babysitting game

Ginger froze. The little girl agreed to talk, and now Ginger had no idea what to do with her. She wasn't even sure why she'd offered such a deal. She would have let the little girl smash popcorn regardless.

"What do you like to be called?" Ginger started.

The little girl frowned. She shrugged.

"Come on," Ginger said. "Do you like being called 'Girl' and 'Kid?'"

"No," she answered.

"Then give me a name or something," Ginger said.

"My dad calls me Sweets," she said.

"Do you like that?"

The little girl slammed her fist down on a piece of popcorn.

"You seem like a nickname kind of kid," Ginger said. She looked around the room for inspiration. All she saw was unfinished walls and floors and the overall ugliness and state of upheaval that she usually lived in without complaint.

"What do you think of my place?" Ginger asked her.

The little girl stared at her blankly.

"Am I boring you?" Ginger asked. The little girl nodded.

Ginger wanted to know about the girl's mother, her relationship with her father, the reasons she didn't like to speak much and what made her as irreverent as she was at age eleven. The questions were too big, though, for her to ask and for the little girl to answer. Ginger felt exhausted just from the weight of wanting to ask them. Then it occurred to her.

"Okay," she said. "I've got it. I'm going to ask you a few questions, and you answer them all and then I'll tell you what your answers mean."

Another piece of popcorn turned to dust under the little girl's fist. She nodded again.

"You're walking in the woods. Who are you walking with?"

The little girl was taken aback. She seemed surprised. She concentrated for a second and said, "You."

Now Ginger was taken a little bit aback. But, she continued the questions. The game revealed a lot about a person. Or, it revealed nothing at all. The point was to create conversation.

"In the woods, you come upon a house. What's the house look like?" Ginger asked.

"The one across the street," the little girl said. She was talking about the two-story brick house with the wide porch and white shutters. Ginger nodded in approval.

"Okay," Ginger said, and then paused for a moment when she considered the implication of asking the next question. She'd have to fudge the meaning a little, but she didn't mind. It was just a game, anyway.

"You go through the front door," Ginger said.

"Like breaking and entering?" the little girl interrupted.

"No," Ginger answered. "Like the door is open and you're allowed to enter. You go through the door and walk through the rooms and into the kitchen. Over the sink is a window. You can see a body of water. What's the body of water?"

"What's a body of water?" the little girl asked.

"Like a lake or an ocean," Ginger said.

"Like a puddle? I see a puddle," the little girl declared.

Ginger's brow furrowed.

"What does that mean?" the little girl said as she placed pieces of popcorn in a long line across the table.

"Well," Ginger started. She took a deep breath. "Whoever you say that you're walking beside in the woods is the most important person in your life."

She saw a brief snarl pass over the girl's face. She continued.

"The house represents the size of your ambition," Ginger said. She took another deep breath before revealing the meaning behind the body of water.

"The puddle...represents your...capacity to love," she said quickly. Then she smiled, pleased with herself for making up such a good answer on the fly. Yes, she thought. Why couldn't it mean that? Just because that's not how she learned the game, when she learned it, as a bar game one night.

"A puddle?" the little girl asked. She seemed disappointed. Ginger had seen her look a lot of ways, but sad wasn't one of them.

Ginger handed her the hammer. There was a time when Ginger would have said, "Puddle," too. But that was speaking to the original meaning: the body of water represented your sex drive.