More Than A Feeling

"In which moment did this become all about you?"
Sasa said, as her palms rose upwards from her sides, a motion I eventually learned gauged her aggravation.

"It's been about me..." I turned my head swiftly in her direction, eyes squinting in dissatisfaction. "Have you forgotten the entire reason why you are here in the first place?"

It was arguments like this that would soon become ordinary. In an environment where emotions are always running high, and there is always something major at risk (such as someone's life or future) you cannot expect everything to always run as you had expected.
I remember what it was like to worry about the forthcoming of adolescence and early adulthood, when my biggest problem was deciding whether or not today was going to be the day I cared what people thought of me. I remember when what people thought of me actually mattered, even if to me only minutely. I remember my father painting me a vivid picture of life and the way it should be lived, in a warm safe place, surrounded by family, enjoying our freedom as human beings to choose what we love, and admonish what we hate. I have found through time that love and hate are accompanied by oddly similar emotions, and during war, can sometimes even be confused. In the past, I have had trouble finding where the line lays between the two. Even now, in these darker times, I tend to associate the same feelings with both emotions. Cassandra once told me that the only way she could gauge how much she loved something, was by how much she would miss it when it was gone. She would always say how she missed being home when she was on the road, but the moment she truly identified her feelings, was the day she missed being on the road when she was home.


September 3rd 2001
Brooklyn, NY.

The brisk breeze of the early fall morning lifted the copper coated stars back into the sky, creating a whirlwind of converging orange and yellow leaflets that sailed eastbound toward the rising sun. The sound of a waking community provided incomparable ambiance, as the hiss of an industrial trailers' hydraulic breaks warn neighbors of the new days' arrival. As the neighborhood dogs let off the first few warnings shots in this morning's war against the postal worker, a young girl tosses in her bed, the light striking her eye lids through a sea of dark strands covering her face. Her eye lids fluttered, coherence hard at work battling subconscious, the landscape around her becoming more blurry by the second. It was heaven for her, that dream she was having, and she felt it dissolving through her fingertips like sand through a clenched fist. The road began to narrow, the voices of her preferred company drowned out by the clatter of the city she was waking up to. Everybody has a recurring dream or two throughout their lives, and Cassandra reveled in hers. Sometimes, she used to say, she thought nightmares had caught a bad rap. In her words, when having your perfect world illustrated in your subconscious, in the company of people you know and love, waking up becomes the nightmare.

Her eyelids fluttered, finally opening as the strain of the light became overwhelming. Dark hair cascaded down her back as she sat up, feet swinging softly onto the blue and silver Turkish carpet. She blinked, and turned toward the window just in time to see the last street lamp flicker into hibernation. This, she thought, was the only good part of waking up; watching the autumn sky mimic a chameleon, as what once matched the rustic color of the trees, now slowly becomes lost on the horizon.


Cassandra had barely been awake for two minutes when there was a light knock on the door, it swung open, and a small middle-aged Spanish woman started to become visible. First only an eye through the crack in the door, then her whole head, then she slipped her whole small, plump, egg-framed body as quietly as possible through the opening and closed the door gently.

"I'm awake Rosalie," Cassandra said, as soon as she heard the locking mechanism on the door slip into its niche.

The small Spanish woman jumped a bit in her skin, before putting a hand to her forehead and breaking into a small laugh. "Ah, muy bien Sandra, tu padre told me to make sure you were up by six thirty para escuela," she said in a broken mixture of Spanish and English, all while she roamed about the room dubiously sweeping dust off the window sill with a wet cloth. "...y, why you no call me Rosa like everybody else, eh?"

There was a moment's pause, before Cassandra's bare mocha legs came sliding off the side of the bed, and she pressed her palms down at her sides to push herself into a standing position. She moved toward the window and pulled on the string, closing the shades and darkening the room. Finally, the young girl's gaze rested on Rosalie, and after a grueling fifteen or twenty seconds of eye contact that must have seemed like an eternity for the aging immigrant maid who just returned a small polite smile, Cassandra spoke.

"Well..." holding the eye contact with Rosa, she moved closer to the maid, so close that she leaned in and her lips were adjacent to Rosalie's left ear."I am not everybody else."

There was another moment of silence. The maid let out a quick burst of air from her mouth, before that polite smile crept nervously over those glossed, chapped lips.
"But of course senorita, you are the lovely Cassandra Valon." The older woman's thick accent wrapped around her words like a warm blanket. "Many chicas wish to be you, miss," Rosalie stated quite confidently, as she scurried back to the door leading downstairs.

"Where is she?" Cassandra said hastily, before Rosalie could fully close the door and secure her exit. "Your daughter, Rosalie--Where is she?"

The door creaked back open, the maid's small round face appeared in the separation, she looked confused, and a bit taken back. "Mija? Honduras, with her grandmother, miss."

"Why?" Sandra asked quickly, making steps in Rosalie's direction.

"She is in sch--"

"Well, perhaps she should be here, in the states," Cassandra hissed quickly as she approached Rosalie. Her young, sun-kissed hand pulled the door back open as the other was raised and placed on the elder lady's face, who then flinched and blinked her eyes nervously in response. "Cleaning houses on her hands and knees, like everybody else."

Letting the words linger for a few moments, she then brushed by the lady's thick frame, and headed toward the bathroom. Walking into the large second floor wash room with a hand above her eyes, the young girl prepared a shield for the surge of light they were about to experience. With a flick of a switch the overhead lights illuminated the white bathroom gloriously and the walls came to life with pieces of gold-painted artwork in a pattern across the wallpaper.

Cassandra moved forward towards the center of the bathroom where the large rectangular mirror and vanity resided, and on the mirror she spotted a small pink piece of paper held onto the glass by some adhesive substance. Her shoulders tensed, she ran her hands over the caramel colored skin on her face and through her almost midnight black strands of hair, before reaching out and grabbing the note. Her tired eyes squinted in attempt to read the small red ink scribed onto the paper.

"Your new adventure starts today. Good luck. Do not try to call, I'll find you in seven days."

The young girl crumpled the piece of paper inside of her palm and tossed it into the adjacent miniature trash bin. Putting both palms down on the marble sink she stared into the mirror intently for a few moments, as if she was deciding whether or not she trusted the depiction of herself that the mirror was offering. Finally, after a minute or two that could have been a lifetime, she shook her head quickly in an effort to break the enchanted state of deep thought she had entered and went on to prepare the shower. It was going to be a really long week.


-------------------------------------------------------


That young Colombian girl would turn out to be a real handful. I did not know Cassandra too well back then, and even if I did, I don't think it would change my initial perception of her. The first few emotions you feel when first coming in contact with someone destined to change your life, even if you don't know it yet, they don't wither, and they do not fade. Few discussions were held between us, and the most time I had to spend with her was during seventh period American History, the only class we shared together. We were both seniors at St. Edwards high school, and every year I had the pleasure of sharing but one class with Cassandra, and every year I made it a point to sit as close to her as possible. I admit I had a faint attraction towards her. She had the most mysterious, oceanic blue eyes that could both sail right through you or stop you dead and drop anchor flat onto your heart. It was a stare that could send a wave that ripples down your back and then soften, and make your shoulders fall like bricks to the bottom of the sea. I always felt like I had ... I don't know, a connection with her, a sort of; undisclosed, undetermined love for her. It was a kind of love that was beyond romantics or paternal love, a kind of love that connected us on a spiritual level ... a love that could capture and carry me like wings in a tailwind to our final destination. This year we did sit next to each other in class, granted, but we still didn't talk all that much. Once in a while she would shoot me an entertained look when I'd offer a smart-ass response to one of the teacher's lacking questions, or when I walked in to class late, and smelling of cheap cigar paper and marijuana. I'd share short, inappropriate jokes I had learned throughout the school day with her, and she would grin as she concentrated on whatever she happened to be doodling that day. I am telling you this now because it will make the events that transpired during that September all that much more peculiar.


I hail from a small family that resided in the Bergan Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, in what my father would tell me was the best country in the world. In my eyes we were a regular family, from a regular city, that did the most regular of things. My father worked from seven in the morning until five o'clock in the evening most days, and my mother would work from the computer at home. There was pretty much always a paternal presence in my household. We ate every night together when my father arrived home from work. My mother would chat him up and fill him in on my work at school, and my father would listen and consume his food without many questions. For the most part I had lead a normal childhood, birthed eagerly into early adulthood, and was currently trying to fit in somewhere between teenager and young adult.


As a child, basked in your ignorance, you are more than likely to accept the natural inclination that urges you from the inside to accept your parents as the best example of what is fair and righteous. From the day you were born they have been telling you what is right, what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. If you did not have many friends and were not able to capture the essence of other households or identify any differences, you had a sense of surety that the way it was in your home was the way it was everywhere. At least I did. I come from a very private family. My mother did her work on the computer while my father did his in an office building, and when they arrived home I was the topic of conversation. I had never heard my mother in my entire childhood ask my father anything additional about his work other than an initial "How was your day?" To this he often offered a short vague response or none at all. I was interested in what my father had done for a living, but every single time I had ever inquired about it I would get a similar vague, dismissing response, "He is a businessman," or when I asked him personally he would deflect with a joke.

"What do I do? I'm a business man son, I do business," He would say, flashing that smile of his, and giving me a reassuring pat on the back. Dad never elaborated further than that. I figured hey, if I had to spend nearly twelve hours every day doing the same damn thing for the last fifteen or twenty years, I probably wouldn't want to talk about it when I got home either.


The entire reason I became more interested, and my curiosity began to overshadow my respect for my father's privacy, was that the job I was told he did conflicted very much with his personality. Sure, he was smart, quick witted, and chose his words carefully but he was also so outgoing, adventurous, and resourceful. My father would insist on going camping in upstate New York every fall for as long as I can remember. He would teach me how to survive, hunt small game, and live off the land. We would go to the same camping grounds every year, and every year he would tell me the same story about an Israeli intelligence agent who saved both their lives from a vicious black bear in that very spot. That reminds me, after that incident my father set out to master the Israeli self-defense system labeled Krav Maga, and if he was going to master it, so was I, per his orders.


We spent many a fall training in that New York wilderness; learning how to survive, how to procure drinkable water, how to defend ourselves using a variety of different self-defense systems and martial arts techniques. Come to think of it, you know that series of questions kids ask each other, such as naming three things or people you would take with you if you were marooned on an island? Well you could answer "David Harley" to all three. You could put my father anywhere in the world and if he could get his hands on a few sticks, some leaves, and some material to use as rope...well, he would keep you hydrated, healthy, prevent you from becoming a meal for a black bear and still have you home before dinner. Think about it, does this seem like the type of man who would let his life waste away for eleven hours a day in an office building? It sure did not to me, not one bit.


When my father never returned home from work on September the 2nd, I sat upright in my bed all that night gazing out the window at the flickering headlights of cars passing. I watched, I waited, but I knew. Something inside me told me he was not coming home, for a reason I did not know, and perhaps could not understand. I think my mother knew as well. She proceeded to come into my room four or five times that night to check on me, and I had never seen her look so concerned, so puzzled and so...relieved. I remember thinking that she had this look on her pale white face like she knew this day would come, and she was relieved because she did not have to worry anymore, at least not about that Harley.


Have you ever been awakened to the most terrible, unsettling feeling in the world shaking you on the inside? Roaring with a vengeance from the tips of your toes to the strands of hair on your head? Well, on September 3rd, 2001, I woke up with that feeling. It is a feeling that I will never forget for as long as I am able to breathe oxygen into my lungs. I could not describe it to you, or explain it to you when I sat up that morning; no, not coming out of adolescence, not having seen what I have now witnessed and participated in since then. I'm much older, filled with more sorrow, and wiser. Wiser to know it was the feeling of an impending loss, an unforeseen gain, and the rebirth of life as I had once known it to be crashing and thrusting its way throughout my bones and throughout the universe. It was the end of anything familiar I had come to ever know, and at the same time, the beginning everything.