Part Nine: Talia
She asked about Benjamin every day for the first week.
Is he okay. Is he warm. Is his mom with him. Is he going to be all right.
I answered each question directly, which was how she preferred to be spoken to and always had been. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
On the third day she asked: “Is baby Benjamin safe now?”
“He’s safe,” I said. “He’s in the hospital and the doctors are taking good care of him. His mom is there with him.”
She processed this with the thoroughness she brought to things that mattered.
“Good,” she said.
On the fifth day, she asked: “Is Daddy coming back?”
I had been preparing for this question. I had talked to a child psychologist — a phone call, an hour, the specific kind of help you needed for the specific kind of situation that had no script.
“Daddy is going to live somewhere else,” I said. “You’ll still see him. But he’s not going to live here.”
She looked at me with her steady eyes.
“Because of the baby?”
“Because of some things between me and Daddy that are grown-up things. That have nothing to do with you.”
“But I saw him,” she said. It was not quite a question.
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Was that wrong?” she said. “To say it?”
I took her face in my hands. I looked at her directly, which was how she needed things.
“What you did,” I said, “was exactly right. You told the truth about what you saw. That was brave and it was right and I am so proud of you.”
She considered this.
“Benjamin was cold,” she said. “I wanted to help him.”
“You did help him,” I said. “You helped him more than you know.”
She accepted this.
She was six years old and she had walked into a kitchen holding a cold baby she had found in the garden and she had stood in the middle of a situation she didn’t fully understand and told the truth in a clear voice that didn’t shake.
She was six years old.
