I know a lady named Melinda; she runs the concession at the ballpark where my boys play. Melinda is 45 years old, she is a highly energetic and hardworking woman, the single mother of 3, works full time for the city of Langley as well as working the concession every night and every weekend. She's smart, funny, kind, thoughtful - a really good person.
She is scarred over most of her body, horribly scarred from being burned as a child of 10. Her arms, chest, back, torso and upper legs do not have anything like human skin covering them, you can see that she was burned nearly to the bone on her upper arms and chest. Her face is not badly scarred, nor her lower legs, and she has a decent head of hair. Looking at her, you wonder how she survived, why she is alive at all.
I always wondered how she came to be so badly burned but never liked to ask. But last summer we were working together at the park and she said something about "when I was burned" and I asked her how it happened, was it car accident? "No," she said, "it was a fire in my grandma's apartment building. And it was arson."
It's hard to express how that affected me, to think that someone could set a fire and that a little 10 year old girl could be hurt so badly. She said she hovered between life and death for months, and that only her mother's strength and determination got her through it. A miracle, her mother says, but Melinda says her mother is the miracle.
Anyway, the other day she came up to me at the park and said, "I have to tell you something. 35 years later, they've finally arrested the man that set the fire that burned me. He's been charged with assault causing bodily harm, 3 counts of manslaughter, and 2 counts of arson."
3 counts of manslaughter? "Yes," she said. "My grandma and 2 other people died in that fire."
You know, I actually felt faint when she said that. It is beyond imagination, and is so dreadful that a person's mind can't dwell on it or really absorb it at all. 3 dead. A child burned nearly to death. 35 years later they arrested the man they always knew had done it, but never had enough evidence to arrest him.
The next day, Melinda was interviewed on CBC radio. And so was the police officer in Regina who had made the arrest. For 35 years they had watched and waited and at last they had something to go on. The interviewer asked the police officer why it had taken so long, and what had happened to bring it to this conclusion. The cop said that people's consciences start to bother them, people who might know something or who might have seen or heard something, or someone says something, and the file had NEVER been closed, so when the tips came in, they acted right away. He didn't imply, and I didn't think, that it was the arsonist whose conscience bothered him. It might have been his mother, or his sister, or a friend, or a neighbour. Whoever it was, he's going to be tried in Regina and Melinda is going to go and give a "victim impact statement" . She wants to see him, and, more to the point, she wants him to see her.
No one is less like a victim than Melinda. She is tough, she is hardy, she won't wear clothes that cover her scars, she doesn't ask for pity, she just wants to live her life. But I know that the pain must be in there, the memory of the physical agony, the lifetime of being scarred, of being stared at, all that.
She has a little girl of her own, who is 10 now. She is the image of her mother, or rather of what her mother was, a beautiful, beautiful child with long blonde hair and almond-shaped blue eyes and the most exquisite colouring and complexion. A merry, laughing little girl. She "likes" my grandson Oz and watches his ball games and chases him around, embarassing him half to death - but only half. He "likes" her, too.
I think the police officers who never let that case rest, who never stopped waiting, who kept track of that man as he moved around Canada, who sifted through phone records and whispered tips and gossip, are the greatest. I don't know what will happen to him, hopefully he'll go to prison, but whatever it is, it has to be good for Melinda to know that she was never forgotten, nor her grandma, nor the other 2. 35 years!
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Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.