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“Tell me who you are.”
“I'm your mommy's friend," I whispered, not wanting to scare her or she'd probably wake up her mom.
Her eyebrows furrowed even deeper, whispering, almost to herself. "My mommy’s friend?”
She just stared at me for a long moment, still looking confused, then after a long time, she shrugged. “Okay. Wanna see my elephants?"
“Yes," I breathed out in relief.
She held her hand out to me and I, tentatively, took it. We walked out of the room and down the hallway. “Do you know how long elephants can hold their breath underwater?"
“I know a human that can hold his breath for four minutes."
“Yeah, but elephants can hold theirs for two hours,” she scoffed, opening her door. When we stepped inside, I was overwhelmed with elephants.
They were everywhere.
Big ones, small ones, medium sized ones. Some were statues or pictures on the walls, but mostly they were stuffed animals. All neatly organized, lined up on her white princess bed, then trailed down onto the floor.
“Wow, you have a lot of elephants.”
“I know.” She let go of my hand and pointed towards a Batman beanbag placed in the corner of the room. "Sit over there.”
I obeyed, curious what would happen next.
I'd never been around young kids. Not even when I was a kid, and especially not as an adult. I had no idea what they said, did, or thought about.
She went to a small table at the foot of her bed where there were two chairs. One of the chairs had a large, stuffed elephant in it. She scooted aside the other one and picked up a dainty, white teapot. She held it to me, showing me the yellow daisies on it. “Would you like some tea?”
“Um, yes?”
She nodded seriously, and began pouring fake tea into little cups.
"What's your name?" I asked.
She looked up at me, her hands stilling, then methodically put down the teapot and cup. Grabbing her cute pink nightgown with purple ribbons, she curtseyed. "I'm Honey Ashlyn. My grandpop named me after his orange grove farm in Florida.” She lowered her voice to whisper conspiratorially, “He also had beehives.”
“I see,” I nodded, “Nice to meet you, Honey. Isn't it a little bit late for tea?"
She scowled at me, picking the teapot back up again and shook her head. “Mommy says I can have one cup if I wake up at night and can't go back to sleep." She shot me an accusatory glance. “And you woke me up.”
“Oh, I'm sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she smiled before her little feet padded over to me. She held out a cup. "Take this."
I took it and she stared at me, her little eyebrows raising in anticipation. When I didn’t do anything but stare at it, she exclaimed, “You're supposed to drink it!”
“Oh!" I put it to my lips, panic beginning to settle in. For fucks sake, what was I going to do now? Sit here and drink pretend tea the rest of the night?
“Mmm,” I took a pretend sip, "It's delicious."
Her face lit up and a smile broke out over her face. "Thank you.” She padded back over to the table and began to pour more cups, handing out the extras to the two GI Joe dolls sitting on top of the table. “Do you think humans feel more pain than elephants?”
“I don't know much about elephants.”
“Hmmm,” she shot me a look of disapproval. “Well elephants can feel.A lot.And they have great memories.”
“Really?”