Inca and I have received our first joint assignment! I was excited to begin, of course, but this assignment is proving to be very different from any others I have dealt with. For one thing, Mary Wimmer is only fifteen, a shy and sweet girl still uncertain as to who she is or wants to be. For another, she is dealing with more pain than I could have imagined a child could know.
When Inca and I arrived at Mary’s school, we found her sitting just outside the band room, headphones in her ears. She is a thin, gangly girl, with thin blonde hair and large, expressive eyes. Those eyes were filled with tears as she flicked through her phone, her lips trembling.
At first I didn’t understand what she was looking at. There were many pictures, many of them inappropriate for a girl her age to be looking at—many of them showed parts of the male and female body suggestive of sex. It wasn’t embarrassment that had Mary so stricken, though. She was looking at the photos with horror, her stomach twisting with anxiety.
“What does this mean?” I asked Inca, crouching to put one wing around Mary. She took a deep breath and banished the pictures from her screen, putting her head back against the wall.
Inca looked around and saw a group of girls, standing in a tight group not too far away from Mary. They were laughing, and occasionally they would look over at her, mockery and smug satisfaction in their eyes.
“There are many ways that young girls use to shame one another,” Inca said. “This must be one of them. I will ask Eburnean—they will know more. For now, however—” She bristled, her wings lifting, forming sharp points on either side of her. “Go away,” she said to the laughing girls.
Their laughter stopped, and they all suddenly found a reason to be elsewhere.
I turned my attention to Mary, who was now crying in earnest. “It doesn’t matter what they say,” I told her. “What matters is the truth, and what you know about yourself.”
What Mary knows, however, seems to be a source of pain. Her thoughts were full of shame and self-hatred—why am I so stupid? she asked herself, rather than wondering why the girls were so cruel. I’m ugly and stupid and everyone hates me—
“I do not hate you,” I said with all my strength, and for a moment I thought it had made a difference. But then the bell rang, and Mary had to get up and go to her class. She remained in a gray mood for the rest of our time with her.
“I think this is best handled separately,” Inca told me later. “You stay with Mary; keep her from despair. I will investigate these other girls and see what can be done about them.”
From the tone of her voice, I do not envy those children.
Who would have imagined that there would be such cruelty among those so young? It has shaken me, I admit it. Mary seems to have borne that pain for some time, and I ache for her. Still, as Inca points out, that she has come this far means that she has strength, and now she has us to help her. We will not let her down.