Ruby was written after my time in Paris, based on my experience of looking after a four year old dealing with grief. It was a very emotional experience writing this story, as it demanded me to reflect on a very difficult time for both me and Ruby.

Her fathers’ thick French accent filled the kitchen of their top floor apartment, the windows to the balcony were swung open and the white cotton curtains waved at me, permitting glimpses of Le Marais below. “Ruby!  Remember the people downstairs!” He would shout every 10 minutes, as she stomped and danced, a caged animal. She was tiny, only four years old, with manic curly blonde hair that stuck out at awkward right angles to her face, a mane I would continually try to tame in the mornings before school and fail, much to her father’s disdain. Her arms and legs were twigs, yet she boasted a robust confidence of invincibility. Her father turned to me and continued, “Her mother was Muslim, and Ruby wanted to go to the burial.” I nodded, producing an empathetic smile, encouraging him to go on and trust me with his story. “We flew to Saudi Arabia and bathed the body. Ruby rubbed the oil on her and helped us wrap the body in cloth – we thought it may help her understand what was going on.” I tried to remain solemn but comforting, strong but empathetic, yet I couldn’t hide my skin prickling with goosebumps. The little girl radiated a kind of hysterical energy, normal for a four year old, but heightened by an unexplained instability in her life and emotions. Ruby felt like a fitting name for her, she was tough and resilient, bright and loud, yet remained precious and fragile.

         The conversation lasted less than an hour, breezing through routines and rules, pointing to where the school was on a map, and ‘there we go, she’s all yours from Monday’. As I stepped out onto the bustling Rue des Archives I thought I’d be overwhelmed, but the September sun washed my thoughts in a golden watercolour. Typically, I only contemplated the romantic ideals; I was living and working in the heart of Paris, and had the opportunity to help a struggling family. Enjoying the new existence I had created for myself in the last hour, I wandered down the Seine, indulging these thoughts. The water was always less green in the summer, instead an opalescent blue that winked under the caress of the sun, accompanied by the banks full of lounging Parisians, their slender bronzed arms reaching for a half full bottle of red, the other hand bringing a lit cigarette to parted lips. The Tour de Eiffel slowly revealed itself, tall behind Pont Neuf. Despite this view being sold everywhere, postcards, posters, films, it wasn’t cheapened and still managed to grip me by the stomach, holding vague promise of a life full of French clichés; espressos, croissants, cheap wine, and dingy bars.

         I slowly accustomed myself to a routine, waking in the dark and lumbering to the early morning RER. I rode it to Chatelet Les Halles and smiled at the cleaners preparing the station for another day of abuse. As I walked to Ruby’s apartment, little pockets of light stretched and reached the streets from the windows of the Boulangeries. The sleepy bakers were setting out spreads of crusty breads and yellow glazed pastries, content in quiet pride. The streets were cleaned of bottles, cans, and cigarettes, any evidence of the night before’s drunken revelry. Paris in the day felt like a guilty hangover, stowing away the memory of the excess belonging only to Paris at night. Often there were still shells of people, wired eyed, swaying their bodies to incoherent beats in the club next to the apartment, contrasting the safe domestic scene I’d intrude upon. Ruby sat on a stool at the kitchen counter, her usual frenzied energy replaced with a quite calm, eyes falling heavy with every blink as she picked languidly at a cheese and egg crepe, hair dishevelled, and looking even younger in her baby pink pyjamas. Her father would rush past me out the door as I entered, briefcase in hand and suited. I’d dress her slowly, brushing through her hair, sometimes plaiting it at her request and adding her favourite clip. Soon we’d be walking hand in hand to the bus stop, and as she slowly came to consciousness, the type of night she had before would begin to stir. It manifested itself in angry sighs, rolling eyes and I don’t love you’s. Or it was animated plans for our afternoon together, and excited exclamations about Bastille twinkling in the morning sun. But always, in both the good and bad, there were dreams of Mummy.  

The summer dissipated and the air grew cold; the leaves had dropped. I kicked them with my boots as we walked hand in hand back from school, elation unchanged since the age of the child clinging to my side. We squinted and smiled in the dappled light, playing whatever game her intricate mind could dream up, our rosy cheeks and misty breath catching in the warm womb colours of autumn. After skipping through the cobbled side streets of the 2^nd arrondisement we reached Place de Vosges, her favorite park, and played hide and seek. I grumbled and roared in my best pirate impression ‘Where be my Ruby!’ in reaction she squealed in delight and ran as fast as her oversized wellingtons could take her, giggling the whole way until she found a bush big enough to hide in. I followed, stomping, and when I found her she would scream, run into my arms and cling tightly around my neck. In these moments I would forget, and so would she, that she was a child grieving for her mother. However all the anger, emotion and confusion came flooding back at the tiniest of triggers. After our hide and seek game she slipped in the thick mud, and I caught her just before she fell. She was silent and stared at me with furious intent; so fierce it conjured up guilt for not letting her fall, in her eyes she didn’t need me. Instantly I was out of control, at the mercy of a feverish four year old. She scratched, hit and cried, incredibly angry at the fact that I cared about her. She didn’t want to rely on me; if she relied on me she may lose me.

When we finally arrived home, after navigating our way through busy Parisian backstreets, she was still furious. In the shower she sunk, her miniature body folding, and wailed uncontrollably as the water hit her back and splashed off her. I tried to comfort and console, asking, naively what was so painful, and offering petty comments of sympathy ‘it’ll be okay Ruby, come on, come out’. As soon as they left my mouth I realized how empty, futile, and meaningless they were. If I moved closer, her wailing intensified and she screamed at me with such pain and fear and hurt, that all I could do was leave her alone. So I let her cry, she longed and craved for maternal arms around her, but wouldn’t allow herself to accept them, I wasn’t her mum and she was all too aware that no one ever would be. So I cried in the kitchen, while she cried in her room, fearing her father would return from work and realise how inadequate I was in caring for his daughter. I eventually managed to coax her out of her despondency with promises of puzzles and piano, anything to distract her from the incurable anguish she was feeling in that moment. She never forgot, of course. As she danced to me playing her favourite song on the piano, her whole body lifting up side by side, one leg then another, a Cheshire cat smile on her tired and tear stained face, she admitted things I thought were impossible for a four year old to think. ‘I want to die, Lauren. I don’t like living.’ The honesty and sincerity of the way she muttered this, paired with the slightly out of tune piano playing an upbeat nursery rhyme, created such an intense dissonance within me that I too felt like sinking.

Even though many days descended into similar scenarios, I persevered and trusted that she was adjusting to me. That maybe as the summer breezed through Paris, bringing everything it rustled into illumination, Ruby’s stern countenance may alleviate. Maybe soon we would be able to laugh together. Maybe I would be able to watch her grow; the school pick-ups filled with stories of Ruby’s kind and gentle nature with her friends, her manic moods swings becoming infrequent and maybe even beginning to trust me. I wish I could say that happened. Instead, the anxieties of the endless arduous days manifested themselves in my dreams, where my sleeping conscious became a tape reel playing days out of picnics under the Tour de Eifel, skipping down the seine, and Ruby smiling. This made the mornings only more difficult when the reality of our relationship hit me with full force, knocking the hope out of my lungs, and leaving me gulping for breath.

I must remind myself of our wonderful days, too. It seems to be inherent to human nature to bury blissful memories in favour of unearthing those that are tinged with guilt. One day stands out, in the middle of December, when I took her to a Christmas fete outside Hotel de Ville. We flitted like sprites down Rue de Rivoli and marveled at the window displays full of glitter, catching like fairy dust in the twinkling lights. The bustling crowd diluted the speakers, making the voice of Bing Crosby ethereal as it swirled in the frosty air around us. Ruby stood, her faced pressed up against the glass, staring into the shining eyes of a huge mechanical deer blinking back at her. We stuffed chocolate tasters into our mouths and found a beautifully lit merry-go-round, illumed in festive colours. ‘It’s your choice, which one is your favourite?’ I said, beaming down at the ball of radiant excitement that clung to me. She climbed into a regal princess carriage and I followed, observing the lights of Paris turning into one long iridescent strip as we began to circle. There were so many moments that I hoped one day she may reminisce upon nostalgically. She had allowed herself to enjoy it. Soon, however, the guilt of enjoying the day with me rather than her mother, showed itself. When her dad returned home she proceeded to let him know that she in fact hated me, and hadn’t had fun at all. She picked around her food, and scowled at me over her plate.

The next month we found ourselves locked out of the house after a particularly icy walk home in the midst of a brutal Parisian storm. I took her hand and we skipped to my favourite café to order their famous Chocolate Chaud. We sat in the window, the sky was already turning dusky, the intense moody blue contrasting the light grey of Hotel de Ville opposite us, lit from underneath.  The waiter indulged Ruby’s excitement, ‘Are you ready? I’m not sure you’ll be able to finish it!’, creating an even giddier and determined four year old. He produced a small china jug of silky melted chocolate and a small cup of hot milk, we poured it in and watched the colours swirl around each other, eventually becoming a dark brown thick concoction. We chatted about holidays and unicorns. She grinned at me with a thick line of chocolate framing her little mouth and I laughed, properly laughed, not an indulgent laugh, but a laugh among friends. There were days like these and I must remind myself of them.

However, they were few and far between. As she grew, and when you are four each day is a milestone of growth, the days became more difficult. Resentment was growing between both of us. I felt anger and subsequent guilt at her and her Father’s lack of appreciation for me and her behavior and anger grew uncontrollable. Public meltdowns on the bus and lashing out violently became part of our daily routine. I found Ruby had attached me to the idea of the evil step-mothers in her fairytales, something that felt so far from what I had intended and so unnatural to me. She was making sense of the situation the only way she knew how, as she came to terms with the finality of the loss of her mother. I was losing any grasp of a relationship, any bond we had formed felt like small shards of glass slipping through my fingers, pulling and snagging on broken and bleeding skin. In between the few days similar to the Fete and the Café, were days of frustrating difficulty.

I learned that four years old is the perfect age for the kind of sorrow and anguish felt in grief to burn deeply. Ruby had spent the first two years of her life nestled in her mother’s bosom, completely dependent, an instinctual and necessary love. Over the next two years the relationship transforms and evolves so suddenly. The ability to converse, laugh and learn about each other creates an all encompassing kind of love and moulds the person you grow to be. The realisation that this mutual adoration is lifelong makes it only sweeter. When that’s taken away, at that perfect age, it’s like losing a limb. All the love Ruby had for her mother was coursing through her with no where to go, gathering into a bundle of confused and tangled emotions she couldn’t comprehend. She was trying to understand herself without a mother, which is like trying to understand how a huge oak grew without the knowledge of seeds, sun and rain. She was so lost in a vast ocean of endless questions about herself that, as much as I tried, I couldn’t even begin to help her answer them.

Seven months had passed since that first meeting with her Father, and it was time for me to return to England. It was a rushed and awkward goodbye, but Ruby reassured me that she’d have a gift for me when I came back, that she loved me, and would miss me. So despite the days we spent together curled up on the sofa watching Disney movies, or the afternoons chasing each other through the park and giggling uncontrollably, or the evenings, over dinner, where she would teach me new French words and laugh at my inability to roll my r’s sufficiently, my overall memory of our time together is one of pain and struggle, anxiety and dread, and I guess overall guilt. She most likely will not remember me, I was a mere 7 months in her life, not significant enough to leave it’s mark on her four-year-old memory, and if she can, I was just one, in probably many to come, that left her.