Free The Girl Who Couldn't Smile by Shane Dunphy Page B

lost his clothes and believing himself to be trapped in the garden, is crying bitterly. The image seemed to have stirred something in the child, who had begun to speak loudly in Polish. She was pointing at the picture, and Gilbert, who was, as usual, beside her, placed a hand on her arm.
    ‘Arga, honey, I don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ I said.
    ‘ Arrrrgaaaa !’ she said angrily, rolling those r s for me (our constant mispronunciation of her name irritated her greatly), then continued to talk rapidly.
    Lonnie hopped off his chair and went over to her. In quiet tones he spoke to her: ‘ Co się stało, kochanie? ’ I later learned this was Polish for ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’
    At what sounded like a hundred miles per hour Arga rattled something back.
    ‘ Powoli ,’ Lonnie said, patting the air rhythmically with his hand: slowly.
    ‘ Został pozostawiony sam sobie ,’ Arga said, tears streaming down her face now.
    I waited with bated breath – this was wholly unexpected. It was as if Lonnie had just produced a rabbit from a hat.
    ‘She says that he has been left all alone,’ Lonnie translated.
    ‘Do you speak Polish?’ I asked disbelievingly.
    He turned to look at me with a halfway grin on his face. ‘And the prize for asking the most obvious question imaginable goes to the long-haired gentleman. Yes, I speak a bit of Polish.’
    ‘Umm … when were you going to tell me that fascinating little nugget of information?’
    ‘When were you going to tell me you had a child here who speaks Polish fluently but has not one word of English?’
    I stopped for a moment. ‘I thought I had.’
    Lonnie shook his head impatiently, then turned back to Arga. ‘ Znasz jego mammy znajduje go.’ You know Peter’s mammy finds him.
    ‘ Może nie na długo,’ Arga said. ‘I on będzie smutny i przestraszony .’
    ‘But maybe too late,’ Lonnie relayed to us. ‘And he will be cold and frightened.’
    Lonnie spoke to her, turning her to face him. I saw a kind of relief spread across Arga’s face: someone finally understood her and was taking the time to reassure and comfort her.
    ‘ Nie chciałbym do tego dopus´cić do ciebie, kochanie. Jesteś bezpieczny, teraz .’ I wouldn’t let that happen to you, sweetheart. You’re safe, now.
    The child threw her arms around Lonnie’s neck and hugged him tightly, sobbing loudly. He hugged her back, then picked her up in his powerful arms and went back to his chair, Gilbert following them like a lapdog. As he settled back into his place, I saw that tears were running down his cheeks, too. Lonnie sat for the rest of the session with Arga on one knee, and Gilbert perched on the other, the latter obviously uncomfortable with the physical contact, but determined not to leave his friend.
    It was not until I got home that evening and pondered the events of the day – and it would prove to be a long and eventful one – that I realized just how much Arga and Lonnie had in common: she an abandoned, semi-feral child; he a modern-day and very real fairy-tale character, whose family had, in a slightly more benign way, abandoned him, too. He had been locked in the attic room when his mother died and his aunt, finding the body, had died of shock. It had beendays before a workman had called and found Lonnie, terrified and half starved in his prison. I thought about them both, that night, as I lay in the darkness and felt the hours tick away: unloved children in a difficult, cruel world. And wondered if there was anything anyone could ever do other than extend friendship and hope for the best.
    It is a question to which I do not think I have ever received an answer.
     
    Another question without an answer was Tammy: she was by far the hardest of the children to read. Milandra was the firebrand; Gus the joker; Julie the vulnerable waif. Who, then, was Tammy?
    It took hours of close observation to grasp that she did not really have a role, other than that of outsider. The