The question

The same question came back to me, in an unexpected place this time, like usual. It was a girl—not older than seven—who climbed onto the bus with her mother and another woman dressed in bright loose florals that stood out against the tight bristling black Italian leather, chatting in a language that sounded strange even in this strange country. The girl sat across from me, and I smiled at her over my book. She didn’t smile back.

What if I had been her? What was it like to have straniera stamped plainly in your brown doe-eyes and dark straight hair, to already know your place—your place as a foreigner in a country that would look down on you as rubbish come to steal their wealth; your place in a home where even little women were seen and not heard. Would I have resigned myself to my fate? Would I have even known that the rest of the world might resent it, might have something different? Would I have searched for a loving God?

I dropped my eyes back to my book, sinking into a place farther from here than even my home is, culturally if not geographically. But I could feel the eyes on my face, and I wondered what she was wondering.