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“You didn’t haveanytoys?”
She shook her head. “Except for Kitty.”
“Who is Kitty?”
“My Hello Kitty was a stuffed animal that I took everywhere. I couldn’t sleep without her.
“You still have her?”
“No, my mom burned her.”
“What? No mother would do something that cruel. Are you sure she burned your teddy bear?”
Cia was biting the inside of her cheek. “My mom was a mean drunk, and it happened on one of those nights when she blamed me for ruining her life.”
“Why did she think you ruined her life?”
She snorted. “Classic story. Sixteen-year-old virgin infatuated with rich pretty boy who says all the right things. She wants to make him happy and gives him what he wants. She ends up pregnant and alone and rejected by him, with her friends fleeing like rats, and her parents angry at her. And who gets the blame? The stupid baby who ruined her life.”
“You’re not stupid, Cia,” I said and stroked her hair. She jerked away.
“I think you need to help me change into this Pony costume.”
We didn’t speak while I helped her change her clothes. What she had revealed made me grateful for the mom I have who has always given me support and love. Unlike Cia, I have never lacked any toys or comfort, and I wished I could somehow share it with Cia.
I couldn’t. No one could. It was too late and the damage was already done. Or was it?
Later that day when Cia was drawing with crayons, which she could do for hours in her own little bubble, I spoke to Therese, who helped me find a multicolored My Little Pony in one of the toy boxes in the play area and wrap it in gift paper. I wished I could have gotten Cia a new one, but at least this one would be hers and not stolen.
“Sugar,” I said and went to sit next to her. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
Using only crayons she had drawn a spot-on portrait of me and in the lower corner she had managed to draw the sapper logo I have tattooed on my back.
“Wow, did you make this?” I asked, although it was a rhetorical question since she had been alone the whole time. “This is incredible.”
“If you like it, you can have it,” she said and handed it to me.
“I love it. Thank you.”
She gave me a genuine smile. “It’s nothing. I make portraits for a living, I’m a street artist,” she said.
“But you’re insanely talented, you know that, right?”
She shrugged. “I just like to draw.”
Then I remembered and handed her the gift I had been holding behind my back. “This is for you, my dear.”
“For me?” Her eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes, for you.”
She opened the gift and held up the little plastic toy, which was the size of her hand, and then she turned it over in the air. “This is Rainbow Dash, she was one of my favorites in the movies.”
“There were movies?”
“Yes… cartoons.”
“That’s nice.”
