We were awakened last night, again, by screaming in the street. It's not that unusual and we've called 911 a dozen times or more since we moved into our South Minneapolis neighborhood seven years ago. A woman was moaning and crying hysterically, unintelligibly. I heard Mark get up and I mumbled something to him and rolled over, assuming he was going to get his phone. A couple minutes later I woke up more fully and put on my glasses and went to the window to assess the screamer -- domestic violence? Ordinary drunken argument? Prostitute solicitation gone from bad to worse?
A weeping, incoherent woman, hunched over, was running frantically back and forth in the street and another woman was standing by. I thought it might be one of our new neighbors. Flashing lights came from one direction, and suddenly the white van from next door came screeching up and parked on the wrong side of the street, too far from the curb, and a third woman got out in a hurry and ran over just as the cop arrived. Meanwhile the fire engine from a block and a half away was pulling up.
I made out a snatch of a wail: I SLAPPED HER BACK, I SLAPPED HER BACK, and I thought -- a fight? But then I saw that the weeping woman had transferred something to the arms of the police officer, not a something but a someone, a tiny someone, a girl about three years old, limp and lifeless, and the police officer turned and carried her (head hanging -- ankles hanging --) and was met by a ponytailed woman from the fire engine, and they put the baby down on the hood of our car parked in front of our house. Hands moved swiftly, a flashlight raised, poised, moved, poised, held up high, and under it hands moving, tearing paper, too nimble for me to see.
I slapped her back transformed instantly in meaning -- "The baby choked," I breathed out loud, to Mark who had come up and put his arm around my shoulders cold and bare in the breeze from the open window. The word seizure? with a question mark came up on that breeze, and I felt my own breath coming in quick pants and Mark squeezed my shoulder. My hands came up and covered my mouth and I watched in horror -- across the little girl's motionless body, the weeping woman stood in the street silently, her hands covering her own mouth.
I could not even pray or think of any words to pray. A completely incoherent and wordless thought entered my mind that only happy endings are allowed to happen on the hood of that car, because that's our car.
Suddenly the little band of people huddled around the hood of our car exploded outward, and the ponytailed woman in the FIRE tee shirt was carrying the girl up the street where an ambulance had arrived silently. If I had to guess from the equipment the woman carried, I would say she had just managed to intubate the little girl; if I had to guess from the pace the woman walked, the urgency was over, but whether it was for better or for worse I could not say. The ambulance stayed there, flooding the street with pulses of red light, but quietly, even as the police went back to their cruiser and two of the three women walked slowly back to the house next door, the house we used to live in. I thought I heard one policeman laughing softly as he spoke to his partner before the door slammed. I hoped beyond hope that this meant the prognosis was good.
The ambulance drove away and left me feeling like the world was a fragile and terrifying place. I went down for a drink of water and paced the floor in the dark, thinking how often when things are going very well for us in our little home -- and they have been going very well for us -- it is hard to see how deeply vulnerable we all are while we walk this earth, the valley of the shadow. It was a long time before I could sleep, to the steady rhythm of my daughter's breathing.
UPDATE. Mark managed to communicate with the neighbors well enough to find out that the child is apparently okay.
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