It was spring now. Dee sat on the roof of a newspaper stand slurping down a recently acquired meal of chow mien and sweet and sour pork. The warm drizzle that fell on her did not bother her. March had been a terrible month for her with barely anyone out on the streets. The driving rains and storms had kept tourists away, leaving her back to scrounging what she could and shoplifting more than she cared to. The meal she ate now was one of the few decent ones she had had in a long time. A week ago she had managed to steal a bag of steamed pork buns from family of tourists. Those hadn't lasted very long after sharing them with her new feline friends, one of who was nursing a litter of kittens.

"Well, Dee," she said to herself, "you'd best start looking for dinner."

Placing the empty containers and used chopsticks back in the bag she tossed it off the roof and into a trashcan. Stretching she felt the pleasantness of warm food in her belly and suddenly felt drowsy. Knowing it was more important for her to find food than to sleep she forced herself off the roof and back onto the streets.

As she walked by the markets and curios, the hum of the shopkeepers speaking in Chinese buzzed in her head. She smiled, grateful she had managed to pick up enough to know understand some, if not all of a conversation. When they mentioned "hong hai", she knew she was the subject of discussion. Many of the shopkeepers knew her by look even if they did not know her name. In exchange of a name, they had taken to calling her "hong hai" or "red girl".

It was this name she heard now as she walked by one of the herb shops. The owner, a wizened old man swept the dust out of his store while chatting with the owner of the seed shop next to him.

{There she goes, little red girl. Do you think she has a family?} he asked.

{Doubt it. Look at her, so proud. Too proud to ask for help, to proud to beg. She wouldn't be such skin and bones if she would beg.} the woman next to him replied.

{You would rather she come in and put her little hands out and ask for money? She has money. I know she does. Before the New Year she came to me for some herbs for a cough. Paid for it even though I told her she could have them.} He paused giving the last bit of dust a flip out the door. {Look at her. Those eyes are too old for one so young.}

Dee had stopped and had been watching the exchange between the two. She blinked now as they watched her back.

{Do you think she knows what we're saying?} the woman asked.

The man gave a soft snort and waved his hand. {She's a little white child who found her way into this neighborhood less than five months ago. I don't believe she understands us any more than we understood the Americans when we first arrived.}

The woman nodded, not quite listening to the old man. She watched as the little girl's eyes flicked between the old man and her, then behind and into her shop. Turning to see if she could figure out what the child was looking at, she smiled. Arranged right behind her was a colorful display of candied lotus seeds and coconut shreds. The woman picked up a small box and held it out to the girl.

"Would you like one?" the woman asked tilting her head.

"I don't have any money," Dee replied.

Stepping into the light drizzle, the woman crouched before Dee and pressed the plastic box into her hand. "You may have it. Consider it a happy spring present, hm?"

Dee began to tremble and could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. She bit her bottom lip as she stared at the little box of sweets then looked up at the smiling woman. "Duo xie!" she said quickly before turning and running like a scared animal.

A smug smile on her face, the woman turned to the old man. {She has manners. And, old man, she understands more than you think! Perhaps if you learned to smile once in a while she wouldn't have run off like that.}

The old man snorted in amusement. {Perhaps you will learn some manners yourself and respect your elders!}

~ ~ ~ She hadn't wanted to take the box from the woman. Had the woman not pressed it on her she would not have. Taking handouts made her feel like a charity case, a feeling that she hated. Dee had prided herself that she was not like the other homeless children who she saw shamelessly sitting on a corner trying to look as pathetic as possible and asking for money. The money usually went to them buying useless items that could do nothing for them on the street. Once in a while she would see them buy food with some of the money. More often than not it went to buying drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol from an "enterprising" older homeless person.

Squeezing through the window, she hurried over to her bed, pulling off her wet sweater in exchange for a dry one. Her tears had started the second she was through the window. Wrapped in her blanket of tied together sweaters, she rocked back and forth looking at the box. People had offered her things in the past, but never insisted that she took the item. Usually the person would push it toward her, not wanting to get too close and then say something derogatory in Chinese about her if she reached for it. This had turned her off on accepting handouts and she stuck to her shoplifting and pick pocketing.

"Get a hold of yourself, Dee!" she reprimanded. "It's just a box of candy. Not like she offered you anything like some warm clothing or a chance to have a real bath."

Yet the woman had offered sincere kindness. Dee frowned. No one had been that nice to her since... She couldn't think of a time when anyone had been that nice to her. Her brow wrinkled as she lay on her side, curling around her treasure. Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep comforted by the idea that perhaps not everyone out there thought of her as nothing more than a pitiful piece of street trash.
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