She
is two years old, dressed as a witch in the middle of February. Her name is Emma
and her mother lets her stand on the waiting room seat. She leans casually
against the adjacent window, her chocolate curls jumble-jangled. She is babbling
nearly complete sentences. Every fourth word her mother asks – “What? You want
what?" – not understanding her daughter's new found vocabulary.
Emma lets out a
belly laugh or a yelp or a grumble with each offering her mother makes – goldfish (happy), pretzels (happy), dried cherries (happy), wet wipes (not
happy). I watch the mother try to reason, asking appropriate specific questions
in an appropriate specific tone – “What's wrong, Emma? What's wrong? No. No.
Don't hit, Emma. Can I snuggle you?” – until Emma falls into her mother's embrace, her messy curls mingling with the smooth blonde strands of her mother's hair.
Emma
lolls her head in my direction. She reaches out one perfectly pudgy hand and
rests it on the seat between us, her fingernails as delicate as tissue paper folded
into flowers. I want to, almost do, stretch out and touch her skin. I stop myself
on the outside but on the inside I keep extending, my winter hands making
contact with this child's perfect tiny thumb. I want to touch this child’s
completeness and simplicity.
Emma
tips her head away from me, away from her mother, away from herself. Her soft
round chin pointing upward, through the mean fluorescent waiting room lights,
through the tiled ceiling and up to the sky. She is limitless. She wears purple
and orange and yellow and green and she leans back and back and back until she
gasps for air.
Suddenly
Emma flips forward and hurls herself at her mother's chest, her hands smashing
into her mother's face – “No, don't hit. I said no. Remember what ‘I said no’
means? No. No.” – but Emma just screams, flailing,
fighting, her face contorted, her mother's words an unbearable physical
restraint. Her mother persists – “Nooo” – extending the 'o' in a deep full voice. And Emma cries and wraps her arms around her mother's neck, her wet face resting on
her mother's shoulder. I see the fear drain from her porcelain skin. She looks
at me, then looks away.
Emma
still has the wet wipe clutched in her little fist. Behind her mother's back
she cleans the seat between us, rubbing the grimy cold metal, a modest mutiny.
Her face is droopy and wet with tears and then her eyes show that she has moved
on. Emma takes the crumpled wipe and delicately brushes it against her chin,
her eyes, her nose, her lips. She rubs the dirty cloth against her unspoiled
skin. She has no fear.
