My eleven-year-old daughter had a choir performance, but both my husband and I were working on a weekday, so there was no one to take her. She is a pretty independent girl, goes to school and choir practice on her own, she knows where to take the bus, and there was a direct bus to the House of Culture where they performed. Monica herself was determined to get to and from the concert without any problems. Her husband drew a rough diagram of the bus stops for her, so that she could get to the right place on the way back, and Monica
claimed to have understood everything perfectly. And then, at seven o’clock in the evening, she gives me a call. She was crying, and it was impossible to understand the words, it was almost impossible to calm her down over the phone.
– Mommy, I got on the wrong bus! I don’t know where I am, and I have no money for the fare.
My heart goes straight to my heels. My daughter is crying, she can’t explain properly how it happened.
– Maria took me to the bus stop, but I went the wrong way. The conductor told me I was going the wrong way…
– Can’t you stay in the same bus and ask the conductor to go the other way?
– I got off,” Monica sobbed. – I don’t know where I am. There’s only a bus stop and a booth here.
I realize now that I should have asked my daughter to find the name of the stop and the bus route to find it, but I was just as frightened and confused as a lost child. I wondered if I should call my husband or drive by myself along the bus stops and look for my daughter.
– Mom, wait,” Monica calmed down a little, sniffing her nose.
She put the phone away, so that I could hear only the indecipherable mumbling of a few voices. It made me feel even more scared. I didn’t know who could approach a frightened, defenseless daughter in such a state. After a minute, she spoke again. Her voice still sounded crying, and she spoke with a stuffy nose, but with relief.
– Mama, the lady who sat by the store gave me money for the fare, and transferred me to the other side, where the stop is at home.
– She did? Thank God!
I was still sitting there on pins and needles and exhaling a little bit when Monica called from the bus and then from our stop, asking to talk to her while she went home.
– That aunt,” she recalled, “I think she was homeless.
– What makes you think that?
– She was sitting with a kitten behind her and a box of money behind the store. I didn’t even see her at first, but she came out crying and told me to take as much from the box as I needed for the bus home.
That really shocked me. A man who was surviving on those pennies himself, the change that others might have thrown around, shared with a stranger child in distress. Neither the conductor, who knew that the girl went the wrong way, nor the cashier from the store thought to help, but that woman did it even though no one asked.
