrogation became more of a conversation. By the end of it, Isabel understood.
“You did not need any of this in order to join us in the end,” one of the doves said, “it is just unfortunate that some choose to fear and persecute rather than understand. You are not different or special, neither were we, none of us are, we are just us and we can so we do. If you will come with us, you can join our mission, in our corner of what comes next, we can be on alert and we can maybe help others like us. You can join us.”
Isabel was at piece by the end of it and then the woman in white robes, with the pressed fan of Oshun and dark skin returned, seemingly very urgent.
“I am glad that you have a better understanding,” the woman said, “but we all must go now, we are needed. I apologize for the haste, but we must go at once.”
So Isabel went away, ordained in a tradition that she knew very little about, and destined for greatness in an afterlife that she could not fathom.
Without her soul, the body crumbled to nothing and the people that found her, mourned the sorry condition of her body. She had no dignity at the end, her body seemed discarded and forgotten, but it is not a clue to the value of the woman. It is her antithesis.
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