Zoom

Zoom... Remember that song? I haven't heard that one in a while. I think I forgot it and to be honest, I think I chose to forget it. It was a commercial R&B hit with a soul vibe, during the '80s.

Bang... heaven called and all the angels sang. It´s a song that comes pretty close to a demonstration of what might happen when love comes into your life. I'll admit it's a song you have to be in the mood for. (I guess it would be more accurate to say, that you have to be in the zone for this one.) 

Last week it came on the radio, and I found myself engulfed in an avalanche of mixed feelings. A memory came back. One that I allowed myself to push into oblivion and was grateful for the fact that I was able to do that. Or maybe I just needed to forget to be able to go on...

Zoom… It was ages ago, but I could see her fragile face with those big ocean blue eyes, as clear as though I saw her just yesterday.

 Her smile betrayed a broken heart, but her eyes reflected hope. She did her very best to get through every day, which was always more of the same as the day before.

The first time I saw her, she was sitting at a dining table doing her homework. She had to share her room with a girl who was studying to become a nurse and wanted their shared room all to herself so she could concentrate better on her studies. It was just territorial behavior because the girl who entered my memory as Zoom was always as quiet as a mouse. 

Short on cash, I found myself looking for a job and I found one in a home for girls with difficult family backgrounds. Hired as a psychologist with no parenting or educational experience whatsoever,

I would soon find out that I was in fact nothing more than a domestic helper. I was the youngest of a group of educators who weren't too fond of psychology, and they made me feel it. The head educator was a former nun (or so it was rumored) who ruled over the house like a military unit. Iron discipline was her daily mantra. Her word equaled written gospel, and debating her laws was not tolerated. Annie was her name. Every sentence that came out of her mouth sounded like a direct order. Everything had a fixed schedule and time and there was no room for even the slightest deviation.

I had bills due at the end of the month, so I did my best to complete the job as best I could, but it was a depressing and sad affair. My heart broke as I watched those young girls being tied up as if they were doing penance for the circumstances that led them there. 

 Zoom grew close to my heart. I learned that she had been placed there not too long ago by youth- services because the grandmother she lived with had been hospitalized (stroke) and there was no one else who could take care of her. Once a week she was allowed to visit her grandmother in the hospital. Annie took her there and stayed for the whole half-hour visit. When I asked Zoom how things were in the hospital, she calmly told me that her grandmother was doing better and that she thought she would be able to be released soon and Zoom could return home. Mostly I heard what she wasn´t saying —that she would have liked to spend some time alone with her grandmother. I went to ask Annie how the grandmother was doing, but she told me in a dry tone that the old lady probably couldn't live at home anymore. I turned around and saw Zoom standing behind me. Her eyes reminded me of a mirror breaking into a thousand pieces.

Annie didn´t say anything else, and I took Zoom downstairs, where she could let the tears, she was fighting flow freely. The girls were not allowed to cry, because Annie had decreed it weak behavior and proof of immaturity.

When I approached Annie with the matter, she shut me up and said she didn't like psychologists. Yes, that part I got already. 

I made another attempt to make her realize that it was very unhealthy to forbid tears, especially since there was no room for laughter either. Her eyes flashed fire and ice at the same time, and she sent me out of her office with orders to go check the rooms.

One fine spring afternoon, after Annie had left for the day and I was working my shift alone, I got the idea to go pick strawberries with the girls, make pancakes and have them for dinner in the garden. (

I knew it would get me a lot of comments if not problems, but I didn't let that stop me.)

During our improvised garden dinner, I had turned on the radio, which was never allowed but I couldn´t care less. After dinner, the girls went to do their own thing and enjoyed the spring sun.

Zoom stayed at the table with me. She looked a bit lighter; her spirits had lifted. We had a nice chat. It seemed to do her good. I got up to go get something from the kitchen, and when I came back into the garden, I saw Zoom completely absorbed in a song. Her face was radiant!

- “Zoom, moonbeams dancing in the afternoon...”

When she opened her eyes and saw me standing, she grew shy and stopped.

I asked her if she liked that song, and she told me she used to sing it with her mom. (I decided to buy a tape – iTunes had not yet been invented - and would find an opportunity to give it to Zoom as a gift.)

Zoom's mom was never to be mentioned in Annie´s presence. She considered her to be vermin.

The relationship between mother and grandmother was very tense. The father was unknown, as was Zoom's father. Mother was a product of "horizontal collaboration" with the enemy during the war. The war was over, and grandma found herself pregnant. An “epuration Sauvage” followed - and savage it was. She became a "punished woman", broken to her very core. Victim of a humiliated nation and a convenient scapegoat to pummel, demean and discard. Sleeping with a German enemy had been the only way to obtain food, for her starving parents and siblings.

She moved to another area with her baby, but it didn't make life any easier. The grandmother was probably trying to make up with her granddaughter for what she had missed with her own daughter.

Zoom's mother was a prostitute, a street hooker, and spent more time in prison than not. Drugs and depression made up her daily struggles in a life she never was able to handle. Sometimes when I drove home in the evening, I would drive by the Hookers ‘strip. I parked there once, just to look at her. Maybe I imagined I could watch over her. She saw me once and walked over to my car. I opened the window, but nothing was said. There was no need for it. She walked away and I remember thinking she looked so lost in this urban lullaby. So alone. She braved the cold to meet strangers in clandestine places for a small amount of money so she could buy a handful of snow to put into her veins and make it all more sufferable. Her daughter looked a lot like her – or at least, how she must have looked like a long time ago.

The grandmother's condition deteriorated rapidly. I asked Annie if Zoom could visit her grandmother in the hospital more often, but she refused.

I wasn't there when the dreaded phone call came. Zoom's grandmother had passed away. Annie had told Zoom the news.

In the days that followed, Zoom was very belligerent with Annie, who didn´t allow her to express her grief and even ridiculed her.

Zoom's eyes no longer reminded me of an ocean but a cold abyss. The color from her face was gone.

When I arrived at work one morning, I was asked to make my way to the main building. I immediately sensed that something was wrong. The headmistress of the facility and the four educators of the group home I worked in sat in a circle around a large desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annie glance at her watch and raise her eyebrows.

I was told that the day before, Zoom had managed to leave the house without permission and walked to a meadow where a railroad ran through and had been killed by a train. Nobody saw this coming, they said.

I started to sense tectonic violence beneath my feet. Annie added that this had been Zoom's own choice.

A pressure on my chest, a lump in my throat, a deafening ringing in my ears.

I got up, staggered to my car, and drove off.

That same evening, I wrote my letter of resignation.

A simple funeral was organized, I didn't go. 

I drove to the field where the girl had sat on the tracks and waited for a train to eternity.

I said goodbye to her there.

Later, at night, I drove to the Hookers' Strip, hoping to catch a glimpse of Zoom's mother. I didn't find her and drove back to my small apartment.

A week earlier I had bought the tape with the song Zoom loved so much.

Zoom's ocean blue eyes smiled at me again, just for the duration of a song.

I mourned Zoom and then decided to forget about her. I was grateful I was able to do that, but I´m even more grateful now, that she made her way back to my memory!