The Lost Child

The Lost Child - Short Story

I stepped out of my house that day, as I usually do – without knowing where I was headed and what for. I sat upon the battered seat of my trusty scooter, noting the uncomfortable patches where cats seemed to have clawed out the covers and the foam. The engine weakly roared to life, then died once again. I sighed deeply, then kick-started the engine again. This time, I received but a whimper. I tried again, and the engine roared once again, weakly. This time, I caressed the engine through gentle revs of the accelerator, fanning the kindling until the fuel could sustain itself within the confines of the engine’s metal frame.

Third time’s the charm, I thought.

Then my mother called out to me, dressed to shop and I realised why I had stepped out of the house – I was to be a chauffeur for mom’s monthly shopping spree.

Guess the charm wore off.

As I did so, I took in the noisy traffic, the same old road being repaved and rebuilt ad nauseam, to the point that one could predict where the next pothole would sprout from. I drove in circles, trying to park a tiny vehicle in a spot where there was no space for tiny vehicles. To be honest, the drive always succeeds in pushing me off a cliff right into a bad mood. But it didn’t stay for long.

The stalls upon stalls of all shapes and sizes called out to the callowness of my heart, and rather than throw it away, I clung to that infantile sense of wonder, hoping it would drive out my cynical side for the time being.

We stopped by a shop owned by a friend of mine. He’s a great chap. Hardworking, hard-earning and he’s a year younger than me. The thought pierced through my sense-confidence much like every other time I think about it, but I let it slide, as I always do. So, we were chatting, my mother peering over the merchandise housed in the store, when all of a sudden, a wail pierced through the humid heat of the March air and fell upon our ears.

All at once did our conversation end, as we turned around to pinpoint the location of the loud cries. They belonged to a girl, a little child barely five or six years old, wailing away as she hobbled around on the uneven market floor. Dressed in a frock of faded emeralds, she had a soft, rounded face bounded by hair that reached up to her shoulders, a face scrunched up and glistening with tears. Her wide, teary eyes searched far and wide, and with every third or fourth step, a cry louder than the last would emanate from her shivering throat.

“Oh dear, a lost child,” exclaimed my mother in concern. “Where are her parents? How could they lose her?” She kept on spouting a long list of questions that at once seemed important yet pointless in light of the current situation. Meanwhile, my friend and I stared, fixated upon the thin frame of the child with a bleak gaze.

She had drawn a small crowd around her, the lost child- a few puzzled onlookers, a handful of local market-folk attempting to decipher her wails in vain, one or two elderly women holding the child in a loose yet warm embrace to ease the babe’s pain and confusion. Yet none would stay for long, their patience stretched thin by an unruly handful of seconds before they left the shuddering creature with the exact same countenance as it had before.

I felt far much worse, finding myself in a bizarre conundrum where my conscience simply did not allow my eyes of the tearful sight, while my wretched subconscious left me paralysed on the spot to do worth a damn about it.
I cursed myself, thinking why my strength would falter at every turn of the screw, that I’d be better off trading places with the lost child- abandoned and forlorn, than be here as a worthless spectator. The thought manifested into my fingers, curling into my fist, the tips bulging red with vengeful blood as the palms turned pale in fear.

My mother shook me out of this trance, walking off without a second thought towards the girl. She had not stopped her incessant wailing and screaming, her cries becoming more and more guttural by the second – as if the her vocal cords had run dry, now cracked and withered like a dead desert. Mother tried to calm her down, first with soft whispers, then by trying to find her mother from amongst the crowd, reassuring the little object that its caretaker would simply appear from amongst the faceless figures and that it would be happy once more.

None of them worked, of course.

Then, a childish smile brightened mother’s lips as she said, “Say, I know what you’d like! How about….. a cup of ice-cream!”

The child’s sobbing stopped at the word ‘ice-cream’. Mom knew she’d struck gold, and told me to go buy one as quick as possible. I found myself moving at her words, steps sprightly and invested in the order. I did not so much as question my reaction at that time as I now do, thinking only of the sullen face of the wretched child, the sad mood at the time and how mother had broken it for the time being.

Now the task lay at my feet to make sure the sorrow did not return. I ran and I ran, realising that the shops around here seldom sold ice-cream and those that did were unfortunately closed today. The absurdity of the situation frustrated me to no end. Of all the days, why today? Why, when the shops were closed, did someone lose their child? Why, when a child stood abandoned and tearful at the centre of the market, was no shop open nearby that could ease her pain?

I finally found an open store, quickly paid for a cup of ice-cream and ran, careful that the cup wouldn’t fall. When I turned the corner, half-expecting mother with her arms full of the child, I only saw mom standing alone, the crowd dispersed and the girl nowhere in sight.

“Her mother picked her up and just….. Left. Like- she didn’t say ‘thank you’ to anyone, didn’t even seem like she cared! She just came all of a sudden, blubbered ‘Where did you run off to?,’ to the girl, pulled her hand and just left!”

My ears stopped listening. I stopped caring. I took the cup of ice-cream and gave it away to the nearest beggar I could find, which wasn’t too far at all.

Why am I writing this? What use is there in sharing this very incident with you?

Well, this one incident has had me digging holes in my mind for weeks on end. Why? Simply put, I was angry.

At that trash-can of a woman who couldn’t be bothered to keep an eye on her gift of joy and life. At the stupid shops stuffed with brilliant objects of manufactured content closed to foster discontent. But most importantly, at myself. The ungrateful wretch, no better than the swathes of faceless shapes whizzing across the child without another thought, without the sense to find a way to help. Myself, who didn’t dare move a finger in the name of a single independent thought, but happy to follow others’ every whim with reckless abandon.

So, I sit here. Trying to comprehend the words and paragraphs written upon a dying book, typed upon a flickering screen, through eyes that want no part in it all and hands that itch to do something, anything, even if it entails ill-tidings to the self. I sit here, writing down and typing up, wishing I could write or type more even as my hands ache and my mind begs for this to just end.