From her hospital window, Marquita watches the dozens of people walking on the sidewalk stories below her. She likes studying them from a distance. From this distance the people are silent and she can only assume what each person is like. Watching each voiceless person distracts her mind from the constant clamor from the people in the hospital. As each person passes she wonders if the people will look the same after the surgery.
Everyone keeps asking Marquita if she is scared. The question seems odd to her. Of course she is scared. Soon doctors will be operating on her brain while she is still awake. The doctors have told her the surgery has many risks. She could lose her ability to speak or walk, she could have major brain damage, or she could even die. Marquita recognizes that everything about the surgery should scare her, but the things that scare her most aren’t the operation, the possible brain damage, or death. Those possibilities barely bother her.
Marquita wasn’t scared when the doctor told her about the tumor in her brain. She was relieved. For Marquita, the tumor is the answer to all the questions she has had about herself since she was a child. The tumor is the reason she is different from all the other girls in Corona, Queens. Perhaps if the tumor were gone she would finally be normal. Perhaps, she will finally have what she has prayed so earnestly for since she was a child.
Marquita looks young for sixteen. Despite her mother being taller than all the other women on their street, Marquita barely stands taller than a grade school student. Regardless of her short stature, Marquita’s beauty is unique. Her eyes are an amber hazel that complements her toffee colored skin. She inherited her eyes from her father’s side of the family. Her usually poufy natural hair is now shaved in preparation for surgery.
Marquita has been trying to be “normal” for years and most people believe her facade. Even her mother is fooled. As long as Marquita could remember, her mother explained away her peculiarities as being a “sensitive child” or it being a result of the seizures she had since she was seven. But Marquita knows she was different before her seizures.
Deeper questions probe Marquita’s mind as she sits at the window waiting. What if her father is right? She has never been able to fool him. He knows she is different because his father was also different. Many people in the Moreno family are different. She knows her and her father are now thinking the same question; will the surgery do nothing because the Moreno family is cursed?
Marquita stops looking at the people outside and gets up from her chair. If she is cursed, then she should go pray, as she always does. She needs to ask St. Valentine and the Virgin Mary for protection. She needs to ask God to heal her, whether it is from a tumor or a curse. As she leaves her hospital room to pray for what might be her last time, the figures on the street below go about their morning. They know nothing of the girl filled with shame, fear, and anticipation. None, except for one. One person had eluded Marquita’s attention.
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