Emily...

She had chocolate skin and short brown hair tied in tiny, matted braids, beginning to turn orange at the roots (a sign I later learned, of malnutrition). She looked up at me with lifeless, watery eyes from the arms of her sister. Her arms hung limp at her sides and her head rested lethargically on her shoulder.

-Tiens, her sister said to me. Take her.

I lifted the baby girl from the outsretch arms of her caretaker, no more than three years old herself. At first, she seemed to object to these foreign hands- their unusal coloring and funny smell undoubtedly unnerved her- and she let out a faint whimper, tightening up her face into a half grimace. But after a moment, she layed her head resignedly on my chest, too weak to protest. I had one hand on her head, covered in blisters and sores, unskillfully hidden by her thin cornnrows, and the other on her bare bottom from which dangled two thin legs.

-How old is she ? I asked her sister in Creole.
-Un an, came the reply. One year old.

At first, I wondered if I had understood her correctly. The child in my arms could hardly have passed for six months, much less twelve, weighing barely fifteen pounds by the feel of it. I wondered when the last time was she’d had anything to eat, if she could even grasp the concept of a full stomach. I could feel the congestion in her young lungs as she painstakingly drew breath after breath. I didn’t even want to contemplate what kind of sicknesses she was probably battling, what parasites were gnawing away at her insides.

-Comment li rele?, I asked. What is her name ?
-Emily, they told me fondly.

Emily. My name. Suddenly, this rag doll resting on my bosom was no longer simply another impoverished child living in a tent in the slums of one oft he world’s poorest countries. Suddenlz, we were connected. She had a name. My name.

My mind went back to seventeen years ago, my imagination painting a scene not so different from this one: another little girl, one year old, resting her head on a young white woman’s shoulder, her name also Emily. The only difference was that this Emily had just eaten a full meal, her pudgy arms and legs making her tiring to hold, a peaceful smile resting on her round, white face. This Emily would grow up never one going to bed hungry, never knowing what it is to walk barefoot over gravel roads or to sleep on a dirt floor in a tent. She woul leanr to read and the names of planets and how to drive a car. She would travel the world and own sixteen pairs of jeans just because she could. She would never have to drink muddy water from a hole in the ground to quench a burning thirst that she would never know.

In that moment, my mind fought to comprehend how two humans, both made of twent-six chromosomes, with ten fingers and two lips and the same name, born into the same world could have such vastly different experiences of it. How is it decided which Emilzy will go to Italy for vacation and which Emily will be born in a tent? Why should one eat cheesecake simply because it tastes good while the other tries to ignore her growling stomach in an attempt to find slumber?

I couldn’t find an answer to satisfy my restless heart other than maybe (at the risk of sounding cliche) it’s a bit like the wind. I mean, have you ever thought to ask why there are some areas of the world that have high barometric pressure and others that have low? I don’t think anyone can explain the why but everyone loves the result: a cool breeze. So maybe the reason why some have so much while others have nothing is so that the one can give to the other and something good can come out of it.

I don’t know. Maybe that’s a stretch. But it gives me some measure of peace so I’ll hold onto it.