I held her. Her body
was barely the size of a toddler, a misconception of age. She was four, they
told me. My mouth dropped. Four, and yet she couldn’t walk, feed herself, clap
her hands, play. Smile. I kept coming back to that appalling truth. I had never
met anyone who didn’t know how to smile. Lost the want to, yes, but even they
could recreate the muscle movements. A skill taught in infancy.
I thought of the
four-year olds in my class back in England, at their faces full of character,
full of happiness, indignation, intrigue, fear, excitement, roguishness and all
manner of expressions that could fill sheets and sheets of paper. I thought of
their parents, so pleased to see them after a few hours of daily separation, so
eager to scoop them up and carry them home, to listen to their chatter and to
revel in their company until their eyelids drooped and they were carried to
bed.
They found her in a
cot, staring up at the holed ceiling with only patches of sun and moon for
company, the only indication that life occurred around her. I wondered if she
cried in those early days, if she thought that would work to gain attention, to
alert someone to her needs. I wondered when she stopped trying.
She didn’t even have a
name.
They picked her up and
took her then and there, without question, without hesitation. Now, they fill
her life with faces, with eyes that search for and hold hers. They smile at her
every day, trusting that eventually she’ll learn, that eventually the muscles
in her cheeks and around her eyes will react like tightened bands and pull her
face into the most beautiful of smiles.
Then she’ll laugh, and Neglect’s
spell will shatter.
Eventually.
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