Bartleby, the Neighbor Child

Today--

Doorbell rings.

Sam, heading toward the door and seeing who's there through the sidelights, then turning to me before opening the door: What's the word on B__?

Me: The kids are eating lunch and the baby's going down for his nap, so later.

Sam answers the door, has a muffled conversation, and returns.

Me: What'd you tell her?

Sam: I told her to come back at 3.

Me: I would have said 4.

Sam: I just feel so bad for her.

Me: I know, you're right.

A few days after we moved in to this house last summer--literally I think it was the first Saturday we were in the house--the doorbell rang.  On the step were two girls, who I'd have guessed were about seven and nine.  They were carrying plastic grocery bags full of stuffed animals and wanted to know if they could come in to play.

Uncertain of the rules of suburban neighborliness (wanting to be welcoming but not, you know, child-luring), we said as long as it was okay with their parents.  We were reassured that it was; the 7-year-old gestured to the house two doors down as hers, and relieved some of our worries by announcing that she just had to check in with her mom every two hours.  The older girl--who by then had been introduced to us as "11.  She's just like a really tiny 11" (in fact, the tiniest 11-year-old I'd ever seen who wasn't an elite gymnast)--had a cell phone, so we figured that if anyone was looking for them, they'd find them, and how long would they stay anyway? 

For five hours.

Sam and I had periodic whispered conversations through the afternoon, each reassuring the other repeatedly that they did have a cell phone, that the younger girl had run home a couple of times to check in.  They eventually went home and we looked at each other and shrugged.  They came over several times over the next couple of weeks before school started, sometimes staying for hours at a time.  Once school was in session, we rarely saw the 7-year-old anymore.  The 11-year-old, whom I'll call B, periodically came by, sometimes staying past when it was totally dark out as the days grew shorter, and when we'd repeatedly ask her if she needed to get home, she'd say she just had to be home by 7:30 or so.  We'd casually ask when her family ate dinner, and she'd stare off into space and say, "Oh, lots of times I don't eat dinner, but sometimes I like broccoli."  (Though in truth, she didn't seem malnourished, just petite.)  Her house is about 5 houses down from ours.  One day I met her mother, who seemed pleasant, preoccupied, and completely unaware that she'd ever been to our house when I mentioned it.

One night in February, we'd had a very busy week and I'd spent a couple of evenings squeezing in preparations for Gillian's birthday on Saturday.  Sam was either working really late or maybe he was out of town (?).  It was the night before the party, and I'd spent hours nagging at the girls to pick up their toys.  B was there for one of her interminable visits.  Literally, one that seemed as if there were no end point from her perspective (though she was usually no trouble, so it wasn't exactly a problem).  B even helped the girls put some toys away, commenting aloud repeatedly within my hearing that they sure weren't doing a very good job and that she was doing a lot of the work!  I thanked her heartily.  But then, just as I was getting the girls' dinner onto the table, I looked into the playroom and all of the bins of toys that the girls had agonized over putting away for the past several hours had been dumped into the middle of the room.  Fairly exasperated, as well as exhausted and facing several more hours of party preparation without the setback, I asked who had done it, and when it turned out it was B, I asked her why.  Not in a mean way, but in what I'm sure was an openly distressed way.  And I told her it was time to go home for the evening since we were going to eat dinner.

B didn't come back for a while, though we saw her every day at the bus stop and things seemed to be fine.  The girls invited her over to play some time, and when she didn't, I assumed that either I'd scared her off (in my guiltier moments) or that she had simply outgrown them (she had turned twelve--12!--by then and surely the age difference must have felt big to her).  Then, suddenly, a few weeks ago, she started turning up again, more grocery bags full of toys in arms.  If we are about to have a meal or the baby is going down for a nap (sacrosanct work time for me), we tell her it's time to go home for a while and sometimes she goes out onto the sidewalk and sits in front of the house waiting to be invited back in after the meal/nap or on the lookout for one of the other kids in the houses near us.

I really don't know what to think about poor B.  She's a sweet kid.  An incredibly young 12 with her bags of baby dolls and toy bottles and stuffed animals.  She has an unusual spaciness about her.  Here's a conversation we often have with her:

Me (at about 5:55): B, we're going to eat dinner in a few minutes, so it's time to go home.

B, looking off into the distance: Yeah, I have to be home at 7:30.

Me: No, we're going to eat dinner at 6:00, so it's time to go home now.

B: Yeah, I have to be home at 7:30.

Naturally, this reminds me quite a bit of Melville's scrivener.

But as with Bartleby, I can't help but wonder and worry some about what's going on inside of this kid.  Once, after seeing B sitting on the sidewalk a few doors down and then seeing she was gone a few minutes later, AC mused, "Wherever B is, I think she's lonely."  I wasn't sure if this was just because AC wanted us to find B and invite her back in, or if it was a profound observation about B, but it certainly rang existentially true.  

She plays with the girls pretty well.  Her only really annoying habit is sometimes announcing within my hearing how fun it would be to do something that the girls can'd do at that moment (like play outside, at a moment while I am getting dinner and can't go out with them), and then when I say we can't do that right now, she plants the idea with each girl to have them come and ask me about it (which leads then to disappointment on the part of the girls where there would have been none).  And sometimes she has ideas about doing things that aren't really good ideas for the girls at their age (playing with cups full of water in their bedrooms to make playmobil pools, etc.)--just because she is older.  But she's not an unkind child.  She's just a mystery, and questions are repelled with a bland staring off into space and answering with a non sequitur.  

We usually have her go home at mealtimes instead of inviting her to eat with us.  At first I wondered if this was inhospitable, but I also thought it was necessary to establish some boundaries where she did go home.  Still, it's all so odd.  I'd vaguely considered asking her if everything's okay at home--she mentioned that her mom is at home, which somehow made everything even stranger and sadder--but her parents seem nice, so I don't think there's anything truly wrong. She just seems so forlorn.  Ah, humanity.