The Photographer

happen to a child? I don’t know that I ever became the person I was meant to be.
After half an hour, Piper paused the movie. She stood up and shook her hips from side to side. “Damn, Gina, I need some candy!” She looked at me expectantly.
“There’s none in the house.” I knew that to be true because I checked the kitchen cabinets from time to time. If the Straubs were running low on any staples, I would stop by the market on my way to their house and pick up the items they needed. Amelia was always so grateful for such gestures.
“Skittles.” Piper moved her hips in circles like she had a Hula-Hoop. “Woo-hoo!”
“Skittles!” Natalie chimed in, though she must have known that her parents didn’t have Skittles in the house.
“I haven’t seen any candy here.” I found myself growing irritated by Piper and her demands.
“Ice cream!” Piper high-fived Natalie.
“Girls,” I said. “Finish the movie. It’s almost ten.”
“Ice cream is a necessity,” Piper said. They continued to dance, their arms in the air, their hips bumping each other.
I caved in and gave them coconut gelato, which I’d noticed in the freezer earlier.
After the movie, I followed them upstairs, but Natalie waved me away. “We’re fine.”
“Really?” I asked.
She closed the door behind her.
Later I checked back and the light was off in Natalie’s room. I assumed that they were sleeping.
I straightened up the media room, fluffing the pillows on the sofa where the girls had flattened them down. A charm necklace had fallen in between two pillows. I assumed it was Natalie’s. It appeared that she had made the clay charms herself. One charm resembled Itzhak. One was a little heart with a zigzagged line down the middle, meant to indicate that the heart was broken.
In the kitchen, as I was pouring boiling water over a tea bag, I heard a loud scream from upstairs. I raced up the stairs two at a time and opened the door to Natalie’s room to find Natalie asleep in her bed. The pull-out trundle bed was empty. Piper was standing by the window, screaming. “There was a man! He had a knife! Help me!”
Natalie rustled in her bed, half-asleep. “What happened?”
“Shhh,” I whispered to Piper. “You had a bad dream.”
“What?” Natalie murmured again.
“Shhh.” I patted Natalie’s arm. “Go back to sleep. It’s OK.”
I tried to walk Piper to the door, but she jumped away from me and started screaming again. “No! No!” Even in the dark room, I could see the terror in her face. It wasn’t a show. “I want my mom! You have to take me home!” Piper crouched on the floor, her body in a tight ball.
“Come with me and we’ll call your mom.” I pulled her to her feet and convinced her to follow me down the stairs.
Piper and I sat at the kitchen island. She was wearing a short red nightgown that could have been described as sexy. I’ve read that young children with a heightened sexual awareness have often been abused. In fifth grade I used to sit on top of the monkey bars in a dress and underwear, blocking the path, so that the boys would likely touch my crotch when they came swinging by.
“Do you want some milk?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Do you still want to call your mom?”
She cast her eyes down.
“OK, let’s have some milk,” I said, “and then we can decide what you want to do.”
“And some cereal. Do they have any excellent cereal?”
I looked in the cabinet and found Special K and Lucky Charms, which surprised me. Piper chose Lucky Charms. I poured her a bowl of cereal and milk and placed the bowl and a spoon on the counter in front of her. I sat next to her while she ate.
Her frame of mind had shifted and she appeared to be recovering from her nightmare. “You know, you can buy a box that has only the Lucky Charms marshmallows,” she said, “and none of the cereal.”
“Wow.”
“I remember you from Natalie’s birthday party,” she said. “You were taking pictures.”
“Yeah.”
She was painstakingly collecting only the marshmallows onto her spoon. “You’re a photographer and a babysitter too? How come?”
I chose to view the question as innocent. “I like Natalie. I like her parents.”
“You like babysitting?”
“Yes.”
Piper took another bite of only marshmallows. I was struck by the definition of her lips, like a painted doll. “That’s weird,” she said.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“I saw you taking pictures of the house. Why were you taking pictures of the house?”
I didn’t realize that Piper had noticed what I was doing while they were watching the movie. I experienced a familiar sharp tug in my abdomen. I knew my intentions were pure, but others might not understand.
“It’s a beautiful house, right?”
“What are you going to do with the pictures?”
The faint smirk on her face elicited a burning sensation in my chest, similar to heartburn. “Someday when I buy a house,” I said, “I’ll refer to the pictures for ideas on how to decorate.”
“Are you buying a house?”
“Not now.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not everyone gets married.”
“You don’t want to get married?” Piper swished the milk around her bowl with her spoon.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Are you dating anyone?”
I paused. Ian would have described us as dating, but I didn’t consider sharing that information with Piper.
“I’m divorced.” Robert and Jasper were useful as a dam to block her questions.
“Then you were married before.”
“I have a son.”
“A son?”
“He lives with his dad.”
“Oh.” She licked the back of her spoon, like she was licking an ice cream cone. “Seems weird to me. That you’re babysitting. Do you need the money?”
“That’s not your business.” I stood up and returned the box of Lucky Charms to the kitchen cabinet and the milk to the fridge. “You should go back to bed.”
“D’you go out a lot?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Where do you go?”
“Wherever.”
“So you have a lot of friends?”
What are friends? I go to three birthday parties a week. That’s more socializing than anyone needs. When I lived