A Snapshot of Kansas City

     The skies had been gray for days, and the threat of rain hung heavy in the air. It was the last day of my visit and I found myself sitting at the River Market Emporium. Exhausted, I stared in no particular direction waiting for my friends to join me. As I sat with my hands wrapped around a hot coffee mug, my attention was drawn to a young family seated at a table to the right of me. The man is barely twenty with his hair pulled back in a long, dark braid, a star tattoo visible on his neck. Anger is emanating from him like steam from dry ice. The woman, presumably the mother, sits across from him completely mesmerized by her cellphone and seemingly oblivious to the children. Next to the table is a double stroller. I thought what a clever design it was. The older child, a girl of no more than two, was sitting in a basket next to the man and was elevated higher than the younger child who sat in a basket facing the older sibling on a lower level. My awareness was pulled to their table by the stirrings of the older child in the stroller. In my sleep deprived state I felt nostalgic and wistfully watched the needy child with a certain expectation.
     The sweet scene is suddenly shattered with a horrible flick of the hand. As if in slow motion, the child in the elevated seat moves her hands to hover over her ears; eyes wide, a shudder moves from her head, vibrating down the length of her body. A sudden picture of Munch's Scream flashes across my mind. The man’s hand has come and gone so fast I thought for a moment I had imagined it. I jerk my head in his direction and we make eye contact. His disdain for my judgment, my shock, my gender, is palpable and I glance away in fear. My eyes move back to the child, her mouth is quivering, her eyes are filled with tears and my heart breaks. The man leans over and yanks the bonnet down on the stroller to shield himself from the child he has just punched in the ear. With the movement I hear “Don't you cry” and he gets up to leave, my assumption is to go to the bathroom. I'm stunned at having witnessed such a twisted, intimate scene when I remember the mother. My hopes are suddenly buoyed for the child as I look to her for some kind of justice, but I quickly see that will not happen.

“The eye never forgets what the heart has seen.”~an African proverb

I will not forget that child.