"Hey, kid, where's your mom?"

"My mommy is very far away," says Zaida, helpfully. "They took her away because she's very bad."

Fred blinks. "Okay, can we find the people who are responsible for you?"

"No."

"Why... not?"

"They'll try to make me be good," she explains, patiently, still drawing on her arms with the purple marker. She doesn't know how to draw five-pointed stars, so she's drawing little lop-sided asterisks with six lines that all meet in the middle. "And that would be awful."

"What's so bad about being good? Good little girls get ice cream for dessert, or so I'm told."

Zaida wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Good little girls have to sit on people's laps all day and never go anywhere ever or draw any stars, and they have to hug people who hit them and never scream. So I am bad like my Mommy."

Fred kneels so he can talk to Zaida eye-to-eye. "Being good is a pain, huh? You don't get to do anything fun!"

She nods seriously.

"But I bet the people who look after you are really scared if they don't know where you are. So how about this: you come out of the closet, and we'll go to your people and tell them you're okay, and then you can draw stars all over me. Sound good?"

"No. Escaping doesn't work if you let the bad guys find you."

Damn. There go all his manipulating three-year-olds skills. 

"You can come out of the closet and show me where your people are, or I will pick you up and take you to the lady who runs Sunday school and ask her who your people are. Your choice, but the second one will take longer and leave less time for drawing stars."

Zaida regards him very seriously. She is angry and she is terrified, and she does not know how to hide these things, because she is three. She has also decided to stick to her guns on being bad, though.

"I'm not afraid of people hitting me!" she says, with conviction. "I am GOOD at people hitting me."

"I'm not going to hit you. I am sure your people are not going to hit you either. It is bad to hit children for playing in a closet."

"I'm not allowed to play in closets."

"You don't hit kids every time they do something they're not supposed to. If you did that, you'd have to hit kids all the time. You hit kids when they do something dangerous, like running out into the street."

"You hit kids if they're bad. Except for Mommy and Auntie, because they're wicked," says Zaida, working hard to make sure she is saying that right. "I don't know how to be wicked but I am working on it. I am starting with bad."

Fred is torn between "d'awwwwww adorable" and "Jesus Christ."

"I don't think people should be hitting you at all if your mommy doesn't want them to hit you. --Where did those bruises come from?"

Zaida knows this one! She points. "This one is from I wouldn't come to the kitchen. This one is from I wouldn't go to bed. This one is from I didn't call her Mommy. This one is from a tree. The tree one is my favorite."

Even if she's lying... those are a lot of bruises for a little girl. 

"It's not okay for grownups to hit little girls that much. Can you tell me your name and your grownups' name? I will tell some grownups whose job is to look after little girls and make sure they're safe."

"I don't want to be safe."

"Their job is to make sure that little girls don't get hit too much."

"I'm going to get hit a lot from now on because I'm going to be bad. I'm not going to be good even ONCE."

...This is not going anywhere. 

Fred says, "I'm going to pick you up and take you to the Sunday school teacher to find out who your people are."