Life stories of those adrift in this world

She always smiles. And she always wants to tell me something. Quietly, like it's a secret.
“We'll talk, Ljilja, in private, just the two of us.”
“Aren't we going to talk with four eyes?” I have to laugh.
She laughs too. A girl, a woman, a mother, burdened by life.
She doesn't know the date of her birth. She knows she's from the class of '88 and that she was born in Split.
For days we talk, and I can't piece together a clear picture.
She wants to tell me, but she doesn't know how.
She starts a sentence with "You know" and ends it with gestures and nods, convinced I've understood her.
I compare her year of birth, '88, with the years my children were born, and I feel a wave of sadness washing over me.

“My mother left me. She went with a man, you know, and I was left alone.”
“Where did you live? In an orphanage?”
“No, with an old woman, I paid rent.”

She begs on the streets. That’s how she survives.
At that woman’s place, there was a man living with them. A drunkard who broke her bones.
She mentions a child she had to leave behind.

P.S. She left three little girls. She ran away into an even harder life in a Roma settlement.
A victim in every sense of the word. Begging and wandering.