brightly, reaching for a hand towel. I wet it and soaped it up before starting to scrub.
We watched as my right hand moved back and forth and I tugged at the fabric with my left. But all that did was spread the black stain, so I crouched down on the floor to get a better angle.
I scrubbed as hard as I could and listened as her sobs quieted. If I could do anything right today, it would be this. To help my child. But as I looked up to smile at her, happy that the mark was starting to fade, black spots swam before my eyes and I had to bend my head quickly.
“Maman?” I heard her say, but her voice sounded small and far away.
“I’m just a bit faint,” I said, standing up carefully. Feeling dizzy enough to fall, I gripped the sink and closed my eyes, letting my head drop heavily forward. The darkness felt welcome, and with my eyes still closed, I turned on the water. I opened them and watched the stream coming out of the metal tap. I placed one of my hands under it, keeping the other on the sink for balance.
When I felt a bit steadier, I bent down and drank from the sink, lapping the cool water in large gulps.
“I’m sorry, Lucie,” I mumbled when I felt I could stand up again without help. I glanced in the mirror briefly, surprised by my pale reflection, then whipped my head to my left.
Lucie was no longer standing next to me.
“Lucie?” I exclaimed, turning around to the toilet stalls. Three were empty, but one had the door closed. I pulled it open, and it flew back, banging the wooden door of the next stall. Lucie wasn’t inside. “Lucie!” I called out, running in a circle in the little room. She wasn’t anywhere.
She was gone.
I ran out to the waiting room and checked the bench Victor had pointed to, but she wasn’t there, either. Neither was Victor.
“Lucie!” I shouted, rushing between the benches, all jammed with travelers, and out to the central space. “Victor!”
The weather was the nicest it had been since we’d arrived, so it was no surprise that the station was packed, but suddenly I felt as if I were swimming in a sea of bodies, when I should have been able to spot them so easily.
“Victor!” I cried out again. I sprinted through the station, bumping people as I did, and out the front door. There were rows of vendors, some desultorily trying to make a sale, others asleep. At the end of one row, I saw a man selling sugarcane and ran to him. It was Lucie’s favorite snack. I asked him if he’d seen a little French girl, accompanied by her father in a beige traveling suit, but he just smiled and held out a stalk of the sugarcane. I repeated the phrase in Annamese, but he just shook his head no. Lucie would have translated better than I did. Where was she?
Back inside the station, I looked up at the clock. The train for Vinh was due in two minutes. I ran out to the platform and studied the large group of travelers waiting. I even glanced down at the tracks, fearing the worst.
But Victor and Lucie were nowhere to be seen.
I rushed back inside to the bathroom where I’d washed Lucie’s dress, but she was not there. She wasn’t in the waiting area nearby. She wasn’t anywhere. I sat down on the bench where Victor had said he would wait for us and started to sob.
“Madame Lesage!” the stationmaster exclaimed as he approached me, handing me his handkerchief. “What is the matter?”
He tried to guide me to a waiting area, but I balked. He handed me another starched handkerchief and sat next to me.
“Can I assist you in some way, Madame Lesage?” he asked as I cried.
“Yes. I hope you can,” I managed to say, clenching his handkerchiefs in my fist. “Something just went terribly wrong.”
“I’m sure I can help,” he said soothingly. “That’s why I’m here. Please tell me what’s upsetting you.”
My words poured out through sobs.
“Just a few minutes ago I went to the washroom to clean my daughter Lucie’s dress,” I said. “To get out a shoe-polish stain. A boy, a shoeblack soliciting my husband’s business, had pushed up against her with his greasy brush, making a terrible mark on her white dress. But I couldn’t wash it out. Then, I don’t know what happened.