Coming back home!

Bryant’s life was always full of unexpected problems and turnarounds. Before the pandemic hit, he worked on several jobs and roles, but none of them liked him. However, when the restrictions kicked in, he lost his job as a waiter and all his incomes.

Bryant is not from here, whenever here is. Bryant is an immigrant like millions. One of those who left his career and his homeland to try to build a better future for his family. However, as soon as he started to climb up, the coronavirus makes his appearance and everything changed. Everything was gone, again and worse than ever. He was back to square one, alone in another county with dependents.

Feeling worthless and disappointed about himself for being fired from a restaurant -even when he was an engineer, Bryant went home to try to think of his options to make ends meet, provide for his family and keep a roof over the head of his wife and his little daughter. These unprecedented times stoped everything, except the bills. He still getting his bill for the car’s loan, the house rent, and the health insurance, among others new modern expenses such as streaming, pets and memberships.

Overthinking full of anxiety on his couch while her four years old daughter was watching cartoons and saying out loud nonsense dialogues, he remembers himself as a little kid just to realize that he was doing completely the opposite of he had written on his magic little black book. The little black book that his grandmother has given to him decades ago and was buried somewhere in his memory until that day. The little black book that someday someone tried to took from him in the school and initiated his first fight.

Martha -his grandmother, always fuels and supports Braynt’s creativity and gave to him dozens and dozen of notebooks of all sizes and styles, along with all kind of color and paints so he can play and just let his imagination flow. However, that little black book was always really, really important for Martha and for Bryant. For any reason that he couldn’t remember, his grandmother always was overseeing the black book, and he always kept it in the back pocket of his pants.

Besides of being full of drawings from a 9 years orphan kid, that little black book kept the biggest desires and goals of the little Bryant. Even-though, his grandmother has had written something really important on it years ago, but he did not know it. Anyway, the idea of finding that black book has grown really fast inside of him, and he couldn't stop thinking on it.

He was feeling sick. Like something has suddenly remove his guts and every organ, bone and muscle inside of his body letting just the skin. He was absolutely consume and driven crazy with the idea of finding the black book.

Bryant starts opening and unpacking the old moving boxes he had kept for years in the closet, but he couldn’t find it in there. Frustrated he jumped into the car and drove to the suburbs in the middle of the night to go and review all the 29 boxes he had storage, in a small unit at a cheap and creepy place in the east of L.A.. Although, he didn’t find it there neither.

He went back home late in the morning completely emotionally broken, but as he passed his daughter’s room feeling worthless, he stoped at the door, got in and sat on the floor close to the bed and started crying until he fell asleep. However, that night, he dreamed with Martha.

In his blurry dream, the old woman was telling him one single phrase even when he was asking more questions to her. She says, “Never forget where do you kept this black book because here is written your fortune and destiny”, and kept on and on during an intense nightmare.

Bryant woke up just before dawn agitated, sweating and with his heart beating so hard that he can feel it in the back of his throat. Quickly, he realized he was safe at his daughter’s room, and while he was getting his breathe back, he stand up and looked at his little child while he told to himself that he never will put her on danger.

In that moment, while he was still sleepy, he remembered the worse night of his life. The last night he ever seen his parents alive. As he step out the room, disoriented due to the lack of sleep and the nightmare, he had a flashback. Suddenly, he was in the same room where he was when his grandmother ran into it in the middle of the night sobbing and telling him the same words he just told to himself about never put him on danger again. Right after that, she told him the same phrase of the dream, “Never forget where do you kept this black book because here is written your fortune and destiny”.

Immediately, Bryant get into his car and drove like a crazy to the airport. In some way, that flashback helped him to remember where did he left the little black book. At the airport, he bought a flight to Bogota because it was the next flight available and a reasonable stop before his final destination, Caracas.

At the end of that long journey, he had never stop thinking about the black book a single second. Then he finally called his wife from the coast of the Caribbean to tell her that he had to deal with a family business and he would be back home in a few days.

But the true was that he didn’t knew if he would be able to find the black book and figure out if that crazy dream and that vivid flashback were true, or if there was a real fortune at all. He didn’t know either if the black book would be at the same place where he had left it years ago. And certainly, he didn’t know if he would be able to pay the rent of the house because he was using the money to pay that crazy-ass trip.

The flight between Bogota and Caracas helped Bryant to remember the last years he spent in a city which once was his homeland, the place where he grew up and learned almost everything he knew until now. The place were he had his first kiss and where he used to had friends and family. A place where he was at the top of his career, living the dream before he was forced to fled the country due to the economic collapse and Martha’s dead. He spent those two hours preparing himself to deal with the idea of coming back after decades.

The arriving was smooth. He used a new passport, so migration didn’t asked too many questions, and he just told them he there for tourism. The short drive from La Guaira to Caracas was a pleasant ride for Bryant, even-though, his eyes couldn’t kept the tears while remembering his childhood and his grandmother. Bryant was back in Caracas because he knew that the cemetery was the only possible place where the little black book could be. And that was in part because it was the last place he ever stood on before leaving the country 17 years ago. The day before leaving for almost forever, Bryant went to his grandmother’s grave and left the little black book on it as a tribute to her, so if the black book still exists, would be there.

He gone to Caracas on taxi and the driver dropped him off at a car rental shop. He got a standard car and drove to the cemetery following his instinct, at the time that he reconciled with his natal city. He arrived to the once opulent private cemetery and find himself driving between deteriorated tombstones, with no grass on it or even grave plates at all. The graverobbers had ripped off the place for years, taken away the marble ornaments and all the copper from the plates.

However, he managed his way to get to the place where the grave was, following his memory and helped by a huge tree that apparently was the only one which remain intact in the place.

After recognizing the grave, Bryant ran to it and let himself fell over it. He was crying desperately as he started looking for the black book inside the tiny mausoleum which was on Martha’s grave. But again, he couldn’t find anything and was devastated on the ground. Bryant was sobbing almost having a cardiac arrest and he was begging desperately to his dead’s grandmother for help.

It took a while until he recomposed himself. Once he did, he wanted to come back to Los Angeles right away. However, after seeing what he saw at her beloved grandmother’s grave, he went to the management to file a complaint.

An old woman -who probably was the same person who he speak with 18 years ago during Martha’s funeral arrangements, came in to help him asking to follow her to a small office. There Bryant told her how disappointed he was after seeing her grandmother’s grave without a tombstone and with the pieces of the marble from the tiny mausoleum ripped off. Meanwhile he was telling her the exact details about where the lot was, the old woman interrupted him and completed the phrase, “The lot 325 East. The one close to the big tree”. Bryant felt goosebumps all over his skinny body after she told that. Then, the old woman explained herself and told him they’ve tried to contacted him for years to give to him a few belonging recovered from Martha’s grave without success.

She explained to him that after the economic collapse of the country, the cemetery administration dramatically cut the maintenance and the security expenses, giving green light to dozen of starving graverobbers to stole the marble and the copper, so they can sell it later on the black market and provide for their families. A bizarre non-ending cycle full of misery and compassion at the same time. Bryant didn’t blame them because Venezuela was a disaster and people was willing to do whatever it took to put food on the table.

The ancient woman told him that one morning Mr. Fermín, the only maintenance worker, hired to keep thousand of graves, was called by a security guard who ran into a thief and confronted him there. At the scene, Mr. Fermin was able to recover some items which were left behind by the thief. He put the items to safety and told the story to the old woman and asked her to notify to the family. However, they never were able to speak with Bryant, so they put Martha’s items in the cemetery’s safe.

While in the office, the woman wrote down a number on a piece of paper directly from her screen and told Bryant to follow her. The old woman has a really slow pace walking, so it was a long and weird walk passing by crematory rooms and empty cold hallways underneath the chapel next to the office building. They walked trough the creepy place for about ten minutes before finally arrived to the gate of a huge safe. The place was really hidden in the guts of the cemetery and he though that if the graverobbers knew about it, they weren’t wasting their time with the marble.

The old woman put a password on a metal keypad close to the door, and then said something by radio. Suddenly, the big steel door started to opening after a security guard who controlled the safety from an unknown location pushed a magic bottom.

The woman and Bryant walked in and the door closed behind them. There was a steel tall table right in the middle of the big safe. Down-there they have paintings, thousands of dollar in cash, jewelry and a couple of dozen of long and flat steel boxes. Following the number that she wrote down on the paper at the office, she was able to located one of those boxes. Then, she put that long and flat steel box on the table and removed a yellow envelop from it, which had written on Spanish, “Lo que quedó del robo. Marta Graterol”, and gave it to Bryant.

When he got it, he started felling sick again, dizzy and with blurry vision. Even-though, he asked to the old woman to open the door, then he ran back to his car without even said thank you, but he definitely couldn’t wait for her to walk back knowing her slow pace. He wanted to open the envelop so badly.

After jumping into the car, he sat on the front seat just behind the wheel, he torn off the envelop and pour the content on the passenger seat. There was a medium size photography of he and Martha, a pair of keys, the black book and what was left of an Angel’s marble ornament placed on top of Martha’s tiny mausoleum. He was right, the book was there and he had it on his hands.

He took a deep breath before opened it, but after few pages he realized they were completely damaged by the time and after being exposed to extreme weathers. All those drawings he did as a kid looked like psychedelic modern art without sense. He was really, really upset and disappointed. He risked his family savings and their home for nothing. He started to yelling so hard that almost got his own tonsil ripped off, but then he noticed a page which was absolutely intact and had something written on it.

At first, he couldn’t understand how that happened. But then, he realized that the photograph was stick on that page and that was the reason it was kept intact. Martha deliberated wrote a crucial information on it, and covered it with the picture. She was hoping he would tried to pulled it up someday to place it on a frame, but he never did it. Actually, before that day, he hadn’t opened that book for 27 years.

There was a text with the familiar Martha’s handwritten which said;

“My dear Bry,

Someday you will discover this text because probably you will put this picture somewhere else to honor me. But here is a confession, something you have to know. Your parents were target by the Venezuelan’s government years ago, so we did too. They were human rights activists and one day after attending one of their regular meetings, they never came back. I’ve never told this to you, but I always knew it was them. I always knew that they kept an eye on us. I was afraid that they wanted take us off the radar too, so we went low profile.

You were just a kid when this happened. I’ve never had the courage to tell you the true because I always wanted you to be out of this fucking place. I always wanted to give you a no reason to come back, but the true is that they left a house for you. Apparently it was always their plan, I guess they knew the risks and what could go wrong with their careers. The house is in your favorite beach. The beach where we always went on vacations. The one you even know the taste of the sand.

I did this arrangements now because I don’t know what might happen. All what you need for your life, would be found in that place.”

Then she wrote a coordinates, “11.1307° N, 63.8476° W”, in Margarita Island.

Bryant was so moved and had his face wet as he cried reading, but now he knew what to do and where to go. So he was relief that the book and the dream meant something. He drove back to the airport, returned the car and flown to Margarita Island, a 30 minutes flight from the capital.

After arriving at the airport and get welcome by a hot breeze, which almost burned his lungs in one breath, he took a taxi and asked the driver to follow his directions as he kept a GPS with the address on his hand.

He was paranoid because of the whole story of his parents, he felt someone was following him. After a 35 minutes ride, they arrived to a small street just next to the beach. There mostly where restaurants and bars, but right in the corner where the sand begins, it was the house.

One of the keys opened the lock, he crossed an old door which was a little bit stuck between the floor and the sand spread by the wind. Then, he opened a second door and got into a beautiful oceanfront house with beach access, pool, bbq area and 4 bedrooms just next to a small mall, which after he found out it was also part of the property.

He couldn’t believe it. He sat in the living room on an old couch which was completely covered by dust. Then he put his both hands on his face, and slipped them slowly trough his hair, leaving himself a tiny layer of dust on the face. While sitting there, he noticed that there was his grandmother’s suitcase just slipped between books under the television. He grabbed it quickly and noticed it was locked. He tried Martha birthday’s date and the suitcase didn’t open. Then he tried with his birthday’s date, and didn’t open again. When he was studying his options to unlock the suitcase whatever it takes, he manage to remember the date of the last time he saw his parents and dial on it “02 12 93”, and it worked. The suitcase just clicked and opened.

This time, Bryant’s scream was so loud that made his grandmother’s grave tremble in Caracas when he discovered 40 packs of $50 dollars bills making in groups of $500. He was almost broken and short of money to cover his family expenses and now has more than $20,000 dollars in cash. It was unbelievable. He was so excited that he ran to the store and got some beers, chips and order food from a restaurant and then went back to call his wife.

— Hello babe, I am sorry. I know it has been weird days. How are you doing at home?. He said while tried to clean up a little bit the couch.

— We’re good. What’s happening? What family business were you taling about? When are you coming home?

— I am going back soon, but home is not there anymore, honey. I finally knew that my parents loved me. I always was their priority, but they were gone by theirs politics beliefs and my grandmother never told me that. She kept the true away from me.

— Oh my good, babe. That’s so hard. I am so sorry. Where are you?

— Home, I at home. I am going back to LA tomorrow, but you should get ready to pack and moved because is time we came back home babe, our real home, in our country.

Three weeks after landing in LA, and contacting his grandmother lawyer, the entire family moved to the Margarita’s beach house. Now they would be able to retake their lives and help the community and those most in need around the small town. People was full of joy after the dictatorship ends, but they need jobs and investment.

Bryant decided to build more business places because he learned there was more money beside the suitcase. The money was held in accounts in the Caribbean’s islands and most of it was years and years of accumulated leasing contracts incomes of the business places next to the home, and profits from investments managed by the bank.

Now Bryant and his family are living the dream back in his homeland. They could thrive and succeed there now that the bad politicians are gone. And they can do it without being judge and underestimated for "not belong here", wherever "here" is.