Isabelle, Domingo, WTED Ending Flashcards
A white doe, just a baby. Its ears are alert.
It stops just at the edge of the forest and our eyes meet.
I feel my screams lost somewhere above us, lost in the lightning and thunder.
It mingles with the screams of a thousand women, a thousand mothers, and children and husbands and fathers and brothers.
Do not hold onto the bitterness Isabelle,
it will eat at your body like worms, and will ruin your future because of it.
It comes like a shock, a stab; my stomach convulses in pain.
It wants the intruder out. I taste blood on my tongue.
I look into their eyes, but there is nothing, no hope, no compassion,
only hate and blackness. I see the face of war.
He touches me with
devil hands. I slap him again and again.
“Traitor,” I scream. Traitor! He lets me claw at his neck,
gritting his teeth until he can stand it no longer. (about Feliciano)
I look in a daze for the sniper. Amerikano or Japanese?
What difference does it make? I step out into the street and open my arms wide to embrace his bullet.
Oh, I am bad. Make no mistake.
But I can be trusted. There is a difference.
The war has kept us apart. When in his presence,
I am awkward, a stranger; I do not know who is more terrified. I fumble to put away my rifle, my knives, to hide the wounds and bloodstains that make his eyes grow large.
No papa, you are a killer…
I am frightened of you. (Domingo’s son Taba says this)
Miguel and I became two pawns facing one another.
If I did not jump over him, he would eat me.
Domingo scoffs at her word,
“does a devil lose his horns?”
But mine is not the only family to consider.
There are many others that may die if none of us were to fight.
He says that we are like abused children
who have never been allowed to grow.
