She left for work one morning with her heart choking with wounded emotions, her eyes lost their radiance, and her feet insensible to her strides. The domestic turmoil had become increasingly complex and harder. The tension had made her relationship with her sons brittle and fragile. She was losing control of her own issues.

"Are you okay?" Janice, who worked for eight months now as Ricarda's replacement, asked from behind her.

She was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing the stains and dark dirt. She didn't noticed the time, because her mind was drifting somewhere else. She was a bit startled by Ricarda's intrusion. She looked up at her and replied, "I'm OK."

"You've been scrubbing the same spot over."

She glanced at her hands and at the floor, paused, and then managed to gave her a faint smile. "I'm just stressed out, I guess. But I'll be fine."

Discontented, Janice pressed, "I'm your friend now."

She dismissed her. "Really, I'm OK."

"Very well," and Janice started to walk away. After a few steps, she turned back. "By the way, Esmeralda and Andrea wanted to know if you will go with them to the cemetery this afternoon. I've already asked Justin to help me here."

Maricar had not survived the hemorrhaging. Too much blood had been lost, and the fracture in her skull had been fatal. An accident involving another child from the Seraphim Room, Martin James, had claimed her life when they had fallen off her bed. She'd fallen headfirst. The local newspaper had questioned their capacity to take care of the children, and the legal battle had been noisy and feasted.

"OK. Thank you."

Janice smiled and walked away.

By 8:30 that same morning, she brought Minerva with her along with Rodrigo, the 19 year-old boy with a worse case of Down Syndrome and was the most restless but less violent, to the bathroom to help them brush their teeth. The two followed her with total obedience.

"No, I want other paste. Don't like that," Minerva refused to brush her teeth with a green paste over the bristles.

She checked the supply in the overhead cabinet but found none. To Minerva she said, "We will replace it tomorrow, honey. In the meantime, that's very tasty. It tastes like candy."

Minerva's unfocused eyes rolled without intentions, and the fatty cheeks of her moon-shaped face rattled as she briskly shook her head. "No."

"You liked it yesterday. You will like it today, I promise. Rodrigo likes it very much, right Rodrigo?" she was pleading silently that Rodrigo would cooperate even just for once. Rodrigo was standing beside Minerva, his twisted, spasmic arms shaking lightly on his sides, giggling. A small amount of saliva drooled from one corner of his mouth. His right hand was holding his empty toothbrush.

"See?" she said, cheering Minerva up. "He's smiling because he likes it."

Minerva shook head head briskly again, her voice now angry, her feet began to thump the concrete floor --- her indication of the oncoming explosion of her inner lava. "No!"

She took a deep breath, then sighed. "OK. We'll do the brushing this noon. Your aunt will go to the store and buy your favorite toothpaste. OK, honey? Rodrigo, come here, darling."

But Minerva erupted like a growling wolf sensing competition over its food. And before she knew it, the girl started to attack her. Minerva was screaming and shrieking with exploding madness, her arms stretching out to her, fingers bending like hungry paws.

When she took control of Minerva, her own anger suddenly was unleashed, and almost involuntarily her right hand swung swiftly from the air above her into the big frame of Minerva's face. She froze in disbelief. Minerva was standing there, perplexed and horrified, unmoving; her narrow, cloudy eyes opened wide, petrified, questioning, teary-eyed.

She just stood there transfixed, reflecting fast at what she had just done to the girl. When it finally settled in, she stepped back without excusing herself, turned around, walked hurriedly toward the backdoor, opened it drastically, and leaned on the wall outside right next to the door. She was breathing hard and rapidly as she cupped her forehead, her eyes stared blankly into the space below her. And then she wept.

Ricarda opened the door of the isolated room, located in the right wing of the building. When they entered she saw four of the children were already awake, two of them were out of their beds and on the floor, sitting. The room was quiet, with only the scraping of a spoon against a china echoed from the four, white walls. A man in her early fifties, which Ricarda introduced to her as Enrico, was feeding a teenage girl. The all-around man, Justin, who had just finished mopping a liquid under one of the beds, smiled at her as he walked toward the door with the mop and a half-full pail.

Jemma saw no one in serious health conditions among the children inside. As she scanned the room, all she saw were sleeping and awake children but seemed harmless and peaceful. She turned her head toward Ricarda and, with questioning eyes, looked at her.

Ricarda read her mind. "These children are the most violent and the most detached. Their tantrum burst unexpectedly, and when they do, they are monstrous. Literally."

Hearing this, Jemma looked at the children again, and looked them more closely. She was searching for those madness in their blank eyes. The girl on the floor, her hair badly cut short and her face a crisscross of scars and fresh wounds, stared at her. Jemma looked at the girl, whom she guessed was in her late twenties, and then smiled. The girl flashed a smile in return, exposing her missing teeth and reddish gums.

"Her name is Minerva. She's mentally unstable, aside from her Down Syndrome. She's the most violent among all the children in this shelter," Ricarda said in a hushed voice.

"But they seem peaceful. It is like this every morning, or just today?"

Instead of Ricarda, Enrico turned his head toward them, and answered, "It's like this every other day. But not all. Sometimes they wake up mad and out of control. And it's very hard to pacify them, it takes hours sometimes."

Ricarda nodded in agreement. "They will test your patience and self-control, Jemma. And they will question your own capabilities and your own purpose here. That is why I need you to be strong and brave and ready."

By ten o'clock that morning, all of the remaining six children were already awake. Ricarda asked her to help them fed the children. She found it difficult to get the attention of the teen boy she was feeding to, and she found it hard to control his unfocused attention and hyperactivity. His arms were spreading and swaying everywhere, knocking the plate Jemma was holding and hitting her on her breast. The other children, who was watching her curiously, cracked into unusual laughter. Those kind of laughter she only heard here, and the kind of laughter that she wonder if she could ever forget.

After feeding two more children, she tried to take a short break. She was exhausted with only one task she had done, and her energy was drained like it had never before. But, after a few minutes only, Ricarda announced that it was time to help the children brush their teeth.

It was supposed to be temporary. She was supposed to quit her job after six months. She was supposed to be in Canada now, working as a caregiver. That was the plan. But she'd been working in the Shelter for already four years now, and the idea of quitting was tucked below her horizon. Her mere interest had turned into a passion, and she realized that too late. But what didn't know was that such passion had already become an obsession.

In her four years of working she had brought many changes to the Shelter. With her spearheading, they had managed to raise more funds for the children, and had changed certain policies that she had deemed inappropriate. She had gravely opposed the way the social workers mixed the toothbrushes of the children in one place, and without proper assignments as to which toothbrush belonged to whom. And she had also encouraged the idea of exposing the children to the outside world, developing the undiscovered talents in them, and giving them the perception that they had the freedom to move in the outside world.

But her obsession threatened the foundation of her family, a price she had never expected to pay. And now, she was torn between the two most important things in her life.

Lying in their bedroom at home, exhausted and drained, she immediately fell asleep. She woke up with a headache a minute past seven in the evening, to the bickering voices of her two sons. She didn't hear her husband's, and she presumed he had not yet arrived. She stood up and went downstairs to them.

"Enough," she told them, her voice a warning, her eyes half-asleep.

Her ten year-old youngest was weeping. When he spoke he was desperately seeking compassion. "He won't give it back to me my sling. I found it!"

"I told you I will, tomorrow," Homer, the eldest, said.

"You're lying!"

"I'm not!"

"You, too!"

Listening to her two sons raising their voices, her head throbbed achingly, sending sparks of impatience and exasperation all over her. She exploded. "JUST GIVE THE DAMN SLING TO ZANDER!"

The two boys suddenly fell quiet. Zander muffled his sobbing, while Homer glared at her with burning eyes. He threw the sling to his brother, who did not pick it up. Silence wrapped them with fiery blanket.

"Do you do that to them, too?" breaking the silence, Homer asked, his breathing hard and hurting.

She did not get what he meant. She snapped, "What?"

"Do you shout to those mongoloids, too, or just to us?"

"Don't you ever call them that! You have no right to call them names like that!"

Raising his voice to overwhelm her mother's, he asked again, "Do you shout at us because we are your son, and you have the right to do whatever you want to do to us?" His voice showed his pain and resentments as he stood there fighting back his tears.

"Shut up!" She couldn't take it; his words were a knife, cutting her heart and making her bled. And she was drowning, such overwhelming truth and such hurting of his son were pulling downward into the dark, cold, sad abyss. She turned around and burst into crying.

Realizing what he had done, Homer slowly walked toward her and hugged her tightly as he wept.

Later that night, she couldn't sleep. Her mind was wide awake, spinning with thoughts and reminiscing. Her wristwatch ticked another minute. As she lied in their bed without the lights, her mind was sailing in a penumbra of her plethoric memories. And in her deep reverie, she recounted those happy days, and the day that she never knew would change her life...

When she woke up the next morning, she already knew what needed to be done to redeem her life back.