It felt like a mysterious wooden spoon had poked through the top of the sky to stir the atmosphere in our lives.  Things like magic and power and sex and tattoos blended with making decisions and unexpected illnesses, vanished angels, and buff looking boys.  In one fast moving week, we became this bizarre recipe. 

A lot of the stuff probably went down because of the angel stories.  My mom,  Diana Martinez, mi Mami, well, she pounded her many stories into me at a young age, especially the one that described how her angel disappeared a few months before I was born.  It sounds waaaaay crazy, but ten years ago I actually believed I was that angel.

Yesenia, mi ángel pequeñita.  That’s what my mother called me.  I took the role pretty seriously. No wings, of course.  But in my five year old mind I decided that I was Mami’s celestial being, the very one who’d been missing all those years.  She called me her little angel, so obviously I’d been sent to earth to protect her.  It was really good for my self image until one afternoon, my powers were tested.

On that particular day, kindergarten let out at the usual time.  It was her day off, so Mami, not the babysitter, walked me home.  We had to pass through a scary part of our neighborhood, close to the projects where police helicopters got sent at least twice a week.  All of a sudden this evil lookin’ dude leaped at us with a long knife.  He pressed it close to my mother’s throat.  She screamed and her face turned white and she clutched her straw purse and wouldn’t let him have it.

            “Bitch!” he said.  “Let go a dat bag!”

            “No,” Mami told him.  “I’ve got my rent money.  Me and my baby need that money.”

            The mugger tried to grab the purse, but Mami held tight.  I stood back, hiding against her full skirt  .  .  .  everything was speeding fast and unreal, like someone else’s bad dream, and I prayed to God that the angel powers I’d been born with would come into my body at that exact moment because what if the man cut her head off?

            “You will die!” I shouted, raising my arms and flexing my invisible wings.

            The bad dude didn’t seem to hear me.  He didn’t fall down dead.  Honestly, he seemed completely unchanged by my magic.  With a quick pull of the knife, he cut my mother!  Then he grabbed her purse and ran.  Blood gushed out of her throat; I still have the memory, how her white blouse turned red, the stain spreading like a drop of ink on porous paper.  I remember how shocked I felt to learn that I was not an angel. I clutched her skirt and prayed.  I prayed she wouldn’t die.

            A man ran out of an upstairs apartment with a clean towel.  He helped my mother press it against her neck.  He said the cut wasn’t all that serious.  Next a lady showed up and offered to drive us to the nearest emergency room.  Mami cried that no, she would take care of the wound herself, so the lady insisted on driving us home.  When we turned to leave, I saw something in the gutter, something from the angels.  A gift.

Mami’s straw bag!  I ran and picked it up.  As soon as it was unsnapped, my mother burst into tears. 

Our rent money.  Still inside the envelope.  Everything there, complete. The amazing discovery almost erased my feeling of failure.  It helped me focus on the things I’d learned:    

1.      Stay alert for magic.

2.      Don’t ever stop believing.

3.      Angels are real.

     Now, at fifteen, I’m still a believer. In fact, recently, the missing angel evolved into an over-the-edge series of complications. It blew our minds into tiny fragments of disbelief and fear and yes, it’s true that I have a larger than life imagination.  But  .  .  .    I always tell the truth.