ENCOUNTER
There is a girl... and I will give the world just to hold her.
***
She had beautiful green eyes, like polished emeralds. Her hair was blonde, a mixture of white and yellow, gold here and silver there, like the flow of a river, pouring and mixing together.
This is the most basic description of Nancy that I can give but at these words my soul turns. I recognize and acknowledge her as the one and there is no one else for me.
The morning light glistened in her eyes as she sat on the floor in a white dress playing with her two dolls, a prince in a black suit and his bride princess in a white dress.
Her mother was ironing clothes on a stand not far away.
Nancy got bored so she put the dolls away and went to the window to look outside. Across the yard was a green lawn and working sprinklers, a durawall and hedge, and a large black gate. Outside the yard there was a tarred road and a stretch of woods.
She went outside and stood on the front porch. She looked far ahead, her eyes steady, until a figure had come into sharp focus.
There was someone in the large green tree beyond the road and he was looking at their house.
You guessed right - that’s me. No, I am not a stalker. I am just the curious and day dreaming type.
The figure of a boy quickly descending the tree made her run across the lawn and come to stop before the durawall. She came to peep out through the locked gate.
Her breathing stopped as she saw the boy also looking at her across the road. A faint gasp had escaped her lips because this was not her ordinary sighting.
She had seen people of color before when her family was driving around town but her curiosity had never been satisfied.
As you must have surmised earlier from my description of Nancy, I am of a different race from her. I have dark eyes and brown skin. And it appears she was quite curious of races just as I was.
The boy also looked equally curious as he stood there. She observed they were in the same age group, around 10 and 12.
This was not my first time seeing her. I was rocking around the shopping center one day on an exploratory routine minding my own business when out of nowhere she came out of one of the shops on her way to God knows where. She was like a sweet-sweet angel come out flying from heaven.
I stopped dead in my tracks, struck by an unknown spell. What was I looking at? I had no idea. She had taken my breath away in that instant. Her blonde hair danced with each step she took. Looking at her made me forget the world. I never forgot the world for anybody so what was happening to me that I should lose track of time like this? She was a surprise. I found myself gob smacked and totally unprepared for any kind of response. I was totally in a daze.
Who knew human beings could have this kind of beauty?
Long after she had gone did the spell that had stopped me in my tracks break and time flowed again. Where had the angel gone? I wanted to understand what I had experienced and why I had never experienced it with anyone else before. Seeking her out was the only natural conclusion, wouldn’t you say? Or, I wanted more…I wanted to experience more of that magic that only came from standing before her. I wanted to be enraptured again, and to stand intoxicated and spell bound by what my eyes were seeing.
So, I was standing before her again, separated by a road and a gate. But this power seemed to know not of this separation because from here I saw her clearly and felt again what I had felt on our first encounter.
I needed to get closer, a wish which a few steps towards her granted, and from here I could see clearly the many colors coming from her. These colors are a wonder. From her hair I see gold. From her eyes I see emeralds. On her mouth I see flowers. Her lips are like the petals of a pink rose. Her skin is like peaches and also like ivory. I see preciousness oozing from her like a rainbow. With each step I get even more closer to her. I want to reach out and touch her because I seem to be in a dream. But I am not in a dream. But how is this real life? Are the stories I hear about in church about a heaven real? I want them to be real yet they also seem like a fantasy and a place only existing in the imagination. They seem too good to be true yet my heart desires them.
Now I know that they are real because I am looking at her and I am feeling this way. I feel exactly how I imagine I would feel if I were somehow caught up into the heaven of God. I am desiring so much to stay in the presence of this person. I want to take her back home with me.
Nancy is looking too. How could she not? His gaze also locked her in place. He seemed to want to say something so she was waiting for him. But meeting his eyes like this, she had no idea that her body would react like this. Her heart had leaped in sudden excitement, that excitement one would feel as if they were waiting for their favorite person to arrive from a faraway journey. Did she know this person from somewhere? That could not be. Yet he seemed like a favorite person of hers and indeed everything in her already favored him for she was pleased to see him. Even if she was not yet acquainted with him she wanted him for a friend and so before she could make any decision she found her body taking that from off her hands as she did something unexpected… she smiled.
“Nancy!”
Her mother was calling to her and therefore she broke the spell that had frozen the flow of time for her, “Time for breakfast.”
When she turned from her house to look at him again she found him running down a small tarred road which was adjacent to the main road but later turned away to disappear into the woods. She could not even call him back because she didn’t know his name. Did he run off because he had heard her mother? At such times as these, it was okay to ignore the grown-ups, was it not?
I was satisfied for today so it was okay to leave. My cover was blown anyway so I couldn’t go back up the tree. I could always return another day.
Nancy was still thrilled by what had just happened to her but she still ran back inside and came to join her mother, father and sister on the breakfast table.
They were having bread, bacon and eggs, coffee and milk. But the food lost all flavor as adrenaline was still in her bloodstream.
She kept quiet about what she had seen until it was afternoon when they were back from church. It was just her sister, mother and her in the room when she decided to open up.
Her sister’s name was Stacey and she was seventeen years old and in high school.
“I saw a boy in the morning;” Nancy began as she was dying to get it off her chest “... he was looking at our house.”
“Really, what did he want?” her mother asked.
She and Stacey were gathering up some old clothes, sewing and darning, for they intended to take them to an orphanage.
“I don’t know.”
Stacey blew out a laugh and then said playfully, “Why didn’t you invite him in?”
“I didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t tell me his name. He was strange.”
“Strange?” her mother inquired.
“Yes. He had beautiful brown skin… like chocolate. His hair was cut, neat and short, and it was the color of ginger. From where I was standing I couldn’t get a better view of his eyes. I wonder what color they are?”
“Oh,” Stacey let a breath escape her lips, surprised by her little sister’s description, “Didn’t you see black people before?”
“Not as close.”
“I suppose she is curios,” Stacey said to their mother.
“A little curiosity should be fine but I don’t want you going near them,” her mother said.
“Why?”
“Because...”
“Because they’re savages, and they’ll rip your heart out,” Stacey jumped in, threw the dress that she was holding down, and then gathered Nancy in her arms to start tickling her.
“Stop,” Nancy managed between bouts of hysterical laughter.
Stacey returned to the dress when the fun had run out. Nancy rolled over from the floor and looked at her.
“Don’t be silly. They are not savages,” Nancy said.
“And how would you know?”
“I just know.”
“I know what this is about. He is your boyfriend, isn’t he?” Stacey meant it as a tease.
“Stacey!” her mother jumped in and shook her head at her as if she had said something wrong, “Don’t encourage her.”
Nancy’s mother was also taken aback by the way Nancy had described the boy. When Nancy became fond of her dolls, she would often describe them in flowering detail. She suspected that Nancy had indeed become fond of this person she met in the morning.
“Mother, how are we different?”
“What do you mean?”
“How are we different? Is it just that the color of our skin is different? Are they human beings, like us?”
“Of course, they are human, what do you think?” Stacey thought the question silly.
“The boy that I saw… I thought he was from another world.”
