The Visit

Deep in the night, I dreamt of a woman sticking her brown elbow inside the front window of our apartment. She was trying to open the latch. When I turned to look, she called a strange name, a certain Mrs. B—(I could no longer remember)—so, I immediately called Ma, who in that dream was sleeping in my room as if she lived there. But looking back now, I thought the name that the woman was calling was a strange name, it couldn’t have been Ma’s. It could have been somebody who used to live in an apartment where we stayed, somebody who was a friend of the woman. But in the dream, when the woman called and saw me seeing her trying to open the latch, she said I needed not open the door, she only wanted us to know she was in distress; and she began telling me, half crying, that the landlady had kicked them out. She said something about the landlady suing her. She needed help, her four small children, around her, listening.I saw all of them outside the window she was trying to open. It was then that I suddenly realized it was Ja, not Ma, who was sleeping in the room. I decided not to wake Ja (who’d surely get mad for being interrupted in his sleep). I decided to talk to the woman, so, I began to open the door, drowsily reaching up to the latch, swaying in my half-sleep.
But then, as the door broke free, I was suddenly exposed to the bright white light outside and the woman was gone. It was then, that I realized the woman was an apparition; and suddenly everything turned into a nightmare. As usual, an unusual force whisked my body and sent it to the floor; I was unable to move. I tried to scream and when I managed to let my voice out, I awoke, feeling the crushing, tingling sensation that only a stupefying nightmare can bring.
I told Sean, once when I chanced upon him waking up that night, that I didn’t want to go back to sleep anymore for fear that the nightmare might come back. In the morning, he asked me what the dream was all about. Why it got me so scared. I told him about the woman. “It doesn’t sound so scary at all,” he said, in his own child wisdom. But I was totally shaken by the dream. The following night, I told Karl about it. He laughed when he saw me making the sign of the cross because he said I was supposed to be a pagan, [yes, i wanted to be a witch!] and there I was, making the sign of the cross. Why was I so easily scared by a simple dream? He asked. I said it’s because I could not understand its meaning. Until now, when I get to think of it, it still gives me the creeps. Who was that woman in distress? Why did she visit me in my sleep?