up and away

She was so excited, it's not her fault that she can't understand her mama when she tells her this is the last week of the program that I didn't mean that everyone living there now had another place to go. So she implored me to take her last night, one of the last nights of the year we'll have this program bustling with heat and laughter and crying and sleeping and filth and mashed potatoes and blankets and four very large walls that create a holding place of sorts for some of the best and worst parts of our humanity. We pull into the lot and weave the car around the already growing line of folks waiting to get inside. Clenched in her hand was a balloon, the one prize of today and the only prize that mattered, a balloon she clearly insisted had to come with us because it was beautiful and because she wanted to show it off.

So whose fault is it when her mama swung open the door to lean into the back and unhook the buckles and the prized balloon leaned into the gust and whipped around me and out of her hands and up up up into the sky.

Her wailing was immediate. I scooped her up and out so at the very least she could watch it soaring higher and higher from that ragged parking lot on a dusky last evening in March. And as the balloon became a ball became a speck I turned around and saw the line we'd parked behind was watching it too, all eyes on me they witnessed the entire thing and can now hear her cries. I walk the few steps over to the line full of haggard exhaustion, of wrinkles and dirty coats and geniunely tired smiles. A woman is looking at her kindly, several others are still watching the balloon as it races towards the end of the sun. One of the men looks at me and asks what did you tell her? And I replied that her mama screwed up and let the balloon fly away. I tried to catch it but it flew away so fast. He nods, his face serious. Well at least you told her the truth. M's head raises from the watery place on my shoulder, tears all over her face and gulps but why, mommy, why? And to everyone involved and for many more reasons than the balloon I simply have no good answer for this.