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Fear Itself

Emily Joyner

    While this is the story of fear, it is also the story of a little girl growing up in a foreign land. These are the memories of a child. This account is true to my memory. I can be sure that these events took place, but I cannot be sure that the details are true. The chances of some of these events happening prove the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. I will always fear in the back of my mind that this account is not fully honest, but I will leave the final decision to you.

Fear #1: Danger
    Old and young people perceive fear differently. I have one very distinct memory trapped forever in my dreams. The lights are out because the power lines have been cut again, the room is pitch black except for the small candle burning up the darkness, and my brother and I are huddling on my mother’s lap. She is sitting in a chair in the middle of the living room. I know that my sister is with us even though I don’t remember her in this image. Everyone is consumed by fear but for strikingly different reasons. My brother and I hear the crack of thunder that shakes the house. We see the blinding flash of light. And we fear.
    Mixed in with the thunder is a sound so similar it is hard to distinguish it. A gunshot. Somewhere in the neighborhood, gangs are shooting at each other. At the time, I assumed that my mother also feared the thunder. Now, I know she feared the gunmen would come down our street. She feared because we had no power and wouldn’t for days. Because my father still had not made it home due to the storm.
    I spent over four years of my life in Mexico because my parents worked with a missionary group called UIM. When I was four, my family of four moved to Mexico for language school. By the time I was five, my sister had been born and my family had moved to Chihuahua where UIM’s base was located. Shortly before my ninth birthday, we moved back to the States. Later, I would learn that Mexico had become so dangerous that my father no longer wanted his family there.
    The one lesson I learned in Mexico, if I actually learned any lesson, is that adults are scared of really weird things. I would fear one thing and was unable to comprehend how my mother did not fear the same thing. Other things terrified my mother; I could always tell, even though she never told me. At the time, I couldn’t understand what she was afraid of. Now I can see.

Fear #2: The Little Things
    Isn’t it funny how people can fear dangerous and terrible situations and then turn around and have the same reaction brought on by something small and insignificant? I think that it is in those moments that adults feel the fear of children. As a child, I never saw the reason to be afraid of most things that I knew adults were afraid of. I also couldn’t understand why they told me I didn’t need to worry about the things I feared.
    I find that a combination of these little fears, all stacking up on top of each other, is far more dangerous and immobilizing than much larger, paralyzing fears can be. I know my mother tended to worry about her children, and what mother doesn’t? We would come home after helping my father and some of the other missionaries, relating tales of all the madness we had accomplished as mischievous children.
    “Today, we got to explore where they put all the tires ‘cuz they didn’t work on the airplanes anymore, and it was a huge pile, like miles long. We climbed on all of them, and snakes lived inside them, but we didn’t catch any because I know you’re afraid.”
    “Mommy! You’ll never guess what we did! There was this thing and it like, like, umm. Well, we chased it, but it got away, so then it was time to go home. Daddy let us sit on top of the seats and then there were lots of bumps in the road. We fell into the trunk and it hurt but it was really fun.”
    After a few of these stories, my mother created a rule that stands to this day: “I do not want to hear about anything that happens with your father.”
    My mother later told me that all the little adventures we had increased her worry. She knew we would be fine because my father was there watching us, but she would rather not know what we were doing. She said that it was easier for her to not worry about the little things that we did if she never knew we did them. Again, ignorance can be bliss. It can free us from fear, but it creates a danger in itself. My mother will never know if we are doing something that we should not be doing because we never tell her what goes on with my father. Once, he almost died when we were riding four-wheelers, but she didn’t even know that was what we were doing.

Fear #3: Death
    Death is a major fear for most, if not all, people. As a child, I never had cause to fear death; my interactions with it were different than most people’s. I lost several family members while I was living in Mexico, but my grandfather, whose death was the most impactful on my family, died shortly after my youngest brother’s birth.
    My mother tells me that she remembers very little from this time. Between the issues she had with her pregnancy and the worries she had with her father’s medical issues and eventual death, her memories are inaccurate at best, nonexistent at worst. While she may not remember what was going on at this time, I do remember several things. The first is that my grandfather abhorred death, and his children dreaded it for him. My mother still has not told me exactly what went on with my grandfather, but I know that he was not allowed to see his grandchildren for a while. My mother and her sisters feared for his soul.
    My brother’s birth brought much pain for my mother. It left me in charge of the household. At age seven, I was expected to watch out for my other brother, my sister, and my father - he might be the least responsible person in our family - as well as to help prepare food, clean the house, go to school, potty train my sister, and keep track of people when we were playing outside. An aunt had come to help my mother and the baby. Thankfully, other missionary families volunteered to help.
    It was during this time that I first began to understand what responsibility was. We came back to the states for several weeks to be with my grandfather before he died. My father still had a job to do in Mexico with the other missionaries. That meant that I was again left in charge of my siblings. I also learned that responsibility creates fear, and for the first time, I began to understand some of the reasons why my mother was always worried about us.

Fear #4: The Uncontrollable
    We were probably playing outside when we heard the news. I’m not actually sure, but I do know that we found out Bonnie’s father was not coming home that night, possibly never again. If there is anything more terrifying than the unknown, it must certainly be the uncontrollable. For one of the first times in my life, I felt truly out of control. My best friend was missing her father, and there was nothing I could do about it.
    “Bonnie! Are you okay? What’s going on?” I bombarded her with questions when my family went over to her house. My mother wanted to comfort her mother, and they thought it would be good to get the kids together to take our minds off of what had happened - not that we knew what had happened.
    “I have no idea,” she said, “but Dad’s not home, and no one knows when he will be.”
    “Umm, why isn’t he home?” I asked, confused. All the dads frequently were gone for extended periods of time, but they always came home after a flight was over. He was scheduled to get back the day before, but he still wasn’t home.
    “I think mom knows, but she won’t tell us,” Bonnie clued me in.
    “Great!” I said. “Now is the perfect time for us to practice our spying techniques that we came up with. We’ll sneak down the steps and slip into the hole behind the couch.”
    “Sounds good,” she agreed, and for the first time ever, we successfully snuck down the steps, slipped behind the couch, and settled into the small fort we had built in the little hole hidden behind it.
    “He was arrested,” I heard Bonnie’s mother say. “They are trying to claim he is a cartel member. They say he used the airplane to pick up drugs from the mountains.”
    Bonnie came over, and we did what we loved best: rocks. We collected more than normal, and her mother even let her keep some of them (until that point, she kept her rock collection at my house). We silently sat in the front yard, washing the rocks until they shone and my mother decided that she would let us and our stones into the house. We sat together and let fear bind us.
    The fear that existed in our mothers, in our whole missionary group, was founded in their inability to do anything to help him while he was trapped. It turns out that it was in God’s hands the whole time, so they didn’t have anything to be afraid of. After three days, Bonnie’s father came home. He told the parents, who later told me, that one of the guards had protected him from the other inmates while he was in the cell. He had been released because they had no grounds on which to hold him, but they were keeping the plane as evidence. We all knew we would probably never see that plane again. We all knew that the cartel, who controlled the policia, did not want the missionaries to go to the mountains.

Fear #5: Change
    One of my greatest fears was and still is change. There is something about it that combines all the previous fears into one undefinable, inevitable monster. When things change, we enter the territory of the unknown. It is an uncontrollable territory that comes no matter how hard we try to stop it. It is surrounded by a thousand nagging annoyances and tiny fears. It results in the loss of everything old, safe, and familiar.
    The gunshots that were so easily confused with thunder became more and more noticeable. Soon, it was not safe to go to the store. My father decided that it was no longer safe for his family. We needed to return to the States.
    The last day I spent in Mexico, I was hunched in our front yard, throwing my rock collection against the wall, watching them bounce into a pile at my feet, angry that my mother had not let me take them to the States with me. The fear of the change I was about to experience surrounded me and strengthened the force with which I hurled the rocks.

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