Lots Lost

I've been thinking a lot lately about the lots we have in life.

Collectively, it all boils down to a very simple soup. We are born, and we die. Some of us have more days than others. Others have more days than meals.

There was a house, once, in southern California. It’s not there anymore. It was sold, and I’m assuming whoever bought it had plans of building a bigger, better house on the property because now there’s just an empty lot where the original house once stood. Pieces of it are still there, rubble, but mostly it’s just weeds and wind. A forgotten little pocket in the world.

The house that was there was owned by my father’s girlfriend. They sold it before the economy went south and moved north, to Oregon. I’ve only been to southern California once since they moved, but I made it a point to go visit the little house while I was there. I knew it wouldn’t be the same; I knew that Riverside county was ground zero for the country’s economic and housing collapse, but I wanted to see the house just the same, to remember the way things used to be.

Imagine my surprise then, when I showed up and all I saw were weeds, waist high. The people I was with wanted to leave, didn’t see the point in staying, but I thought I’d get out. Walk around a little bit. Reminisce.

And so I did, envisioning where the different rooms of the house used to be. It wasn’t a big place. One floor, two bedrooms, one bath. Like I said, pieces were still there. The foundation especially made it easy to see what the space used to look like. Used to be like. Here was the living room, where many a party was had. Here was the spare bedroom, where after overindulging at said parties, I would often stumble to and crash out. And here, in the bedroom my father and his girlfriend used to share, was now nothing but a purse laying on its side among the weeds.

A purse, small and brightly colored.

As I knelt down beside it, I could see that it had been emptied, that its contents lay in disarray all around. By the way it looked, it was the kind of bag a young girl might carry. Somewhere to put these hair elastics, this small make up kit, all those different types of lip gloss.

Who would take a little girl’s purse, I wondered. Clearly no one so young would be carrying much money, if any at all. Is that really how bad things had gotten, where even little girls were now targets to be robbed?

And then I saw her. Not ten feet away. Mostly hidden in the weeds, but I could tell by the way she was laying, her shoes unnaturally positioned and unmoving, that she used to own a purse. Small, and brightly colored.

I stood up, realized that things are always much worse than we care to ever see or think about, and called 911.

When the police arrived, they questioned me, wanted to know what I was doing there, how I found her, if I had touched anything. I don’t remember much of what was said; I was in shock about what I had stumbled upon, but I do recall one of the officers saying that it didn’t look as though the girl had been the victim of any sexual assault. As if that were something unexpected that we could all take a moment to be glad about.

What is this world that we live in, where the absence of sexual violence in a murder scene is a delightful surprise? Where being killed and robbed is an everyday occurrence? Where a little girl’s lot in life is literally abandoned and filled with weeds?

I don’t know who you were, little girl with the small and brightly colored purse, but I want you know that there used to be a house in the place where you died. It was warm. It was safe. I’m sorry it wasn’t there when you needed it.

I’m sorry my friends and I went to eat and drove around for a while before we found you. I’m sorry we weren’t there in time to help.

But most of all I’m sorry that the world we are born into is one where stories like yours, and now mine, happen.

That anyone’s lot in life should be so very little.