Welcome my guest: Jacqueline Jill-Rito

For the first time, just joan is providing space today for a Guest Columnist. Confident readers will support this decision … I’m offering a piece of prose written by a friend in New York.

Jacqueline Jill-Rito, a single parent and entrepreneur with diverse skills, has managed to keep afloat throughout the vicissitudes of life. Now a first-time homeowner in her late fifties with her daughter’s college expenses to cover, she anguishes at never managing to get ahead. She always has barely enough to cover outstanding bills.

Last month as she finished writing the monthly checks, she sank into the usual funk. Suddenly, however, her thoughts shifted and you’ll read what happened next.

I’d met Jill-Rito a few years ago at an intensive training event for Compassionate Communication. Ever since, Jill-Rito receives a weekly link to the “just joan” column. When those published on Jan. 21 and 28 arrived, she decided to send me the piece of prose which had flowed for her on the day described above. She added a wish for me: “I hope you feel it as I did.”

I extend the same wish to you.

Empathy
by Jacqueline Jill-Rito

Sitting paying bills, fine-point pen in hand, feeling the fatigue of the workday, alone and afraid, I search for answers about making ends meet and increasing income … no money left, mind clouds and eyes blur. Why have You forsaken me?

I fade in and out of the moment. Words murmured to myself become increasingly muffled as sounds blend into the cracking walls that surround and a stabbing pain shreds through my right arm, extended, groping, pushing against a slab of cement that pins me to the ground…

My skin has turned from a pale cream to a coffee bean brown. The words I utter are no longer familiar to me, but they flow like a bastardized staccato French. Ban mwen, souplè …

My plump white flesh has withered to bare muscle and bone. My arm aches … trapped and irrretrievable. Nou bezwen… Screams and cries deafen me in this language. Kisa pi nou fe? … Names are whispered somewhere in my mind, evaporating amid the wails – Ketty, Brunel, Genevieve, Emmanuel, Mireille – their souls fine spun, rising into the heavens.  Sickness, despair, pain and pressure close me into shadows.

Years of political usury cripple my strength. I breathe in dust, cement and dirt.  Toupatou … Heavy hands of dictatorial oppression squeeze my narrowing throat. My mouth will not open, the words fade into soft moans. I don’t feel my body complete – it is in pieces, scattered, surging pain then numb, as if hacked by machetes. Kote nou ye?… But my mind is racing, sifting in and out, several dimensions, all feel strange, but all familiar, as if I have dreamt these passages all before.

Dust scrapes the inside of my nose. The gritty taste of mudcakes scratches the corners of my mouth. My lips swell parched, cracked and cut. My bones protrude like spikes from the depth of my soul. I smell hardened blood and death on me, around me. Only the Lord can reach me where I am. Only He knows where to find me. My mind darkens. I try to take a breath, inhale, rattling my throat, weak, fading … then …

A burst of strength from who knows where forces me from the padded armchair in front of the computer and I drop the pen. I rise and walk around, shaking off this inexplicable moment of transfiguration, unsure of who I am, where I was, when and how it will once more envelope me.

©28 janvier 2010

When I wrote Jacqueline seeking permission to publish her work, she was magnanimous, as expected. She said she only wishes she could do more, “writing about, going to, being a voice for those who can’t or don’t have the means and being a conscience for those who can’t yet or refuse to see and feel …”

Please write for permission if you wish to use her masterful work. She welcomes comments at jjill21@yahoo.com. Personally, I would feel gratified if some of you had writing assignments for her so she might, for once, have a bit left over at the end of the month!