Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Hunger (07/04/24)
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TITLE: Bones | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
07/05/24 -
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I almost missed the bundle of rags nestled up in the ten-inch shadow outside the doorway. I almost missed it because of everything else I missed. The endless whine and buzz of motorcycles was gone. The honking of mini-vans jockeying for customers was silent. There was no braying of donkeys, barking of stray dogs, clucking of chickens – everything was wrong. Even the flies hid away.
I looked behind me at the two-dozen women gathering their bags and chuckled to myself. It wasn’t the rapture.
It was then I heard the briefest wheeze at my feet. I stepped back into the doorway and squinted. The rags moved an inch. I motioned with my head toward Esther, our head deaconess. She moved quickly to my side. I nodded toward the rags.
She was on her knees in a moment. “Oh, child,” she said. “What a gift from God you are. Come home with me. I have potato soup.” She lifted off the rag and cuddled the little one, laying the skin-covered skull against her chest.
It was a little girl, younger than ten. With all her effort she lifted her bony fingers and pointed.
“I think she’s trying to tell us something,” I said.
Esther lifted her higher, resting the girl’s cheek on her shoulder. “Tell me, little one. What do you need?”
A whisper, no stronger than the breeze that bends a dandelion without releasing its parachutes, rasped toward Esther’s ear. “Her brother,” Esther said. “She wants us to find her brother.”
I followed the deaconess and orphan into an inferno that might have humbled Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “Where are we going?” I asked. “There’s nothing over here but the garbage dump.”
Esther’s flip-flops plowed through the dust toward the stench that almost daily made me lose my breakfast. I shielded my nose and mouth with the blouse covering my elbow. My tennis shoes faded from view under the clouds of red puffs around my feet. Still, we persevered.
And there he was. Among discarded banana peels, dented paint cans, rotting potatoes, mushy onions, empty water bottles, shredded cardboard, and all the refuse of a city that has nowhere to lose its trash. I only knew it was him because of the tattered cloth identical to the girl’s.
Without hesitation, I waded into sludge that normally would make me vomit. I picked up the tiny skeleton and looked toward the girl. She nodded and closed her eyes.
“He’s yours,” Esther said. “I have my own. Feed him a spoonful of potato soup six times a day. Look at how bloated his stomach is. How frizzled and red his hair is. He hasn’t eaten for days. When he’s healthy enough, bring him to see his sister.”
It took two weeks of drizzling potato soup, water, and milk into his gaping mouth. He hardly moved for the first week but after that his puckered lips begged for more and I gave it.
I remember how my life changed because it was Christmas morning when his eyes opened and he smiled for the first time. I thought of how God sent a baby into the filth and emptiness of our world to change us all. I thought of how that baby had grown and told the story of how a certain Samaritan had pushed past his own fears and anxieties to care for someone no one else would touch.
I remember how Peter, one of his followers, told us to be hungry like a baby for pure spiritual milk so that by it we could grow up into our salvation, now that we have tasted that the Lord is good (I Peter 2:2-3). His sister told Esther and I later that their mom had died and they had no one. The girl’s name was Ruth and the boy’s name was Edward.
When I adopted him, his papers filled out that name to Edward Peter. He never stopped being hungry. Last week he graduated and the first thing he said to me was, “mom, can we eat, I’m hungry.”
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