Suffering

I know everyone suffers, the girl tells me. She’s seven or eight years old, chubby in the way kids sometimes are right before a growth spurt. Jean shorts, blue t-shirt, curly black hair. Her mom just went into the grocery store and asked me to make sure the girl didn’t get kidnapped. The woman seemed normal enough, but I don’t know her or the girl. I was just walking to my car with a bag full of zucchinis and bread and yogurt when the mom stopped me, asked me to watch her kid for a few minutes. What could I say?

So here I am, sitting on the sidewalk outside the store with my brown paper bag of groceries next to me, and the girl is talking about how her father died two months ago. She describes his hospital room with the dinky TV, the crisp white sheets, the tubes snaking in and out of his body, the nurses who frowned when they looked at her dad but smiled when they looked at her. He got his own room because he was dying, she says. Then she talks about suffering, how her dad suffered, how her mom suffers now. She’s familiar with the word, it seems. She asks me if I’ve suffered, and I nod. She asks if I’m suffering now. I’m not sure, I tell her. I’m sad sometimes, but I don’t know if that’s the same thing. Me neither, she says. We stay quiet for a while, watching the sun set behind the car dealership to the west as people come and go from the store, in awe of all we’ve lost.