In the Shadows of Light

I knew something was wrong that afternoon in 1989. 

I had come home for lunch. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. I did it every day. Monday through Friday. Walked home on Sapodilla Street from Belmopan Junior School, ate lunch, then strolled on back to school. 

But not that afternoon.  

That afternoon, home was no longer home. 

The red cushions from one of the living room chairs were on the carpet. A police officer was inspecting where the intruder had entered. “They came in through here,” he said. From outside, the thief had pushed the white PVC chair away from the window so he could climb into the house. He had pulled out some of the window louvers, torn the cardboard that temporarily repaired a gap, and broken some of the other louvers. Since the windows had no burglar bars, all he had to do was crawl in through the opening he had created.

Fear rose in me. Even in the verandah’s shade, I felt the midday heat around me like a plastic wrapping, tightening, squeezing me. 

I moved further into the verandah’s shade, seeking comfort. I looked at the unfenced yard, noticed the way the shade’s darkness pushed the sunlight to the verandah’s edges. On a hot day, that shade should have been comfortable, cool.

I felt anything but comfortable and cool.

"Someone broke into the house," Mom’s voice cut through my thoughts. 

Stepping into the house, I could see that the intruder had pulled the Zenith TV set away from the wall.  He had left the cumbersome brown-and-silver box at an angle. On the shelf below it, there was an empty space where the VCR had been. The black wires that had connected the two devices were attached to the TV set still, their loose ends strewn aside like the legs of a dead black spider. 

The VCR was gone. 

My heart sank deeper as I walked through the house. The shade inside the house, like that on the verandah, offered no coolness, no comfort from the sun outside. Rather, it became something for me to fear.  

I wondered who else was hiding in it, waiting for their shot at breaking into my home. 

In the 1980s and early 90s, VCRs were a luxury in Belize. Mom had bought ours only a few months before, and she rented videotapes that all three of us—she, my twin brother Jason, and me—watched together on Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday nights. My heart would beat a little faster whenever I heard the videotape's click when pushed in, and when I saw the display of green numbers and red PLAY that glowed on the black box's front. In general, the VCR was comforting to me—the clicking and whirring of the hollow box and the tape's mechanical whine when you pressed “Rewind” or “Fast forward,” and the VCR’s comforting warmth after being used for a few hours. The VCR was the hub that my mother, Jason, and I gathered around.

And now it was gone. 

Mom led Jason and me to the kitchen where she continued heating lunch. The microwave door’s familiar clunk as Mom closed it, combined with the aroma of chicken and rice and beans with spices that filled the air, made my anxiety disappear for a minute as I continued to watch the police work. The police, in their dark blue slacks and khaki shirts, made me feel protected.  

I felt that if they were around, everything would be okay. 

They would find the thief and get our VCR back.

My life would go back to the cool safety I felt before. 

They examined the bedrooms, which I knew would not take long because the house was small. A police officer dusted my mother's jewelry box for fingerprints. I could see the black dots and ovals of fingerprints forming on the off-white jewelry box.

“Looks like they didn’t take any of your jewelry.” The officer’s voice interrupted my once-again racing thoughts, holding up the jewelry box at an angle with gloved hands.  

My mother owned a topaz, and for some reason, I was deeply relieved to see that the sparkling, light-brown stone was still there. She didn’t wear the topaz much anymore, but I remembered when she did only a few years earlier. It would glitter in the sun as she walked in after work. 

Dread and tension wound even tighter inside me; yet, I somehow still had an appetite. I ate the food Mom had prepared, and I went back to school at the end of lunch hour. 

The afternoon at school was a blur. The blue skies and golden sun must have been a beauty, but they were lost on me. All I could think of was a stranger's presence in my home, having gone through my things. All afternoon I stared out of the window, thinking about that person in my house, uninvited, unwanted. 

Thankfully no one had been home, or who knew what would have happened? 

The winding spring of tension and fear inside me, twisting like a steel corkscrew, finally couldn’t twist anymore. I had been pushing against it all afternoon, keeping it from overwhelming me. But by evening, the emotional work was too much. 

We were having dinner around the table, and through a mouthful of toast, I burst into tears. Mom got up and hugged me. “It’s okay, Marlon.”

“The VCR,” I said.  

I had no idea at the time why I felt this strong sense of loss over the VCR. 

“It’s just a VCR,” Mom said. 

“But you paid so much for it.” I could barely choke out the words as the kitchen shimmered through my wet eyes. The $700 that I knew the VCR had cost seemed like an extraordinary amount of money to me. I felt horrible that my mother had lost her investment. To my eight-year-old brain, our life was over. 

“It’ll be okay. We can always get another one.” 

Mom’s certainty made me feel okay. 

The reassurance didn’t last, though. It didn’t feel okay that night when it was time for bed. I dreaded the darkness. My temporary comfort had disappeared with the setting sun. 

The three of us—Mom, Jason, and I—were all on edge. We worried that the burglar would come back, maybe with some friends of his. Mom got a kitchen knife and a hammer and placed them on the floor beside her bed. She found a night light and plugged it in as well.  

The three of us slept in the same room that night. I stared at the knife and the hammer on the floor, the knife’s wooden handle and stainless-steel blade, the hammer’s metallic shine next to it, the entire room aglow with the night light’s dull beam. As one last security measure, Mom had also put a chair under the bedroom's doorknob, at an angle to keep the door shut and locked against anyone trying to force it open.

The night light’s yellow glow was as weak as the comfort it brought me as I tried to sleep. My mind kept returning to the afternoon—the police in the yard, the shade’s dark coolness no longer comforting. The darkness surrounding the night-light glow in that flimsily barricaded bedroom threatened to swallow the three of us.  Only that one weak light kept the darkness away, pushed it to the room’s edges. The heat in the room engulfed me like an oven on low flame as I continued staring at the knife and hammer on the floor.

I fell into a light sleep.

In my dreams, I saw men with revolvers. Men with burnt cork on their faces. Grinning men in black bandannas who looked like the pirates from Tampa, Florida who I had read about in one of my schoolbooks. They were circling the bed, moving in and out of the house and the rooms like a pack of hungry black wolves, looking for more things to steal. They had returned to steal the topaz they left behind and the television they didn't take the last time. It sounded like ten, twenty, a hundred of them were in the house—an invading army. I could hear their footsteps and clattering, thumping, and creaking as they opened doors, searched drawers, and rummaged. 

Because the place was small, I knew their search wouldn’t take long. 

They were in the kitchen, the living room, the bathrooms, searching. These dark men with dark faces that matched the daytime shade and darkened night had returned for the young single mother and rail-thin young boys they had seen coming and going from the unprotected house. They had watched us coming and going, figured that yes, this was the house for them. A woman and two little boys? This whole thing is too easy. 

The dark men circled the bed, staying in the darkness, moving around the light but never coming into it. Like ghosts, they avoided the light. Maybe the light wasn’t so weak if it kept them away. It was the way a fire keeps away the beasts in the forest.

But this wasn’t a forest. 

This house was my home, my sanctuary. 

I used to be safe here.

Was it safe, or my sanctuary, anymore? 

One of the dark painted faces stared at us, white-teeth-revealing grin, his black revolver against the light, held up to his upper chest as if posing for a picture. His partners in crime continued ransacking the house, dark shapes moving around in the shadows. 

I no longer had boundaries between outsiders and me, and my home was now theirs to do whatever they wanted to, take whatever they wanted. 

My heart thumped as I realized no barriers—not the light, not the chair-bolted bedroom door, not the walls—kept out uninvited guests. Now the room felt like a hot oven, the flame turned up high. I was sweating profusely under the sheets. 

Neither the shade nor the light brought comfort anymore. 

My eyes shot open, frantically searching the darkness, but there was no one there. There was only the blur of the chest of drawers, the closed bedroom door, and the chair propped up under the doorknob, keeping the door locked.  I later found out that my brother and mother had felt the same way—sleepless, restless, and anxious. 

The following day, the rising sun’s golden light calmed me down. 

Somewhat. 

Daylight always made me feel better after restless nights. Like many kids, I was already afraid of the dark at that time, and the burglary made me even more so. That morning, I made it to school, tired, and began to adjust, slowly, to the new reality that boundaries can be fragile. 

The police never caught the burglar, and the VCR was never recovered. I slowly got over the loss. What remained with me, however, was an obsession with protecting and strengthening my boundaries. 

Sometimes I pass that house on Sapodilla street, thirty-five years later. The house is now painted green, and its yard has a fence enclosing it. Today, it looks more like the fortress I wish it were back in 1989. The house has also been expanded, with additions built on like someone who, tired of bullies, hit the gym and became muscular to ward off threats. 

I look at houses differently now.

I instantly take note of whether or not they have fences or burglar bars. I like houses with a single front gate, high fence, and burglar bars on all the windows. That’s the only kind of house I’ll live in. This arrangement may sound like a prison to some. For me, it is all about protecting my boundaries. I also became obsessive about personal space after that afternoon in 1989. Because at eight years old, I realized that no border is sacred. It can be violated at any time.

_________________________

Marlon Martinez currently lives in Belmopan and is an English major at the University of Belize. He aspires to master all existing communication forms, especially writing.

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