Angel

Claudia Luna’s father went to heaven, and sometimes when people go to heaven they don’t come back. At least that was what her mother, Rosa, always said. Claudia didn’t see her mother much, because Rosa was always working to pay the rent and feed her three children. She worked the morning shift as a maid at a local hotel, and freelanced for a small house cleaning company after lunch. In the evenings she cooked at a local Salvadoran restaurant. Her life as a single mother had made Rosa old before her time. In just a few years, all her youthful vigor had vanished, and with it her smile, laughter, and love of dancing. In spite of her demanding schedule, Rosa plodded on sacrificing herself for her son and two daughters. Fourteen-year-old Ricky, her oldest, was in a rebellious stage and spent most of his time conspiring with his friends in the street. Adriana, who was ten, was starting to wear clothes not suited for a girl her age. She listened to the latest pop music and wanted to look just like her idols. So she nagged her mother for short skirts and tight tops, and complained that the other girls would make fun of her if she wore the “lame” clothes her mother picked out. Seven-year-old Claudia was a dreamer. Her teachers were concerned because she did not speak in class, though she always did her work. On several occasions Rosa was asked to come to school for a parent/teacher conference, but she never did because she was working. And she wouldn’t have come anyway, ashamed as she was about her poor English. If her daughter was doing fine in school then she saw no need to come and talk about her silence. Obviously, Claudia listened to and understood her teachers. It was Rosa’s opinion that people talked too much anyway. In her work she spent most of the day not talking at all, just taking orders from her bosses.

Because their mother was always working, Adriana took care of her little sister and they both spent a great deal of time alone in the apartment. Ricky would only come home to heat up some pupusas mom had brought home from the restaurant before going out again to hang out with the other kids in the complex. On school days, after walking home together and eating a snack their mother had prepared for them, Adriana would listen to her music and chat with her friends on the computer. Sometimes Adriana would have friends over and they would lock themselves in the bedroom she shared with her sister, leaving Claudia alone. One way Claudia occupied the time until her mother came home and tucked her into bed, was to draw. Claudia’s preferred subject matter was angels. In the second grade alone she had drawn almost one hundred angels, each unique like a snowflake or fingerprint. She drew angels to save the world. She hoped her drawings would call the angels down to earth to help people with their problems. To Claudia people seemed to have a lot of problems, particularly adults. When she watched her teachers she noticed how they seldom smiled, were often upset, and seemed tired. She noticed the same thing about people she saw in the street, rushing about from one place to the next, always in a hurry and ignoring one another. But she was most concerned about her mother, and had drawn an archangel with the hope that he would come take care of her. That angel was her father. She knew she would have to draw many more angels to save the world and make everybody happy, and so everyday after school she drew. Her sister laughed at this, saying, “Angels are stupid. Can’t you draw anything else?” To which Claudia shrugged. Of course she could draw other things. She was particularly good at cats, horses, and palm trees, but there were enough of those in the world, so she would only use them as a background sometimes. In her drawings angels rescued people from burning buildings, helped the sick, fought gangsters, prevented natural disasters, built houses, fed the hungry, and gave people gifts. Claudia’s angels were responsible for fixing people’s problems and so far they were doing a very good job. She knew that her angels were there on the streets, but she also knew that they were hard to spot because like her they liked to be quiet about what they were doing. They did not help people in order to get a good grade or for some monetary reward; their reward was in helping others and seeing them happy.

Claudia got good grades, always brushed her teeth, went to bed on time, helped her mother with chores, and was always quiet and never complained because she was an angel herself. She had never told anyone that before, but it was true. She knew that one day she would be able to fly and then she could see the angels in heaven with their wings and white robes. On earth it was impossible to spot an angel because their wings were invisible; they were on missions to help people, but one rule of helping others when you were an angel was that you could never tell them your true identity. If you did then you would have to go right back to heaven and another angel would take your place to finish your job.

When Adriana was in her room with her friends listening to music and talking about boys, Claudia would sometimes go to the small altar by the door with the votive Virgin Mary candle and wooden cross, and, putting the phone book on the floor, she would stand on it, extend her arms and flap them slowly and gracefully like a bird. Flapping, she would stand on her tiptoes, shut her eyes and feel her feet leave the ground. Even if it was just an inch and for a second, she would fly, and this was proof that she was becoming an angel de verdad. Once her sister and her friend Raquel came out of the room and caught her. Though she quickly dropped her arms, Raquel said, “What are you doing?” To which Adriana replied, “She’s so weird. She’s obsessed with angels, and now she’s trying to fly. Right, hermanita? Well, none of us are ever going to be angels, so you’re wasting your time.” From there they went into the kitchen to get a soda and Raquel asked, “What’s wrong with your sister, anyway?” “She’s just stupid. She doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t have anything better to do.”

After Raquel went home, Adriana grabbed her sister by the arm and shook her, “Stop embarrassing me in front of my friends, okay? You’re such a retard. Now Raquel is going to tell everybody at school. Why can’t you just act normal?” And then she went to their room and slammed the door. Claudia didn’t say anything. She was used to being talked to that way. Somehow she understood that if you were an angel people would not understand you, and because you could not explain it to them they often got angry and said mean things. Both her mother and her brother did the same thing. Regardless of what they thought about her behavior, Claudia knew if she kept practicing she would be able to fly. Like birds, flying was something angels had to learn. On earth you couldn’t see wings; only angels knew their arms were wings. So Claudia kept standing on the phone book whenever she could flapping her arms each day lifting off a little higher, hovering over the carpet in the dark and gloomy apartment that was identical to all the others in the complex, while other children played video games or watched TV. It felt good to fly. Soon she would fly to heaven and see the other angels, and among them would be the one who was her father. The reason her father was not with them was because her mother had found out he was an angel when he was on earth and he had been sent back and replaced. Her mother never talked about him, because it was her fault he was gone. So now it was up to Claudia to visit him. Like in school, she would be a good angel who would never be found out and could come and go from heaven as she pleased.

Once her mother came home early and caught her daughter red-faced frantically flapping her arms with her eyes closed. Rosa stood a long time watching her daughter do this, and, with each second that passed, she found herself getting more and more angry until finally she grabbed her daughter off her perch and slapped her face several times.
“What is wrong with you? Your teachers tell me you don’t talk, and you are always staring off into space, and drawing pictures of angels. This obsession has gone far enough. You’re too old for this. Angels don’t exist, mihija! At least not here. So get it out of your head. God save me, how much I have to suffer for this child! I don’t want to ever catch you doing it again. It’s a sacrilege to make fun of God. It just brings bad luck.”
“I’m sorry, mama,” Claudia said, thinking how lucky she was that her mother hadn’t found out the truth; if she had then Claudia wouldn’t be able to return from her visit to see her father.

“Come in the kitchen and help me with dinner,” Rosa said, hugging her daughter and regretting her slaps and harsh words. While Rosa began preparing dinner she thought about her husband, Hector, who had died in a car accident shortly after Claudia was born. When she was old enough to understand, Rosa had told Claudia that her father had gone to heaven, without going into the details of how he got there: a head on collision with a semi truck. He had fallen asleep at the wheel and drifted into the other lane, waking up to the other driver’s horn seconds before impact. This incident would cause Rosa to doubt God, and to begin to think of life as a series of chance events. Again and again she considered the probability that her husband should fall asleep at the wheel and that a truck should be coming at that moment in the other direction. If the truck hadn’t been there would he have woken up? Would he have had an accident of a different type, and if so, would he have survived it? What if he had left work earlier, or been sick that day, or gotten a better night’s sleep? What if this and what if that.

In compulsively reviewing the incident that had destroyed her family and changed her life forever, Rosa even began to wonder if she could have done something to prevent it. She tried to remember: had she felt some sort of premonition that day? Had there been some sign that she should have heeded to prevent her husband from going to work? Had she done something wrong to cause God to forsake her in this way? Try as she might she could find no meaning in the suffering. And now her daughter thought only about angels and was trying be one to meet up with her father, and try as she might, Rosa could not tell her daughter the truth, that her father was simply dead, and that there was no guarantee that he was in heaven. It made her angry to be reminded of it: first with the drawings, and then in her daughter’s attempts to fly. Now angels made Rosa think of death; they were a bad omen. Like her daughter, Rosa was a spiritual person prone to superstition; pretending that there was some power or meaning beyond the struggle that was her life was the last resort to coping with tragedy. She wanted her daughter to be well, but it was becoming increasing clear that she wasn’t. Hector didn’t die, she thought. We did.

Then one day Claudia learned to fly. This was no longer the inch or two of hovering over the phone book, she was suspended several feet in midair over the living room floor and, flapping her wings, she was soon pressed to the ceiling. It was a glorious feeling. I’m an angel, she thought. I’m an angel and I’m going to heaven to see my dad! In her mind flashed the image of a smiling man throwing her into the air; it was Claudia’s only memory of her father.

Her sister was at the park that day, where she was hanging out with Raquel and some of the boys they liked from school. It was this absence that had given Claudia the time to fly to the ceiling. Having accomplished this, she slowed her wings and came back down until her feet touched the floor. She did not want to waste anymore time. Just beyond the clouds was heaven and she was going to fly there and back before her mother came home to scold her. She would only stay a short while this time. Heaven was a big place and it might take some time to locate her father. Though she was shy, she would work up the courage to ask any angels she met if they knew or had seen him. She imagined the clouds were like houses organized into neighborhoods, except that they came and went and changed size and shape, so it was probably more like camping and sleeping in a tent. She would visit some of the clouds she could see outside her window and then come home and go back and visit others another day. Now that she could fly there didn’t seem to be any hurry. She just had to be sure no one found out or she would be stuck in heaven and unable to help her mom and her sister and brother on earth.

Claudia stepped out onto the concrete balcony and shut the sliding glass door behind her. She stood there for a moment surveying the scene. In the distance she could see her sister and her sister’s friends in the park. If they looked they would be able to see her too, but they weren’t paying attention. Claudia stood there for a minute looking at the changing shapes and colors of the clouds. They were much more interesting than the boring old apartment complex. It was spring; the sun was shining and a light breeze was blowing. Ideal conditions. Some birds glided by and she smiled knowing now how they felt to hang in the sky and look down to the earth. She dragged a chair over to the corner of the balcony and stood on it. Then she got up on the railing and propped her hand on the wall to keep her balance. When she felt stable enough she let go and began to flap her wings slowly at first and with increasing vigor like she had been practicing. She felt the usual lightness in her feet as she began to lift free of the balcony.

At just this moment old man Vargas came walking by on the street below with his dog. Looking up he saw what appeared to be an angel in the form young girl floating in the air above the balcony of a third floor apartment. It was a fantastic sight and one that made him cross his heart with reverence. He realized that she had come to take someone to heaven. Though it would be pleasant to go with her, he decided to keep walking. He was still too attached to life to join this gentle creature on his final journey. Let her take someone else this time.

Claudia didn’t notice the old man because she had shut her eyes to concentrate like she always did just before take off. In order to fly like an angel your mind had to be clear and free of doubt and fear. At some point her mother had come home, but Claudia didn’t hear the door. Rosa called out to her daughters and, receiving no reply, went to their bedroom, which was empty. They must be at the park, she thought, opening the door to the balcony. In that instant, Rosa was transfixed by the vision of her daughter’s flight. Then panic took her and she shouted Claudia’s name.

Startled, Claudia turned to look at her mother; then she fell three stories to the pavement. Rosa had found out her secret, and, like her father, Claudia could never return. Rosa’s last memory was of her daughter with her wings spread wide hovering over the balcony. From then on she always referred to her as an angel. “She wanted so badly to see her father so she flew to heaven,” Rosa would tell friends and neighbors. “I saw her with my own eyes. She was my little angel.” And they would nod in that polite compassionate way one does to people who have suffered a tragedy which affects their reason and from which they are ultimately unable to recover.