Scene: Heaven. God is passing judgment on a small girl who recently died somewhere in the deserts of Africa. She is about four years old.
She has been kneeling in His presence and slowly rises to speak.
“When I was a baby, my mother would take me out with her during the day to forage for something to eat. We lived in a place that was devastated by famine caused by a drought. I was nearly a year old but I was too weak to walk more than a few steps. It was hard for her to carry me even though I only weighed about ten pounds. There was never enough to eat.
We lived in a small village with my father who was the charcoal maker, his brother — my uncle, and my two older brothers who were still young boys. In his village, my uncle had been caught living with another man. He had been chased out of his home by marauders who vowed, in Your name, to kill all who were like him and anyone who gave him shelter from Your wrath. While mother and I were away one day, men from his village came and found him and killed him. They killed my father and my brothers with knives and machetes and then burned our house. When mother and I returned, the other people from the village chased me and my mother away and told us if we ever came back, the marauders would soon find us too and we would die like the men. She looked through the ashes of our house and found nothing. What little we had of value or utility was taken away before she had even been given a chance to look.
We had not gone far when two of mother’s friends caught up to us on the road. They gave her a bundle of heavy plain cloth with a water gourd, a small steel cooking pot and a spoon, a small bag of grain, and a few coins… treasures they could hardly spare. They wept together for a time and then left us alone on the road as the sun fell into the darkness.
I don’t know where we went. Each village we came to was no different than our own. We were not known and not welcomed. At night we slept on the cloth we had been given and during the day mother tied it to bushes to save us from the hot sun. We would find some shade along the biggest streets which usually had the most people. The coins she had been given slowly disappeared in exchange for food. The cooking pot became a begging bowl that mother would rhythmically tap with the spoon as she moaned of our needs and our plight when someone would approach. There were always many more beggars with bowls than there were coins. When there were finally no more coins for us, we walked to the next town.
Mother began to lie. She told people that we were traveling to a city where my father had found work. She told people that we had been robbed on our way to find him. She began to steal. She used rags that she found to clean me when I soiled myself but my shirt was stained and always smelled bad. She took a child’s shirt from a fence as he and some others kicked a ball and played out in the sun. It was much too big for me. It was the only thing I wore for the next year.
When I was about two years old, we found a big camp full of people who had become feral nomads like us. There were some others there who were not like us at all. They were from somewhere far away and did not look like us. They were ghostly pale with eyes that were sometimes like the blue color of the sky or green like the algae in a pond. They could not speak our language very well and when they needed to tell us something, they would talk to one of our people who could understand them who would then tell us what was said.
They came in big trucks bringing tents for us to live in and clothes with strange writing on them and strange food for us to eat. They had dug a well for water to drink. Sometimes, when there was no water to pump, they brought us another big truck with a tank of water which would soon be empty again. People would get into fights to be among the first to fill their jugs and cans and gourds. When the food trucks came, there would be more fights. There was never enough to eat.
They showed us our tent where we would live. By now, I had gotten bigger. I still could not walk very well. My legs were bent and I was always very weak. I could slowly walk most of the way to the tent where we would get our food or to the latrine where mother would wash me in a big tub when there was enough water. Coming back to our tent was harder. My mother would hold my hand and pull me along until I need to rest and then carry me the rest of the way. There were three other women who lived in the tent with us. I was the only child. Their stories were not much different than the one of my mother and me. They told us about the loss of their families and their homes and their hope. Sometimes they would have a faint smile as they talked, but no one ever laughed. Not once.
Some of the bigger tents were used for places where they would talk to us and write things down in their books about who we were, where we came from, and how we got to the camp. Other tents had people who examined us for diseases and gave us pills and liquids to swallow or stuck us with needles to put medicine in our bodies if we were sick. And still other tents were for meetings where we would gather to hear things about the camp or they would tell us stories about You and the wondrous things You could do.
At night when it was cooler, we would sit out by the fire pit where the women could talk and meet other people. Some men would always wander by to sit and talk with my mother and the others. Soon, they would wander off again and one or another of the women would go along with them. She would come back alone with a small bundle of food or a different shirt or some pretty beads on a string around their neck. Mother always stayed behind with me. I watched her eyes as they came back with those bits of treasure. I could see she wished for some too. One night she asked one of the other women to stay with me so she could go for a walk with one of the men. She came back with new shoes on her feet and streaks of shameful tears in the dust on her face. It was the first time we had ever been apart.
As time went slowly by, I got bigger and stronger from the food we got from the pale ones and from the men who came to see my mother. My belly was still round like a melon. My hair was the color of dry grass. My legs were badly bent and my feet, which had now turned inward, no longer rested flat on the ground. When I walked, I had to turn sideways and rock from side to side with my strongest leg first and drag my other foot behind. I was very slow but I no longer wanted mother to help me.
Mother began to be sick. Sores appeared on her skin. She could not eat without being sick and would keep throwing up until nothing came out but spit and blood. The people in the medicine tent said she got the sickness from one of the men. They said there was no medicine that would help and she would soon die.
Then the marauders came. They came just before the first early light of morning. They came in trucks with many men and with many guns. They shot the pale ones first. Then they started shooting us. As we raised our hands to surrender, they shot us. As we tried to run away, they shot us. As we lay dying, they shot us. Mother picked me up and ran into the darkness. Above the screaming of our people, we could hear the marauders shouting this was Your will. It was You who commanded them to rid the world of us.
I don’t know how mother got the strength to get us so far away from the camp. The sun was overhead when we stopped. We could no longer hear the trucks or the guns or the screams. We tried to hide among the dead bushes and finally laid down to rest in a small patch of shade. We fell asleep and did not wake until the sun fell into the darkness once again. We stayed where we were through the next day.
When night came, mother was too weak to move. She could not hear me or see me anymore. She did not hold my hand as I held hers. She would barely breathe except for the last few heaving gasps. She closed her eyes and was gone from this world to journey on to the next. I stayed by her for another day until I was overtaken by heat and thirst and died.
I had been born, lived my entire life, and died in the dirt. I knew nothing about You until the pale ones told us the stories in their Holy Book. One of the stories was about a tribe who had been cast out into the desert for forty years. They would have surely starved if You had not sent food from the sky for them to eat. You had told them they were special. They were Your chosen people. I know we were not like them. I know we were not special in any way in your eyes. Far from it, we were cursed by famine and disease and murder. There never was enough to eat. I never knew a day without hunger. And I know I will not be allowed to have the eternal life next to You that others will have. I was not washed by the special water and did not know the special words. I do not know what will become of me now. But before I have to go, I would like to ask a small favor that, aside the love of my mother, would be my only blessing. May I please have only just a taste of the food from heaven that You sent to the chosen ones?”