Fireflies

                I have Sam Tsui in my earbuds and the bitter coffee aftertaste in my mouth and fireflies just feet away from me, outside the tall window. I look up at the towering hospital building that adjoins the library. The nubby cotton of my shirtdress brushes reassuringly against the small of my back and less reassuringly against my upper thigh. I shift, pull my hemline down, stare out the window. Earbuds and coffee and fireflies and clothing and me, invisible stranger, lost child of privilege. 

                The little girl wasn’t child of privilege. She was a child of poverty. When we attended church in Maradi I would watch her toddling in through the door to the cinderblock building, small for her age, with the sparse red hair and taut-rounded belly of malnutrition. Her mother wore the same sun-faded riga and zuni every week. Her father was so thin. And her older sister’s dress was far too short. I used to sit on the hard plank bench and stare at that little girl as she sat languidly on the mat with the other children during the sermons. 

                Finally I told my parents what I was thinking. I told them and told them and told them. I didn’t let them respond. I honestly just wanted to say what I was thinking. I was sure I wasn’t wrong. And I didn’t care if there were other right perspectives. I was a teenager. But I was the same me that I still am. 

                The fireflies are flashing outside. The years we were on furlough, my brothers and I cleaned out glass jars and caught fireflies in them. I wanted to use my jar of fireflies as a nightlight and was disappointed that no matter how many I caught, they were never bright enough to light my room. It was an unreasonable disappointment compounded by my failure to appreciate the fireflies for being fireflies – for the marvel, the crazy marvel, that there are bugs that glow in the dark. I mean, for real, glow in the dark? Really? But I was just upset that they couldn’t compete with my electrical Chinese nightlight. That was true. But it wasn’t everything. It was barely anything. It wasn’t necessary. It squandered the short-lived beauty of the little bugs that suffocated after I fell asleep disappointed and left them in the jar overnight. 

                You know what I felt was so important to brood over and say? I wanted to know why her parents didn’t practice better family planning. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t good or necessary. It wasn’t helpful. I never advocated for her. But I remember spending a solid trip to and from church complaining that people who couldn’t support kids sometimes have them anyways. Later, Dad said that if I was going to make such a fuss about things I couldn’t change, I should at least do something about things I could change. I had no idea what to do. Maybe that’s why I just made an arrogant fuss. In the end I gave some money and vitamins to a family friend and asked her to give them anonymously to the girl’s family. Really? Money and vitamins. Come on, Tab. And then I never thought of her again. Until fireflies and privilege. 

                And oh, oh, oh my God, the moment when there is no clear parallel but there is a piercing connection. The moment when I am one more ugly disappointed suffocating combatively-outspoken proof that little malnourished girls are born not just to a mother who wears the same outfit and a father who is bone-thin, but to a world where the children of privilege are compassion-poor and entitlement-rich.

                 

                It is suddenly darker outside the window, and the fireflies are gone, and all I see, looking out, is the reflected woman with dullened eyes.