Matthew 18:3

The sun dapples Cory's broad freckled shoulders as she hunches forward in her plastic lawn chair. Her head is down, but twisted slightly, as if she's trying to crack her neck, or work out an algebra problem she can't quite grasp. Her hands are clasped tightly together, elbows pressing her pastel summer skirt into her thighs, and I'm pretending not to notice the way her left thumb worries away at the inside edge of her right hand. Or the way her legs shake and her flip-flops beat a staccato rhythm in the dirt.

Her posture defines her.

I'm stretched sideways in my camp chair - back against one arm, leg flung over the other and my left boot heel dug into the cup holder. Brea lounges sideways in the V made by my legs and torso, fiddling absently with the strings hanging from my cargo shorts while the grown-ups drone on and on in the heat - an indistinct buzz that hovers somewhere just above and to the left of her six-year-old consciousness. My sunglasses grant me an artificial poker face.

I'm trying to define myself with my posture.

"Cory."

She's still not looking at me. She's waiting for the moment to pass. She's waiting for this sudden mood to leave me. She's making herself small until it does. Without looking at her, I slowly arch my back until it cracks, then casually play another card.

"You're going to do it eventually." It's almost a code - dredging up in her mind a dozen other times I've gotten my way. For what it's worth, I feel like a manipulative bastard, but this is the only way I know. One of these days, I'm going to say that to her again, I'm going to push her one too many times, and she's going to look me in the eyes and tell me where to stick it. And on that day I will dance a jig.

I will hop right out of my chair, God will for one shining moment bless me with the rhythm I've never had, and a choir of Southern Baptist angels will provide the background music while I dance the kind of jig that lets the whole rotten world know that this girl is no longer afraid of it. Then, of course, the record will skip, the choir will disappear and I will sit back down - because I am too cool for that crap anyway.

Today I just wish she could meet my eyes.

"Why?" Her voice is plaintive, and after a second she looks up at me. She's also rocked back in her chair the smallest bit, an infinitesimal prelude to standing up, and I force myself to relax. Why.

Because you cannot live your life in fear. Because if you look like a rabbit the wolves will find you. Because you have been a victim once - more than once - and I have made it my mission in life to prepare you never to be one again. Because I am stubborn. Because I want to see you turn your festering wounds into battle scars that testify to your strength rather your suffering.

"Because it'll shut me up, and I think we both want that."

"Fine." She stands up and turns to grab her purse, telegraphing irritation in her quick motions, then panic in her almost stumble.

"Who's it going to be?"

"What? You're not picking for me?" Sarcasm. Lovely. A single brow arched over my sunglasses and she lowers her eyes. I don't know why people respond to that, but they do. It's like some random superpower I've inherited from my father. Like I said, I'm a manipulative bastard.

"No," I answer slowly, waiting for the last of the irritation to fade before continuing. "You get to pick - anybody you don't already know."

It's a decent party - families on picnic blankets, children flying past adults (adults dodging children's squirt gun fire) and single twenty-somethings doing the Eternally Awkward Dance of the Single Twenty-Something. She scans the crowd for a moment, and I can almost hear the wheels grinding in her head.

No men, obviously. And no cutesy-girl types - they tend to attract men. An older married woman would be safest, but the ones not talking to their husbands all seem to have their hands full with their kids. Her options dwindle as she narrows the field. Finally, she points to Cassie Williams - 29, single and known to be categorically disinterested in boys. Safe.

Cory gives me one last pleading look - which I smile and ignore - before shuffling slowly across the yard to do the impossible task I have set for her. To introduce herself to a stranger.

Head still resting on my knees, Brea twists to face me. I wince for a moment as her hip burrows itself in my stomach. Before I can recover and shift her weight, she drops a bomb on me.

"Why is Cory scared?"

Thank God for sunglasses. Thank God that on hot summer days tears can be passed off as sweat if you turn your head at the right moment. And most definitely, thank God for every little girl who will never really know the answer to that question.

Why is Cory scared.

In spite of the heat, I pull Brea towards me, tucking her head under my chin as I look for the words to not tell a six year old that we live in a world where, in the final analysis, a woman's right to say "No" exists only as long as a man allows her that right. That when "No" is ignored, some women lose the ability to say it at all. And that some of these women, who have had their voices stolen, blame themselves because they could not scream. So they hide.

"A long time ago," I tell her, finally, "Some one hurt Cory very badly. And now she's afraid of people." Brea sits up to meet my eyes - looks right through the sunglasses because grown-ups have always met her gaze and presumably always will. For a moment, I'm caught up in the way she tilts her head back and to one side like her father and furrows her brow like her mother. Then she nods.

"I'll go help." She says it casually, as if announcing her intention to go grab a soda or a cupcake, and hops down from my lap. As if it was as simple as that. Just "go help."

Cory is still moving at a snail's pace across the lawn, and Brea catches up to her easily. It's so natural to watch her little hand slide into Cory's big one. To watch Cory frown down at her, then slowly return her smile. To watch Brea's confidence melt into Cory. To know that in the middle of my friend's back yard on a sweaty Sunday afternoon, I am having my concepts of courage, faith and hope completely rearranged.