The little girl sitting on the log border edging the small city playground smiled at them as he and Megan walked by. He smiled back. Megan, who was recounting the semi-finals her team had lost, heartbreakingly, on penalty kicks, barely glanced at her. He had been listening quietly, with pleasure, at his daughter’s long, involved tale, but now he found himself losing track of her words. Half a block down, his gait faltered, he slowed, and he stopped. He looked back at the little girl.
“Megan, hold on,” he called out. Megan, who had gone on, oblivious, still chattering away, halted and turned around. He shook his head in the direction of the playground and walked back to the little girl, making sure to approach her in a wide curve so she could clearly see him coming.
The little girl’s lips were still upturned in a smile, but he could see now that her eyes were wide and shining. She could not have been more than five or six. He asked her if she was all right.
She nodded rapidly, then turned her smile to Megan as she appeared beside him. Megan looked at the girl, then at him, questioningly. He asked again of the little girl if she was all right, if there was anyone with her.
She nodded again. “My mama,” she said.
He and Megan scanned the playground and the street. No one who looked like she might have been the girl’s mother was in sight. The two women on a park bench chatting away as their children played with buckets and trucks in the sandlot were Vietnamese; the girls in helmets skateboarding down the sidewalk on the other side of the street were barely pubescent; the woman striding by, talking brusquely to the air in front of her, bluetooth in her ear, was obviously on her way to some other destination than this little child.
He knelt on one knee in front of her and asked her if she knew where her mama was.
The little girl shook her head and the smile vanished, unmasking the fear underneath. Upon gentle prompting, she told him that her mama hadn’t come yet, but she would soon, her mama had said she could play in the playground after the grocery – she was insistent that permission had been given.
He sifted through her words, trying to glean the story behind them, decided the most probable version was that the girl had run off to the playground by herself and had not simply been left there. He asked her if she knew where she lived, if she lived up the street – he pointed up the block, or down the street – he thumbed the other way. She gave a quick, helpless shrug, and her face pinched in an effort to hold back tears.
He thought of taking her up the street, in the hope they would chance upon her house and she would recognize it – and dismissed the idea at once. The picture of a strange man walking around with a child not his own could all too easily be misconstrued. Best to stay put. He was glad Megan was with him; she was a shield against any number of potential misunderstandings.
“Well,” he said to the little girl, sitting down on the log beside her, “why don’t we just stay with you until your mama comes? Okay?” He turned to Megan. “Sweetie, why don’t you ask those women on the bench if they know who her mother is?”
Megan had just stepped over the log when a piercing cry of “Leila!” rang down the street. She, he, the little girl, the women on the bench, the kids in the sandlot, assorted pedestrians, all turned as one to the woman who had just turned the corner pushing a stroller and lugging several bulging canvas bags. Despite her burdens, she covered the distance to the little girl in an instant and was all at once hugging her and crying and yelling at her in fear and rage to never, ever do that again, what was she thinking? She all but smothered Leila in her relief.
He stood there knowing his job was done, but that there were still formalities to be gotten through. He told her his name was Daniel; he and his daughter had found Leila sitting here by herself. He listened as she narrated breathlessly that she had been going home with her children from shopping, but the baby was fussing and she had really bought more than she should have, more than she could carry, and she thought Leila was behind her all the time, until they got home and she saw that she was gone, and she had panicked and ran all the way back to the grocery and looked up and down the aisles, but she was afraid to ask the clerks if they had seen her for fear of what they would think; she should have left the groceries at home before looking for her, but she wasn’t thinking straight, they had just moved in to the neighborhood and were still finding their way around, everything was still so confusing, and she finally remembered that Leila had been pestering her this morning to go to the playground and decided to look here, and Leila should have known better, and she was the worst mother in the world, and thank you, thank you for finding her, for staying with her. The two Vietnamese women and their children and several passers-by had been drawn to the scene, so she was explaining, confessing, expiating her guilt to a small crowd. He was quick to absolve her, telling her several times that it happens, he’d done it himself (which elicited a quizzical look from Megan), the important thing was that Leila was safe.
The talking took more time than the finding and safeguarding of little Leila. Finally, when all the necessary words had been spoken, he watched with Megan as the woman walked away, holding Leila’s hand firmly in one hand and steering the stroller awkwardly with the other. The two Vietnamese mothers carried the shopping bags for her, their kids chattering in their wake, carrying their sand-encrusted trucks and buckets. Leila’s mother had finally accepted, after much importuning, the proffered assistance with the bags, but had drawn the line on any help handling her children. When the caravan disappeared around the corner, he and Megan resumed their journey.
“How did you know?” Megan asked him after they had walked a little while. “She was just sitting there. I thought she was with those kids playing in the sand.”
He considered it. “I don’t know. There was something off about her smile.” He continued, “Sometimes you just catch something in someone’s face, you know?”
His daughter nodded slowly four or five times, in rhythm with her steps, then glanced at him sidelong, as if still puzzled but not knowing what questions to ask.
He thought about it himself. He supposed it had something to do with this knack of his for homing in on lost little girls, because of his need to protect them, rescue them – a disposition that had given him all sorts of grief in the past. It had been what had drawn him to Sheila in the first place – and why he had blown it with her. He had met Sheila when she was still new to the city, a country girl unmoored from family and home town and already drifting aimlessly from job to dead-end job; he had pulled her out of the doldrums. But when she finally found her bearings, he had persisted in seeing her as someone he had to save. He knew no other way to be with her.
He was glad things had worked out today, that this faculty of his had proved unambiguously useful for a change. It also felt like confirmation of the hard lesson he had had to learn: when lost little girls were found, you let them go.
He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder and drew her close as they neared the steps to his brownstone flat. Megan had had a tough time of it after he and Sheila had finally broken clean what had been falling badly apart. There was a long, painful period when Megan's only utterances to him were clipped words toneless with anger. He had despaired of ever being forgiven. But her hurt had given way over time; she really was too good-hearted to keep him out in the cold forever. She was most precious to him, his one saving grace: his girl, still somewhat small, no longer lost to him.
He would have to get her things ready. Sheila would be by soon to pick her up.
(November 2011)
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