Author Information
A Hole in the Wall
Salvador Garza A00817082
26 april 2016
“A Hole Through the Wall”
Leaning down, she submerges her hands in a black trashcan beside a white pillar. She looks straight through it, with a blank stare, picking up dirty wrappers and banana peels with her bare hands. She doesn’t mind it, as she puts all of it in another bag and wipes her hands off in her tight, khaki pants. She looks at her phone. Students rush past her, ignoring her existence; still, she doesn’t mind. She looks around, incapable of finding what she seeks and glances down. The woman is in her 40s, and drags her feet as if they were glued to the center of the Earth, not letting her move on. She reaches the nearest table, with students surrounding it, and cleans up after them. None of them notice her, continuing with their own routine expecting for her to do the same. She looks at her phone. The bell rings, startling her, and she goes back to work. Students scramble through the red doors into freedom, yet she still has two more hours to go, and going is not necessarily what she wants. She looks at her phone. Waiting for the commotion to end, she grabs a mop and prepares a bucket with soapy water filled with chemicals. Once the building grows silent, she steps into the girls’ bathroom, closing the door behind her. The woman opens the door twenty minutes later and sticks a wooden board in the door hinge forcing it open. She looks at her phone. She finishes mopping and puts it aside. Stepping into a dark room, she comes out with a yellow sign reading “CAUTION: Wet Floor” and places it in the doorway. She looks at her phone now, hoping for a single text reading “Hi mom, I’m home.” Closing her eyes and leaning on the door, her mind drifts away to that night, locked in her room, listening to her son trying to scream louder than the other men in the next room. She cried clinging to the wall that was absorbing her tears. Her mouth wide open, crying inside, trying to make no noise, because her son begged her not to. The same had happened to the love of her life, only ten years earlier. She knew her son, his son, had ended up just as twisted. Love was stronger than those 30 years of living through his hell, though, and she still would do anything to save his rotten son, the rebirth of the love of her life. She still wondered why she loved those that hurt her the most; why the love of his life was a murderer; but most importantly; why her only son, was the rebirth of his father. And as she wondered, she looked to the sky, because she was always taught that God had all the answers, begging for an explanation, a reason for her suffering, but it never came.
Gunshot. Screams. She hasted out, ignoring the danger that followed, but the room was empty and the front door open. No blood, no track of them ever being in her small house; just a hole through the wall. The wall was cracked, but not stained, a reminder of her son. He was cracked because his life was never smooth, and unstained because to her, he was still innocent. She misses having him around.
She forces her eyes open and comes back to the empty hallway with lockers half closed. Her right hand started hurting from squeezing the cell phone and her knuckles looked pale against her dirty skin. The phone slips from her hand while wiping her tears. She just stares at the bouncing cell phone on the floor. She picks it up and stares at her reflection in the recently broken screen and cannot help but notice, just how much the screen and her life have in common.
