How Would You Speak of Love When Language Dies? (Volume I)

VII. Of those that speak of neighborhoods and city libraries

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For the love that shelters.

For the love that grows with and within you.

"Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined."
— Ocean Vuong in his novel,
ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS

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Entry VII.
THE STORY OF CLAIR VICTORINE DE PAGUA

I first met Reese Julian on the day I moved out of the orphanage.

He was standing outside their lawn, petting his Siberian Husky named Poppy—if my memory serves me right—on the head while I was pushing my luggage inside my new home for the next years of my life.

Unlike any other orphan, I am clueless about what life was like when I was born. You know, 90% of orphan stories start with the memory of a life elsewhere before the orphan life happened—may it be in the suburbs, the streets, the hospital, the mountains—just literally somewhere. Sometimes, still without the knowledge of where life came from and who you saw the moment you first took a glimpse of the world—but the point is, you knew that you had life somewhere else before you moved into an orphanage.

For the remaining 10% of us (which I am part of), it was only a blank, clean slate. It was as if I just... woke up one day in the orphanage and accepted my life's shallow history.

They say circumstances only lead to this if one of two things happened:

One, you experienced a traumatizing event in the past—perhaps a huge car accident or something—that has lead you to become amnesiac before getting orphaned. Rare case only.

Or two, you were abandoned too young as a child therefore, it's logical for you, as a baby, to not discern what life was like before getting orphaned.

And I totally got it right away for my case the moment I heard of those two reasons. Piece of cake. I had no scars, no trauma, and no recollection of vivid fever dreams wrapped around tragedies.

Hence, It could only be the latter.

I didn't bother to ask confirmation from anyone. Not even my Tita Melbie in the orphanage, the co-owner who takes care of us personally and knew me since the day I moved with them and the rest of the girls into the house. Because records tell that I was found abandoned in a basket outside the Religious of the Virgin Mary convent on a rainy September. The nuns, I theorize, brought me to the orphanage. I figured that the records are true because my usual visitors are three de Pagua sister nuns named Victoria, Victorianne, and Victory.

Which could only be the reason why I was named Clair Victorine. The name Clair came from St. Clare of Assisi.

I have no idea why I was left in a basket. I don't even remember being in a basket outside what seemed like a convent in the middle of a stormy afternoon. That just most likely explains how young I was, as a baby, to be left abandoned.

I first moved here in this neighborhood two years ago when I was adopted by two grandparents who lost their children and apos to a plane crash. It took them a decade to heal from the trauma before they decided to adopt me. I was 17 and they were both 64 already.