I must have been one. At most, a one year old baby. Wearing a diaper, crawling, runny nose booger picking baby, but I can remember. Its not one those remember because of a picture, or from having heard it so many times. I actually remember.
Not in full retrospective detail, no dates, times, scents or sensations even, but just pictures and sights of things going on around me, somewhere still stuck forever.
I remember our house was yellow, a polluted busy street shade darker than our car, and we had a big guava tree, with black ants going up and down it like an ant freeway, and sometimes our maid would go out and pick a few guava for juice, which I don't remember ever drinking.
Toys would fly over this grey concrete wall that separated our house form the neighbor.
I had an invisible friend who would fling toys back and forth with me, like some cartoon I once saw about kids who did that at the Berlin Wall. Don’t remember the kid, but I know we stopped playing because one time I threw a toy, that never got thrown back.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying, holding on the bars of my crib, and looking at my older brother kick off his blanket and lament to the air, saying "I can't take this baby anymore."
We had a rectangular outdoor plastic pool, which was dominated by a big frog. It feels like that pool was always there, with that frog swimming along the edge in straight angles. That pool was dirty, almost like a pond. Don't remember ever being in it. I don't remember playing with our dog, but we had one. A skinny mutt we called Lili.
The only thing I remember about Lili, is the day she died.
I know there was some kind of fuss going on. We were about to go out, and people were excited. Later I would find out this was to go to see the brand new and first ever shopping mall that had recently opened, which was built on a lot that used to be a steel and iron mill that made the sewer top for the city, ironically.
So anyway, there was usually some caution when opening the gate. Lili was territorial, and would occasionally barge out and bark away other dogs or people.
Exactly as I remember it, and not fact checked with other witnesses, but maybe somehow true, is that across our busy street, went prancing like a king, a very charming dog, kind of like a Lassie type breed, and with a classy poise that made him stand out from the usual garbage can tumbling flea bags that used to cross our driveway.
Now I don't remember exactly, but I did see, the exact moment that those two dogs locked eyes, and as if in slow motion, that charming long haired pure breed dog let out a bark.
Next thing I hear are tires and horns, screaming and yelling.
The sight I see next, is one to never forget. A baby as I was, oblivious to tragedy, not yet aware of death, I see death for the first time, as I look into Lili's eyes. She was being held tight in the chubby arms of our maid, a thin stream of blood rolls down her tongue, she leans her head back and looks at me, and she takes her last breath.
According to my mother, after that, while Lili got buried, she took us all out to a fancy ice-cream place, to help ease the pain, but I can't remember that at all.
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