The Girl with the Cornflower Blue Eyes

She was a young girl who, to my unpracticed eye, looked to be about ten years old. She had the long, fine hair that used to be called corn-silk blonde and eyes that used to be called cornflower blue. She wore a sundress, light grey and adorned with little blue flowers, faded and careworn but clean nonetheless. Her bare legs and arms were the same brittle, pale gold as the tall grass that covered the hills. The problem was that the grass should have been green this early in the summer and she should have been outside playing in the waning heat of the dying day. Instead she sat pensively in a metal folding chair and gazed down her thin legs to her bare feet and toes. She had the beauty of a silent child.

I was here because it was a summer of heat and drought. A lighting storm had created hundreds of wildfires throughout the mountains and now, a month later, many still remained. It had been a battle fought on a daily basis by residents and firefighters, some days losing when the dry Santa Ana winds kicked up, sometimes winning when the winds calmed or turned against themselves. The fire storms swirled, merged, died, were reborn, retreated and sometimes spread with dizzying speed. Several days earlier the cat and mouse game had ended suddenly and cruelly for this community. The winds blew strong and steady and it was completely engulfed. As cruel as it was, there was still some small measure of mercy. The fire had burned cool and moved fast. Scattered here and there were houses that had been spared, either wholly or in part.

The residents had been allowed to return to visit their property earlier today. They learned, just a few hours ago, which homes had been spared and which destroyed. They came now to learn what could be done. This evening the girl and I, along with nearly all of the residents who remained, were in a small, dilapidated, dirty white schoolhouse. The small cafeteria we met in was sweltering and packed. The sun was near the horizon but the temperature outside still hovered in the mid-90s.

FEMA had called this meeting and hopes were high. President Bush was scheduled to visit the destroyed areas earlier today. Hadn’t the government come to the aid of those residents of Malibu and the wealthy communities nestled in the San Bernardino Mountains last year? The people of this poor mountain community knew that they suffered worse, suffered longer, with wounds that lay closer to the bone. A Presidential visit meant a disaster declaration. A disaster declaration meant assistance from FEMA and a chance to rebuild. FEMA was the organizer and main attraction at the meeting, but county officials attended, as did forest service and fire fighting representatives, along with the usual array of ubiquitous local politicians. I was there with several people representing the Red Cross and the task of addressing the community on our behalf was given to me.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I had received word, a few minutes ago, that there would be no federal aid. In a cobweb of rules spun from political influence and wealth these people were simply too unimportant. FEMA had quickly changed the President’s agenda to a brief fly-over of the disaster area on the way to a party fund-raiser. FEMA intended to handle this meeting by the simple expedient of not showing up. They called to ask me to pass that information to the community.

One of the difficulties in disaster relief work is in embracing acceptance. We had food we could give the people, we had water, and we had a place for them to shower and to sleep. These things are a balm that soothes but does not heal. We could not heal them; we could not find justice for them; we could not summon the attention of an indifferent government. The easy path, disaster after disaster, is to get caught up in their fear, in their loss, in their anger. You want to do something heroic; you want to take some grand action that will take away the wounds, the suffering and the fear. It is so easy, so seductive, to burn in a towering fire of indignation, but it is a flame that burns with no warmth and no light. You cannot approach disasters without some reconciliation with your belief in fate. I had made my reconciliation with no sense of heroism or even hope. I would talk to the people this evening; I would offer them what I could. I would keep silent on all other matters. First I would talk to the little girl who had caught my attention by her silence.

We kept a plastic bag of small dolls with us. They are used by our mental health workers as a kind of role-play to get children to talk about their trauma. They were the kind of penny arcade dolls that you get after you missed the target with every shot of your air gun - "too bad but, hey kid, everyone is a winner; pick something out from the back row." The dolls we handed out inhabited the back row. When I first started in disaster relief I was embarrassed to give them out but, I soon learned, the gesture of a gift is important. I fished out the nicest one I could find and went over to the young girl who still stared pensively at her toes. I held it out in front of me.

"Here is a doll for you," I said.

She looked at the doll for a moment, and then at me for a moment. Her eyes were impossibly blue and quiet.

"No, thank you" she said to her toes.

I was momentarily confused. I knew from her brief glance that the girl wanted the doll. I had been refused on other occasions by children who were too shy or too wary. I sensed that this girl was neither. Besides, those children invariably looked at their parents for some clue as to how to behave. This girl, whose mother was beside her, did neither. So I looked at the mother for a clue. She was a physically non-descript woman, dressed poorly but neatly, like her daughter, sitting quietly and patiently, like her daughter. She gave me a soft smile. I was unsure as to the meaning of the smile; even now I am unsure. It seemed to softly encourage me to proceed while already knowing the outcome. I was an actor who had momentarily forgotten his lines and she was encouraging me to remember. That is the kind of smile it was.

I knelt down to get closer to the line of sight between the girl and her toes. I held the doll out again.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She looked neither at the doll nor at me. She spoke softly and in a low voice; I strained to hear. Her voice caught slightly as she spoke.

"My house wasn’t destroyed."

Miracles exist in the realm of the young and old because we are the ones who believe it them. I believe in them, at any rate. Not the "throw the crutches away; I can walk again!" kind, but the small moments of grace and clarity that are given to us in our moments of need. I had found, in this small, cornflower girl, an honor and grace at the moment of my need and where I least expected to find it.

It became, somehow, important for me that she accept this doll. I thought for a moment.

"Okay," I said, "but it is so hot in here and you are so patient. I think you deserve this doll. Besides, who else will take care of it for me?"

She thought about that for a moment, weighing the justice of my argument. Finally, she looked up at me and took the doll. "Thank you," she said quietly.

I only took an occasional glance at the young girl during the interminably long meeting. She did not fidget and she did not smile. She remained quiet and somber but now she looked at the doll instead of at her bare toes and sometimes she held the doll close to her chest as the meeting swirled around her. We are healed more by what we give than what we receive.

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