Watching the Little Girls Dance

High Baby is back. When she moves she flails, and when she eats the food dribbles down her front and liquid foams at the side of her lips. Her presence bothers the other women. They watch her spastic movements from a distance and feel she takes up too much space. The room is already crowded. We try to be gentle with her – we guide her to a bench and replace her water; she spilled the last glass and doesn’t touch this one. We don’t know what to say to her – she does not talk, but grunts meaningfully and looks wildly from place to place until eventually her eyelids grow heavy and she collapses into the wood.

The other women call her a junkie without a sense of irony; we’re all superior in our own habits.

I take little notice of her – it’s a very busy night. We feed a hundred and fifty women and send them on their way. The regulars settle in front of the tv, and no one complains about the girl who no longer twitches and sways. I get someone a spare jacket, and some one else has lost her shoes. At the makeup counter, a woman’s hand shakes as she paints her face with eyeliner and lipstick with the precision of a surgeon and artist in one. Someone asks for more juice, and we’re out of tampons. I pause in a back room to catch my breath.

“That little girl on the bench is breaking my heart.” A staff member says, as an aside, while she digs through her purse. She doesn’t smoke but she gives out cigarettes in exchange for favours. “Do you know her?”

I don’t know her, but she ate the night before and, after fifteen minutes and two spilt plates, we asked her to leave. In the last twenty-four hours she’s lost most of her clothes – her tiny dress is riding up her thighs and as her head lolls back we try not to notice her pale, exposed breasts. Her hair is dyed blonde and her skin is dark brown, but I don’t know her name.

As we walk past her again, we guess at her age. She lies unconscious and for the first time I get a good look at her face. Fourteen or fifteen. I wish she would stop breathing so I could call 9-1-1, but her chest keeps on rising and she lets out a low groan. I start wiping down counters and watch the tv.

It’s the end of the night and I can’t wake her up. As I shake her shoulder she lets out soft grunts but never opens her eyes. I ask for her name and she doesn’t answer – the other women shuffle past us towards the door. Someone has given her a purple blanket and black, woolly sweater – I wrap it around her shoulders.

One of our regular participants notices my struggle.

“Her name is A***. I know her from detox.” This girl is also young, high, and homeless. She is going to an emergency shelter and offers to take High Baby with her. “You can’t leave her alone. Look at what she’s wearing. Someone will finger-fuck her.”

Her friend takes the blanket and waits outside while I walk High Baby down the front stairs. She’s responding to her name and her eyes are half open now. She sways at the doorway and leans her tiny weight against me as we wait for her friend to return and retrieve her.

She looks down quickly and sees herself – I watch the embarrassment well up in her eyes as she asks me to zip up her sweater.