Free When I Knew You by Desireé Prosapio Page A

much ran things.  
    "No one would talk about it, none of the school officials anyway. We didn't have grief counselors or any of that like there is now. After the funeral, Antonia was furious. No one would help Sylvia when she was alive, and no one would talk about her when she was dead. No one even considered going after Duran. No one but Antonia."  
    I tried to imagine her back then, tried to construct her from the high school graduation photo that hung in the hallway. Her long hair in waves, her smile clearly forced, eyes penetrating the glass.  
    Father Vincent turned back to face me, away from the window. The curtain moved silently back into place, and the room was dim again.  
    "After about a week Antonia left the note that Sylvia had written in a display case here, at the church. It was tacked right in the display case where we list services, upcoming meetings, agendas, flyers. The priest at the time claimed he 'couldn't find the key.' By the time the sheriff came to get it out with a crowbar, word was out all over town and on into El Paso. Duran was an abuser and had gotten Sylvia pregnant.
    "The sheriff never formerly said who put that letter in the display case. But we all knew. Antonia had found Sylvia. She'd gone to the office stained with Sylvia's blood. That's why she had the note. And she knew what would happen to that note if she just left it with Sylvia."  
    "You mean they would have ignored it?" I asked.
    "More like 'lost' it. Her father had been getting away with it for years. Everyone had been turning way from that situation, ignoring it. But they knew. We all knew."
    "That's horrible."
    Father Vincent nodded, a pained look filling his eyes as he pulled himself back into his chair. "It was. I wish I could say it isn't like that anymore. Anyway, at first the commissioner tried to say the letter wasn't real, then when they proved that it was Sylvia, he tried saying that Sylvia was crazy. Then they proved the baby was his.
    "Then it got ugly. He tried to go after Antonia. Claimed she'd forged the note. But he'd lost his grip on everything by then. Everything fell apart."
    We sat in the quiet of the room as I tried to absorb all of this. The woman on the tape, that Antonia, this is who she was. She wasn't the woman I grew up with, the one who had to relearn to read every week, who had to hold my hand when we crossed the street because she would forget to look both ways. The woman on the tape was the same as the one he was talking about. Someone who saved the truth from a dying girl so it would not die with her in that school locker room.
    "I understand your grandmother not telling you," Father Vincent said, straightening his frock. "Word was she was furious at Antonia. But they were never very close. At least not then."
    My grandmother. Sitting in the kitchen, working with mom on the alphabet. Tracing each letter, endlessly working on Ds and Bs which always confused her. There for me, there for my mother, always there. How could they not be close?
    "You know, your mother, she was like that plant on the windowsill. It's sage. We have it planted around the back. It can keep growing no matter where you put it, or what it goes through. It grows tall, blooms late, demands little from the world. But it thrives." He got a faraway look in his eyes for a moment. "I have it there and planted it in the back to remind me of what we can do, even with very little. So, when Father Henry gave me this" he said, lightly resting his fingers on the envelope, "after he'd been holding onto it for ten years, I wasn't surprised. When I came two years ago he made me promise to take care of it because someday someone would ask for it."
    "Did he tell you what was in it?"
    "He said he didn't know. He said he thought it was better that both he and I didn't know."  
    I wondered if the same held true for me.
    "But he did say it was from Antonia. From before her accident. To tell you the truth," he said, "I'd pretty much forgotten about