Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott

deal?”
    We came upon her a few minutes later, sitting, like a baby in a fairy tale, at the edge of a brown potato field, her face streaked with tears and dirt, her hands filthy, her clothes—a pilly and too tight cotton sun suit—dirtier still. I walked over the cool, lumpy dirt in my bare feet and snatched her up. She smelled like the earth, like a freshly dug potato, as if she had just rolled up out of the jumbled ground.
    “You guys,” I said, turning to the two boys, who seemed nonplussed by the whole ordeal—she had been, after all, pretty much where they’d expected, just behind them.
    “You guys should never leave her like that. Do you know what could have happened to her?”
    “Well, she’s too slow,” Petey said.
    And I said, my voice growing louder, “She could have been hit by a car, Petey. She could have been kidnapped. Stolen.”
    “No one would steal her” Tony said, and the two of them laughed at the joke.
    “She could have been run over,” I said again, louder this time.
    “I can’t believe you guys did this—you’re idiots. Perfect idiots.”
    Suddenly Petey’s face changed. He stepped closer, his fists clenched.
    “Well, we kept looking for you,” he said, squinting, matching his angry voice to mine.
    “Yeah,” Tony said indignantly.
    “Where the hell were you?”
    Petey stepped forward again.
    “Yeah, where were you?” He was right under my nose and his dirty baby sister was staring down at him from my arms. He was all open mouth under Flora’s mother’s wide straw hat, and his blackened eye was half closed. His voice was loud enough to hurt my ears.
    “We kept going back to the beach and you weren’t there.” He gestured wildly, like an adult. There was spit forming at the corners of his mouth.
    “You weren’t where you were supposed to be.” He jabbed a finger at me.
    “You’re the idiot.”
    Softly, staring him down, I said, “You two left your baby sister alone in the road. It’s about the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
    First I saw the tears come into his pale eyes and then I saw his fist. I turned to protect baby June’s knee and he hit me solidly on the forearm.
    “Well, to hell with you,” he cried, sounding for all the world like his grandpa. And then he turned, skidding down the incline of dirt that separated the road and the field, and, as if for good measure, punched Daisy, too, on the shoulder, hard enough to make her step back, her face filled with surprise and pain. Then he ran, Tony at his heels.
    With June still in my arms, I went to Daisy, who was holding her shoulder and whispering, “Ow, ow, ow,” but not crying.
    A girl with brothers. I put my free arm around her.
    “Go get your bikes, idiots,” I called after the boys.
    “And bring me back that hat.” But Tony just turned and thumbed his nose, and stuck out his tongue, and the two of them kept running.
    I held Daisy tighter, and little June reached down to pat her head. In her stroller Flora began to cry, but I hushed her.
    “Daisy’s okay,” I told her.
    “You’re okay, aren’t you, Daisy Mae?”
    She nodded, being brave.
    “It’s okay, Flora Dora,” she said.
    “I’m all right.”
    I told them we would forget the beach for today. I gave Daisy one more pat on the head and then with my free hand turned Flora’s stroller around.
    “Margaret Mary,” I said, “do you think you can push the stroller while I carry baby June?
    Something tells me she’s done enough walking.”
    Daisy said sure, and then had some trouble keeping the stroller straight. I put my hand on it briefly to guide her, and then let her go on her own. It took some effort, I could tell, the smooth soles of her pink shoes slipping and sliding against the macadam, but she put all her legs and her sore shoulder into it, all of that tiny body, muscle and bone.
    “What would I do without you, Daisy Mae?” I said.
    “One day here and already you’re indispensable.”
    Back at my house, Rags was tied to