Her name was Malarie
By Sally Friedman, Special Writer
Her name was Malarie.
She was thin and unsmiling, with remarkably sad eyes for an 8-year-old child. Malarie was our Fresh Air Fund child for two summers.
The concept was simple enough: We’d give an inner-city New York child the experience of fresh air, both literally and figuratively. We’d share daily life, some special times. Our three daughters, then 5,7, and 9 were positively ready for their summer sister.
So on a steamy June afternoon decades ago, we were part of the crowd scene on a train platform in Trenton as two dozen Fresh Air kids, and several organizing adults, sorted out who went with whom.
The youngsters all wore ID tags, but Malarie’s was turned backwards. So only when the crowd thinned did we spot this little girl with the perfect pigtails, looking so forlorn.
I remember leaning down to hug her – an instinct – and how she stiffened.
Malarie wasn’t ready yet for hugs from strangers. She had to look us over and decide how to handle us. In that instant, I fell in love with this spunky child.
I wish I could report that everything smoothed out instantly, and that Malarie bonded with us in a flash. But that would be the storybook ending.
Malarie was initially homesick, a little scared. Plunked down in our world, she was without her moorings.
”It’s too quiet here,” she told me one night when I was putting her to bed. And I understood that quiet could itself be disquieting to Malarie.
I’d be hard-put to explain how and when the thaw happened, when Malarie melted into our household and its rhythms that first summer. But one day, there she was, out on the lawn in a garden hose water fight with our daughters, giggling, shrieking and suddenly altogether fine. I exhaled.
There would be trips to the seashore and dutiful outings to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, which were frankly less thrilling to Malarie than our nightly trips to the local ice cream store.
There would be excursions to the local library where Malarie took out her first chapter book ever, carried away like pirate’s booty in those little hands.
And there was the July 4 night when Malarie sat atop our station wagon with her host-sisters and watched the local fireworks. Her combination of mingled awe and delight remains one of those rare photos taken only by the heart – no camera needed.
When those two weeks were up, I helped Malarie pack her things. I slipped in a few gifts – pajamas, new socks and the hair ribbons that she loved.
The ride back to the Trenton train station was silent. Nobody knew what to say.
Little Malarie didn’t want to let go of my hand, and she cried when she left us that first year. She would return once more, taller, surer and more comfortable.
By then, I had learned how to coax her hair into pigtails, although Malarie told me I never got them quite right.
She counted the days until the July Fourth fireworks, and this time, cheered in delight at the most spectacular ones.
I knew that our trip to the library would come early in her visit, and that this child would actually hide her books in odd places, for fear that someone might take them away from her.
That summer, I sent her home with as many books as I thought would please her, but not overwhelm her.
There never was a third summer. Our Fresh Air child was unreachable when we tried to arrange another visit. Malarie and her mother had moved. No forwarding address.
We finally had to give up.
Amy, our middle daughter with the tender heart, cried when I told her. Jill, the oldest, was philosophical. By 11, she already had come to know the taste of disappointment. And Nancy, the youngest – the summer sister Malarie affectionately called “Squirt” – did her characteristic retreat, saying little, feeling much.
We never signed on with a new Fresh Air child. It somehow felt disloyal to Malarie. Still, I like to think that wherever she is, Malarie, now a woman, is happy and well. And I hope she sometimes remembers those summers with a family that tried to get it right.
We surely have never forgotten that first hot July 4 night when a little girl sat on the top of our station wagon, eyes not believing the flashes of magic she was seeing.
That’s why every July 4 I take a moment to say a little prayer for Malarie, Our Fresh Air child, wherever she is.