Elneila

It was a rainy evening. Two cars, their tires sloshing on the wet road, pulled up in front of the Monstros residence, one after the other.

Two rooms from the third floor lit up with 20-Watt fluorescent bulbs. A window of one of these rooms slid open, and out of it peered an adolescent girl in her night gown. She had golden yellow hair, pulled back and clasped with what very much appeared to be a large black metal binder clip. Her skin was glowing, fresh from an application of a skin lotion supposed to make it soft as a baby�s. Her eyes, though heavy at the eyelids, looked very much awake, and it wouldn�t even surprise anyone if it was revealed here that she was in fact in page three hundred and one of a lovely teenage romance novel she had borrowed from a friend.

Presently, she yawned, and looked sleepily at the two cars, more than half particularly at their license plates. Recognizing them as vehicles naturally belonging to the Monstros residence garage, she drew her young head back into her room and shut her window. She didn�t, however, turn off her 20-Watt fluorescent light, and from the vantage point of the left-side passenger at the back of the second of the two cars, the girl could clearly be seen putting on a robe and removing the office supply off her head, replacing it instead with a regular hair grip.

Twenty seconds later she appeared on the Monstros residence front door. It was a huge double door, each five-foot wide and twenty-one-foot high. It had a canopy overhanging for about two feet from the wall, and about half a foot from the doorframe edges on both sides. Though it was still raining, the young girl stepped out of the shelter of this canopy and walked as if without any concern in the world toward the front gate.

The Monstros compound, in proper proportionality to the Monstros residence itself, was vast. It took the young girl a full minute to reach the front gate, and she was therefore drenched in rain water as she unbolted the lock to let the two cars in.

As the first car passed, the driver rolled down the front passenger seat window and yelled for her voice to be heard over the sound of rain falling on the tin roof of her vehicle, �Geesh, Elneila. You should have at least brought some umbrella or something. Geesh.� The driver then opened the front passenger seat door as an invitation for the young girl to get in.

�Sorry, Tita,� Elneila said. �Someone has to close the gate after you. And look�� she indicated the second car in queue to enter the gate. �Walneia�s car is next to come in.�

No sooner had she spoken this had the second car impatiently honked its horn.

�Oh, that young lady is impossible!� screeched Elneila�s aunt, as she closed the just refused car door. �Believe me,� she said to her adolescent niece. �If she weren�t a blood relative, I would have blown her entire head off with your uncle�s shot gun a long, long time ago. Geesh!� and she accelerated forward.

If Elneila had any opinion about what she�d just heard, she didn�t express it. She watched with interest the entrance to the Monstros compound of the second car. Like the first, the second car pulled up as it passed Elneila, and its front passenger seat window rolled down. The driver, who had a striking resemblance to Elneila (if but about eight years older), also addressed the young girl. �What was that all about?�

Elneila looked at her as if looking straight to a mirror eight years into the future and in a more favorable weather condition. �I don�t know,� she said as sincerely as she was able to.

� Jay Santos 2003.