cracks and fissures pt 2

So I've talked about her before, this little girl who breaks my heart but what I haven't talked about is how cruel she is to M, who worships her, talks about her incessantly, always setting aside little treasures to bring her, allowing her good days to rise and fall on this other girl's mood. She told me the other day she brings her presents so she likes me mama, I just want her to like me mama and why doesn't she like me mama i try so hard. And I saw myself and a thousand girls in her and I wanted to pull the car over on the freeway and cry because there will be a lifetime of this and I can't believe it starts so soon.

Little girls can be mean, hurting little girls even more so. Nearly every day M will tell me her latest heartache, ______ was mean to me today, the next day _______ spit on me (note to little girl, you do not spit on my kid.) I know this little girl is in pain, the sorrow hangs heavily on her face but she's learning, she's learning so soon the art of cruelty, the masterful way words can punish and wound. It's not her fault and yet she wounds my girl all the time and no matter how many times M and I have gone round and round, from the trying to remember not everyone feels the same way to sometimes we all have bad days to M, my baby girl, you simply do not deserve to be treated like this and there will come a point where you simply will have to stop trying and I'll be right here when you do.

And it wounds. It wounds because she's not yet four. It wounds because every day I leave her to defend herself and she can't quite figure out how to do that, how to let the nice girls matter as much as the one whose attention she wants the most. I've talked to the teachers, I've even talked to the little girl but words are small, they are little scraps of paper blowing around the windy playground sticking to the fence. They blow and swirl around my girl and yet every day she tries again, her wide open heart runs straight up to her and waits to see if she'll be turned away. She catches my eye in those moments, the ones I'm there to catch and I see her face fall. Today I went to her and gathered her in my arms, the other little girl watching us and while part of my wanted to gather them both my arms are not quite built for two.