
When the shadows of winter grow long, the heart yearns for rebirth and companionship. That feeling was filtering through the whole of Sonya as she trudged through the new fallen snow.
A deepening sense of trepidation filled her as she lifted each foot past the previous. The snow made sounds of crushing agony under each step. Yet that was the only sound her ears could hear. The night air was crisp and silent. The lights of the houses mostly remain dark and mostly uninterested in the life on the streets.
That’s what it is to be alone. A world free to explore but without a home or a hand to hold what hope has one have? Sonya’s youth never was. She grew up and understood a world she was not supposed to. Her mother was the bottle teaching her how to slumber in the sun and her father was the pill who taught her how to become someone she wasn’t.
The house wasn’t a home. Her home was the streets. The streets were part friend part enemy but you could always depend on them for their moods rarely changed and never failed you. A friend was someone you knew for a time. And time was often too short.
You never trusted. Luxuries were few and far in between with hope not even existing. God had stopped listening to her but when she couldn’t remember. Days lay unnumbered behind her and the future was as far as the next corner, next car, next guy. One never risked more than that.
At 13 she was too experienced to know. At 15 she was a woman she didn’t know. At 17, she was mother of one. One she knew she couldn’t share her life with. The mother bottle, father pill make for parents that Sonya wouldn’t offer.
So, with a prayer to anyone who would listen, she laid the tightly wrapped girl with the remains of her only blanket. And with the only name she liked, Sara, she left her at the doors of the emergency room at 4:30 in the morning. With Sara she left her only childhood possession, a small doll, barely recognizable, but it was all she had. With that, she left a note. She had no time or words to say what she meant. All it said, “You are a child of God, and I leave you in his hands. Sonya Grace.”
That was over a decade ago. When you’re in a pit, the walls too steep to climb out, and the light dim at the best, you cannot last for long regardless of your will. Sonya turned to her mother, and Sonya talked with her father. They lied and they cheated her of life. You could always trust them for that.
One day, when the snow was falling quietly late in the evening, Sonya stared at the worn paper taped securely on the pole. The streetlights amber light lighting her, the paper and the snow. The words written in crayon and the picture overexposed but unmistakable.
“Have you seen my mommy, Sonya Grace?”, with a picture of a little girl with shoulder length blonde curls in a red dress with white frills holding with both hands to her chest a small doll, barely recognizable.
With her last bit of change Sonya couldn’t understand why she would, but she dialled the number. In the remains of the broken mirror, in the only restroom that didn’t care who she was, she cleaned herself as best she could. Tears flowed without understanding down her cheeks. She cried even harder as she looked with embarrassment at her attire. Determined to fail and wither into the darkness she left and yet found herself walking down an unfamiliar street.
The lights of the houses remain mostly dark and mostly uninterested in the life on the streets or the woman walking step by step with trepidation. A door opened shining a warm light onto the streets. A little girl with blonde curls rushes out to the sidewalk and stands smiling. With one hand she holds a doll barely recognizable and with the other she holds her mothers hand. Sonya is not alone.