I can speak to that now firsthand.
My parents and I were camped near Saluda. I was both old and young for my age. I hadn’t known other children, other teenagers. I didn’t have friends. Where could I have made them? I was wholly dependent on my parents. And I was their equal. But that’s its own story, as I said, and anyway, what you need to know now is that Mama and Daddy were working, setting up the mobile lab, and I’d promised to go do some foraging but what I really wanted—and I think they always knew this—was a breather from them. A couple of hours on my own, time enough to imagine a life occupied by the kinds of characters I’d always read about in books. So I’d go on my walks and I’d pretend myself a boyfriend or a best friend or a loyal dog. I’d pretend myself a purpose—a job, an act of heroism. You can be lonely without ever having known anything but being alone.
I went south. It was hot and sunny, sunny enough to set your eyes to aching. The air wasn’t moving. I was thinking after twenty minutes that I might just turn around and go back, that I’d be better off napping through the heat of the day, but that’s when I spotted the child in the flowers. You could see that the sun had moved as she slept and she was baking in a patch of bright light. What I remember about that first glimpse of her is the sight of her bare arm, how hot and red it was, and by instinct I rushed over to block the sun with my body. It didn’t occur to me that she might be dead, and I’ve wondered about that since, why that thought never crossed my mind. I think it was the sleeping posture. She was on her side. She had her head resting on her crooked elbow, her thumb in her mouth, and her face was hidden by this scraggly blond hair that went down almost to her waist. Her knees were drawn to her chest. The fetal position, you’d call it. I must have stood there at least two full minutes, just staring at her. I hadn’t seen a child in real life since I’d been one and looked in the mirror. Oh, I’d seen photos in old books, and my mother had some movies stored on a drive that I was allowed to watch on special days, and there were children in some of them. The Sound of Music was one. Have you seen it? There’s this part where the children are singing farewell at the end of a party, they’re ascending this glorious staircase, and the youngest one, Gretl, curls up and falls asleep. It’s very sweet. I saw this child in the purple flowers and I thought of Gretl. What happened next is that I crouched down and very softly drew back that curtain of long blond hair, thinking I’d see beneath it a face like Gretl’s, plump and rosy and smooth, and what I saw instead—
Well, you know what I saw.
I made some sound, some startled sound, and her eye popped open. I fell back, and my heart was just skittering away. That blue, blue eye. The color of the sky. It is lovely, and I bet none among you has been able to see that yet. Its beauty. But I tell you it’s there. This suffering child fixed her one blue eye on me, and now, I look back, and I think of all the things a regular child would have done. She’d have jumped up, or screamed, or cried, or maybe she’d have clung to me and begged for water or help. But not Violet. She lay there and she stared, she didn’t move, and I didn’t see fear in that eye, but I didn’t see hope, either. What I saw was resignation. It was an old look, an ancient look, and I won’t lie to you now: I almost fled. I looked in Violet’s eye and I thought, This’ll be my burden to bear. And I wasn’t wrong, but what I couldn’t see then is that a burden can also be a gift.
For whatever reason, I didn’t run. Maybe my legs just didn’t work. I said something my mother always used to say to me. I said, “Honey, are you all right?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t move. She just kept that level blue gaze fixed on me, her one eye on my two.
I said, “What’s your name?” I said, “I’m June, honey.”
She said nothing back.
I put my hand out slowly, like this, I was shaking like a leaf, and I touched her hot little arm. She trembled just a little. But that was it.
I said, “Honey, you’re going to burn up in this sun.”
She had nothing to say to that, either. And why would she? What was a little sunburn to what she’d been through already? She looked like she’d been set torch to. But still, I’d fixated on it, I’d convinced myself that getting her out of the sun was the right first step, and so what I did was scoot back on my bottom until I’d gotten to the shade under a tree, and I beckoned to her, I said, “Why don’t you come over here, honey?” and when that didn’t work I took out my canteen. I said, “Come and get some water, at least.”
This went on for what seemed like a long time. Me waving the canteen at her, beckoning. Violet still lying there on her side, that blue eye on me, thumb in her mouth. She had on this cotton slip thing and nothing else. It had been white once—the hem came almost to her knees, and her legs poking out from under it were scratched and Stamped and scarred and skeeter-bit, and the bottoms of her feet were blacker than owl gravy. I was thinking through my options. I was wondering if I should try to leave the canteen and walk out of sight, to trick her, or try to pick her up and carry her to camp by force, or if I should run and get my parents and hope Violet would still be there when we returned. I was just about decided that I’d leave the canteen and run when she sat up—all at once, as if she was spring-loaded. Still with that just-about-unblinking eye on me. She got to her feet, took small steps my way. Stopped. Two more steps, so she was just within my reach. Then her hand popped out. Like, gimme. So I did, I put the canteen in her hand, and she tilted her head back, gulping until it was empty, and when she finished and looked at me again so still and solemn, I could see in her blue eye that she was mine now and I was hers, and I thought, God help us.
She clutched the canteen. She gave no indication she planned to hand it back to me.
I said, “You want to come with me, honey? Do you want to come to where I live?”
I don’t know what I expected her to do, but it wasn’t what she did. Which was to put her hands up toward me, one of them still gripping that canteen. And I hadn’t seen another child before, but I guess that’s a universal gesture, isn’t it? Pick me up. So I picked her up. I hitched her up by her armpits and sat her on my hip, and she slung her sunburned little arm around my neck and with the other cradled the empty canteen like it was a teddy bear. She was skin and bones. I don’t think she weighed two stones. I carried her the half mile or so back to my parents, and by the time our camp was in sight she’d fallen asleep again, her poor face nuzzled into my collarbone, hot breath on my neck. I called, “Y’all need to come out here right now.” They did. My mother and father. They saw me with the child and they froze.
I said, “I found her in the woods.”