CHAPTER 7: AN ANGEL WITHOUT WINGS

“STOP RUNNING THROUGH THE HOUSE!” Grandma yelled.

Still running full speed, I turned my head toward her and yelled back, “Aww, Grandma, we’re just having —”

But it was too late.

Crash!

I’d run straight into the door that led to Grandma’s back porch, shattering the glass window that filled the top half of the door. My hands, which had been outstretched in front of me clenching a toy gun, had taken the brunt of the damage. My small body had hurtled halfway through the shattered window.

My legs hung on one side of the door’s window frame while my chest, arms, and head dangled on the other side. Balancing like a teeter-totter between the inside and outside, I hung there in shock.

My brother, Doug, had been sitting on the porch when I came crashing through the window. “You’re in big trouble,” he said.

I knew instantly I was in trouble with Grandma. But I had no idea how right Doug was about being in big trouble —until I saw the blood.

My hands and wrists were pierced in what looked like a dozen places. Massive amounts of blood were gushing from a couple of the deepest cuts.

“Get some towels!” Grandma screamed at Doug. She’d turned pale and kind of greenish, like she might throw up.

I didn’t cry. I just dangled from the window frame, balanced and bleeding until Doug and Grandma lifted me up and off.

Grabbing the white towels Doug had retrieved from the bathroom, Grandma tossed one back to Doug and barked, “Wrap that towel around that hand and wrist!” With shaking hands, Grandma wrapped a second white towel around my other gushing hand.

Once my hands and wrists were tightly wrapped, Grandma screamed further instructions to Doug. “Get all of the kids and take them out to the car! We’ve gotta go to the hospital!” Along with watching Doug and me while Ma worked, Grandma also provided childcare for other families. On summer weekdays, her house was typically full of kids scattered here, there, and everywhere. Thankfully, there were only two other kids with us that day.

Doug and Grandma corralled the other kids and crammed us three into the back seat of her light plum–colored 1959 Thunderbird. Then Doug climbed into the front passenger-side bucket seat.

The once-white towels wrapped around my hands and wrists were crimson red. I felt weak. I was losing blood fast. But Grandma was just sitting in the driver’s seat. Her hands were shaking even more violently. She was terrified, and her fear terrified me. Never in my whole life had I seen Grandma scared, and now she was far beyond that point.

“Grandma, you better hurry,” I said, woozy from blood loss but still not crying. Blood was dripping from the saturated towels onto the white leather interior. I was worried about getting in trouble for that, too.

But Grandma was worried about me. “God, help me!” she screamed. But still, we just sat there while Grandma grasped the car keys in her trembling hand, looking around her frantically.

Then, out of the blue, we heard three loud knocks on the car windshield.

Outside the rolled-up front passenger window, an elderly Black man was bent down, peering into the car with a look of concern on his face.

He was the first Black man I’d ever seen. Our part of North Denver was mostly Hispanic, with some Italian and a little bit of other, and the “other” didn’t include many African Americans, since I’d reached the age of six and never seen a Black man in real life before.

“Are you okay, Ma’am?” he asked calmly. Somehow, his sincerity counteracted the distressing effect Grandma’s panic was having on me.

“No!” Grandma screamed, reigniting my fear. “My grandson is bleeding out, and I’m so scared, I can’t even find the keyhole to start my car!”

Taking command of the chaotic situation with an unusual combination of gentleness and assertiveness, the man said, “Get out, ma’am. I’m driving you to the hospital.”

Grandma opened the door, gladly shoved the keys into his hand, and told Doug to cram in the back with the rest of us. Then the man settled in behind the wheel and calmly drove us to St. Anthony Central Hospital.

“I’ll wait here in the lobby with the other kids,” the kind man told Grandma, “so you can stay with your grandson while they stitch him up.”

After they wheeled me into the ER, they poked me in the arm with a big needle and pumped my blood-depleted body full of IV fluids and pain meds. Grandma was glued to my bedside, but she seemed calmer now, so I was too. I watched in fascination as they stitched my hands and wrists back together. It was bloody, but I had seen lots of blood before —just not my own.

After a few hours, the doctor released me, and the man drove us all back home.

“Goodbye,” he said, after politely seeing us all to the door but never telling us his name.

“Thank you so much, sir! You saved my grandson’s life,” Grandma said with tears in her eyes.

Then he tipped his hat, smiled, and walked away.

For as long as I could remember, I’d feared for my safety. Tempers flared around me for no discernable reason. Violence erupted at the drop of a hat. But I’d always thought Grandma could protect me. Now I knew that even Grandma’s house wasn’t safe for me.

Still, who was that man who had appeared out of nowhere? Had he been sent by Someone to help me —to save my life? And if so, why?

Years later, I stumbled onto a Bible verse that said, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

Was the first Black man I ever met an actual angel or merely angelic?

I had no idea. But either way, I began to wonder whether Someone had sent him to save my life. If only I could figure out why and what it all meant.

Little did I know that only a few short months later, death would come knocking on my door again, leaving me even more confused and frightened.