John Barry: The little girl who walked through fire wants to show her pictures.
She opens a binder with her stiff, taped hands. One photo shows her posing in her cheerleader uniform, and another shows her grinning beside her mother, surrounded by Pooh bears. Then she shows a newspaper photo of a bedroom that is no longer a bedroom, just a black ashen hole.
She points out a heap of soot on the floor.
“This was my bed.”
She is 9 years old. She likes Hannah Montana, lip gloss, tiaras, macaroni and cheese, and doll babies.
She wants to know what this story is about. She is told it’s about how she got up from that bed and walked through flames hot enough to melt a television set.
It’s harder to explain to her that the story is really about the kind of child she is. She is a little mother. She is a girl who is lovingly, intuitively protective of her small baby cousins. Everyone knows little girls like her. Even at the youngest ages, they are mysteriously attuned to the profound beauty of a mother’s calling — her willingness to endure anything for her baby — even to walk through fire.
The little girl who walked through fire is wrapped in elastic, toes to neck. Hard plastic covers her face. Over her medical wrappings, she wears a Hannah Montana T-shirt and pink jeans. She is not smiling. She is remembering the fire.
Her voice is soft as a whisper.
“Everyone panicked but me.”
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