fifteen year old unatoned sin

only this evening that i remembered the story of elisa. i can say that we were good friends who used to borrows stuffs from each other (most of the time i was the one borrowing pencils from her) and who used to trade snacks and "text" cards. she was an awesome playmate while waiting for our class and while waiting for our school bus to take us home. it was the typical my-girl friendship (remember the mcaulay movie with whoever that girl is), it was so great to have her as a buddy.

on a fine day of whatever month it was, our school bus screeced halt in front of their house to fetch her, i knew i heard something weird inside. it sounded like some animal doing some crazy incomprehensible sound, it was so loud that everybody inside the bus heard it. when she boarded the bus, she immediately sat beside me. i remember it clearly now, she was asking what is my lunch box for snack time, as we often did. i never knew that the next question i asked her would mark end to such snacks-trade friendship.

"bakit may kambing sa loob ng bahay ninyo?"

the sound was coming from her older brother who has a cerebral palsy, and yet i never realized the gravity of my question, but at such a young age, she already knew the pain that came along with it. i never knew how much painful it is to her and how much a grade two pupil like her is trying to learn how to read the alpahabet and understanding why such fate had dawned on his older brother at the same time. everything then was all play for me, and i knew no anguish, much, an apology. maybe, i was just still a kid to understand.

when we turned to grade 3, elisa was no longer in st vincent. i do not know up to now where she had transferred and i even could not rememeber her surname. but i do remember the snacks we used to trade and the pencils i used to borrow. i could not say that i never got the chance to apologize because i had a lot of them, only, i never realized how much painful it was for her for me to apologize.

maybe she had grown to become a loving baby sister to his brother. maybe, somewhere along her own jaded existence, she had finally understood the fate of his brother, much more than human anatomy could ever teach. or maybe not. i do not know.

now, somehow i wish i apologized for what i have said. somehow i hope she would know how sorry i am for it, no matter how long it took me to realize that. somehow i wish she had forgiven me. if not, somehow i wish, like the way did on her surname, she had forgotten...