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Wara's War on Terror

Karamoh Kabba

karamohslylhorg@aol.com

Monday, May 28, 2007

“My left leg is cold, I mean cold and numb,” Wara complained.

She stretched and rubbed ointment on it. Mojo, her husband, helped too—but the coldness and numbness reigned.

They were both worried:

“Do you have a chest pain?” Mojo asked.

“No,” she answered.

“Do you have any pain in your arms?” he asked again.

“What about in your legs?” he insisted.

“No, I don’t have pain anywhere,” she explained almost snobbishly.

“We need to go to the emergency room,” he suggested.

“Let me call my doctor first,” she countered.

She groped for the receiver and dialed;

“Hello,” she paused….

“I have this strange coldness and numbness in my left leg. It has been like this for the last three days doc,” she paused again. “My husband wants us to go to the emergency room, but I wanted to talk to you first,” she explained. “What do you think is happening to me doc?” she asked. “I am very worried,” she said firmly.

In response to the doctor, she uttered intermittently: “…No,” and paused. “…No,” she paused again. “…No, not really.”

She held the receiver between her neck and shoulder, held her hair to the back and untied a ponytail, while she listened.

Finally, she said; “…Oh! Really! Thanks doc. I feel better now doc.”

She stretched out her arm in the semidarkness for the lamp-stand, before she hung up the receiver, turned away from him, cuddled a pillow under a cover and wept.

Mojo became even more worried:

“What did the doctor say to you?” he asked nervously that the doctor had told her something bad. He had felt better when he heard her told the doctor, “I feel better now doc.” But the crying puzzled him, as he sat still on the bed.

On the far quadrant of the room, between light and darkness, was a gloomy silhouette portrait of Mojo on the bed as Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of The Thinker. Looking on the wall, she said in despair, “he said I’m suffering from stress,” as though she was expecting reaction directly from the  shadow of her husband.

Without saying a word more, Mojo walked out of their room and went into the children’s room to sleep.

Wara and Mojo were refugees from a far-away land that was fighting a civil war. Mojo was a slender man when he first came, but had put on considerable amount of weight lately. His doctor recently told him that his rapid accumulation of fat, especially around his belly, was also stress related. He held a degree from his country of origin’s Mountain Top University, but drove a delivery truck as an independent sub contractor. It meant that he provided his own truck, vehicle liability insurance and gas to drop off and pick up whatever job the main contract holder company assigned him.

Wara, a secondary school graduate from backhome had since settled for a nursing assistant career. Unlike Mojo, Wara showed no signs of overweight, but she frequently laid herself about and easily ran out of breath, especially when she walked up the stairs to their fourth-floor apartment.

Wara woke up the following morning and went into the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror. In great despair, she looked at her image. She flinched and looked away suddenly. But she beamed on a neat display of empty brand name personal care containers around the sink area, well organized as on a convenient store personal hygiene aisle.

She frowned, pulled the shower curtain apart, and revealed two half-empty tubes of generic conditioner and shampoo in the tub.

Mojo who worked in the evening, woke up earlier to prepare the kids; he was in the kitchen, arguing with their three children over what was for breakfast. Usually, he would wake up earlier than he did today to take the children to school in time for school breakfast.

There was no milk in the refrigerator to prepare cereal for them. There was only one egg left. He was relieved to find out that there was enough pancake mix. But felt a surge of lameness through his body when he discovered that the pancake syrup was finished to the last drop.

While he was off to the nearest Grandè Food store to pick up a bottle of pancake syrup, Wara came out of the shower just in time the kids were rushing up to her, griping: “mommmmyyy, I’m hungryyy, mommmmyyy I’m hungryyy and mommmmyyy I’m hungryyy,” one after the other that caused her an increasing palpitation along with a piercing feeling of pain in her chest area. She knew that there was no food in the house and that the kids had missed the school breakfast.

“Where is your dad?” she asked.

“We don’t know,” cried the youngest child.

“He left to go somewhere,” mumbled the younger child as she rubbed her stomach, “hmmm, my stomach is growling.”

“He went to the store to buy something,” the young child uttered.

Wara went into the kitchen and took out empty boxes of everything that was in the refrigerator, looking for syrup to spread over the three plates of pancakes that Mojo had lined up on the dining table. She shoved the empty boxes into the garbage bin, which was also lined with the last trash bag in utter frustration. She turned around and saw the empty syrup bottle on the far corner of the kitchen counter just where Mojo had left it before he dashed out of the apartment. She dropped her weight against the refrigerator door that was ajar with enormous lameness, slamming it back to close, before she repeatedly banged on it with both fists in such a fury that let the children, who had formed a queue behind her, jostled their way into the living room in great fear—they were waiting in great expectation for food, not such outburst of hanger.

She supported her forehead on her clenched fists, with her weight against the refrigerator door and sobbed profusely. Just when she turned round, Mojo had returned from the Grandè Food store, standing still, bewildered, with the bottle of syrup in his hand.

She was relieved to see the bottle of syrup, but without looking at him or saying anything to him, she walked by and returned to the room to finish dressing for work.

In front of the dresser that was draped with dirty linens hanging everywhere, she took the top off the Cocoa Butter Formula with Vitamin E for Dry and Ashy Skin lotion from under a pile of more dirty jeans. On to her palm, she shook out every smidgen of lotion and massaged over her body parts that would be exposed to the harsh weather condition outside sparingly. The deodorizing powder had worn down to its oval edge and she smeared whatever morsel was around its rough edge against her bare skin that irritated her underarm.

*************************

She went to pick the kids from school after work. But not until she came home, changed her nursing uniform, and took a quick shower. It is a regular routine—she was always careful not to expose her children to disease from the nursing home she worked. She left Mojo, who left for work when she returned from work, in the house preparing to go. Just what they had to do since they could not afford a baby-sitter anymore.

Mojo had left by the time Wara returned from picking up the children from school. While the kids were throwing their school bags, shoes and clothes everywhere in the apartment, where they would pick up everything the next day without even looking at the day’s homeworks or the daily school notices in the bags, Wara was heading for the couch by the door, where she sat and recuperated from her shortness of breath from walking up the stairs. She rose from the couch and walked to the kitchen after regaining her breath.

She threw a bowl of rice and soup in the microwave. She had cooked it couple of days ago. She dished it in three separate smaller bowls, lined them on the dining table alongside three glasses of water and returned to the sofa where she sat at this time of the month and listened for the footfalls of the sheriff who delivered the nonpayment of rent citation. She must remove the pink slip from the door before her next-door neighbors came to visit to avoid sharing the family economic quandary with them. She did that first before she returned to see how the kids were doing on the dining table.

Today, Sarah, the oldest of the three kids ate much of her food. She seemed to be more understanding whether she knew of the hardship in the family or not. Joe and June complained when Wara asked them, “why are you not eating your food?”

“There is nothing to eat mommy,” they replied.

“But I just gave you food,” Wara refuted.

“Rice, rice and rice everyday,” Joe and June fired back petulantly at once.

Wara walked away and returned back with Mojo’s leather belt, wrapped neatly around her clenched fist:

“Start eating now!” she threatened Joe and June.

“Now! I say!” she smacked the dining table hard with the belt, which left Joe and June very terrified before they gulped down the content of their bowls in no time.

Wara had become very irritable over the years. She did not understand why she could not afford the things she used to afford. She did not only pay late rent fees, but court fees also. She paid the rent only after it had accrued a 5% interest rate, a dollar per day penalty after the tenth of the month. They had, at least, one month behind on their rent for about two years now.

But Wara knew that they were spending three times what they used to spend on gas two years ago, their grocery cost had doubled since then, their utility bills had almost doubled as well, but her salary remained the same besides the twice fifty cents raise she got in the last two years. In fact, her husband brought home a bit more than what he used to make, because he drove more hours than before.

She could only discern these things separately, but unable to consummate them into one big picture. It seemed over her head that her family was not alone in this situation. She had no interest in the news, politics or the economy to know that the middle class was depleting very fast and that the poor people were becoming poorer in the last ten years. Her economic predicament was causing her the stressful condition. To console her despondent life, she spent her spare time in the couch doing her nails and watching talk shows until her bedtime when she gulped down a pill of Prozac, undo her ponytail and went to sleep. And in this way, she managed her stress, while unconsciously increasing Mojo’s stress level with each passing day.

On her way home, she had stopped by the SVC pharmacy and picked up the Prozac prescription the doctor had called in for her over the phone. She pushed one down her throat that evening. She was on it for a long time. She loved the feelings it gave her. It calmed her down and made her a bit more tolerant with the kids, and helped her to forget about the financial problems as well.

On the other hand, she lost all sensual desires. She did not read the side effects on the bottle nor did her doctor or the pharmacist told her anything about the side effects of Prozac. She went to bed every night and dozed off to a deep sleep. She paid no mind to Mojo’s sexual needs. In fact, she snapped when Mojo tried some little romantic tricks on her. She accused him that, “all you care about is sex.”

“Leave me alone, I don’t have any feelings,” she always told him.

Mojo who did not understand what his wife was going through was suspicious that she was seeing somebody else; he asked many questions when Wara went out for whatever reason. They argued very late at night and disturbed the kid’s sleep time, who in turn went to school very tired.

Mojo was unable to endure anymore. He packed up and returned backhome. Wara was unable to afford the apartment on her income alone. She too abandoned the apartment and lived with her aunt.

Mojo became very active in the reconstruction projects back backhome in the aftermath of the war, in the society where his degree and foreign exposure meant something; he secured a well paid job, realized his worth and became productive again. He persuaded Wara to join him, “the children can return to their country of birth anytime they wish to do so. You know that Wara. We can fight the War on Terror anywhere in the world. It’s time to come backhome,” he concluded. And Backhome, Mojo and Wara fought on and lived happily thereafter.

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