I tried not to sigh too loudly. She’d been the one to insist on bringing Melody over, but now she was changing her tune just because Mia stared a little too much. It didn’t seem fair. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was already being treated like a villain for no reason.
I was about to argue that very point when I was interrupted by a sudden shout from Melody. While Chantal and I had been talking, Mia had reached forward to pinch the hem of Melody’s dress. Now, Melody stood there frozen with a large stuffed rabbit in her arms while the skirt of her dress remained caught in Mia’s grip.
“Hey,” Chantal yelled, darting forward to no doubt slap his hand away, and probably claw his eyes out while she was at it. She was a fierce mama bear when it came to her kid.
Luckily, I was able to stop her before she took more than a single step forward.
“Hold on.” I pushed myself between Chantal and Mia as a human shield. It would only stop her for a moment, but that was enough for me to, hopefully, play peacekeeper. “Um, Mia, what are you doing?”
He didn’t seem to hear me or even notice the danger he’d just been in from Chantal. All his attention was on Melody’s dress as he rubbed the fabric between his fingers.
“This dress,” he said, staring fixedly at the fabric. “I think… I had one like it.”
The unexpected answer was at least enough to cool Chantal’s anger, so we were at least out of the danger zone, but that still left the bizarre question of Mia’s statement.
My thoughts traveled back to the mostly burned dress that had been found in his meager belongings, and a picture began to form in my mind.
Melody laughed, no longer at all concerned that someone was tugging on her clothes.
“That’s silly. Why would you have a dress? It’s for girls, not boys.”
At her words, Mia’s hand jerked back as if the cloth he’d just been holding suddenly burned him. His wide-eyed stare, usually so curious about the world around him, shuttered closed like someone had drawn a shade behind his gaze to block out the light. It was a subtle shift, but in just an instant, he changed from a creature of open curiosity to an iron prison in the shape of a person.
“That’s what they said,” he whispered, so quiet I could barely hear him.
“Mia, what is it?” I asked as I sat next to him as close as possible without touching him. “Did you… remember something?”
Mia’s gaze remained unfocused, but he started plucking at the fabric of the sweatpants he was wearing. They were borrowedfrom my closet and far too big on him, so there was plenty of extra material to play with. He practically drowned in the pants, but he never seemed to mind. However, now he seemed like he really wanted to take them off.
“That’s what they said,” he repeated. “When they made me get rid of my clothes. They said it was bad. I had to wear boy clothes.”
My suspicion from earlier snapped into focus. Mia was usually a woman’s name, but it wasn’t impossible for a man to have such a name. However, combined with the burned dress I’d found among his possessions, and the vague memory of someone getting rid of his clothes for not beingboy clothes, it created a pretty clear picture.
There was something to be said for the innocence of children. While I was still trying to figure out how to respond to Mia’s sudden reveal, Melody had already absorbed this new information and added it to her world view. She looked at her dress, then at Mia’s clothes, then back at her own dress. After a few back-and-forth glances, she came to a decision with a firm little nod that made her braids swing.
“No one should take your clothes. If you like it, you can have my dress.”
Her tone was so earnest, and her words so simple, it made me want to laugh. I managed to hold it back, but to my surprise, I heard laughter anyway.
Sitting beside me on the bed, laughter bubbled up out of Mia like uncontrollable hiccups. He pressed one hand to his mouth to stifle the sound, but he couldn’t stop, and as his pathetic laughter continued, tears began to trickle from his eyes.
There was a perfect word for the sight that Mia made. I’d learned it once from some random source and the meaning stuck in my memory because of how oddly specific it was.
Tragicomic. Something that is both tragic and comedic at the same time. Or, in other words, something so sad that it was also funny.
It had seemed like a pointless word at the time.
How often did such a contradiction appear that it needed its own word?
Looking at Mia now, though, I understood why such a word existed. No other word could better describe his current state.
Only a monster would be able to ignore his distress, and I’d like to think that, despite how many lives I’d taken in the line of duty, I still didn’t yet count as a monster. I slipped my arm around Mia’s shoulders, squeezing very gently so that he could easily pull away if he wanted.
“Sorry, Melody, that won’t work.”
Beneath my arm, I felt Mia grow tense. He was clearly waiting for me to rebuke him, maybe even get angry or violent with him. It hurt, knowing that he thought me capable of such abuse, but any hurt I felt paled in comparison to what he must have experienced. This kind of instinctual reaction, where his body clearly reacted on its own without the conscious input of his mind, didn’t come from a single violent experience. No, this kind of automatic defensive response could only come from repeated exposure to violence and abuse.
I very carefully kept my tone light and directed my attention to Melody rather than Mia. “Your clothes won’t fit him. Mia’s goingto need his own clothes. So, we’ll have to take him shopping for some. How about that?”