ben brooks RUNNING FAST, RUNNING FREE

A crowd formed around the street performer, a magician. Idlers, loungers, loiterers, shoppers already happy with the purchases they’d made and in no hurry to make more, people with nothing better to do on a beautiful spring afternoon, the air clear and fresh and warm. The crowd simply appeared, drifted over – it materialized in clumps, iron shavings drawn to a magnet. Twenty people, thirty, fifty, a hundred. The magician strode into The Well on stilts, towering above everyone, nine or ten feet tall. He took the stairs down carefully. He wore oversized lime-green pants that stretched from his hips to the ground, hiding the stilts, a purple polka-dot shirt beneath a loose tan jacket, and an old-fashioned top hat on his head. The clothes alone, and his stretched-up height, made him an instant show. He began with two silver discs the size of pancakes that he shufed together into one. He turned the remaining disc so the edge faced out, the sun glinting of it, and then suddenly it was gone. He shook out his sleeves to show there was nothing there. A boy around twelve, an assistant, handed up more props from a wooden box. The box was also used for collecting money from spectators. The performer kept up a rhythmic, singsong patter as he made things disappear. They went into his hat and up his sleeves and down the back of his coat, and they reappeared somewhere else. “Beautiful day for tricks, ladies and gentlemen. Beautiful day for illusions. Keep your eye on the ball here. All you sharp minds, who can say what I’ll pull out of my ear next?” Cassandra watched from the corner of the adjacent subway station, eyed the crowd, finally joined it. She moved without hurry, purposeless, a lovely afternoon in Harvard Square, the warmth of the March sun a surprise to everyone – an idling type of day. It was a young crowd, so she fit in. This man on stilts was new to Cassandra – she had never seen him before. The Well, on the plaza by the subway entrance, was down a few steps from street level. At any kind of gathering there, whether for musicians or jugglers or political ranters or religious haranguers, people were pressed together. Now the necks in the crowd were tipped back so eyes could get a view of the man at his full height.

BROOKS 43 The performer showed a large egg, handed up to him by the boy below. He held it between his thumb and middle finger and swung it in an arc. Then he threw his arm back and dropped the egg into the collar of his jacket. A second, two seconds, three, and he pulled out a bird, a full-grown dove-looking creature – though possibly an albino pigeon – alive, plump and white. The bird flapped its wings as if chafing at having been confined in the magician’s jacket. Feathers flew of. Then, as the magician wobbled perilously on his stilts, the bird escaped his hands. It rose into the blue sky and away. Cassandra moved casually through the crowd, sidling, took her time as if she had all day, but her eyes remained keen. She stopped beside a young woman with black hair in a long thick braid that hung down the entire length of her spine. A college student, Cassandra judged, for sure. She stayed a half-step back, but the student sensed her presence and turned to smile. Cassandra was short, not even five feet tall, and the college student peered down. Cassandra smiled back. Her smile was dazzling, radiant, it lit her up like a bulb, and she had bright blue eyes to go with it. But now that the young woman had gotten a look at her, Cassandra inched along. She threaded through the crowd, legs shifting sideways, and stopped again in a knot of people. The woman directly in front of her was wide, heavy, with burly- looking shoulders and flakes of dandruf speckling her cropped hair and her jacket. Cassandra only stood as tall as this woman’s shoulder blades. Bodies angled toward one another and squeezed Cassandra in. The magician was a juggler now, spinning batons into the air. He kept up his talk and wobbled dramatically on his stilts, pretending he would spill over at any moment. The woman in front of Cassandra had a tan purse hanging by a strap of her shoulder, and somehow, barely moving, Cassandra’s fingers were on the seam of it. The fingers unclasped the purse and dipped inside. Cassandra’s body, not quite touching the woman’s, shielded her hand from view in case anyone looked away from the juggler. Those fingers were trained to operate on their own – Cassandra’s eyes remained fixed on the performance. The fingers were miniature burglars let loose in a room they’d never seen before. They scoped out the inside of the purse – boundaries, walls, furniture that was fixed, and movable items. They located a wallet, a cell phone, a watch, and in no time, with a sleight of hand that equaled that of the performer, the fingers made their exit from the purse, and the wallet and phone and watch were

44 december inside one of Cassandra’s capacious pockets. The fingers finished the job by re- fastening the clasp on the purse, and Cassandra moved along. What she loved most were the surprises she found later in her pockets. Opening a wallet and discovering a small fortune, or else that there was no money at all inside, the surprise on her. She took relish in unfolding bills from a money clip and finding out if they were large denominations or small. Sometimes a cell phone was a brand new model, a $250 item that she could move for $100. She might come away with a gold anklet, a small folding knife, or a ring with a real ruby in it. And there were times she ended up with handwritten notes – love letters – or chewing gum, or a fancy pen, or even condoms.

She fancied herself a gypsy, but there was no Roma blood in Cassandra. She was of English stock on both sides, her surname Richards. She lived with her parents and four brothers in a two-bedroom apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, halfway up the hill above Union Square. Their apartment was on the first floor because her father couldn’t do stairs. Cassandra was fourteen, the middle child, with two brothers older and two younger. She was the one who shared a bedroom with her parents and listened to them snore. She slept on a cushion made of rugs and blankets piled on the floor by the foot of their bed. The four brothers, ranging from nineteen to nine, shared the other bedroom, wall to wall when they were all in it. The third room in the apartment contained the television, the toys, a worn green sofa, the table where they ate. The fourth room was the kitchen, and of the kitchen, sharing a wall through which the pipes ran, was the bathroom. Cassandra’s father was a cripple – he was in a wheelchair. She could remember when he’d been a house painter and would come home stained with paint, and smelling of it, but when she was seven he had fallen of a ladder. Later, when he had regained his ability to speak, he said he reached over too far with his brush. He’d felt the ladder lean, tip, as if in slow motion, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Cassandra’s mother was convinced that her husband had been drinking, though she never said this to him directly. He’d been a heavy drinker before the accident, and after it as well. Jimmy Richards was a mean drunk, before and after he was hurt, and Fanny approached her husband with fear even in his confinement. He might not

BROOKS 45 be able to chase anyone, but he could still hold things in his hands and swing them around. The accident happened one August afternoon. There were twenty feet between Jimmy and the ground, and he ended up with a Grade III concussion, four crushed vertebrae, and a rupture in the spinal column that resulted in his loss of lower body function. Now he collected disability pay, and his wife augmented his checks with a job in a Brazilian bakery, but even so, there was never enough money. Not for seven people, five of them young, two of whom lobbied incessantly for their own cars to drive, and two younger boys who yearned for electronic toys that seemed nearly as costly as cars. Only Cassandra wasn’t constantly whining about what she didn’t have and yammering about what she couldn’t possibly go on living without.

It was a bountiful outing. Cassandra emptied three purses and two pockets, and not one victim so much as glanced her way or furrowed a brow. She worked three people in that magician’s crowd, one in a cafe in the Square, and one by the river where she’d gone to stroll. At six she caught the bus back to Union Square. Her legs tired, she squeezed into a seat between two large men and ignored the press of their thighs against hers. Her coat pockets were heavy, but she hadn’t yet examined the full scope of what she had. There was no privacy at home, so when Cassandra got of the bus she went straight to a playground. There, two children were scrabbling across monkey bars with their mothers in attendance, and Cassandra made her way across the asphalt to a vacant bench. Item by item, in the fading daylight, she emptied her pockets and admired her loot. From the wallets she extracted nothing but cash, no credit cards or licenses, and the residue she dropped into one of the plastic bags she carried with her. That bag went directly into a trash receptacle. Now Cassandra had over four hundred new dollars in her pocket, three phones she would sell, a woman’s watch, and several pieces of jewelry. There was also a set of keys, a paper clip chain, a partial pack of cigarettes, and a piece of hard cherry candy in a wrapper. The keys, the paper clip chain, and the cigarettes she left on the bench, and the candy she unwrapped and plopped into her mouth. Dinner at home was always a competition for food, so she went back to Union Square and treated herself to pizza. She could aford it, and no one at home would

46 december miss her anyway. Her mother set places for the number of people who were in the house when it was time to serve. Chairs had to be brought to the table from around the room for each meal, so there would be no empty seats to give her absence away.

She kept herself in the best possible shape by practicing whenever she could. She perfected her techniques on her unsuspecting brothers and parents, slipping things out of their pockets and back in without them knowing. Her father ought to have been hardest, because he was always sitting down, but working on him was cheating because even if Cassandra was clumsy his legs wouldn’t feel it. Sometimes, for fun, she practiced in reverse and put something extra into someone’s pocket – a five- dollar gift for one of her brothers, or a condom, or a pair of pretty earrings for her mother. To keep them nimble she did exercises with her fingers, bending them smartly, thrusting them forward, crossing them back and forth, or hooking them through and around objects, then lifting the objects to hold aloft. She slipped her fingers into holes, trying not to touch the sides, into cracks, into seams, into crevices, and she practiced pulling out coins or pebbles, tiny trinkets or slips of paper, without disturbing the rim of the hole. She stole on sidewalks, she stole in buses and on the subway, she stole in stores, but she never stole at school. That would have been easiest – but Cassandra knew that if she got caught there, it would be the end for her. She was in the eighth grade, and the kids at school, some of whom were her friends, did not take to being targets or victims. At their stage of life, they could be cruel like children, they could be hard like adults, and they could be unforgiving like both. The money she kept, but most everything else she ditched. If she could she sold stuf, otherwise she tossed it. She hid her cash inside three dolls that she stored in the back of the closet she shared with her parents. The dolls lay amid other outgrown toys, beneath a stack of Cassandra’s sweaters and jeans. These dolls had once been the talking kind, with removable backs for installing batteries. They were hollow, and Cassandra rolled her bills into tubes and stufed the tubes inside. She counted on her mother not digging into the depths of the closet – and if she did, not bothering with inspecting Cassandra’s old things. Some of the phones and jewelry she sold to kids at school, but mostly she took

BROOKS 47 them to a guy she knew. He sat perched on his Harley on the same corner every day unless the weather was foul, and he conducted his business from there. He was an old-timer named Mickey, older even than Cassandra’s parents, with a scraggly gray beard and wire-rim glasses, a leather jacket with faded patches, and a black motorcycle helmet ensconced on his head. Cassandra never haggled prices with Mickey – she described what she had in her bag and took what he ofered for it. She and Mickey had an understanding and operated on mutual trust. He didn’t try to cheat her, didn’t ask where anything came from, and he ofered more than the kids at school ever did – and Cassandra didn’t overstate her product to him, and was always happy to be rid of it all, to get it of her hands.

The boys chased her. Her brothers. It was a game – though not always, to Cassandra’s mind, in fun. They were too big to roughhouse indoors, so they went out to the street. This time it was Devin, the oldest, who started it, while they were all watching television, and the other three joined in. A poke, another, a yank at her hair, jabs to the shoulder, and Cassandra was out the door. If they caught her they would sling her to the ground, all four of them. Then tickle, pinch, prod, holding her arms and legs so she couldn’t move. And they wouldn’t be shy about her female parts. It was dusk. Half the cars going by had their lights on and half didn’t. Cassandra was fast, quick, and more daring on the streets than any of her brothers. Her father had run track in high school, middle distance races, until his smoking ruined his lungs, and he always said she had gotten his speed genes. In him the genes were well disguised now – not only was he in a wheelchair, unable to even walk, never mind run, but he was paunchy, bloated, and he hufed just wheeling himself from one room to another in the house. She slipped between parked cars deftly, clambering over a hood or a trunk if the cars were close together, and she darted into the road, instinctively gauging the trafc in both directions. Horns blared, but Cassandra never faltered, never slowed. Her brothers waited for the trafc to clear, not willing to risk confrontations with moving vehicles the way she did. Utilizing cars as barriers was her best shot at creating distance between herself and her pursuers. Her hair swung free. It was brown and long, streamed down her back, and

48 december Photo by Birgit Gutsche

BROOKS 49 whipped side to side as she ran. Cassandra was a dynamo, legs short but strong, arms churning. At fourteen she may or may not have reached her full height – she didn’t know. A year ago she had been 4’10”, and she was still 4’10”. Both her parents were of middling height, and two of her brothers were on the tall side, the other two average for their ages. If she had inherited her father’s speed gene, she always wondered, whose stunted height gene did she get? She ran in and out of one-way streets, then turned toward the top of the hill, knowing her brothers would be too lazy to climb. When she turned back to look, none of them was in sight, but Cassandra kept running. She had lived in this neighborhood her entire life, and she knew the look and configuration of every house and yard and tree on every single block. At the top she made her way to the Prospect Hill Castle, her legs still jogging. This was Somerville’s most distinctive landmark – a granite tower built to commemorate where the Grand Union Flag had been flown for the first time ever, on New Year’s Day in 1776. This was the first flag created to represent the thirteen colonies that had banded together in revolt against the British, and the flag had been hoisted at the top of this hill on a schooner mast, on the orders of none other than the army’s commander, George Washington. The tower was more than a hundred years old, and it had been closed for as long as Cassandra could remember. These days the grassy park surrounding it was primarily a nightspot for teenagers, a gathering place for adolescents who could think of no better place to go. But the evening was early still, not quite dark yet, and none of Cassandra’s peers was around. The view was not only of the city of Somerville, but of all of Boston, which was why Washington had picked out that hill to hold. Cassandra leaned forward on the platform. Below her the grounds and concrete stairs were littered with bottles and trash. The wind blew into her face. The air was warm, and it carried a blend of scents, the strongest being diesel fuel, as if a fleet of trucks had begun revving engines around the corner. Cassandra scanned the Boston skyline, then lowered her eyes to her neighborhood. In the dimming light she picked out her house – a three-decker with porches stacked to the top floor, and a fading green facade. From that distance, it was not possible to see how rundown the building was. The rotting boards on the

50 december porches weren’t visible, nor the windows that were askew in their frames and didn’t quite close all the way, or the chipped paint, or the gutter that was held to the roof by twisted wire. Cassandra’s breathing slowed to normal after her run. She pictured what would be going on inside her house: her mother in the bedroom with the door shut, a cigarette between her lips, her hair in curlers so it would be wavy when she went to work in the morning; her father in the living room with a baseball game on the television, the sound turned of so he wouldn’t have to listen to the idiocy of the announcers, his hand curled around a bottle of Irish whiskey; her brothers either watching the game with him now, elbowing each other on the sofa, or else shut up in their room snickering over dirty magazines. If she went home, she knew, she would be safe from her brothers. They wouldn’t go after her indoors, wouldn’t dare enrage their father. Devin would wink at Cassandra, and one or another of them would smile, and Cassandra would smile right back.

When school let out for the summer, Cassandra’s mother wanted her to work in the bakery with her, but Cassandra resisted. There was an opening for twenty-five hours a week, to assist in the early mornings with laying out the baked goods in the cases, and then running the register after the store opened. The owner was looking to hire someone young, someone he could pay with cash under the table, and pay below the minimum wage. Cassandra and her mother argued about the job for four nights straight. Fanny had already promised the owner that Cassandra would take the job. “I’m not your slave,” Cassandra said. “You don’t decide everything I do.” “No, you’re not my slave, but you are part of this family,” Fanny retorted. “And I’m still your mother.” The bickering would start at supper, cease for most of the evening, then pick up again in the bedroom when Cassandra and her parents settled in for the night. She would curl up on her bed on the floor and stuf her blanket in her ears so she wouldn’t have to listen to how ungrateful she was, how selfish she was, how stubborn she was, what a struggle it was for her parents to pay their bills, and how the least Cassandra could do was chip in for two months over the summer so they could get over the hump. Cassandra’s father stayed out of it, though there was no doubt which

BROOKS 51 Customers side he was on. He was putting pressure on John, the second oldest boy, to find work. Devin had a job, at least responded to in name. He worked at a gas station, though his hours Cassandra’s were sporadic and on the days that he got paid there smile, to her never seemed to be any money left by the time he got pretty face, and home. Cassandra couldn’t tell Fanny she would make to her casual more money by not working, make more money than manner. any of them, so in the end she lost. A week after school let out, she started going in with her mother. Instead of sleeping through her mother’s alarm, which she had done for most of her life, she now got up when Fanny did, at 5:00. She and her mother would leave the house at 5:45, and they’d walk down the hill to the Square without passing a word between them, Cassandra dawdling a step or two behind. Cassandra didn’t particularly care for the first hour of work, when she filled the trays with freshly baked rolls and pastries and slid them into the cases, but she didn’t mind pouring the cofee and operating the cash register once the store opened. She preferred being out front to working in the back where her mother was, with the giant ovens and the long tables with their aluminum tops and the industrial-sized rolling pins and the fifty-pound sacks of flour and sugar. All the other women in the kitchen were from Brazil and spoke only Portuguese, so Cassandra couldn’t have understood the gossip anyway. It was true she had to keep her hair bunched up in a hair net so it wouldn’t get into the food, but she tolerated that. She was adept with money, quick at figuring out change in her head and counting it out with her fingers. Customers responded to Cassandra’s smile, to her pretty face, and to her casual manner. She kept a footstool behind the counter, which she stepped up on so she would not seem so short – despite the breasts she now had, she knew she looked like a child without the extra height. Many of the customers were people Cassandra had known her entire life, and they made bits and pieces of conversation as they paid, asking her about school and boyfriends and whatever else she was up to over the summer. Change got dropped into the tip jar, and the friendlier Cassandra was, the bigger the tips that got left. There were opportunities to steal when she came around the counter to lay

52 december out more baked goods, and though she was tempted by purses and by bulges in customers’ pockets, she kept her nimble, little fingers to herself. Like school, she knew the bakery would be the wrong place to get caught. Cassandra’s shift ran until 11:00, and when it was over she emptied the tip jar. The agreement was that all the morning tips would go to her, since she ran the register those hours, and because everyone else in the bakery got paid at least the minimum wage. She pretended to the customers that the tips were for her college fund. Fanny went along, although no member of the Richards family had ever gone to college, and it didn’t look like the streak would be broken by the current generation of Cassandra and her brothers.

Occasionally she traded a weekday shift for one on the weekend, and on the last Saturday in July Cassandra left work and found a street fair being set up in the heart of Union Square. It was some kind of arts thing, she saw. The streets had been closed of and tables and booths were being assembled, and in the middle of the street a plywood bandstand had been erected. Cassandra had two brigadeiros to chomp on, her favorite pastries from the shop. Liberated from its hair net, her hair swung free. The sun was strong and the sky a brilliant blue, with a few white wisps of cloud streaking it. Cassandra had no plans for the afternoon and decided to hang around the Square for a while. “Hey, little girl.” The rumbling voice surprised Cassandra. It was Mickey, loitering by one of the tables. She almost didn’t recognize him of his motorcycle, which was normally an appendage to his body. His usual glasses were gone, replaced by sunglasses that hid his eyes, and his wiry hair was held back in a clip. He didn’t have his leather jacket either — he had on a green tee shirt with a big purple peace symbol over his sunken chest. “Hey, Mickey.” Cassandra felt shy – she always did around him. It was weird, their business relationship, both surreptitious and intimate. He was a stranger maybe four times her age, yet he knew so much about her – they had so many secrets between them. Cassandra hadn’t seen Mickey since she’d started her job, because she’d curtailed her pickpocketing activities. Her paychecks she’d been turning over to her

BROOKS 53 parents, but she was keeping the tips, which meant she had more than enough money to spend without resorting to stealing or dipping into her stash. In her dolls Cassandra had almost eight thousand dollars squirreled away, and there wasn’t much room to fit more. She’d already converted the cash to hundred dollar bills, waiting in lines at banks and asking the tellers to exchange smaller bills for larger ones. She was aware of how suspicious she’d look in a bank, so she’d done the conversion one or two hundreds at a time, and at diferent bank branches in diferent areas of the city. There were no additional hiding places for money at home – nowhere that her brothers or parents would not be likely to stumble across it – and with no place to salt more away, her urge to acquire had diminished. Plus, Cassandra had no actual plan for her money. For now she had everything she needed, though she knew the cash would be good to have if an emergency came up. If a crisis should arise, Cassandra could be the surprise savior of the household. “Ain’t seen you around, kid,” Mickey said. He sat on the edge of a table with his arms folded across his chest. He had thin wrists, with the same wiry hair as on his head. “Where you been?” Cassandra shrugged. “Busy, I guess.” “Too busy for old Mickey?” “I guess,” she said again. “I have a job.” “Yeah? No kidding. What kind of job?” “In that bakery,” Cassandra answered, tilting her head in the direction of the storefront. “No more side business, no more Little Girl’s Import and Export going on?” Cassandra grinned. “Not really.” “Well that’s too bad. We made a team, didn’t we?” Cassandra shrugged. “I tell you what, little girl, you change your mind and import some cell phones or jewelry, you come find old Mickey again. My shop’s open ’round the clock.” Cassandra took her leave and wandered on. She felt the press of Mickey’s eyes on her back, but she was careful not to speed up. It had been a while since she’d thought about stealing, but suddenly it was back in her mind. People began to fill the Square, music blared from multiple speakers, and the smells of fry bread and grilled meat made Cassandra hungry again, as if she hadn’t

54 december just downed those pastries. She stopped at a table to buy a plate full of pulled pork and pinto beans, with a corn cob on the side. She balanced the paper plate in one hand and held her fork in the other, and she stood her ground while streams of people walked by. When the first band began to warm up, Cassandra found herself in the midst of a tightly-packed crowd. The itch of restlessness traveled the length of her fingers. The man in front of her had a wallet in his back pocket, and Cassandra flexed her fingers, working the excess energy out. They felt rusty, and she felt self-conscious. She hadn’t been practicing, not even her basic routines. But she leaned her shoulders forward and slipped her index finger and middle finger into the pocket. She nearly had the wallet out when the buttocks shifted and the man whipped his head around. “What the fuck!” he barked. The man slapped at Cassandra’s hand, and the wallet flew out of it. Cassandra bolted. The man, in his twenties, bent down to retrieve his wallet, then took of after her. She bulled her way through the crowd, using her knees to clear a path, and when she broke clear she sprinted. Her lunch and those pastries lay heavy in her belly, but she looked back and saw that the man was still coming. “Help! Rape! Someone help me! He’s trying to rape me!” she screamed. The next time she turned around, the man had stopped. Cassandra’s stomach hurt, and sweat was beaded on her brow. People were staring. As close as she was to home, it was all but certain someone would recognize her. The man she’d tried to rob was enclosed by a circle of people. When a hand went on his arm he swung it free. One of the people haranguing him was Mickey. Cassandra gulped down a breath and smiled. Good old Mickey. She headed out of the Square. Not running, not in a hurry, strolling – she took her sweet time.

She stayed out until the air turned, until the August heat began to evaporate away. Dusk, then dark. Bands of kids were about, and for a while she hung with one group, then with another. They didn’t do much, just talk, walk, snicker, a few of them smoked cigarettes, and some of the boys got into shoving and wrestling things, but only in fun. These kids were her friends, most she’d known all her life. But also not friends, not in that old way. She didn’t really know anyone anymore, Cassandra thought, and no one knew her. Things were changing, or maybe they already had

BROOKS 55 changed. In a week she would be starting high school, though she hadn’t given it much thought – her old life left behind. She figured the house would be settled for the night, but only her father and William were there when she got home. William was asleep, the bedroom door open, a light still on. Cassandra’s father had his wheelchair in the living room. The television was on, but no sound. There were cops on the screen, but Cassandra didn’t recognize the show. There was a smell of piss in the room. Sometimes, when Fanny wasn’t around to help him get to the bathroom, Jimmy got lazy and just let go. He had a bottle of whiskey in his hand, a pint of Jameson, and there was another bottle on the floor, empty, tipped on its side. “Where is everyone?” Cassandra asked. “Where’s Mom at? Where’s Paul?” It wasn’t so unusual that Devin and John would be away, but Paul was only eleven. It was late for him to be out, and late for her mother, too. “Girl, go get your old man another bottle,” Jimmy said. His face was flaccid, red. He had wattles shaking of his neck. His eyes looked angry, and Cassandra wondered if that’s why everyone was gone. Her father was leaned forward in his seat, as if he meant to step out of it, but his legs were folded in their usual way. “Where is the bottle?” she asked. “In the kitchen?” Jimmy’s look told her she was the stupidest person on the planet. “It’s at the store,” he growled. His words ran together at their edges. “Daddy, I can’t buy whiskey at a store.” There was poison in his eyes, and he aimed it at her. “What you say?” “I can’t buy whiskey at a store. They won’t let me. I’m too young. You know that.” “Girl, I’m telling you, go get me a bottle.” Cassandra looked at her father. The man drank a lot, but he didn’t always drink so mean. Tonight, he’d drunk mean. He was in a state. He almost never hit any of his children or his wife, but he had. He’d hit Cassandra before, when she’d made the mistake of being careless about his mood and passing too close to his chair, allowing herself within range. Sometimes he used his hand, sometimes whatever he was holding.

56 december “Do you have money for it?” she asked. She hung back out of reach. “You don’t have money, girl? What you got in your pocket?” “That’s my money.” Jimmy glared and put his hand on the wheel of his chair to turn it. “All right,” Cassandra said, “I’ll get you a bottle.” “Yeah. You hurry now.” Cassandra backed toward the doorway, then was outside again. She heard something thump against the door as soon as she shut it. The bottle he’d been holding, probably, if it was empty. Or it could have been an ashtray. Or even her poor mother’s Bible, Cassandra thought, which Fanny kept in a drawer beneath the television. There wasn’t much going on in Union Square on a Tuesday night. The bars and restaurants were open, the convenience stores, and the liquor store, but nobody was milling around. Cassandra positioned herself across the street from the liquor store. She lingered beneath a tree. The store was lit up, with one clerk in attendance, no customers. She crossed the street and walked in, as if she did that every day of her life. The air was cold in the store, the air conditioner cranked up. The clerk looked up from his magazine. “Can I help you?” he said. He was sitting on a stool. He was fat – he looked like he weighed three hundred pounds – and he had a bushy red beard that made his face puf out even more. “I came to get something for my father,” Cassandra told him. She walked up to the counter. “Something? What kind of something?” “He asked me to get him a bottle of whiskey. He’s in a wheelchair. He couldn’t come himself.” The clerk smiled, his lips spreading his beard back. “You know what a minor is, kid? I can’t sell you a bottle of whiskey. A candy bar, if you want, or a stick of beef jerky, but not whiskey.” “He’s in a wheelchair,” Cassandra repeated. “I’ve got him stuf here before.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” “Well that’s funny, because I’ve never seen you here before,” the clerk said.

BROOKS 57 He shut his magazine and leaned up against the counter to get a better look at Cassandra. His eyes took their time going up and down her body. “Seems like if you’d been in here before, I’d remember. A cute little girl like you. Have I seen you in here before?” Cassandra blushed — she felt the heat flow into her face. “I don’t know if you’ve seen me, but I’ve been here.” The clerk smiled again. “Okay, you thinking you want to make a deal with me? Is that what this is? Because if you do, I’m listening. I’m closing up in a little bit. We could make us a deal.” “What kind of deal?” He hufed out a breath. “What kind of deal you think? Same as any deal – you get what you want, I get what I want.” The fat man’s stare made Cassandra tremble. “I’m not talking about a deal. I just want to buy a pint of whiskey for my father.” The clerk leaned backwards again and folded his hands over his enormous belly. “Well I’m sorry, but not tonight, sweetheart,” he told her. “If there’s no deal, there’s no whiskey. Not tonight.” “You’re a creep,” Cassandra scowled. “Am I?” The clerk blinked. Cassandra knew he wasn’t going to get up to chase her. “Yeah, you are,” she told him. Outside, her body slumped. She felt exhausted, and she had work in the morning, in barely seven hours. This was the last week of her job. The bakery owner had asked if she would work weekends after school started, but she’d said no. She’d said she would be too busy. Cassandra made her way back up the hill. Her legs moved slowly, trudged. When she got to her house she stuck her face to the glass, and through the window, through the tattered curtain, she saw that her father was still in the living room. It appeared he had dozed of. No one else was there. The door to the boys’ room was still open, but William’s bed was empty now. The door to the room Cassandra shared with her parents was open as well, and she didn’t see her mother anywhere. Maybe everyone had gone out to get away from him, she thought. Cassandra lowered herself to the porch floor. She sat with her spine against the

58 december wall, circling her raised knees with her arms. She shut her eyes. It was as good a place as any, she thought, to sleep.

All day it rained, and then around dusk it stopped. At school Cassandra had listened to the drumming of the rain against the windows and thought about how dreary her life was. She was still getting used to her schedule – she kept forgetting which class came after which. None of her teachers knew her name yet. Her friends from the neighborhood, the ones who were the same age, were at the school, but there were also a ton of kids she didn’t know from the rest of Somerville – unfamiliar faces everywhere. She’d walked home in the rain, over a mile. It was a cold rain, the wind blowing it at a slant. When Cassandra got home her clothes were soaked, her shoes were soaked, her books were soaked, her papers were soaked. Her hair was plastered to her head, and even her ears had water in them. She didn’t care. Her father looked up when she came in but didn’t say anything, nor did Cassandra say anything to him. None of the boys was home, nor her mother. Cassandra went into the bedroom and shut the door. She pulled of her wet shoes and let them fall, then lay on her parents’ bed without bothering to do anything about her sopping hair or clothes. She listened to the rain against the windows, which sounded louder than it had at school. In the closet, not more than ten feet away, was her fortune. She never took any of the money out, never used it, never did anything with it. She could have bought something her parents needed, or paid of their debts, but she hadn’t. It could be for herself, her way out – for college someday, to buy a car, to get her own place to live – but she had no plans for it. The money was just there. She could toss it all away, she thought, and it wouldn’t make any diference in her life. When the rain finally ended, Cassandra rolled of the bed and changed into dry clothes. She rummaged around for her sneakers in the closet. She picked up the three dolls, weighed them in her hands, then settled them back under their piles. She opened the bedroom door and stopped in front of her father. “Going out,” she told him. Jimmy nodded once. He didn’t ask where she was going or when she would be back, or tell Cassandra to have a good time or to be careful or to take care of herself.

BROOKS 59 She made her way up the hill toward the castle. It was still chilly out, and the sky was still heavy, though in the distance, toward the west, there was a strip of clearing where the air was blue. Cassandra imagined that blue moving forward, picking up speed like a train, smashing into the mass of gray and pulverizing it. There were puddles everywhere, and Cassandra crouched down beside one near the back side of the castle. The water was murky from mud, the color of cofee with cream in it. Her knowledge of gypsies was rudimentary, but if she had been born a gypsy, Cassandra thought — as she should have been — there would be no home for her to worry about. She probably wouldn’t be with her family anymore, and surely she wouldn’t be going to school. She would be on her own, and go wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She let the fantasy grow in her mind – it felt satisfying. She pictured herself in a forest, wearing a dark dress that came down to the ground, her hair as long as it was now, though with flowers in it. A white horse stood beside her, eyeing her, waiting for her to mount and ride. She shook her head to clear the horse out, then reached into her pocket and pulled out several coins. She dropped a quarter into the puddle, and it disappeared into the cofee-colored water. When the ripples subsided, she lowered her index finger and middle finger into the puddle. The fingers, as if they had eyes, located the quarter, grasped it, and lifted. The exercise was to extract the coin without setting of ripples again. When she had the quarter out, Cassandra dropped in a nickel. Same game. She let the water settle, then lowered her two fingers. It had been a mistake to let her skills lapse, a mistake to take things for granted. The person you are is the person you make yourself into, she thought. She pictured her father in his chair, a bottle of whiskey in his hand, and her mother in her hair curlers, waking to her clock before it was light out and plodding of to work. If she didn’t want to be like her father, be like her mother, Cassandra knew it was up to herself to get back to where she had been, then go beyond it. No one else would do the job for her. She stood up and closed her eyes and dropped both a penny and a dime into the puddle, and she kept her eyes shut until she knew the surface of the water wouldn’t give away where the coins had fallen. Then she opened her eyes and bent down again.

60 december Carefully, Cassandra inserted her fingers into the puddle, feeling the rise of the cold water against her skin. As closely as she looked, she saw no movement on the water’s surface. Beneath the surface, where she couldn’t see, she let her fingers troll. Slowly, seemingly without purpose, her fingertips stepped across the muddy bottom. When they touched something they felt around it briefly, and she was pretty sure the edge of the coin had ridges. Cassandra flipped the coin onto its side and maneuvered it between her fingers until she had a grip, still without disturbing the water, and then lifted it out. She looked at the coin and felt the momentary spurt of pleasure as she recognized her triumph. No, the water hadn’t given any sign that she’d been in it, and yes, she’d been right — it was indeed the dime.

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