The Little Girl

   The little girl, she was nothing but skin and bone. I could feel this as I carried her to the toilet. I could feel the top of her thigh bone in the palm of my hand (yes, I had my hand on her bum and I was terrified of being mistaken for a paedophile, but how else are you meant to carry child?) and my other hand: my fingers were cradled in the notches of her spine. She had her arms around my neck and her legs around the trunk of my body. I thought: she’s just like a monkey, a malnutritioned monkey. She seemed very happy with me carrying her to the toilet. I don’t know why. I also did not know why she was so skinny. A disease of some sort but I was certain it was not self inflicted as every time I happened to allow my eyes to meet hers, they sparkled with a hunger for a fullness of life or something equally magical, also she smiled a smile of pure contentment like a cat and as we all know: cats don’t lie. They never attempt to lie. They are the world’s most honest of creatures. Man would probably be near the end of this list, near the bottom among the jellyfish and bees and the rest of the soulless bunch. At the entrance to the toilets, as I was instructed, I put the little girl on her feet (her name, it eludes my memory now) and said to her:
  
   So, you know what to do. I’ll be waiting right here for you when you’re done. If you have any problems, scream, and I’ll be right there.
  
   The bit of bathroom tiled floor I could see from the entrance, it was wet, covered in a layer of piss and shit from leaky toilets. The little girl, she was barefoot.
 
   I asked: Shouldn’t we go find some cleaner toilets or can’t you wee in some bushes?
  
   She shook her head and said: No.

   She walked into the bathroom as I held the door and slipped and fell, arms flailing, trying to grab onto anything to prevent her fall. I was out of reach as was anything. She fell onto her back, with her head following closely. The sickening crack of bone on tiling sounds different when it is someone you care about and you’re supposed to be looking after them. She rolled onto her side, spreading more filthy water from the floor onto herself and looked up at me, crying silently, tears flowing down her face. That instant an emotion and a separate image flashed in my head simultaneously.

   Image: The little girl, she was in a pigpen, covered in slop or whatever it is on the floor of a pig pen. I picked her up and carried her to the water trough and washed her off as the pigs looked on, disgusted at how filthy she was.

   Emotion: I can’t convey it sincerely or proper but it was similar to the first time I heard Roy Orbison singing on the radio, in my mother’s car, on the way to school. The whole day I couldn’t get the song out of my head and when I got home begged and nagged my mother until we went and bought a Roy Orbison cassette. The song? I can’t remember it now.

   The image and the emotion, together are a powerful combination. I picked up the little girl and held her tight against my chest, scared that I might snap her bones, carrying her and whispering comforting words all the time:

   The bastards, can’t keep a bathroom clean, I’ll break their legs.

   I marched to the management office, (we were in a shopping mall, after all, did I forget to mention that?), shouldering doors open, cursing under my breath all the while holding the little girl, who was silent. So there I was, in the office and I didn’t know what to say. The manager on duty looked like an asshole and no matter what I said, it wouldn’t have bothered him much or caused him any concern but I let my tongue loose and without much thought became increasingly rabid:

   You bastard, what if this was your child, I’ll break your legs and bust your head in and drag you around by your shirt collar in that muck, I’ll find your family and drag them around in it too, you bastard, you, christsakes, it’s like a pig pen in there, but worse and you son of a bastard, you son of a ...christsakes!...

   I went on and on like that for some time until I felt a wet, warm patch forming on my body, just below my chest. No, the little girl, I’d forgotten all about her, scared her with my screaming and now she had pissed all over me.