America's Most Wanted #5

Her name is Michelle.  She is seven years old.  She has a purse with hearts all over it.  It is really cold in the high desert at night so she is  bundled up in a hot-pink hoodie sweatshirt with a long brown wool jacket buttoned up over it.  Her mother has put her hair up in a neat ponytail.  But here is the big thing...despite the fact that she and her mother have been deported from the United States, despite the fact that she and her mother are living in a women's shelter, despite the fact that she gets two meals a day in a cold, cement floored dining room with 130 adults squished in at long tables...she exuded 'security in the face of insecurity'.  I am haunted by her trusting, calm demeanor.