The Tarp

"May we chat with you?" Liya asked the ladies standing in the doorway. "My friend would like to practice her language." Liya motioned toward her white-skinned friend standing on the side of the road beside the small house.

"Yes," answered the mother, "come in."

Liya and Jackie slipped off their sandals at the door and entered the room. There was not a stitch of furniture in the room except for a wooden table that held an old TV. Purple and pink contact paper covered the floor and the faded pink walls were smudged with dirt. Jackie smelled a combination of urine, body odor, and dirt. She quickly decided to breathe through her mouth and not her nose. Three daughters who were in their teens or early twenties stood in the room and watched quietly as Liya, Jackie, and the mother sat on the plastic floor. Behind the mother sat a young man. He did not turn his head to greet them and the mother did not introduce him. Jackie looked at the man. He stared straight ahead, was he catatonic?

"Who is that?" asked Liya.

"That's my son," said the mother.

"What's wrong with him?"

"He was in an accident. He lost his sight."

Jackie looked from the mother to the young man. That couldn't be all that was wrong with him. He continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring the conversation about him.

The mother introduced herself as Rohiza. She and Liya began to talk, but Jackie struggled to understand them. Rohiza spoke in words slurred by her lack of teeth. The TV beside them blared a scratchy sounding soap opera that enthralled one of the teenage daughters.

Distracted, Jackie gazed around the room. At the far end was a kitchen area and there were what appeared to be two bedrooms with stacks of mattresses. Jackie guessed that Rohiza and her children brought the mattresses to the living room when it was time to sleep. But Rohiza was not only a mother to these girls. She was a grandmother.

Jackie watched as one of the teenage girls brought in a baby. The tiny boy had a cleft lip.

Liya looked up from her conversation with the Rohiza. "Is the baby alright?" she asked.

"Oh yes," said Rohiza, "he is just small. When he is bigger he can have an operation to fix his lip."

Jackie doubted that a cleft lip was all that was wrong with the baby boy. She noticed that as the young mother held him, his back stiffened and his head fell back. He could not hold himself at all. Something else was wrong with him.

Jackie looked at the teen-aged girls, Rohiza's daughters. Rohiza said they were all married and already had several kids each. The young moms were nice and watched quietly, but did not seem to really engage in the conversation. Jackie looked at the strange man sitting staring straight ahead. She listened to the crackling television and the warbled words of the toothless Rohiza. Jackie smelled the stench of the house and absently rubbed her fingers across the dirty plastic paper used as flooring. And she sensed something...something spiritual. Like a tarp. Yes, it felt like a spiritual tarp.

"I'm overwhelmed, Lord. These people are totally without You Lord! I can't even think right now. Help me know what to do..."

To read the rest of the story, click HERE.