Unknown markings

It was long after the end of the war that I decided to go back to the old barn by the house in which I grew up, back in the days when it was still primarily occupied by hens and chicks, and one feisty rooster who would cry loudly throughout the day when I would least expect it. It used to scare the living daylight out of me, I was just a small child back in the day, and would only venture into the barn, terrified, to pick up the precious eggs from the hens' nests once I had deemed it a safe distance away, that would let me run back to the house before he could get to me.

Eventually, the rooster deemed past his prime, was sold at a Sunday market. It was Sally's mum who bought the rooster, and because she was my age and we were both there, I waived nervously at her by the market stall and felt my face flush immediately. Wearing her Sunday best, a sky blue dress, and two pig-tails with matching ribbons.

Our mothers talked politely in a language that doesn't exist anymore. Their tongues rolled around their mouths and brushed against their teeth producing the familiar sounds that cradled our childhoods, but that I wouldn't be able to recreate even if it could bring it all back: the mothers, the barn, the Sunday dresses, and the egg-laying chickens.

The war didn't spare much of the barn or any of the older buildings and farmland around it.

I walk up to the old stone house in search of a sign of its former glory. I see leftover bits of the markings that intrigued me, decades earlier, that once again piqued my curiosity. The three markings at the bottom symbolise a specific person, and in this case, it was probably my grandfather's, had explained to me my mother with a look on her face I had never seen before. Her eyes, alert, quickly glancing around the barn, as if she was expecting someone to jump out of a corner at any time. Sally met me, with her large inquisitive eyes, that always seemed curious to know when things were happening.

Three weeks later, knocks at the door and she was taken away to a different place. I stayed with my grandmother, a stern older woman who spoke a language I could understand even less, one that was even more full and warm in sounds than my mother's- a sharp contrast to her otherwise cold and distant demeanor. I saw her later that day, by the old stone wall with a brush and a bucket of water, scrubbing the strange markings one by one until they were practically gone.

The marketplace grew quiet. People still bought from us, but more hesitantly than before, while exchanging embarrassed glances with those around them, and avoiding eye contact with us as much as they could.

Today a man pulled me over, as I deciphered the cryptic leftovers of the text written by my grandfather, most likely. A hood over his head, he pulls a gun to my head and asked me a question with two possible answers. I give him the one I think he'll like.

I guessed right and the guy let me go. But as I close my eyes and recall the markings on the wall, one strike, two strikes one loop, and one curve, I think of all the possible meanings and interpretations it could have and I smile as I think of the endless combinations of sounds it could make. with such accuracy that perhaps one day, I'd be able to order them in such a way that they could carry the strength and softness of my mother's worth.