St. Gabriel the Writer

 Fragments from my notebook

Hilcias is his name.

He is a genius.

No one knows.

Those are the best kinds of geniuses, for they are humble.

The world needs more humble geniuses.

Like most geniuses, he sees the world with curiously. 

This is how I learned of him.

He was curious about whales. 

"There's a boy who knows a lot about whales," came word over water. 

And he did. 

He drew a beautiful picture of a bowhead whale and wrote beneath it - "A bowhead whale's blubber is over two feet thick so it can live in the Arctic cold. The bowhead can create it's own breathing hole by breaking through ice up to twelve inches thick." 

He drew a blue whale and wrote - “A blue whale's heart is bigger than a Volkswagon Beetle, but it's ears are smaller than the point of a pencil." 

He drew a sperm whale and wrote - "For many years, oil from a sperm whale's head was used to create light for people. In fact, people measure the strength of light in lumens, which is the light of one sperm whale oil candle." 

He is a whale genius.

He is ten years old.

He doesn’t speak.

He hasn't spoken a single word in his whole life.

When he was two years old, his mamí talked with him in the language of poetry as she walked with him tied to her back down the long rows of peaches and tomatoes under the South Carolina sun. 

She reached up to the trees, took a peach in her hands, and rubbed the fuzzy skin against his soft cheek.

She whispered,

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres

porque de las praderas planetarias

otra estrella no tengo. Tú repites

la multiplicación del universo.

I love the handful of earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

She waited for him to talk back to her in toddling talk, to say words like “mamí” and “amo” and “tú”.

But he didn't. 

He didn't say anything at all. 

He only looked at her with his wide, unblinking, brown eyes, eyes the color of the deep parts of the earth.

He jutted out his little, bottom lip as if to say, "I’m sorry, mamí, but I can’t find the words to talk about the beauty, genius, wonder and courage I see and feel around me.”

People ask him, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "How are you?" and he answers them with whistles instead of with words. 

People ask his abuelo, "What's wrong with him?" 

The old man simply shrugs and sighs the sigh of someone who carries heavy loads on his back and in his heart. 

"Dios sabe,”’he answers. “God knows." 

Well, I know, too. 

I am St. Gabriel the writer, patron saint of ten-year-old kids searching for their voices.

Here is his story.

- TSB, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020