A friend from Connecticut came to visit for the weekend. It was refreshing because it's been years since I have been able to play 'tourist' in this city. We set out toward Independence Mall to hop on a double decker tour bus. We bought our tickets and decided to go to the bathroom before we embarked on the hour and a half city tour.
In the terminal, I waited outside and held my friends purse while she went into the ladies room. I noticed that there were quite a few families there - typical of a warm weather weekend. One little girl caught my attention in particular: she couldn't have been older than five years, and she was an absolute doll. She was playing ring-around-the-rosie around her adoptive mother's legs (I knew instantly that she was adopted, being that the woman she called "mother" was white and she was asian). Nothing struck me as completely out of the ordinary until the rest of her family joined her.
I saw her husband and four young boys moving in a roudy pack toward them. I began to smirk as the apparent situation became clear in my mind: Nice young couple, four boys of "their own", who "hand picked" the little girl they never had. Inwardly, I was rolling my eyes. Again, I would have thought very little of it and it probably wouldn't have stuck with me... if it weren't for the next dialogue I heard.
One of the younger boys (maybe 6 or 7 y/o) who had already been punching his older brothers, moved to the little girl and pushed her quite hard and she fell at her mother's feet. She didn't cry; she just stood up, brushed herself off and frowned, pushing him back. I laughed a little at the spectacle of it all. But that smile was wiped clear off of my face. The little boy who had initiated the fight, once he realized she was pushing back, whimpered and cried and yelled at her, "You're not even my real sister!" The mother and father both repremanded him instantly, all the while looking over their shoulders to see who heard the boy's claim. My attention was completely on the little girl.
She was now hiding behind her mother's legs, her face buired in the back of her knee, hands balled into fists and clinging to her mother's pants. I literally bit my tongue to keep from saying or doing anything. I can't tell you how many times that very same scene played out in my own life. My brother, also adopted, used to pull that card every day when we were 10-15. I think we both said some things we regret. Our neighbor called me a bastard once; I burst into tears and ran home, unable to explain to my mother why I was so upset. My heart and my thoughts are with that little girl right now, wherever she is.
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