Lost Infants

After fifty years I returned to my birth place. All I remembered of San Antonio, was the night we spent at my Uncle Pete’s

house. It was just outside the city in a housing track. My Uncle Pete worked as a cement mason laying large slabs of cement

in the booming housing market at that time. He was a lot taller than my father and rather handsome. His voice boom when he

spoke yet his nature was gentle. That night still haunts me.

Those sounds, those cries of abandon or lost infants calling out from the rain soaked backyard. It was black as coal out

there except for the flicker of lights that appear like small stars then vanished to appear somewhere else. I wanted to go out

and search for those babies. I knew I would never find them how could I? it was pitch black. Why didn’t my parent hear their

cried and do something? Why didn’t someone do something? help them.

It kept raining all night. I worried they would drown. Where were their mothers, those babies’ mothers ?

I opened the door and step outside. I pierced the darkness desperately to find them, My Aunt suggested I come inside. I told her there were babies out there crying out for help.

She laughed and told me those were frogs calling out, croaking but it sounded like babies crying to me.

We left in the morning to California. I never told anybody about that night until I wrote this piece. Its strange how some memories never die.