A Boy Named Aaron

  Copyright © 2023 by Tony Torres

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  Paperback: 979-8-8229-1939-6

  eBook: 979-8-8229-1940-2

  Table of Contents

  A Boy Named Aaron

  About the Author

  Watching the tiny mushroom dust clouds that formed as the stones hit the ground after having bounced off his filthy and ill-fitting tennis shoes became entertaining for eleven-year-old Aaron, who had just run away from home and was on his way to his uncle Mario’s workplace in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Ponce is located on the halfway point of the southern coastline of the island, far from Lajas, where Aaron initiated his journey. He was on his way to ask his uncle to take him in. It was just after midday, and the sun was punishing the earth on the desert-like terrain of the southern coast of the island. Carrying nothing more than a blue denim backpack made by his mother with a half-used composition notebook and an almost new and recently sharpened number 2 pencil to journal, the boy attempted his journey. He had figured that he no longer needed his old textbooks because soon he would receive new ones at his new school so he randomly tossed one at a time from his backpack as he walked. Also, it seemed like a good idea because the load became easier to carry.

  Aaron hated his thick black curly hair, which now felt like flames under the heat of the sun. His chubby cheeks glowed red. His big brown eyes looked mostly to the ground, avoiding the harsh sand blown by the wind. Once in a while, squinting, he would raise his sights toward the front to make sure that he was still heading in the right direction. He was also avoiding looking up to the sky to find out why there was not a cloud or bird in it at that particular time.

  His fair skin showed that his eleven-year-old body was not used to this climate; after all, it had not been quite two years since his family had moved from New York City. Along with the fair skin, some physical features gave away his African descent, for example his curly black hair, slightly wider nose, and fuller lips.

  His school uniform had consisted of a white buttoned-down shirt and navy-blue pants, but by this time, the shirt had changed to a darker shade of cream, and his pants looked gray.

  The boy had walked for miles after dropping off his younger brother, Milton, and sister, Maria, at school early that morning before he started his quest. Little Milton was a year younger and also had curly hair, but it was light brown. He wore black-framed glasses. His sister, Maria, had waist-length straight black hair but wore it in two ponytails, one to the left and one to the right. She had very cute girly features, like small brown eyes, a small perked-up nose, and tiny, naturally red lips. She looked more like their aunt Ann, Uncle Mario’s wife.

  Aaron did not share his plan with his siblings because he thought that they would not understand and were better off with one less mouth to feed at home. Like every morning, he had led them to the schoolyard, where then they ran freely into the chaotic and noisy multitude of children in search of their classmates and friends before the morning bell. Once the starting class sound was dispatched, he saw Milton and Maria head to their respective classrooms. He then turned around and went out the gate without ever saying a word to a classmate or his siblings. He was leaving it all behind and starting fresh…at eleven years of age.

  Although there was rarely a car on the road, he walked well to the side of it because it had become so hot that the asphalt was sticky, and the tar smell sometimes became a bit overwhelming. The boy was determined to reach his destination even if he had to walk all the way there. After all, he had looked at a map of Puerto Rico and had seen that his uncle worked halfway across the island…and the island was not that large. He was also counting on hitchhiking, just like in the movies. One compassionate stranger after another would drive him as close as possible to his uncle’s, and he would arrive just before quitting time. But the few cars that did pass by him did not slow down at all. Every so often, a gentle but warm breeze would reenergize him and replace the tar smell with thin but large clouds of dust and sand. Run-down shacks sparely littered the desert landscape. Some seemed to be inhabited because Aaron could see a full clothesline. Spaced so far apart and weathered, they were almost camouflaged.

  His uncle’s workplace was a commercial truck repair shop, and he was the lead mechanic. Tough, dark-tanned skin covered his medium but stout build. He was about forty and wore his short, curly salt-and-pepper hair pulled back. He seemed to always wear a smile. He had big, strong, leathery hands that were adorned with abstract art created by the thousands of tiny nicks and burns gifted from his years of working on trucks. Aaron’s image of the man was that of a quiet, sweet man who always wore a white T-shirt and blue Dickie work pants. Mario was Bill’s older brother. He had taken him in after Bill and his family fled New York because of rising safety concerns. It was the mid-seventies, and New York had become like a scene from a low-budget postapocalyptic crime thriller. The city laid off a lot of people, and the Transit Authority went on strike…Crime ran rampant.

  As the boy bent on one knee to tie an undone shoelace, a drop of sweat from his forehead fell onto the front of his shoe, instantly creating a tiny mud puddle that disappeared instantly. Aaron then heard the unmistakable sound of an automobile slowly making its way off the road and stopping just behind him. The crackling sound of the tires rolling over the unpaved surface gave the boy hope that a good Samaritan had come to his rescue to get him closer to his intended destination. While still on one knee tying his shoe, he turned his head and squinted his eyes in an attempt to taper some of the glare away. What he saw was a large black-and-white police patrol car. Having recently come from Brooklyn, New York, he had witnessed police brutality in his former neighborhood and feared for his safety. He turned his head quickly to the left and then right, hoping to see an escape route, but all he saw was a barren desert. Tired and thirsty, he threw his hands in the air just as he had seen people do many times on TV and in the movies when they got arrested.

  Laughing, the two policemen stepped out of their patrol car and assured Aaron that he was not in any trouble and they just wanted to help…in Spanish. Both officers were fair-skinned and clean-cut middle-aged men and wore their uniforms to perfection. Both had light-brown hair and eyes, but one looked slightly older than the other and had a larger nose. Aaron was still learning the language but understood perfectly what they meant. He was still a bit on edge until the younger officer handed him a bottle of water. The boy grabbed the plastic bottle and gulped it down in what seemed one swallow. The officers managed to convince the boy to get into the police car by telling him how dangerous it was to be out in that kind of heat. Plus, the car had air-conditioning and more water. He still approached cautiously, holding the empty water bottle like a comfort blanket. Slowly he made his way into the car. The police officer on the passenger side of the front of the police car asked Aaron what he was doing and where was he going as the car made its way onto the pavement.

  With naive excitement, Aaron was convinced that the police were there to rescue him so he began to spill his guts freely…in Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English that was commonly spoken by Puerto Ricans raised in the United States.

  “We used to have un apartmento bonito with lots of toys and stuff. We played in the park todo el dia. We would go to zoos and museos and have ice cream!” Changing his facial expression from one of excitement to one of displeasure, he added how his mom and dad had suddenly decided to move to the island and had thrown away almost all their clothes and toys. He commented that they had lived in a storage area beneath his uncle Mario’s house but had just recently moved to another house. He also confessed that his parents kept fighting with each other and drank too much.

  The officers often looked at each other smiling as they listened to the boy. Having heard similar stories their entire careers, they had no reason to believe that this was any different than any other runaway case.

  A few minutes into the drive, while telling his story, Aaron saw the police officer who was driving reach for the radio in the center of the dash. He began speaking into the handheld device. He mentioned that he was coming in with a lost child. The station acknowledged. At that point, Aaron quickly tried to reiterate that he was not lost and that he was on his way to his uncle’s place of work. The desperation was becoming clear in the boy’s voice and physical agitation. He spoke of his uncle as if he could walk on water. He explained how his serious, leathery face could instantly switch into a day-changing smile and how his kids had everything they wanted as well as a nice big house. He also mentioned that his aunt and uncle brought Cheez Whiz home from the grocery store and that was a luxury afforded only by rich people. With his eyes in full sparkle, he told them how he and his siblings were not allowed to drink milk, but his cousins enjoyed chocolate milk every night before bed. While rubbing his belly, he said he wished he could do the same. He then quickly added that he would be sharing with his siblings as well if he ever had some.

  Soon enough, the patrol car veered off the road onto a chain-link-fenced patch of land with a small white square concrete building with another police car parked beside it. It was surprising to see patches of green grass on the pathway as they walked toward the building. A lone small palm tree decorated the center of the front area of the building along with two flag posts, one displaying an American flag and the other the Puerto Rican flag. The structure looked like a tiny white jail cell placed in the middle of the desert as some kind of practical joke. Instead of some fancy tropical or modern facade, above the entrance on a plain concrete slab in crudely painted blue letters were the words “Cuartel de la Policia,” which meant “Police Station.”

  As he stepped into the small building, he felt the alleviating sensation of the air-conditioning running at full power. His hair waved with the blowing of the appliance. He was quickly asked to take a seat on a large wooden chair next to a water fountain near the entrance. An extremely long wooden table with an almost hidden sliding door on the far right-hand side stood dividing the building in half. The center of the table was shaped like a combination of a desk and a podium. When the officers approached the shoulder-height structure, the officer on the other side moved his large wooden chair to make himself more visible to the officers and listen.

  The officer at the desk had great view of the row of empty jail cells beside him and the front entrance. He wore a perfectly detailed uniform as well but had a huge beer belly that would cause alarm in most people. Thick gray eyebrows and no facial hair made the calm officer look righteous and confident. By the way he used his hands to rub his eyes, it did not take a rocket scientist to know that this man had been napping nicely before he was interrupted. The walls, bars, and cells on that side of the building were light greenish in color and did not seem to have aged well. The paint on the walls showed peeling, cracks, and concrete patchwork that was never painted over. The place on the cell door where a prisoner’s hands would be as he begged for mercy was completely stripped of paint and glinted with raw steel. On the wall by the door was a map of Puerto Rico with the road he had been on highlighted and a pin indicating the station’s position. Wondering what could’ve gone wrong, he noticed that he was nowhere near his destination, though he had walked for hours.

  He did not clearly understand the full extent of the conversation because he could barely hear over the sound of the air-conditioning unit and it was also completely in Spanish, but Aaron could sense that they were not taking him to his uncle’s workplace but back home. All three officers seemed very engaged in a discussion of what to do. They would be talking, suddenly pause, look at him, and then continue talking. They did this several times. The boy desperately began to search for ways he could escape from the building and continue his journey, but it was quickly obvious that there was no place to run. There was only desert outside and no cover.

  After a few moments, the officers turned back to Aaron. The younger one crouched to his eye level and explained that his mother and father were very worried about him and that it was very dangerous to be out alone in the street. The boy’s heart dropped, and he began to cry. Nonetheless he put his head down and calmly walked back out of the building and got into the patrol car escorted by the officers. Having already gotten his home address, they proceeded to drive there in silence. The sound of the patrol car’s engine roared down the empty road as if it too was trying to escape the hot asphalt. It was occasionally interrupted by the gibberish that came from the officer’s radio and the young boy’s sobbing. In tears, he tried convincing them that he would get beaten if he was taken back, but they kept silent and looked straight ahead. The boy cried himself to sleep.

  It was just starting to get dark when Aaron awoke and sat up as the patrol unit slowed onto the sidewalk curb in front of the house located on the main street almost in the center of the town. With the charisma and stance of an evil queen from some Disney animation film, with her arms crossed, a tall, black-haired woman wearing a long velvety purple robe stood there. By the obvious similarities to the boy, such as fair skin and mild African descent features like a slightly wider nose and thicker lips, they could see this was his mother, Dana. Surrounded by three other neighborhood mothers, visibly angry and worried, the mother made eye contact with her son as the patrol car came to a halt in front of them at the house. His eyes widened when he saw the anger in her eyes and how she clenched her fist. His little heart began to pound harder like some sort of out-of-control African percussion competition was taking place in the center of his chest.

  Like a couple of handsomely paid street snitches, the officers informed Dana of where and how they had found Aaron, as well as why he claimed he had run away. As the officers spoke, Dana guided Aaron toward her side and tightly secured the back of his shirt with a clenched fist, ensuring that he could not run from her side. The officers did not notice this because they were too focused on their conversation. After their brief explanation, the officers asked Dana to please not beat the kid because he really didn’t understand the implications of his actions and added that he was not the first and would not be the last boy to try to run away. Dana only nodded in agreement and with a smirk, waved as the police officers drove away.

  The sarcastic smirk on her face clearly indicated to Aaron that she was going to do whatever she felt was necessary to discipline her own child and not what the police or anyone would suggest. She continued waving the officers goodbye as she watched the patrol cars shrink down the narrow street.

  Feeling betrayed by the men who were supposed to protect him, the boy was suddenly violently shoved through the front door and into the small living room, where he fell to the ground. Hearing the commotion, his siblings quickly came out of their rooms. All bedrooms surrounded the living room in the small house. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Dana menaced the boy with words like, “You want to run away? You want to run away? I will teach you how to run away!” She then snapped the electric cord off the iron she had been using to get her nightshift clothes ready with a single pull and headed toward the terrified and crying boy. Looking up from the floor, he raised his little hands as if to protect himself from the lashings he was about to receive.

  “Please, Mommy, don’t hit me. I won’t leave again, I promise!” Aaron cried in inconceivable fear.

  She then told him to get naked and kneel by the door that gave way from the living room to the side of the house. He kept screaming for his mother not to beat him as he then knelt by the door, trying to cover as much of his body as quickly as he could to protect himself.

  She grabbed the eleven-year-old by the hair with one hand and pulled him from facing the door. She began to strike him with the electric cord wherever she could land a lash. He kept trying to cover himself, but she was faster and much stronger than he was. Out the corner of his eyes, he could see Milton and Maria watching in horror as tears of fear came from their innocent little eyes. With every lash, Dana asked Aaron if he still wanted to leave. The boy’s body would twitch violently with each lash. With one hand, she would lift him up from the floor by his curly hair or wherever she could get a hold of him and lash with the other. Then things changed drastically. The boy looked up to his mother, and what he saw was an avatar of a gigantic white shark with its giant black eyes rolled back, heading toward him. He now began to scream for help from anybody. It was at this time that his mother in a state of blind anger wrapped the cord around his neck and began to tighten furiously to keep him from moving and screaming.

  Aaron’s cries for help changed to cries, pleading for his mother not to kill him. She kept tightening the cord around the boy’s neck while screaming, “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you!” Completely exhausted from trying to fight off the attack, Aaron could hardly breathe or move. Soon enough, he gave up fighting. His body could not resist anymore and went limp. In his peripheral vision, he saw his siblings shaking and crying and lamented their suffering due to his trespass. But just as he was ready to pass out, his mother’s younger sister, Eleanor, who was there on a summer trip from New York ran toward them and with a hard shove, she was able to separate Dana from the child. They argued about the severity of the punishment handed out and who was right on how to raise this child specifically. Eleanor pointed to where the child lay and mentioned the scars and blood on the child. Dana then grabbed Aaron by lifting him by the hair and dragged him through the narrow hallway and into the bathroom. She then turned the cold shower on and shoved him under the water. Aaron wept as quietly as he could when he began to see the welts on his arms, sides, and legs. The blood and water blended as it ran down his legs onto the shower floor and then into the drain. The cold water felt like ice pellets on his shivering body, but it was better than getting lashed, he thought to himself.

 

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