lost voice

Dr. Maria came to Charleston from El Salvador. 

She practiced medicine at the Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic on Johns Island. 

She was short and brown skinned, with black bobbed hair and earthy brown eyes. 

She was a good soccer player.

She wore her white lab coat and red Chuck Taylors with pride.

She was a person of the land for the people of the land.

There is a belief within mystical Judaism that there are 36 righteous people in each generation who hold the world together.

If true, she was one of those 36.

She was brilliant and kind.

She was gifted at LOOKING and SEEING.

At LISTENING and UNDERSTANDING.

This made her the best doctor for many, many miles around the clinic. 

Of the many patients she saw every day throughout the planting, growing and harvesting season, Little Salt was her favorite.

Little Salt, in return, loved Dr. Maria. 

He loved that her skin was the same color as his.

He loved her brown eyes and the way they looked inside of him when she was examining him and trying to help him.

He loved her holey Chucks because they were like the ones he wore.

Johns Island, along with Wadmalaw and James Island, make up the barrier islands around Charleston. 

There are two main roads on the island, Maybank Highway and Bohicket Road. 

The island is between the Charleston Harbor and the Stono and Folly Rivers. 

It used to be covered in farmland, but now there are a few residential communities around the old farms. 

It has a small-town feel. 

Migrant workers make their way there in the spring and summer to work in the tomato fields and the peach orchards.

They are so small, quiet and hidden, the vacationers who come to enjoy the beach life rarely know they’re there.

But they are.

The Barrier Island Free Medical Clinic is an old cottage painted pea green.

The two lane Maybank Highway runs past the Barrier Island Free Medical Clinic, just a stones throw from it’s front door. 

At the back of the clinic, there is a thicket of trees and 120 acres the Smith family uses to grow tomatoes and peaches.

From the clinic’s back door you can look out across the land at the tomato plants and peach trees. 

It’s very beautiful in the spring and summer.

The soil is brown and rich.

The land glows red and yellow with the tomatoes and peaches growing on it. 

Looking out over the land, Dr. Maria could see the migrant workers moving across the plants and trees, picking tomatoes and peaches, putting them in large sacks tied around their bodies held close to their sides.

Dr. Maria thought a lot about Little Salt’s condition. 

He worked beside his mamí and abuelo during the day and played with the other migrant children in the evening, never speaking a single word. 

At night, he read by the light of an old bulb hanging from a cord running into the dilapidated bus that served as his family’s home behind the Smith’s house. 

In the fall, he and his family packed all of their belongings and boarded a migrant bus and headed down to Florida for winter work. 

Dr. Maria was studying Little Salt’s condition for the whole spring and summer before he left. 

She wanted to help him, to give him the gift of his voice, but she was afraid to borrow too many books and journals from her colleagues or ask too many questions about him to them. 

“Why are you spending so much time and effort on one migrant kid?” they would ask. 

“There are too many other patients to see.”

But as we noted, she could SEE Little Salt. 

And she UNDERSTOOD he needed her.

She UNDERSTOOD in the ways of mystery that the world needed him.

The world needed to hear his lost voice.