The Playground Rules

True sketches from another country

Her close-shaved head revealed an expressive face. “Come on,” she encouraged my son to take the next step toward the slide. She spoke in a different language than my son, but at 2 years old he understood her. She watched so he wouldn’t fall and showed him how the slide worked.

She was probably 6 or 7 at the time. Sometimes she would be sent to ask better-dressed people for money. But today, she was taking the chance to play on the playground while other kids were in school.

When other kids came with cleaner faces, their parents would ask her to leave. Poverty might be catching, and no one in this neighborhood was rich.

She knew the rules of the playground.

A few years later, I saw her again. Her bright attitude and her rebellious kind of joy were hard to forget. She was at the new playground on our block. Cardboard characters from children’s favorite stories covered the fences in honor of the park’s opening.

There were gaps where a few characters were missing. She counted them in her language and my son counted after her in his. She laughed in surprise at how many numbers he knew and counted slower in her native tongue teaching him something new. “Did you put these here?” she asked me.

“No,” I said, “But they’re nice aren't they?” She nodded. The next day I noticed a few more cardboard cutouts were missing and I couldn’t help but smile.

She liked beautiful, unclaimed things.

I was hanging our clothes on the balcony and saw her walking through our parking lot next to the playground with her mom, and several other little kids running before and behind. She was excitedly showing her mom a new set of paints. Her mother smiled at this little extravagance.

She liked to create art. Sometimes she would take a cast-off piece of chalk and leave flowers on our neighborhood sidewalk. You could use leftover things as long as they weren’t claimed. It was her rule.

She was about the same age as my daughter, but smaller in size. “Tanti, do you have any clothes?” Hers were faded and dirty and she liked to be clean.

I found some shirts, pants, and dresses that were too small for my daughter. When I saw her again she was wearing a pretty yellow dress. She walked next to her mother proud and confident.

She was happy to see me as she pushed the bushes aside and entered the park. She had two little pictures in a pre-loved purse. “This is my mom,” she showed me proudly. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

A picture of a woman I didn’t recognize smiled happily and a little coyly from the photo. “And this is me.” It was a baby with blonde hair, blue eyes, and chubby, squishable cheeks. The name of the brand and price of long-lost frames were still printed across both 90s-style photos.

In front of me, dark curls, sunkissed skin, and the proud brown eyes begging for approval were beautiful, too. “Very beautiful,” I said. “Thank you for showing me.”

She played kick the ball with my son and pushed him on the swing. He laughed at her wildness and she made sure he didn’t fall. She shared the snacks we offered but never helped herself or asked for more. It was her rule.

“Hi Tanti,” she said as she passed me in the park. I waved as she walked through the park next to a man who was likely her father. She was hugging a baby doll. It was carefully wrapped up in the hopes that it would look real enough to earn money.

At 8 years old, she was used to this work. She walked with a purpose. She liked to be helpful.

A ping pong match was going on at the park. Whoever brought the paddles and ball would start the game and a huddle of hopeful neighbor kids would surround them until they got a turn. She watched with interest as the children played. Maybe she was hopeful too?

“Get off the playground!” A mom from my son’s neighborhood soccer team shouted at her. “Why don’t you let the children play?”

At 9, she was still a child herself. But she left so the other children could play unbothered by thoughts of what their lives might have been if they had been born a few streets away.

For a moment, she had forgotten the playground rules.

We moved away from the neighborhood but when we were in town my kids still begged to visit the park. As I pushed my son on the swing I felt small arms wrap around me in a hug.

“Tanti! Where have you been? Do you have any clothes?” I told her we had moved and I didn’t have any clothes right now. But we had extra snacks. She ate what I gave her and she pushed my son on the swing. As we left, so did she.

“Goodbye Tanti, she said. She walked through the beaten path through the bushes making her way out of the playground.

The playground was for anyone… as long as you didn’t stay too long.

It was her rule.