i never saw any burning bushes growing up. that, inspite being raised by a mother who regularly claimed talking to god in her sleep.
but i, i was a witness, a mortal witness, to a divine intervention. or at least that is how my memory remembers it.
this is also how my memory remembers persistent dreams i had when mama and i first moved to that yellow house under two adolescent kamachile trees.
i would dream of swimming alone in a blue and pacific lagoon, never visited by any squall. then the gecko, the one that has been terrorizing me from the ceiling over my bed since we moved in to that blasted house, would dive into the sea with me. the gecko would straddle my legs and I would whirl downward to the bed of the sea, feet bound, head first.
here's another dream. i would dream of shocking my mama with new words I coined, like zsu ming sa, for the stinging hot pansit sold by an itinerant peddler or hazard reasons why kanaways refuse to fly west when there was a storm brewing. then in the midst of my locquacity, the gecko would jump from the ceiling and strap itself across my lips. i would be mute for days.
and here's another one. i would dream of melting all the crayons in my box and drip them over colored papers. then the gecko would walk on each of these works. i would try to yank him off from these creations but the half liquefied wax would stick and tear along with his feet as I pulled him off, leaving the trail of a bleeding amputated starfish.
i do not remember crying in any of these dreams. but there was this night. this one when much of my sweat did not leave my skin, choking my pores.
from the wall beside one of the kamachile trees, the damper wall, a plump and well coordinated centipede, its head intimidating and poised, barreled toward the foot of my bed.
my feet, exposed by a shrunk blanket, started to die. then the gecko and its tongue bolted toward the creature.
the gecko, as if acting the lead in a highly embellished biblical miracle story, outran the heathen creature with the hundred legs.
and in an authentic swift dealing of yahwetic justice, the gecko and its godly tongue subdued the thrashing gentile, the pagan centipede.
and i, the mortal witness to a divine intervention, could do nothing to show my gratitude but cry.
i cried as the gecko, like an old testament patriarch satisfied over seeing the carnage inflicted on a pagan village, decided the fight between good and evil was over.
i cried as the now haloed gecko moved away back to the sanctuary of the ceiling. half of the infernal centipede's limp body bobbing outside his mouth.