Memoirist Idol 2022

On a Day in Melbourne Long Ago I Left a Little Girl to Her Fate

Pitiless memory torments me with my sins and sorrows.

Flashes and glimpses of the life I have led haunt me; a relentless, revolving carousel in my head.

I am at the mercy of my strange cognitions. And today, for reasons unknown, I remembered a day in Melbourne, long ago.

It was 20 years past, or thereabouts. At a shopping centre in Melbourne, whose name currently eludes me, I was browsing the wares of a chemist shop. How placid and peaceful was my life then, upon reflection; the reality of my marriage buried under knowledge I had not yet acquired. I had two beautiful little babes, and I was loved. Or so I thought.

If we knew the miseries hunting us down the years, we’d stay in bed.

What happened that day was nothing, and it was everything.

I’d taken my little ones by bus from Beaumaris, where we were visiting relatives. My beloved babes. They were and are my heart’s delight.

As I pushed my little girl around the store, chatting amicably to my boy, a woman nearby started asking a member of staff for help.

She had long dark hair. Her makeup was just a little off. She looked as though she was trying to pass as one of the normals, and out of the corner of an eye she would indeed pass. But closer appraisal revealed something. Something.

Her speech was breathless, a little vague. She was dressed appropriately enough, as was her daughter, and she wasn’t rude or aggressive or overtly untoward. But her speech patterns were a little distracting. Her eyes missing some vital component.

She was either cognitively impaired in some way or wasted on something, or some combination of the two. And she claimed she was under some sort of ambiguously described threat from a man at the mall. Her story was dubious and vague. And yet. There was something.

The young sales assistant whom she’d approached hesitated. She wanted no part of it, but she didn’t want to walk away. I told the girl to get a member of security to come and talk to the woman and assess the situation. She hurried off to attend to that and I turned back to the shelf I’d been browsing. Then the dark-eyed little girl who was with this woman spoke up.

She’d been standing quietly, watching everything unfold; she looked up at me and spoke just one sentence. “Can I come home with you?”

Jesus Christ. I just stared at her. I literally didn’t know what to say. Three times my mouth opened and I started to speak while she watched me solemnly from her dark, four or five-year-old eyes.

The security guard and the sales girl arrived and he started talking to the woman, kindly enough. I still had not spoken. Words lay uselessly behind my lips. My mouth opened and closed a few times, in the manner of a goldfish.

The girl turned back to her mother.

The security guard and the woman walked over to the counter, the girl trailing behind. He was making a phone call. It was now officially somebody else’s problem.

My heart was as heavy as it is now writing these words. I wanted to take her home with me. I want to take them all home with me.

Perhaps there was nothing really I could have done. She looked well fed, reasonably dressed, she was in no imminent danger, there were no open signs of abuse.

But oh God “Can I come home with you?” To a stranger, in a mall.

Child, I swear I would do more if it happened today. I would involve myself. I would make it my problem. I would dig.

The weight that presses down on my heart whenever I remember you tells me that I cannot shirk my guilt.

Can I come home with you? She said. Her life in one sentence.

God forgive me for just standing there. Because nobody else can.

The Memoirist idol story I’d like to highlight is:

Judy Walker is a skilled writer, this piece was extremely evocative and said so much in such a brief telling. I urge you to read it too.

Copyright Alison Tennent 2022, all rights reserved. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship since 2002.