E, it seemed, had run off. I called her name, but without lifting my eyes from the tissue paper, the ribbons. Images of large hands finding hers and leading her away, out of the store, a pink tuft disappearing around the corner and out the door flew across my mind. But still, that was nonsense, and I was busy doing this. B was sleeping in his bassinet and I should continue doing this necessary and important thing. I should for once not let myself succumb to everyday hysteria, to the thoughts of disaster that pressed themselves up against me, up against my face.

Next to the ribbons and papers the shop ladies were arranging silk wraps in a display. The wraps kept escaping their hangers and sliding to the ground, as if they were alive, as if they could run away from the ladies who were trying to hang them. E, I called out, but softly, so as not to disturb the quiet shop. E didn’t answer. The ladies continued to try to arrange the wraps. One, a beautiful blue-grey wrap, embroidered with cranes, the birds all wide wings, necks turned upwards, a flash of red at the throat, fell at my feet.

I felt I really had lost E. I couldn’t see her, but the cool silk pooled at my feet like a pond hidden in the forest, touching my bare ankle, inviting me in. E, I called softly. E, where are you? But my eyes were on the silk, not quite blue, not quite grey, a colour completely lost within itself. The cranes stared up at me with their crooked necks. I bent down to pick it up. B squirmed in his stroller, buried in a nest of pink ribbons I hadn’t realized I’d taken, his hands coiled in them, fighting. The ribbons dangerous as snakes, my baby, buried in a nest of flicking tongues.

But I continued to run my hands through the silk. The shop ladies, seeing me, laid aside the other wraps, letting them slide to the floor like so many sighs. They turned to me, their eyes newly bright. They smiled at me with their painted jewel lips. I flipped over the price tag, the number made me sick, but I smiled back at the ladies. I could smile too, like them, in my beautiful coat. I took a step towards the register, leaving B, leaving all the ribbons, leaving the baby gift in the bottom of the stroller. I took a step as if I were a crane stretching out my long wings, my feet about to leave the cold surface of the pond.

There was a commotion behind me. A voice boomed, loud and insistent. I turned to find a large carelessly dressed woman holding E by the hand. I’m looking for her mother, the woman was saying, or something like that. She was out on the street, a child out alone on the street! She was speaking French, but she could have been saying that. I let the silk wrap slide from my fingers onto the cool black expanse of a table and went to gather my daughter up in my arms. The woman glared at me, the shop ladies had lost their pretty smiles. I quickly bought the baby’s present and one of the pink ribbons and left.