the little girl on the minibus

She couldn’t have been older than 9 or 10, but her eyes whispered the weight of at least four times that many years of life experience.  She took my breath away, the solemness of her old soul looking out so carefully for the well being of a blind mother and a 3-4 year old younger sister.

She did not meet my gaze with her one seeing eye and another which had probably become worn and tired from having seen too much in its short life. In fact, she did not note me at all; so focused was she on the task of caretaker for those both older and younger than she, navigating the perils of public transport with her charges whom she so carefully guided and settled into their seats.

She was unflinching, attentive, and sober… sadness & sweetness mingled with the knowledge written across her unsmiling face that, yet, held no jaded bitterness with a childhood abandoned for the hard responsibilities of life. No resignation nor flickers of anger. Just resolute maturity and… something more… is it hope? Is it determination? I cannot tell, except to get a strong sense that this little girl-woman is a fighter.

Love also now spills out she watches her younger sister, intent on being sure the smallest one of them (who stares unconcerned out the window with the pure innocence of a child’s naivete with life still blessedly in tact) eats a biscuit at the late hour as they travel together under her single, watchful eye. The difference between the two sisters outlook is as striking as their resemblance to each other. 

I long to know this 9-or-10-year-olds story.  I want to greet her, to talk in the span of minutes we will share this space. Then, I am suddenly painfully aware of the world’s and cultures and languages and distance that lie as barriers between us even as we sit with knees pressed together in the crowded seats. She has a story to tell that I desperately want to hear, even as I see it resting there beneath her expressions. I know then, I must write of her… this little girl, who is actually a little woman, in the minibus this afternoon… whom I wish I could have met and known.

I alight first, leaving the little guardian angel with her cares… but have not stopped thinking of her.