Fresh Air

There was this kid leaving the supermarket and when he passed the security guard he said “Thank you” to him in a fainted voice.
I was looking in my purse for the shopping list.
The security guard was busy checking the shoppers’ bags and took him a while until he looked towards the kid and then he said ‘Hey’ but by then the kid was out of the store and into the mall, walking steadily and he did not hear the ‘hey’.
‘What did he do?’ I asked the man in uniform, on half an impulse to hurry and get the boy. 'Nothing' he said. ‘Is he homeless? ‘ I asked while moving a step towards the outside of the store at the same time with the guard and glancing together at the small hunched back and the blond short hair of the very skinny child. He must have been about 8 or 9 years old, wearing a stripy polo shirt that seemed too large for him and completely inappropriate in the bitter cold of a rainy winter day like that one. ‘Yes’ the man said ‘I think he is homeless. But the problem is that he has a plastic bag he’s sniffing from’ he added. ‘One day I snatched it from him and right now I had no time to try. I'm too busy' he said, while stopping a tall African young man and a red haired girl to look into their backpacks. He was talking to me while doing his job, looking in shopping bags instead of looking at me. Then he stepped again outside for a second and pointing in the kid’s direction: ‘If you look carefully, you’ll see him sniffing right now, after catching some distance from me. Damn!’ he said.
‘I’m gonna go and snatch it from him myself' I said all of a sudden, feeling that it was some sort of obligation to do so, since the security guard could not leave his post.
I almost ran and caught up with the kid few meters down the road. He was with half his face in a small plastic bag and did not see me; I had to pat him on the shoulder.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked stupidly, not knowing how to start such a conversation with a 9-year-old. He looked up at me.
He was very skinny, shivering with cold and his eyes were a pale blue grey, rimmed with a bit of a purple shadow, looking very tired and although I know it sounds pathetically tacky, looking extremely sad and hopeless. ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked quickly, before he had a chance to answer anything, hoping that he would say ‘yes’ and I’ll gain some time in order to find a way to take that plastic bag from him. I was ready to buy him some warm food somewhere if I could convince him to take it from me. He followed my gaze and hurriedly he scrunched the bag in his fist and slid his had in the front pocket of his blue jeans. He was wearing quite clean clothes for a homeless kid and it looked to me that they were his own clothes, but it seemed like he had shaded few kilos and now they were hanging on him like a plump kid’s clothes on a skinnier one.
‘Am I hungry?’ he stoled after me instead of an answer, maybe because he was trying too to gain some time until he could make up his mind about this woman in a warm coat and what possibly she could want from him.
‘Why are you sniffing that rubbish?’ I asked, remembering meanwhile how he thanked the security guard at the supermarket and assuming that the man allowed him inside to nibble on some fruit or allowed the poor little devil even to steal a bun or a croissant. ‘This stuff is going to kill you’ I said, with the certitude that he had been told that before, even if the only other one would have been the security guard. I was searching frantically in my mind for something – I do not know what exactly, a way to try to scare the habit out of him while all my logic was fighting against that useless idea. But what else could I do.
‘So you must be aware that this stuff is going to kill you’ I said again. He sort of nodded quietly and continued to stare at me, his tiny back glued against a big, cold window, displaying dozens of shoes. He looked up and down the street a couple of times, undecided if he should run away or maybe ask the passers by for help.
It broke my heart to look at him. My chest was so full of pity, I felt like drowning in it.
‘Do you really want to die?’ I went on, and he shrugged his shoulders in a way that said clearly ‘So what!’
What would he know about death anyway at that age, I thought in despair, realizing that I made no progress and I wasn’t helping. Feeling as helpless as he must have felt; thinking of his parents and hating them for what they must have done to make him do what he was doing at such a tender, hopples, fragile age. And then I had an idea that at the time felt right.
I said: ‘ But do you know how much it hurts to die like that? You’ll wish you were dead already. It hurts more than it hurts if somebody is beating you with a big bat; much more than it hurts to fall from a bicycle in full speed; it hurts more that it would hurt if someone would pull out your hair strand by strand, or your teeth, one by one for days and days without even stopping. It hurts so bad this kind of death, that you would do anything to make that pain go away. You would gladly give away all things that you like the best, just to make that pain go away. You would give a million away if you had money, just to make that pain stop and if you had the coolest bike in the world, you would give it away too, just to make that horrible pain stop. That is not going to be a quick death. You are not going to close your eyes and bingo! you are dead. No. It's going to last for days and days and days. Even if they take you to a hospital and the doctors will try to help you, it will still hurt and hurt and the doctors cannot make all that death pain go away entirely, no matter how hard they try. And after a while they will have to give up on you.’

I was threatening a little kid with stupid words, not even knowing if he really was listening to them or if he grasped any of the meaning. I was determined to terrify him; but was I? I had no idea.
‘I saw that before’ I said ‘ because I am working in a hospital, you know’ I lied.
He continued to look at me and his eyes grew wider, his mouth slightly opened. Maybe in his little mind this woman was crazy and he was more afraid of her lunacy than he was of her meaningless words. I was thinking to scare the hell out of him and the only thing I knew children of that age feared, was pain.

Pain made him find refuge in the dizzy world of sniffing. Pain was what he tried to avoid when he filled his lungs with those fumes. The pain of being abused, or neglected or abandoned or whatever had happened in his little life that nobody cared about for the moment, but me and some young security guard from a supermarket.

‘You know what?’ I said. ‘You must give me that bag. It will only kill you and I am trying to stop you dying tonight’ I said. ‘Then you will not feel the pain of dying at least another day or two, you know. It can happen any day. You never know when it could happen. Might be today or next year, but it will happen for sure. Unless you give up on that stuff.’
He nodded again, this time a bit more energetically but not entirely convinced, of course.
I went back to the innocent, motherly conversation and asked him again if he was hungry. ‘Not really’ he said. ‘Not right now, anyway’ he mumbled. I thought of the “Thank you” he addressed the man in uniform. 'What about later?’ I asked. ‘I dunno’ he said. ‘Maybe. Can I have some money then, please?’
‘I’ll give you some money if you give me that bag.’ I said. His hand moved in his pocket.’ He shook his head in disaccord. ‘No’ – he whispered. ‘Look, it’s a fair deal” I said. ‘I give you some money, you give me the bag’ I said. He looked down and mumbled something. ‘What did you say?’ I asked. ‘How much?’ he whispered and then looked down again, unsure and miserable. ‘5 buck’s I said. He reflected a few seconds. His hand came out from his pocket with the bag, hesitantly, reluctantly. Then it went back in. Then came back out with the bag still held onto tight. He did not raise his arm, but kept it along his hip, still looking down. I pulled a bill of 5 from my purse. He still didn't budge. Then he looked up at me again, for just an instant, then down again and without a word handed me the bag, without taking the money. I grabbed his hand and deposited the five in it. He closed his skinny, little fist on it and did not put his hand back in his pocket, waiting for me probably to change my mind and take the money back, now that I had the bag. A terrible scent of glue was emanating from it as I was holding it in disgust, with two fingers. ‘You can go now’ I said. ‘ Do not try to follow me, because I'm not going to chuck it here so you can get it back from some rubbish bin’ I said. 'I’ll throw it away somewhere far away, after you are gone’ I said. He nodded, still not moving. I patted his shoulder. ‘Go now.’ ‘Thank you’ he said. ‘Bye’. He walked away.

Back to the supermarket I went. The security guard was still checking bags randomly. I handed him the bag asking him to discard it somewhere inside the store. My hand stank from it. The man took it in surprise: ‘ How did you managed to do that?’ he asked, looking outside to see if the kid wasn’t running after me to get his gooish stinking chemicals back. The kid wasn’t there. ‘ No, really, how did you manage to take it from him?' he asked.
‘I bought it’ I said. ‘Do not put yourself in danger’ he said fatherly and that made me smile. ‘How much?’ he asked. I told him. ’You did a good thing’ he said. ‘Bought him a few hours of fresh air’ he added.

That was true.
All I could do was buy that kid few hours of fresh air.