She was properly suspicious of me; strange men who want to be allowed to visit little girls just turning into big girls should always be suspected.
I explained that I was the child’s uncle, Daniel B. Davis by name, and that I had a message for the child concerning her family. She countered with the statement that visitors other than parents were permitted only when accompanied by a parent and, in any case, visiting hours were not until four o’clock.
“I don’t want to visit with Frederica, but I must give her this message. It’s an emergency.”
“In that case you can write it out and I will give it to her as soon as she is through with rhythm games.”
I looked upset (and was) and said, “I don’t want to do that. It would be much kinder to tell the child in person.”
“Death in the family?”
“Not quite. Family trouble, yes. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I am not free to tell anyone else. It concerns my niece’s mother.”
She was weakening but still undecided. Then Pete joined the discussion. I had been carrying him with his bottom in the crook of my left arm and his chest supported with my right hand; I had not wanted to leave him in the car and I knew Ricky would want to see him. He’ll put up with being carried that way quite a while but now he was getting bored. “Krrwarr?”
She looked at him and said, “He’s a fine boy, that one. I have a tabby at home who could have come from the same litter.”
I said solemnly, “He’s Frederica’s cat. I had to bring him along because . . . well, it was necessary. No one to take care of him.”
“Oh, the poor little fellow!” She scratched him under the chin, doing it properly, thank goodness, and Pete accepted it, thank goodness again, stretching his neck and closing his eyes and looking indecently pleased. He is capable of taking a very stiff line with strangers if he does not fancy their overtures.
The guardian of youth told me to sit down at a table under the trees outside the headquarters. It was far enough away to permit a private visit but still under her careful eye. I thanked her and waited.
I didn’t see Ricky come up. I heard a shout, “Uncle Danny!” and another one as I turned, “And you brought Pete! Oh, this is wonderful!”
Pete gave a long bubbling bleerrrt and leaped from my arms to hers. She caught him neatly, rearranged him in the support position he likes best, and they ignored me for a few seconds while exchanging cat protocols. Then she looked up and said soberly, “Uncle Danny, I’m awful glad you’re here.”
I didn’t kiss her; I did not touch her at all. I’ve never been one to paw children and Ricky was the sort of little girl who only put up with it when she could not avoid it. Our original relationship, back when she was six, had been founded on mutual decent respect for the other’s individualism and personal dignity.
But I did look at her. Knobby knees, stringy, shooting up fast, not yet filled out, she was not as pretty as she had been as a baby girl. The shorts and T-shirt she was wearing, combined with peeling sunburn, scratches, bruises, and an understandable amount of dirt, did not add up to feminine glamour. She was a matchstick sketch of the woman she would become, her coltish gawkiness relieved only by her enormous solemn eyes and the pixie beauty of her thin smudged features.
She looked adorable.
I said, “And I’m awful glad to be here, Ricky.”
Trying awkwardly to manage Pete with one arm, she reached with her other hand for a bulging pocket in her shorts. “I’m surprised too. I just this minute got a letter from you-they dragged me away from mail call; I haven’t even had a chance to open it. Does it say that you’re coming today?” She got it out, creased and mussed from being crammed into a pocket too small.
“No, it doesn’t, Ricky. It says I’m going away. But after I mailed it, I decided I just had to come say good-by in person.”