The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas excited, the horse being the only animal who
the horse being the only animal who has adopted our
by Ursula K LeGuin
from The Wind's Twelve Quarters, 1973
________________________________________________________
With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring,
the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-
towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor
sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red
roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and
under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings,
processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long
stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quiet,
merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they
walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of
gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the
procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high
calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music
and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north
side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the
Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-
stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their
restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all
but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with
streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils
and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly
1
ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the
mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air
of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the
Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of
sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just
enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse
snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad
green meadows one could hear the music winding throughout
the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a
cheerful faint sweetness of the air from time to time trembled
and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous
clanging of the bells.
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the
citizens of Omelas?
They were not simple folk, you see, though they were
happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more.
All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as
this, one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a
description such as this, one tends to look next for the King,
mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble
knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled
slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or
keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the
rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were
singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so
they also got on without the stock exchange, the
advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat
that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble
savages, bland utopians. There were not less complex than us.
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by
pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as
something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil
interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit
the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you
can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise
despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose
hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no
longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not
naïve and happy children – though their children were, in
fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults
whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could
describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds
in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away,
once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it
as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion,
for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about
2
technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters
in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the
people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a
just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither
necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the
middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but
undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they
could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains,
washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet
invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for
the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't
matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns
up and down the coast have been coming to Omelas during the
last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and
double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is
actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than
the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I
fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody.
Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If
an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have
temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and
priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with
any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with
the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea.
But really it would be better not to have any temples in
Omelas – at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy
no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering
themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy
and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let
tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of
desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant
point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved
and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in
Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at
first there were no drugs, but that is puritanical. For those
who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume
the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness
and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some
hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the
very arcane and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as
exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not
habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to
be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The
sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we
did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built
upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will
not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous
contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some
outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in
the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's
3
summer: This is what swells the hearts of the people of
Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I don't
think many of them need to take drooz.
Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields
by now. A marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red
and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children
are amiably sticky; in the benign gray beard of a man a couple
of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls
have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around
the starting line of the course. An old woman, small, fat, and
laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young
men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or
ten sits at the edge of the crowd alone, playing on a wooden
flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not
speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them,
his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thing magic of the
tune.
He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the
wooden flute.
As if that little private silence were the signal, all at
once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line:
imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their
slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced,
the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them,
whispering, “Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope...” They bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds
begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still
the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come.
The Festival of Summer has begun. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that
sometimes -- the child has no understanding of time or
interval -- sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the
person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in
joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.
and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come
close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The
In a basement under one of the beautiful public
food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is
buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its
locked; the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say
spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked
anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool
door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between
room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice,
cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window
sometimes speaks. “I will be good,” it says. “Please let me out.
somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a
I will be good!” They never answer. The child used to scream
couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand
for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a
near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the
kind of whining, “eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less
touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces
often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly
long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room.
protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a
In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It
day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered
looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded.
sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas.
imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its
Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to
nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or
know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of
genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the

4
them understand why, and some do not, but they all the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt
understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the within the walls indeed.
tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children,
the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even
The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even
the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of
be a kind word spoken to the child.
their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a
between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of
tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this
understanding; and most of those who come to see the child
terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years.
are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or
But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child
comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter
could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a
has been explained to them, these young spectators are always
little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no real doubt, but
shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which
little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real
they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger,
joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits
outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would
are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment.
like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they
Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without
can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight
walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its
out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and
own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry
comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it
when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and
were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and
to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their
beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be
generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are
destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness
perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is
and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small
no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like
improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for
the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the

5
existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence,
that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the
poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is
because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They
know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the
dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful
music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race
in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The
place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most
of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is
possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where
they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas. ♦

Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible?

But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see

the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go
home at all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older
falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go
out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep
walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through
the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of
Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman.
Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets,
between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into
the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north,
towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they

6
A Serious Talk
By Raymond Carver
From the award-winning collection What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love, 1980
Vera's car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks
for that. He pulled into the drive and stopped beside the
pie he'd dropped the night before. It was still there, the
aluminum pan upside down, a halo of pumpkin filling on
the pavement. It was the day after Christmas.
He'd come on Christmas day to visit his wife and
children. Vera had warned him beforehand. She'd told
him the score. She'd said he had to be out by six o'clock
because her friend and his children were coming for
dinner.
They had sat in the living room and solemnly opened
the presents Burt had brought over. They had opened his
packages while other packages wrapped in festive paper
lay piled under the tree waiting for after six o'clock.
7
He had watched the children open their gifts, waited
while Vera undid the ribbon on hers. He saw her slip off
the paper, lift the lid, take out the cashmere sweater.
“It's nice,” she said. “Thank you, Burt.”
“Try it on,” his daughter said.
“Put it on,” his son said.
Burt looked at his son, grateful for his backing him up.
She did try it on. Vera went into the bedroom and
came out with it on.
“It's nice,” she said.
“It's nice on you,” Burt said, and felt a welling in his
chest.
He opened his gifts. From Vera, a gift certificate at
Sondheim's men's store. From his daughter, a matching
comb and brush. From his son, a ballpoint pen.
Vera served sodas, and they did a little talking. But
mostly they looked at the tree. Then his daughter got up
and began setting the dining-room table,' and his son went
off to his room.
But Burt liked it where he was. He liked it in front of
the fireplace, a glass in his hand, his house, his home.
Then Vera went into the kitchen.
From time to time his daughter walked into the dining
room with something for the table. Burt watched her. He
watched her fold the linen napkins into the wine glasses.
He watched her put a slender vase in the middle of the
table. He watched her lower a flower into the vase, doing it
ever so carefully.
A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A
carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up from
the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until
they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the
patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the
sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for
every ten times she had ever betrayed him.
In the driveway in the dark, he'd let one fall as he
fumbled with the door.
The front door was permanently locked since the night
his key had broken off inside it. He went around to the
back. There was a wreath on the patio door. He rapped on
the glass. Vera was in her bathrobe. She looked out at him
and frowned. She opened the door a little.
Burt said, “I want to apologize to you for last night. I
want to apologize to the kids, too.”
Vera said, “They're not here.”
She stood in the doorway and he stood on the patio
next to the philodendron plant. He pulled at some lint
on his sleeve.
She said, “I can't take any more. You tried to burn the
house down.”
“I did not.”
“You did. Everybody here was a witness.”
8
He said, “Can I come in and talk about it?”
She drew the robe together at her throat and moved
back inside. She said, “I have to go somewhere in an hour.”
He looked around. The tree blinked on and off. There
was a pile of colored tissue paper and shiny boxes at one
end of the sofa.
A turkey carcass sat on a platter in the center of the
dining-room table, the leathery remains in a bed of
parsley as if in a horrible nest. A cone of ash filled the
fireplace. There were some empty Shasta cola cans in there
too. A trail of smoke stains rose up to the bricks to the
mantel, where the wood that stopped them was scorched
black.
He turned around and went back to the kitchen.
He said, “What time did your friend leave last night?”
She said, “If you're going to start that, you can go right
now.”
He pulled a chair out and sat down at the kitchen
table in front of the big ashtray. He closed his eyes and
opened them. He moved the curtain aside and looked out at
the backyard. He saw a bicycle without a front wheel
standing upside down. He saw weeds growing along the
redwood fence.
She ran water into a saucepan. “Do you remember
Thanksgiving?” she said. “I said then that was the last
holiday you were going to wreck for us. Eating bacon and
eggs instead of turkey at ten o'clock at night.”
 “I know it,” he said. “I said I'm sorry.”
“Sorry isn't good enough.”
The pilot light was out again. She was at the stove
trying to get the gas going under the pan of water.
“Don't burn yourself,” he said. “Don't catch yourself on
fire.”
He considered her robe catching fire, him jumping up
from the table, throwing her down onto the floor and
rolling her over and over into the living room, where he
would cover her with his body. Or should he run to the
bedroom for a blanket?
“Vera?”
She looked at him.
“Do you have anything to drink? I could use a drink
this morning.”
“There's some vodka in the freezer.”
“When did you start keeping vodka in the freezer?”
“Don't ask.”
“Okay,” he said, “I won't ask.”
He got out the vodka and poured some into a cup he
found on the counter.
She said, “Are you just going to drink it like that, out
of a cup?” She said, “Jesus, Burt. What'd you want to talk
about, anyway? I told you I have someplace to go. I have a
flute lesson at one o'clock.”
“Are you still taking flute?”
9
“I just said so. What is it? Tell me what's on your
mind, and then I have to get ready.”
“I wanted to say I was sorry.”
She said, “You said that.”
He said, “If you have any juice, I'll mix it with this
vodka.” She opened the refrigerator and moved things
around. “There's cranapple juice,” she said.
“That's fine,” he said.
“I'm going to the bathroom,” she said.
He drank the cup of cranapple juice and vodka. He lit
a cigarette and tossed the match into the big ashtray that
always sat on the kitchen table. He studied the butts in it.
Some of them were Vera's brand, and some of them
weren't. Some even were lavender-colored. He got up and
dumped it all under the sink.
The ashtray was not really an ashtray. It was a big
dish of stoneware they'd bought from a bearded potter on
the mall in Santa Clara. He rinsed it out and dried it. He
put it back on the table. And then he ground out his
cigarette in it.
The water on the stove began to bubble just as the
phone began to ring.
He heard her open the bathroom door and call to him
through the living room. “Answer that! I'm about to get
into the shower.”
 The kitchen phone was on the counter in a corner
behind the roasting pan. He moved the roasting pan and
picked up the receiver.
“Is Charlie there?” the voice said.
“No,” Burt said.
“Okay,” the voice said.
While he was seeing to the coffee, the phone rang
again. “Charlie?”
“Not here,” Burt said.
This time he left the receiver off the hook.
Vera came back into the kitchen wearing jeans and a
sweater and brushing her hair.
He spooned the instant into the cups of hot water ad
then spilled some vodka into his. He carried the cups over
to the table. She picked up the receiver, listened. She said,
“What's this? Who was on the phone?”
“Nobody,” he said. “Who smokes colored cigarettes?”
“I do.”
“I didn't know you did that.”
“Well, I do.”
She sat across from him and drank her coffee. They
smoked and used the ashtray.
There were things he wanted to say, grieving things,
consoling things, things like that.
10
“I'm smoking three packs a day,” Vera said. “I mean, if
you really want to know what goes on around here.”
“God almighty,” Burt said.
Vera nodded.
“I didn't come over here to hear that,” he said.
“What did you come over here to hear, then? You want
to hear the house burned down?”
“Vera,” he said. “It's Christmas. That's why I came.”
“It's the day after Christmas,” she said. “Christmas
has come and gone,” she said. “I don't ever want to see
another one.” “What about me?” he said. “You think I look
forward to holidays?”
The phone rang again. Burt picked it up.
“It's someone wanting Charlie,” he said.
“What?”
“Charlie,” Burt said.
Vera took the phone. She kept her back to him as she
talked.
Then she turned to him and said, “I'll take this call in
the bedroom. So would you please hang up after I've picked
it up in there? I can tell, so hang it up when I say.”
He took the receiver. She left the kitchen. He held the
receiver to his ear and listened. He heard nothing. Then he
heard a man clear his throat. Then he heard Vera pick up
the other phone. She shouted, “Okay, Burt! I have it now,
Burt!”
 He put down the receiver and stood looking at it. He
opened the silverware drawer and pushed things around
inside. He opened another drawer. He looked in the sink.
He went into the dining room and got the carving knife. He
held it under hot water until the grease broke and ran
off. He wiped the blade on his sleeve. He moved to the
phone, doubled the cord, and sawed through without any
trouble at all. He examined the ends of the cord. Then he
shoved the phone back into its corner behind the roasting
pan.
He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but
he thought he had proved something. He hoped he had
made something clear. The thing was, they had to have a
serious talk soon. There were things that needed talking
about, important things that had to be discussed. They'd
talk again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things
got back to normal. He'd tell her the goddamn ashtray was
a goddamn dish, for example.
He stepped around the pie in the driveway and got
back into his car. He started the car and put it into
reverse. It was hard managing until he put the ashtray
down. ♦

She came in. She said, “The phone went dead. Did you
do anything to the telephone?” She looked at the phone and
then picked it up from the counter.
“Son of a bitch!” she screamed. She screamed, “Out,
out, where you belong!” She was shaking the phone at him.
“That's it! I'm going to get a restraining order, that's
what I'm going to get!”
The phone made a ding when she banged it down on
the counter.
“I'm going next door to call the police if you don't get
out of here now!”
He picked up the ashtray. He held it by its edge. He
posed with it like a man preparing to hurl a discus.
“Please,” she said. “That's our ashtray.”

11
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl
One Beautiful April Morning
By Haruki Murakami, 1981
____________________________________________________
One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street
in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked
past the 100% perfect girl.
Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She
doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing
special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from
sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even
close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from
fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The
moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my
mouth is as dry as a desert.
Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of
girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful
fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take
their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of
course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring
at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape
of her nose.
But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl
correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses,
I can't recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I
can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's
weird.
"Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% perfect
girl," I tell someone.
12
"Yeah?" he says. "Good-looking?"
"Not really."
"Your favorite type, then?"
"I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything
about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts."
"Strange."
"Yeah. Strange."
"So anyhow," he says, already bored, "what did you
do? Talk to her? Follow her?"
"Nah. Just passed her on the street."
She's walking east to west, and I west to east. It's a
really nice April morning.
Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be
plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and
- what I'd really like to do - explain to her the complexities
of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side
street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981.
This was something sure to be crammed full of warm
secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the
world.
After talking, we'd have lunch somewhere, maybe
see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails.
With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.
Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.
Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen
yards.
How can I approach her? What should I say?
 "Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare
half an hour for a little conversation?"
Ridiculous. I'd sound like an insurance salesman.
"Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there
is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?"
No, this is just as ridiculous. I'm not carrying any
laundry, for one thing. Who's going to buy a line like that?
Maybe the simple truth would do. "Good morning.
You are the 100% perfect girl for me."
No, she wouldn't believe it. Or even if she did, she
might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might
be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you're not the 100%
perfect boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in
that situation, I'd probably go to pieces. I'd never recover
from the shock. I'm thirty-two, and that's what growing
older is all about.
We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air
mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the
scent of roses. I can't bring myself to speak to her. She
wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a
crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She's written
somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to
judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could
contain every secret she's ever had.
I take a few more strides and turn: She's lost in the
crowd.
Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have
said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far
13
too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I
come up with are never very practical.
Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time”
and ended “A sad story, don't you think?”
Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The
boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not
unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful.
They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary
lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their
whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the
100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes,
they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually
happened.
One day the two came upon each other on the corner
of a street.
“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you
all my life. You may not believe this, but you're the 100%
perfect girl for me.”
“And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% perfect boy
for me, exactly as I'd pictured you in every detail. It's like a
dream.”
They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each
other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely
anymore. They had found and been found by their 100%
perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be
found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic
miracle.
 As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of
doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for
one's dreams to come true so easily?
And so, when there came a momentary lull in their
conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let's test ourselves -
just once. If we really are each other's 100% perfect lovers,
then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail.
And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100%
perfect ones, we'll marry then and there. What do you
think?”
“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.”
And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the
west.
The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly
unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it,
because they really and truly were each other's 100%
perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met.
But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they
were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss
them unmercifully.
One winter, both the boy and the girl came down
with the season's terrible influenza, and after drifting for
weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their
earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty
as the young D. H. Lawrence's piggy bank.
They were two bright, determined young people,
however, and through their unremitting efforts they were
able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that
qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society.
14
Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens
who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another,
who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter
at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again,
sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.
Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the
boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.
One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of
coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to
east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery
letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same
narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They
passed each other in the very center of the street. The
faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the
briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in
their chest. And they knew:
She is the 100% perfect girl for me.
He is the 100% perfect boy for me.
But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and
their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fourteen years
earlier. Without a word, they passed each other,
disappearing into the crowd. Forever.
A sad story, don't you think?
Yes, that's it, that is what I should have said to her. ♦
What You Pawn I Will Redeem
Sherman Alexie, 2003
_____________________________________________________
NOON
One day you have a home and the next you don’t, but I’m
not going to tell you my particular reasons for being homeless,
because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to
keep secrets from hungry white folks.
I’m a Spokane Indian boy, an Interior Salish, and my
people have lived within a hundred-mile radius of Spokane,
Washington, for at least ten thousand years. I grew up in
Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-three years ago for college,
flunked out after two semesters, worked various blue- and
bluer-collar jobs, married two or three times, fathered two or
three kids, and then went crazy. Of course, crazy is not the
official definition of my mental problem, but I don’t think
asocial disorder fits it, either, because that makes me sound
like I’m a serial killer or something. I’ve never hurt another
human being, or, at least, not physically. I’ve broken a few
hearts in my time, but we’ve all done that, so I’m nothing
special in that regard. I’m a boring heartbreaker, too. I never
dated or married more than one woman at a time. I didn’t
break hearts into pieces overnight. I broke them slowly and
carefully. And I didn’t set any land-speed records running out
the door. Piece by piece, I disappeared. I’ve been disappearing
ever since.
I’ve been homeless for six years now. If there’s such a
thing as an effective homeless man, then I suppose I’m
effective. Being homeless is probably the only thing I’ve ever
been good at. I know where to get the best free food. I’ve made
friends with restaurant and convenience-store managers who
let me use their bathrooms. And I don’t mean the public
bathrooms, either. I mean the employees’ bathrooms, the clean
ones hidden behind the kitchen or the pantry or the cooler. I
know it sounds strange to be proud of this, but it means a lot
15
to me, being trustworthy enough to piss in somebody else’s
clean bathroom. Maybe you don’t understand the value of a
clean bathroom, but I do.
Probably none of this interests you. Homeless Indians are
everywhere in Seattle. We’re common and boring, and you
walk right on by us, with maybe a look of anger or disgust or
even sadness at the terrible fate of the noble savage. But we
have dreams and families. I’m friends with a homeless Plains
Indian man whose son is the editor of a big-time newspaper
back East. Of course, that’s his story, but we Indians are great
storytellers and liars and mythmakers, so maybe that Plains
Indian hobo is just a plain old everyday Indian. I’m kind of
suspicious of him, because he identifies himself only as Plains
Indian, a generic term, and not by a specific tribe. When I
asked him why he wouldn’t tell me exactly what he is, he said,
“Do any of us know exactly what we are?” Yeah, great, a
philosophizing Indian. “Hey,” I said, “you got to have a home
to be that homely.” He just laughed and flipped me the eagle
and walked away.
I wander the streets with a regular crew—my teammates,
my defenders, my posse. It’s Rose of Sharon, Junior, and me.
We matter to each other if we don’t matter to anybody else.
Rose of Sharon is a big woman, about seven feet tall if you’re
measuring over-all effect and about five feet tall if you’re only
talking about the physical. She’s a Yakama Indian of the
Wishram variety. Junior is a Colville, but there are about a
hundred and ninety-nine tribes that make up the Colville, so
he could be anything. He’s good-looking, though, like he just
stepped out of some “Don’t Litter the Earth” public-service
advertisement. He’s got those great big cheekbones that are
like planets, you know, with little moons orbiting them. He
gets me jealous, jealous, and jealous. If you put Junior and me
next to each other, he’s the Before Columbus Arrived Indian
and I’m the After Columbus Arrived Indian. I am living proof
of the horrible damage that colonialism has done to us Skins.
But I’m not going to let you know how scared I sometimes get
of history and its ways. I’m a strong man, and I know that
silence is the best method of dealing with white folks.
This whole story really started at lunchtime, when Rose
of Sharon, Junior, and I were panning the handle down at
Pike Place Market. After about two hours of negotiating, we
earned five dollars—good enough for a bottle of fortified
courage from the most beautiful 7-Eleven in the world. So we
headed over that way, feeling like warrior drunks, and we
walked past this pawnshop I’d never noticed before. And that
was strange, because we Indians have built-in pawnshop
radar. But the strangest thing of all was the old powwow-
dance regalia I saw hanging in the window.
“That’s my grandmother’s regalia,” I said to Rose of
Sharon and Junior.
“How you know for sure?” Junior asked.
I didn’t know for sure, because I hadn’t seen that regalia
in person ever. I’d only seen photographs of my grandmother
dancing in it. And those were taken before somebody stole it
from her, fifty years ago. But it sure looked like my memory of
it, and it had all the same color feathers and beads that my
family sewed into our powwow regalia.
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” I said.
So Rose of Sharon, Junior, and I walked into the
pawnshop and greeted the old white man working behind the
counter.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“That’s my grandmother’s powwow regalia in your
window,” I said. “Somebody stole it from her fifty years ago,
and my family has been searching for it ever since.”
The pawnbroker looked at me like I was a liar. I
understood. Pawnshops are filled with liars. “I’m not lying,” I
said. “Ask my friends here. They’ll tell you.”
“He’s the most honest Indian I know,” Rose of Sharon
said.
16
“All right, honest Indian,” the pawnbroker said. “I’ll give
you the benefit of the doubt. Can you prove it’s your
grandmother’s regalia?”
Because they don’t want to be perfect, because only God is
perfect, Indian people sew flaws into their powwow regalia.
My family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on our
regalia. But we always hid it so that you had to search really
hard to find it.
“If it really is my grandmother’s,” I said, “there will be one
yellow bead hidden somewhere on it.”
“All right, then,” the pawnbroker said. “Let’s take a look.”
He pulled the regalia out of the window, laid it down on
the glass counter, and we searched for that yellow bead and
found it hidden beneath the armpit.
“There it is,” the pawnbroker said. He didn’t sound
surprised. “You were right. This is your grandmother’s
regalia.”
“It’s been missing for fifty years,” Junior said.
“Hey, Junior,” I said. “It’s my family’s story. Let me tell
it.”
“All right,” he said. “I apologize. You go ahead.”
“It’s been missing for fifty years,” I said.
“That’s his family’s sad story,” Rose of Sharon said. “Are
you going to give it back to him?”
“That would be the right thing to do,” the pawnbroker
said. “But I can’t afford to do the right thing. I paid a thousand
dollars for this. I can’t just give away a thousand dollars.”
“We could go to the cops and tell them it was stolen,” Rose
of Sharon said.
“Hey,” I said to her. “Don’t go threatening people.”
The pawnbroker sighed. He was thinking about the
possibilities.
 “Well, I suppose you could go to the cops,” he said. “But I
don’t think they’d believe a word you said.”
He sounded sad about that. As if he was sorry for taking
advantage of our disadvantages.
“What’s your name?” the pawnbroker asked me.
“Jackson,” I said.
“Is that first or last?”
“Both,” I said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, it’s true. My mother and father named me Jackson
Jackson. My family nickname is Jackson Squared. My family
is funny.”
“All right, Jackson Jackson,” the pawnbroker said. “You
wouldn’t happen to have a thousand dollars, would you?”
“We’ve got five dollars total,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” he said, and thought hard about the
possibilities. “I’d sell it to you for a thousand dollars if you had
it. Heck, to make it fair, I’d sell it to you for nine hundred and
ninety-nine dollars. I’d lose a dollar. That would be the moral
thing to do in this case. To lose a dollar would be the right
thing.”
“We’ve got five dollars total,” I said again.
“That’s too bad,” he said once more, and thought harder
about the possibilities. “How about this? I’ll give you twenty-
four hours to come up with nine hundred and ninety-nine
dollars. You come back here at lunchtime tomorrow with the
money and I’ll sell it back to you. How does that sound?”
“It sounds all right,” I said.
“All right, then,” he said. “We have a deal. And I’ll get you
started. Here’s twenty bucks.”
He opened up his wallet and pulled out a crisp twenty-
dollar bill and gave it to me. And Rose of Sharon, Junior, and I
17
walked out into the daylight to search for nine hundred and
seventy-four more dollars.
1 P.M.
Rose of Sharon, Junior, and I carried our twenty-dollar
bill and our five dollars in loose change over to the 7-Eleven
and bought three bottles of imagination. We needed to figure
out how to raise all that money in only one day. Thinking
hard, we huddled in an alley beneath the Alaska Way Viaduct
and finished off those bottles—one, two, and three.
2 P.M.
Rose of Sharon was gone when I woke up. I heard later
that she had hitchhiked back to Toppenish and was living with
her sister on the reservation.
Junior had passed out beside me and was covered in his
own vomit, or maybe somebody else’s vomit, and my head hurt
from thinking, so I left him alone and walked down to the
water. I love the smell of ocean water. Salt always smells like
memory.
When I got to the wharf, I ran into three Aleut cousins,
who sat on a wooden bench and stared out at the bay and
cried. Most of the homeless Indians in Seattle come from
Alaska. One by one, each of them hopped a big working boat in
Anchorage or Barrow or Juneau, fished his way south to
Seattle, jumped off the boat with a pocketful of cash to party
hard at one of the highly sacred and traditional Indian bars,
went broke and broker, and has been trying to find his way
back to the boat and the frozen North ever since.
These Aleuts smelled like salmon, I thought, and they told
me they were going to sit on that wooden bench until their
boat came back.
“How long has your boat been gone?” I asked.
“Eleven years,” the elder Aleut said.
I cried with them for a while.
 “Hey,” I said. “Do you guys have any money I can borrow?”
They didn’t.
3 P.M.
I walked back to Junior. He was still out cold. I put my
face down near his mouth to make sure he was breathing. He
was alive, so I dug around in his bluejeans pockets and found
half a cigarette. I smoked it all the way down and thought
about my grandmother.
Her name was Agnes, and she died of breast cancer when
I was fourteen. My father always thought Agnes caught her
tumors from the uranium mine on the reservation. But my
mother said the disease started when Agnes was walking back
from a powwow one night and got run over by a motorcycle.
She broke three ribs, and my mother always said those ribs
never healed right, and tumors take over when you don’t heal
right.
Sitting beside Junior, smelling the smoke and the salt and
the vomit, I wondered if my grandmother’s cancer started
when somebody stole her powwow regalia. Maybe the cancer
started in her broken heart and then leaked out into her
breasts. I know it’s crazy, but I wondered whether I could
bring my grandmother back to life if I bought back her regalia.
I needed money, big money, so I left Junior and walked
over to the Real Change office.
4 P.M.
Real Change is a multifaceted organization that publishes
a newspaper, supports cultural projects that empower the poor
and the homeless, and mobilizes the public around poverty
issues. Real Change’s mission is to organize, educate, and
build alliances to create solutions to homelessness and
poverty. It exists to provide a voice for poor people in our
community.
18
I memorized Real Change’s mission statement because I
sometimes sell the newspaper on the streets. But you have to
stay sober to sell it, and I’m not always good at staying sober.
Anybody can sell the paper. You buy each copy for thirty cents
and sell it for a dollar, and you keep the profit.
“I need one thousand four hundred and thirty papers,” I
said to the Big Boss.
“That’s a strange number,” he said. “And that’s a lot of
papers.”
“I need them.”
The Big Boss pulled out his calculator and did the math.
“It will cost you four hundred and twenty-nine dollars for
that many,” he said.
“If I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t need to sell the
papers.”
“What’s going on, Jackson-to-the-Second-Power?” he
asked. He is the only person who calls me that. He’s a funny
and kind man.
I told him about my grandmother’s powwow regalia and
how much money I needed in order to buy it back.
“We should call the police,” he said.
“I don’t want to do that,” I said. “It’s a quest now. I need to
win it back by myself.”
“I understand,” he said. “And, to be honest, I’d give you
the papers to sell if I thought it would work. But the record for
the most papers sold in one day by one vender is only three
hundred and two.”
“That would net me about two hundred bucks,” I said. The
Big Boss used his calculator. “Two hundred and eleven dollars
and forty cents,” he said.
“That’s not enough,” I said.
“And the most money anybody has made in one day is
five hundred and twenty-five. And that’s because somebody
gave Old Blue five hundred-dollar bills for some dang reason.
The average daily net is about thirty dollars.”
“This isn’t going to work.”
“No.”
“Can you lend me some money?”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “If I lend you money, I have to
lend money to everybody.”
“What can you do?”
“I’ll give you fifty papers for free. But don’t tell anybody I
did it.”
“O.K.,” I said.
He gathered up the newspapers and handed them to me. I
held them to my chest. He hugged me. I carried the
newspapers back toward the water.
5 P.M.
Back on the wharf, I stood near the Bainbridge Island
Terminal and tried to sell papers to business commuters
boarding the ferry.
I sold five in one hour, dumped the other forty-five in a
garbage can, and walked into McDonald’s, ordered four
cheeseburgers for a dollar each, and slowly ate them.
After eating, I walked outside and vomited on the
sidewalk. I hated to lose my food so soon after eating it. As an
alcoholic Indian with a busted stomach, I always hope I can
keep enough food in me to stay alive.
6 P.M.
With one dollar in my pocket, I walked back to Junior. He
was still passed out, and I put my ear to his chest and listened
for his heartbeat. He was alive, so I took off his shoes and
socks and found one dollar in his left sock and fifty cents in his
right sock.
19
With two dollars and fifty cents in my hand, I sat beside
Junior and thought about my grandmother and her stories.
When I was thirteen, my grandmother told me a story
about the Second World War. She was a nurse at a military
hospital in Sydney, Australia. For two years, she healed and
comforted American and Australian soldiers.
One day, she tended to a wounded Maori soldier, who had
lost his legs to an artillery attack. He was very dark-skinned.
His hair was black and curly and his eyes were black and
warm. His face was covered with bright tattoos.
“Are you Maori?” he asked my grandmother.
“No,” she said. “I’m Spokane Indian. From the United
States.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I have heard of your tribes. But you
are the first American Indian I have ever met.”
“There’s a lot of Indian soldiers fighting for the United
States,” she said. “I have a brother fighting in Germany, and I
lost another brother on Okinawa.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I was on Okinawa as well. It was
terrible.”
“I am sorry about your legs,” my grandmother said.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he said.
“What’s funny?”
“How we brown people are killing other brown people so
white people will remain free.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Well, sometimes I think of it that way. And other times I
think of it the way they want me to think of it. I get confused.”
She fed him morphine.
“Do you believe in Heaven?” he asked.
“Which Heaven?” she asked.
“I’m talking about the Heaven where my legs are waiting
for me.”
 They laughed.
“Of course,” he said, “my legs will probably run away from
me when I get to Heaven. And how will I ever catch them?”
“You have to get your arms strong,” my grandmother said.
“So you can run on your hands.”
They laughed again.
Sitting beside Junior, I laughed at the memory of my
grandmother’s story. I put my hand close to Junior’s mouth to
make sure he was still breathing. Yes, Junior was alive, so I
took my two dollars and fifty cents and walked to the Korean
grocery store in Pioneer Square.
7 P.M.
At the Korean grocery store, I bought a fifty-cent cigar
and two scratch lottery tickets for a dollar each. The maximum
cash prize was five hundred dollars a ticket. If I won both, I
would have enough money to buy back the regalia.
I loved Mary, the young Korean woman who worked the
register. She was the daughter of the owners, and she sang all
day.
“I love you,” I said when I handed her the money.
“You always say you love me,” she said.
“That’s because I will always love you.”
“You are a sentimental fool.”
“I’m a romantic old man.”
“Too old for me.”
“I know I’m too old for you, but I can dream.”
“O.K.,” she said. “I agree to be a part of your dreams, but I
will only hold your hand in your dreams. No kissing and no
sex. Not even in your dreams.”
“O.K.,” I said. “No sex. Just romance.”
“Goodbye, Jackson Jackson, my love. I will see you soon.”
20
I left the store, walked over to Occidental Park, sat on a
bench, and smoked my cigar all the way down.
Ten minutes after I finished the cigar, I scratched my first
lottery ticket and won nothing. I could only win five hundred
dollars now, and that would only be half of what I needed.
Ten minutes after I lost, I scratched the other ticket and
won a free ticket—a small consolation and one more chance to
win some money.
I walked back to Mary.
“Jackson Jackson,” she said. “Have you come back to
claim my heart?”
“I won a free ticket,” I said.
“Just like a man,” she said. “You love money and power
more than you love me.”
“It’s true,” I said. “And I’m sorry it’s true.”
She gave me another scratch ticket, and I took it outside. I
like to scratch my tickets in private. Hopeful and sad, I
scratched that third ticket and won real money. I carried it
back inside to Mary.
“I won a hundred dollars,” I said. She examined the ticket
and laughed.
“That’s a fortune,” she said, and counted out five twenties.
Our fingertips touched as she handed me the money. I felt
electric and constant.
“Thank you,” I said, and gave her one of the bills.
“I can’t take that,” she said. “It’s your money.”
“No, it’s tribal. It’s an Indian thing. When you win, you’re
supposed to share with your family.”
“I’m not your family.”
“Yes, you are.”
She smiled. She kept the money. With eighty dollars in
my pocket, I said goodbye to my dear Mary and walked out
into the cold night air.
 8 P.M.
I wanted to share the good news with Junior. I walked
back to him, but he was gone. I heard later that he had
hitchhiked down to Portland, Oregon, and died of exposure in
an alley behind the Hilton Hotel.
9 P.M.
Lonesome for Indians, I carried my eighty dollars over to
Big Heart’s in South Downtown. Big Heart’s is an all-Indian
bar. Nobody knows how or why Indians migrate to one bar and
turn it into an official Indian bar. But Big Heart’s has been an
Indian bar for twenty-three years. It used to be way up on
Aurora Avenue, but a crazy Lummi Indian burned that one
down, and the owners moved to the new location, a few blocks
south of Safeco Field.
I walked into Big Heart’s and counted fifteen Indians—
eight men and seven women. I didn’t know any of them, but
Indians like to belong, so we all pretended to be cousins.
“How much for whiskey shots?” I asked the bartender, a
fat white guy.
“You want the bad stuff or the badder stuff?”
“As bad as you got.”
“One dollar a shot.”
I laid my eighty dollars on the bar top.
“All right,” I said. “Me and all my cousins here are going
to be drinking eighty shots. How many is that apiece?”
“Counting you,” a woman shouted from behind me, “that’s
five shots for everybody.”
I turned to look at her. She was a chubby and pale Indian
woman, sitting with a tall and skinny Indian man.
“All right, math genius,” I said to her, and then shouted
for the whole bar to hear. “Five drinks for everybody!”
21
All the other Indians rushed the bar, but I sat with the
mathematician and her skinny friend. We took our time with
our whiskey shots.
“What’s your tribe?” I asked.
“I’m Duwamish,” she said. “And he’s Crow.”
“You’re a long way from Montana,” I said to him.
“I’m Crow,” he said. “I flew here.”
“What’s your name?” I asked them.
“I’m Irene Muse,” she said. “And this is Honey Boy.”
She shook my hand hard, but he offered his hand as if I
was supposed to kiss it. So I did. He giggled and blushed, as
much as a dark-skinned Crow can blush.
“You’re one of them two-spirits, aren’t you?” I asked him.
“I love women,” he said. “And I love men.”
“Sometimes both at the same time,” Irene said.
We laughed.
“Man,” I said to Honey Boy. “So you must have about
eight or nine spirits going on inside you, enit?”
“Sweetie,” he said. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
“Oh, no,” Irene said. “Honey Boy is falling in love.”
“It has nothing to do with love,” he said. We laughed.
“Wow,” I said. “I’m flattered, Honey Boy, but I don’t play
on your team.”
“Never say never,” he said.
“You better be careful,” Irene said. “Honey Boy knows all
sorts of magic.”
“Honey Boy,” I said, “you can try to seduce me, but my
heart belongs to a woman named Mary.”
“Is your Mary a virgin?” Honey Boy asked.
We laughed.
 And we drank our whiskey shots until they were gone.
But the other Indians bought me more whiskey shots, because
I’d been so generous with my money. And Honey Boy pulled
out his credit card, and I drank and sailed on that plastic boat.
After a dozen shots, I asked Irene to dance. She refused.
But Honey Boy shuffled over to the jukebox, dropped in a
quarter, and selected Willie Nelson’s “Help Me Make It
Through the Night.” As Irene and I sat at the table and
laughed and drank more whiskey, Honey Boy danced a slow
circle around us and sang along with Willie.
“Are you serenading me?” I asked him.
He kept singing and dancing.
“Are you serenading me?” I asked him again.
“He’s going to put a spell on you,” Irene said.
I leaned over the table, spilling a few drinks, and kissed
Irene hard. She kissed me back.
10 P.M.
Irene pushed me into the women’s bathroom, into a stall,
shut the door behind us, and shoved her hand down my pants.
She was short, so I had to lean over to kiss her. I grabbed and
squeezed her everywhere I could reach, and she was
wonderfully fat, and every part of her body felt like a large,
warm, soft breast.
MIDNIGHT Nearly blind with alcohol, I stood alone at the
bar and swore I had been standing in the bathroom with Irene
only a minute ago.
“One more shot!” I yelled at the bartender.
“You’ve got no more money!” he yelled back.
“Somebody buy me a drink!” I shouted.
“They’ve got no more money!”
“Where are Irene and Honey Boy?”
22
“Long gone!”
2 A.M.
“Closing time!” the bartender shouted at the three or four
Indians who were still drinking hard after a long, hard day of
drinking. Indian alcoholics are either sprinters or
marathoners.
“Where are Irene and Honey Boy?” I asked.
“They’ve been gone for hours,” the bartender said.
“Where’d they go?”
“I told you a hundred times, I don’t know.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“It’s closing time. I don’t care where you go, but you’re not
staying here.”
“You are an ungrateful bastard. I’ve been good to you.”
“You don’t leave right now, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Come on, I know how to fight.”
He came at me. I don’t remember what happened after
that.
4 A.M.
I emerged from the blackness and discovered myself
walking behind a big warehouse. I didn’t know where I was.
My face hurt. I felt my nose and decided that it might be
broken. Exhausted and cold, I pulled a plastic tarp from a
truck bed, wrapped it around me like a faithful lover, and fell
asleep in the dirt.
6 A.M.
Somebody kicked me in the ribs. I opened my eyes and
looked up at a white cop.
“Jackson,” the cop said. “Is that you?”
 “Officer Williams,” I said. He was a good cop with a sweet
tooth. He’d given me hundreds of candy bars over the years. I
wonder if he knew I was diabetic.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was cold and sleepy,” I said. “So I lay down.”
“You dumb-ass, you passed out on the railroad tracks.”
I sat up and looked around. I was lying on the railroad
tracks. Dockworkers stared at me. I should have been a
railroad-track pizza, a double Indian pepperoni with extra
cheese. Sick and scared, I leaned over and puked whiskey.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Officer Williams asked.
“You’ve never been this stupid.”
“It’s my grandmother,” I said. “She died.”
“I’m sorry, man. When did she die?”
“Nineteen seventy-two.”
“And you’re killing yourself now?”
“I’ve been killing myself ever since she died.”
He shook his head. He was sad for me. Like I said, he was
a good cop.
“And somebody beat the hell out of you,” he said. “You
remember who?”
“Mr. Grief and I went a few rounds.”
“It looks like Mr. Grief knocked you out.”
“Mr. Grief always wins.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
He helped me up and led me over to his squad car. He put
me in the back. “You throw up in there and you’re cleaning it
up,” he said.
“That’s fair.”
He walked around the car and sat in the driver’s seat. “I’m
taking you over to detox,” he said.
23
“No, man, that place is awful,” I said. “It’s full of drunk
Indians.”
We laughed. He drove away from the docks.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” he said.
“What guys?” I asked.
“You Indians. How the hell do you laugh so much? I just
picked your ass off the railroad tracks, and you’re making
jokes. Why the hell do you do that?”
“The two funniest tribes I’ve ever been around are Indians
and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent
humor of genocide.”
We laughed.
“Listen to you, Jackson. You’re so smart. Why the hell are
you on the street?”
“Give me a thousand dollars and I’ll tell you.”
“You bet I’d give you a thousand dollars if I knew you’d
straighten up your life.”
He meant it. He was the second-best cop I’d ever known.
“You’re a good cop,” I said.
“Come on, Jackson,” he said. “Don’t blow smoke up my
ass.”
“No, really, you remind me of my grandfather.”
“Yeah, that’s what you Indians always tell me.”
“No, man, my grandfather was a tribal cop. He was a good
cop. He never arrested people. He took care of them. Just like
you.”
“I’ve arrested hundreds of scumbags, Jackson. And I’ve
shot a couple in the ass.”
“It don’t matter. You’re not a killer.”
“I didn’t kill them. I killed their asses. I’m an ass-killer.”
We drove through downtown. The missions and shelters
had already released their overnighters. Sleepy homeless men
and women stood on street corners and stared up at a gray
sky. It was the morning after the night of the living dead.
“Do you ever get scared?” I asked Officer Williams.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, being a cop, is it scary?”
He thought about that for a while. He contemplated it. I
liked that about him.
“I guess I try not to think too much about being afraid,” he
said. “If you think about fear, then you’ll be afraid. The job is
boring most of the time. Just driving and looking into dark
corners, you know, and seeing nothing. But then things get
heavy. You’re chasing somebody, or fighting them or walking
around a dark house, and you just know some crazy guy is
hiding around a corner, and hell, yes, it’s scary.”
“My grandfather was killed in the line of duty,” I said.
“I’m sorry. How’d it happen?”
I knew he’d listen closely to my story.
“He worked on the reservation. Everybody knew
everybody. It was safe. We aren’t like those crazy Sioux or
Apache or any of those other warrior tribes. There’ve only been
three murders on my reservation in the last hundred years.”
“That is safe.”
“Yeah, we Spokane, we’re passive, you know. We’re mean
with words. And we’ll cuss out anybody. But we don’t shoot
people. Or stab them. Not much, anyway.”
“So what happened to your grandfather?”
“This man and his girlfriend were fighting down by Little
Falls.”
“Domestic dispute. Those are the worst.”
“Yeah, but this guy was my grandfather’s brother. My
great-uncle.”
“Oh, no.”
24
“Yeah, it was awful. My grandfather just strolled into the
house. He’d been there a thousand times. And his brother and
his girlfriend were drunk and beating on each other. And my
grandfather stepped between them, just as he’d done a
hundred times before. And the girlfriend tripped or something.
She fell down and hit her head and started crying. And my
grandfather kneeled down beside her to make sure she was all
right. And for some reason my great-uncle reached down,
pulled my grandfather’s pistol out of the holster, and shot him
in the head.”
“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, my great-uncle could never figure out why he did
it. He went to prison forever, you know, and he always wrote
these long letters. Like fifty pages of tiny little handwriting.
And he was always trying to figure out why he did it. He’d
write and write and write and try to figure it out. He never
did. It’s a great big mystery.”
“Do you remember your grandfather?”
“A little bit. I remember the funeral. My grandmother
wouldn’t let them bury him. My father had to drag her away
from the grave.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t, either.”
We stopped in front of the detox center.
“We’re here,” Officer Williams said.
“I can’t go in there,” I said.
“You have to.”
“Please, no. They’ll keep me for twenty-four hours. And
then it will be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
I told him about my grandmother’s regalia and the
deadline for buying it back.
 “If it was stolen, you need to file a report,” he said. “I’ll
investigate it myself. If that thing is really your
grandmother’s, I’ll get it back for you. Legally.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not fair. The pawnbroker didn’t know
it was stolen. And, besides, I’m on a mission here. I want to be
a hero, you know? I want to win it back, like a knight.”
“That’s romantic crap.”
“That may be. But I care about it. It’s been a long time
since I really cared about something.”
Officer Williams turned around in his seat and stared at
me. He studied me.
“I’ll give you some money,” he said. “I don’t have much.
Only thirty bucks. I’m short until payday. And it’s not enough
to get back the regalia. But it’s something.”
“I’ll take it,” I said. “I’m giving it to you because I believe
in what you believe. I’m hoping, and I don’t know why I’m
hoping it, but I hope you can turn thirty bucks into a thousand
somehow.”
“I believe in magic.”
“I believe you’ll take my money and get drunk on it.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“There ain’t no such thing as an atheist cop.”
“Sure, there is.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not an atheist cop.”
He let me out of the car, handed me two fivers and a
twenty, and shook my hand.
“Take care of yourself, Jackson,” he said. “Stay off the
railroad tracks.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
He drove away. Carrying my money, I headed back
toward the water.
25
8 A.M.
On the wharf, those three Aleuts still waited on the
wooden bench.
“Have you seen your ship?” I asked.
“Seen a lot of ships,” the elder Aleut said. “But not our
ship.”
I sat on the bench with them. We sat in silence for a long
time. I wondered if we would fossilize if we sat there long
enough.
I thought about my grandmother. I’d never seen her dance
in her regalia. And, more than anything, I wished I’d seen her
dance at a powwow.
“Do you guys know any songs?” I asked the Aleuts. “I
know all of Hank Williams,” the elder Aleut said.
“How about Indian songs?”
“Hank Williams is Indian.”
“How about sacred songs?”
“Hank Williams is sacred.”
“I’m talking about ceremonial songs. You know, religious
ones. The songs you sing back home when you’re wishing and
hoping.”
“What are you wishing and hoping for?”
“I’m wishing my grandmother was still alive.”
“Every song I know is about that.”
“Well, sing me as many as you can.”
The Aleuts sang their strange and beautiful songs. I
listened. They sang about my grandmother and about their
grandmothers. They were lonesome for the cold and the snow.
I was lonesome for everything.
 10 A.M.
After the Aleuts finished their last song, we sat in silence
for a while. Indians are good at silence.
“Was that the last song?” I asked.
“We sang all the ones we could,” the elder Aleut said. “The
others are just for our people.”
I understood. We Indians have to keep our secrets. And
these Aleuts were so secretive they didn’t refer to themselves
as Indians.
“Are you guys hungry?” I asked.
They looked at one another and communicated without
talking.
“We could eat,” the elder Aleut said.
11 A.M.
The Aleuts and I walked over to the Big Kitchen, a greasy
diner in the International District. I knew they served
homeless Indians who’d lucked into money.
“Four for breakfast?” the waitress asked when we stepped
inside.
“Yes, we’re very hungry,” the elder Aleut said.
She took us to a booth near the kitchen. I could smell the
food cooking. My stomach growled.
“You guys want separate checks?” the waitress asked.
“No, I’m paying,” I said.
“Aren’t you the generous one,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me rhetorical questions. They scare me.”
She looked puzzled, and then she laughed.
“O.K., Professor,” she said. “I’ll only ask you real
questions from now on.”
26
“Thank you.”
“What do you guys want to eat?”
“That’s the best question anybody can ask anybody,” I
said. “What have you got?”
“How much money you got?” she asked.
“Another good question,” I said. “I’ve got twenty-five
dollars I can spend. Bring us all the breakfast you can, plus
your tip.”
She knew the math.
“All right, that’s four specials and four coffees and fifteen
per cent for me.”
The Aleuts and I waited in silence. Soon enough, the
waitress returned and poured us four coffees, and we sipped at
them until she returned again, with four plates of food. Eggs,
bacon, toast, hash-brown potatoes. It’s amazing how much food
you can buy for so little money.
Grateful, we feasted.
NOON
I said farewell to the Aleuts and walked toward the
pawnshop. I heard later that the Aleuts had waded into the
salt water near Dock 47 and disappeared. Some Indians swore
they had walked on the water and headed north. Other
Indians saw the Aleuts drown. I don’t know what happened to
them.
I looked for the pawnshop and couldn’t find it. I swear it
wasn’t in the place where it had been before. I walked twenty
or thirty blocks looking for the pawnshop, turned corners and
bisected intersections, and looked up its name in the phone
books and asked people walking past me if they’d ever heard of
it. But that pawnshop seemed to have sailed away like a ghost
ship. I wanted to cry. And just when I’d given up, when I
turned one last corner and thought I might die if I didn’t find
that pawnshop, there it was, in a space I swear it hadn’t “I don’t want your money.”
occupied a few minutes ago. “But I wanted to win it.”
I walked inside and greeted the pawnbroker, who looked a “You did win it. Now take it before I change my mind.”
little younger than he had before.
Do you know how many good men live in this world? Too
“It’s you,” he said. many to count!
“Yes, it’s me,” I said. I took my grandmother’s regalia and walked outside. I
“Jackson Jackson.” knew that solitary yellow bead was part of me. I knew I was
“That is my name.” that yellow bead in part. Outside, I wrapped myself in my
grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the
“Where are your friends?”
sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars
“They went travelling. But it’s O.K. Indians are stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my
everywhere.” grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing. ♦
“Do you have the money?”
“How much do you need again?” I asked, and hoped the
price had changed.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.” It was still the
same price. Of course, it was the same price. Why would it
change?
“I don’t have that,” I said.
“What do you have?”
“Five dollars.”
I set the crumpled Lincoln on the countertop. The
pawnbroker studied it.
“Is that the same five dollars from yesterday?”
“No, it’s different.”
He thought about the possibilities. “Did you work hard for
this money?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He closed his eyes and thought harder about the
possibilities. Then he stepped into the back room and returned
with my grandmother’s regalia.
“Take it,” he said, and held it out to me.
“I don’t have the money.”

27
 Man and Wife
Katie Chase, 2007
______________________________________________
They say every girl remembers that special day when
everything starts to change.
I was lying under the tree in my parents’ backyard, an
oak old enough to give shade but too young to be climbed,
when Dad’s car pulled into the garage. All afternoon I’d been
riding bikes with Stacie, but we had a fight when she proposed
we play in my basement—it was getting too hot out, but I was
convinced she was only using me for my Barbies. This was
eight years ago. I was nine and a half years old.
Dad came out and stood in the driveway, briefcase in
hand, watching me pull up grass. “Mary Ellen!”
I yanked one final clump, root and dirt dangling from my
hands, and sat up.
“Come inside. I have wonderful news.”
In the kitchen Dad was embracing my mother, his arms
around her small, apron-knotted waist. “I can’t believe it went
through,” she was saying. She turned to me with shiny eyes,
cleared her throat, and said in her sharp voice, “Mary, go get
down the good glasses.”
I pushed a chair to the cupboards and climbed onto the
countertop. Two glass flutes for my parents, and for myself a
plastic version I’d salvaged from last New Year’s, the first time
I’d been allowed, and encouraged, to stay up past midnight
and seen how close the early hours of the next day were to
night.
28
Dad took down the last leftover bottle of champagne and
popped it open, showering the kitchen floor. My mother
laughed and wiped her hands on her polka-dotted apron, as if
she’d gotten wet.
“Hold up your glass, Mary Ell,” said Dad. He filled it
halfway, and theirs to the rim. When in the past I’d been
curious about alcohol, my parents had frowned, taken a drink,
and feigned expressions of disgust. On New Year’s, for
instance, my cup had held plain orange juice, and the next
morning, while my parents still slept, I’d had orange juice in it
again.
“A toast.” My mother held up her glass and waited.
I waited, too. The champagne fizzed, bubbles rising.
“To Mary,” said Dad, and then he stopped, choked up.
“Our own little girl, to be a woman,” my mother said.
“Bottoms up.”
They clinked their glasses together, and mine met theirs
dully, with a tap that brought an end to the pleasant ringing
they’d created. I brought the champagne to my lips. I found
that, if ingested in small sips, it was quite drinkable, no worse
than my mother’s Diet Coke, and it had the welcome effect of
making me feel I was floating away.
“Don’t you want to hear what the big news is?” said Dad.
My mother turned her back on us to the cutting board, where
she was chopping a fresh salad.
In a small voice I said, “Yes.” I tried to smile, but that
feeling was in my stomach, made more fluttery by drink. I
recognize the feeling now as a kind of knowledge.
“Well, do you remember Mr. Middleton? From Mommy
and Daddy’s New Year’s party?”
 At the party I’d been positioned, in scratchy lace tights
and a crinoline-skirted dress, at the punch bowl to ladle
mimosas for their guests. Many of their friends introduced
themselves to me that night: Mr. Baker, Mr. Silverstein, Mr.
Weir. Some bent to my height and shook my hand. Mr.
Woodward scolded me for insufficiently filling his cup, and his
young wife, Esmerelda, my former babysitter, led him away.
“Mr. Middleton—that nice man with the moustache? You
talked together for quite some time.”
Then I remembered. As I served other guests, he’d
lingered with a glass of sweating ice water, talking about his
business. He directed his words to the entire room, looking out
over it rather than at me, but he spoke quietly, so only I could
hear. He offered figures: annual revenue, percentages, the
number of loyal clients. And then: “My business is everything.
It is my whole life.” I looked up at him curiously, and his face
reddened; his moustache twitched. When he finally left,
patting my shoulder and thanking me for indulging him, I was
relieved. I’d had little to say in return—no adult had ever
spoken to me that way—and I’d felt the whole time, on the tip
of my tongue, the remark that might have satisfied and gotten
rid of him sooner.
“That’s the good news,” Dad said. “He’s gone ahead and
asked for your hand. And we’ve agreed to it.”
My mother put down the knife and finished off her
champagne. I wanted no more of mine.
“Well, don’t be so excited,” said Dad. “Do you understand
what I’m saying? You’re going to be a wife. You’re going to live
with Mr. Middleton, and he’s going to take care of you, for the
rest of your life. And, one day, when we’re very old, he’ll help
out your mother and me, too.
29
“Yep.” He smiled. “It’s all settled. Just signed the contract
this afternoon. You’ll really like him, I think. Nice man. You
seemed to like him at the party, anyhow.”
“He was okay,” I managed. It was as I’d feared,
somewhere, all along: the toast, the party, everything. But
now he had a face, and a name. Now it was real: my future
was just the same as any other girl’s. Yet none of my friends
had become wives yet, and it didn’t seem fair that I should be
the first taken. For one thing, I was too skinny. They say men
first look for strength in a wife. Next they look for beauty, and
even with braces and glasses yet to come, I was a homely little
girl. It’s last that men look for brains. You may notice that I
skipped over wealth. While rumors of sex spread freely at
school, it wasn’t clear to me then just how money fit in. It was
discussed only in negotiations, when lawyers were present and
we were not. It was best that way for our parents, who tried to
keep such things separate.
At dinner I pushed the food around on my plate, clearing
a fork-wide path and uncovering the blue-and-white pattern of
little people kneeling in rice fields and pushing carts. My
mother was on her third glass of champagne—she wouldn’t
last through Jeopardy!—and she was laughing at everything
Dad said about his anxious day at the office.
A timer buzzed, and my mother rose from the table to pull
out her raspberry pie. She approached me with the dish
clasped in her oven mitts.
“Take a good look at that pie, Mary.”
The crust was golden brown, its edges pressed with the
evenly spaced marks of a fork prong. Sweet red berries seeped
through the three slits of a knife.
“It’s perfect,” she said, with her usual ferocity.
 ***
The next morning Stacie acted like our fight hadn’t
happened, and I wanted to play along. We went to ride bikes
while my mother showered. Dad’s car had left already for
work, and he’d dragged the garbage out to the curb. The
champagne bottle poked from the recycling bin, ready to be
taken away. It was another summer day.
“We had a celebration last night,” I told Stacie. “Dad let
me have booze.”
“Oh, yeah? What for?” She pedaled ahead and moved onto
the street, which her parents, and mine, forbade.
I had to shout, she was so far ahead. “Someone named Mr.
Middleton wants to take me.”
Stacie slammed on her brakes and turned her bike to face
me. Once caught up, I kept going.
“When?” she demanded, appearing alongside. “You know
he can’t take you yet.”
“Why not?” I said, but I assumed, as did Stacie, that
there’d be a long period of engagement. In the fall we were to
start the fifth grade, and it was rare for a girl still in
elementary to be taken.
“He must really like you,” Stacie said, in awe. We pedaled
slowly, pensively. “But you’re so skinny.”
Mrs. Calderón, in her silken robe, was out watering her
rose bushes. She waved.
“We’d better get on the sidewalk,” I said.
When we reached Maple Court, we laid our bikes on the
island and sprawled in the warm grass, making daisy chains
from the flowering weeds. Stacie put her hand on my arm. It
was rare for us to touch.
30
“Whatever happens,” she said, “don’t dump me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, ever since my sister went to live with Mr.
Gordon, she never plays with me anymore. When she comes
over she just sits in the kitchen with my mom drinking tea.”
She rolled her eyes. “They talk about recipes, and my mom
gives her a frozen casserole that she pretends to Mr. Gordon
she made by herself.”
“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
She held up her pinkie, and I joined it with mine.
“I promise, when I live with Mr. Middleton, you can still
come over and play Barbies.”
“Not just Barbies,” she said. “We’ll still play everything.
We’ll still be best friends.”
I hadn’t even been sure we were best friends, since during
school she spent her time with ratty-haired Cassandra and I,
in protest, with the studious Chan twins. But I remained
solemn. Maybe she wasn’t using me. Besides, although I
couldn’t really imagine what it would be like to be a wife, I
knew I wouldn’t want to be stuck with Mr. Middleton all the
time. I began to laugh.
“What?”
“He has the stupidest moustache!” I drew a thin line
above my mouth with my finger, sweeping up at the edges, to
indicate the way it curled.
“Probably, you can make him shave it off. My sister makes
Mr. Gordon wear socks all the time, so she doesn’t have to see
his feet.”
Stacie picked apart her chain and let the flowered weeds
fall—she had a theory they could again take root. I wore mine
around my wrist but lost it during the ride back. My mother
was still in the bathroom, the mingled scent of her products
floating out beneath the door.
***
After serving us tuna-and-pickle sandwiches, my mother
sent Stacie home.
“But why?”
“Shhh,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
I folded my arms across my chest and glared at her.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. Come here with me.”
In the living room, she sat and patted the couch beside
her. The television wasn’t on, which made the room feel too
still and too quiet, like nothing happened in it when we
weren’t around.
“Now, I know Daddy explained that you’re going to be a
wife. But do you know what that means?”
I refused to look at her, though I could feel her eyes on my
face. “Yeah. I’ll go live with Mr. Middleton. I’ll have to make
him dinner.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you’ll have to do more than that.”
“Can I still play Barbies with Stacie? I promised her.”
“You did, did you.”
I nodded. I told my mother everything that Stacie had
said. It made me proud that she was jealous, and I thought it
would make my mother proud, too.
“I’m sorry to say, it’s really up to Mr. Middleton when, and
if, you can play with your friends. And he may not appreciate
you, still just a little girl, telling him to shave off his
moustache. He’s had that thing for years.” She halted a
31
creeping smile. “What I’m trying to say is, you’ll belong to him.
You’ll have to be very obedient—not that you haven’t always
been a good girl. Your father and I are very proud of you. You
get such good grades and stay out of trouble.”
She paused, frowning. “I don’t think you realize just how
lucky you are that Mr. Middleton has offered to take you. He’s
a very successful man, and he’s made quite a generous offer,
for little in return.” She patted my leg. “I don’t mean you, of
course. Any man would be lucky to have you. But to be honest,
I’m not sure why he’s so eager to settle it.”
I stared at the black television screen. “Can I go to
Stacie’s now?”
“Wait. We’re not through.” She stood and approached the
bookshelf. On days when I stayed home sick, I’d lie on the
couch and stare at that bookshelf. Each book’s spine, its title
and design, suggested something of its story, and their order
and arrangement seemed fixed, like the sequencing of
photographs along the hallway wall: from my parents’
wedding—my mother thirteen and Dad twenty-seven—to the
day of my birth to my fourth-grade class picture. But as my
mother took out the Bible and a few romance paperbacks, I
saw that behind them were more books, a whole hidden row;
the shelf was deeper than I’d realized. She removed from
hiding a slim volume called Your Womanly Body, its cover
decorated in butterflies and soft-colored cut flowers blooming
in vases.
“This will tell you some of what you need to know about
being a wife. I imagine Mr. Middleton won’t expect much from
you at first. After all, you’re still very young.”
I began to turn the pages: there were cartoons of short
and tall and skinny and fat women, their breasts different
sizes and weights, with varying colors and masses of hair
between their legs. The pictures weren’t a shock to me. I’d
seen my mother naked before, and Stacie had confirmed that
her own looked much the same. Once I’d even seen Dad, when
I surprised him by waiting outside the bathroom door for a
Dixie cup of water late one night.
“You’ll have a child someday, of course. But most people
like to wait until they’re older and know each other better. I,
for instance, had you when I was eighteen. By today’s
standards, that’s still a little young.
“It can be scary, at first.” My mother’s voice had turned
soft, and she was staring out the window at the tree. “The
important thing to remember is, even though he’s in charge,
you can have some control. Pay close attention: what he wants
the most may be very small, and you can wait out the rest.”
I already knew there were ways to put off sex: some girls
“sucked” their husbands “off,” others cried until left alone. And
if a girl did become pregnant too soon, if it would be unseemly
for her to keep the baby, I knew there were ways to get rid of
it. But still, I’d rather not think about all that before I had to
face it.
My mother was saying, “A man’s life is spent waiting and
preparing for the right girl. It can be very lonely. In a way,
girls have it easy—”
“Mommy, when will I go live with Mr. Middleton?”
“I was getting to that, Mary. You can be so impatient.”
She lifted the book from my hands and turned to put it away.
“You’ll be going to him in the fall.”
“Oh.” I stared down at my bare summer feet, callused, tan
and dirty. “After school starts?”
32
“Mary. There’ll be no school for you this fall. You’ll have a
house to take over.”
The feeling was back my stomach, more of an ache now,
and all I wanted was to curl up on the couch while my mother
brought Jell-O and chicken-noodle soup. On sick days you
could escape the movement of the world. It was always
difficult to get back into it, to catch up on schoolwork and eat
real food again, but this time I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to
rejoin the world.
Yet the books were different now. I wouldn’t be able to not
think about that.
“Of course, he’ll probably let you go back soon. He’ll want
you to. That’s what Mr. Middleton told us—that he admired
your mind. He said he could tell you’re a very bright girl.
“I should be so lucky,” she added darkly. “Your father only
saw my strength.”
***
It became routine for Mr. Middleton to spend Sunday
afternoons with us. At dawn my mother yanked open all the
blinds, and the acrid smells of house cleaning began to fill the
rooms. Even Dad was kept from sleeping in and given chores
to do. I was ushered straight into the kitchen: “Do me one little
favor,” she said.
“Knead this dough. No, like this. Punch it, like you’re
pissed off.”
“Check the stove. Has it reached the preheated
temperature? Well, is it hot?”
“Okay, now we’ll let that marinate. You know what’s in
this marinade? Just smell it—what does it smell like?”
 Once I had completed my mother’s “favor” (“Umm, it
smells sweet.” “Good! That’s the honey.”), I snuck out while
her back was turned.
I was to be scrubbed “my pinkest” in the shower. She
showed me how to use Q-tips to clean out my ears, to rub
lotion over my skin, and to pluck the little hairs I hadn’t
noticed before from between my eyebrows. She swore under
her breath when she nicked me with the pink disposable
razor—my legs slathered in a thick gel that smelled like baby
powder. “Here,” she said. “You finish.”
I slid the blade along my leg, pressing as lightly as
possible.
I was to wear “one of my prettiest dresses,” which meant
that I rotated between the three in my closet. Their straps dug
into my shoulders, their crinoline scratched my bare legs. The
first Sunday my mother threw onto my bed a package from
Sears. Inside were three training bras. I didn’t have anything
resembling breasts, and when I finally did, years into my
marriage, they were so small that I continued to wear the
trainers for some time. My husband didn’t seem to care or
know the difference.
Every Sunday had the feel of a holiday—the boredom of
waiting for the guest to arrive and the impatience of waiting
for him to leave. Mr. Middleton always brought a bouquet of
flowers, at the sight of which I was to feign surprise and
gratitude. Every week, the same grocery-store assortment of
wildflowers that smelled rank and bitter, like weeds. Mr.
Middleton sat with my father in the living room while I
trimmed and arranged the flowers in my mother’s crystal vase.
She had me stir something or taste it for salt before nudging
me back out to join them.
33
Mr. Middleton would wear a full suit and tie, despite the
fact that our house had no air conditioning. As the afternoon
wore on, he would take off the suit jacket, loosen and remove
the tie, roll up the sleeves of the dress shirt and, lastly, undo
the shirt’s top button, revealing a tuft of dark, curly hair. The
hair on his head was straight, and he’d run a hand through it,
slicking it back with his sweat. Dad, in a short-sleeved polo
shirt and khaki shorts, would watch, smiling to himself. My
shaven skin felt cool and smooth. I had to stop myself from
running my hands along my legs as I sat listening to them talk
“business.” Their tone was cordial, but they seemed to eye each
other warily. I didn’t consider it then, but Dad was likely
sensitive to the fact that while he had to report to a boss, Mr.
Middleton was his own.
“How’s business?”
“Business is good. You?”
“Business is good. Clients?”
“Clients are good. Got to treat them right, keep them
happy,” Dad said.
“Of course.”
In and out of the room bustled my mother. She refilled the
pitcher of lemonade, replenished the dish of melting ice cubes,
brought out bowls of mixed nuts and pretzels and onion dip.
Before long, this became my job. I’d stand before Mr.
Middleton with a tray of pickles and olives.
“Hmm, let’s see.” He’d mull over the choices, select a
pimento-stuffed green olive. I’d turn to offer the tray to Dad,
who had a penchant for sweet pickles, but then: “Please, wait
just a moment—perhaps another. Hmm, let’s see.” And he’d
choose a kalamata. The metal tray was heavy, but my arms
grew stronger, and I learned to balance it on my shoulder.
Mr. Middleton rarely addressed me directly. Which is not
to say he wasn’t speaking to me. “Profit margins” and
“quarterly analyses” were discussed with glances and smiles in
my direction. But he never asked what I thought, how I was
doing, how I had spent my week. Adults, I knew, just liked to
humor children, and ordinarily those questions tired me,
causing me to clam up on the pretense of feeling shy. But in
this situation it was disconcerting. After all, wasn’t Mr.
Middleton supposed to like me? What were we going to say to
each other when we were, one day, inevitably, alone? I knew I
would be expected to say something; wives, especially as they
grew up, didn’t have to be invited to speak. They scolded their
husbands for things they were doing wrong, or weren’t doing
at all. They had stories to tell, of what had happened that day
at the market, of the rude cashier and the unmarked price of
the fresh loaf of bread.
For then, I followed my mother’s advice the best I could. I
wouldn’t speak unless spoken to. I sat up straight in the chair,
didn’t complain if the food at dinner was strange, didn’t ask to
turn on the television. I paid close attention to Mr. Middleton;
I focused on his moustache, the way it moved with his mouth,
studied the shine of his gold watch, viewed the gradual
stripping of clothing, the sweat gathering on his forehead and
alongside his nose, where his glasses slid. I suppose I may
have already been following my mother’s advice, but I don’t
remember thinking so. I never liked to admit I was doing as
she suggested. I preferred to credit my own volition.
Mr. Middleton seemed to me older than my father, though
he was almost a decade younger. Dad was strict, but he could
34
be silly, wasn’t afraid to be lazy, and had been known to watch
cartoons that even I found stupid. Mr. Middleton was too
polite and too proper. He was boring in the way a robot would
be: never leaving to go to the bathroom, never saying anything
Dad disagreed with or found ridiculous. They would have had
much to argue about—they do now—their strategies in
business so different: Dad doting on his clients, trying to keep
them pleased each step of the way, Mr. Middleton acting with
cool aggression against their wishes, with the long run in
mind, the biggest possible profit. I suppose we were all on our
best behavior.
By dinnertime the business talk had faltered, and the
men punctuated their silence with compliments for the meal—
something Dad never did when it was just the three of us. This
was when my mother took over. “Thank you,” she might say.
“Mary Ellen helped prepare that.”
“Did she? It’s quite good,” said Mr. Middleton.
“Oh, she’s learning. Believe it or not, just a month ago
even something this simple would have been beyond her.”
Mr. Middleton smiled politely and chewed, his moustache
moving up and down, a piece of couscous caught in the right-
side curl.
“There is still so much for her to learn, I’m afraid. You
mustn’t—you mustn’t expect too much, from the start.”
“But of course Donna will get her up to speed,” said Dad.
“Won’t you, honey?”
“Of course,” my mother said. “All I meant was, Mary is
such a fast learner. Why, just the other day the sauce was
starting to stick, and instead of letting it burn or calling me,
she just turned down the burner and gave it a stir. How about
that?”
The heat from the kitchen was creeping into the dining
room, and a bead of sweat slipped down Mr. Middleton’s
forehead. His top button, at that point, remained done. He
offered nothing but another polite smile. Maliciously, I
wanted, in front of everyone, to call attention to the couscous
still in his moustache. “Right there,” I’d interrupt, pointing to
a spot above my own lip. This was something a wife could do,
scold or embarrass her husband for his own good. But I knew I
hadn’t earned it yet, and it would take years of waiting,
quietly noting.
Mr. Middleton seemed oblivious to my parents’ fears and
cover-ups, but I’ve come to see that he was not, nor was he too
polite to lead the conversation elsewhere. I can look back now
with some sympathy. I can see myself in him: he was
determined to behave in the way that was expected, in the
belief, often false but sometimes accurate, that this gave him
some autonomy. And after all, he was getting what he wanted.
***
One Saturday afternoon Mr. Middleton showed up while
my parents were out. They were leaving me home alone more
often in preparation for the days when I’d be keeping house,
with Mr. Middleton off at work. Usually I found myself frozen,
unable to act as I would if my parents were around. I had a
great fear of doing something wrong, either accidentally
(opening the door to a dangerous stranger or coming upon
some matches, which would inadvertently scratch against
something and become lit, igniting a raging fire) or purposely,
overcome by the thrill of risk. The only way to ensure this
35
wouldn’t happen was to remain on the couch until they came
back.
At the sound of a knock at the door, I lifted a slat of blind
and peered out at Mr. Middleton: no flowers in hand, no suit
and tie. He wore blue jeans and sports sandals, a polo shirt
like those Dad owned. His arms were covered in those dark,
curly hairs. Through the peephole his nose was made long by
the curved glass, and his moustache twitched nervously. It
gave me a small thrill, making him wait. Just as he began to
back away, I did as I should and opened the door.
“Mary Ellen. What a pleasant surprise.”
“Hello,” I said politely. “Would you like to come in?”
He looked down the block, both ways. It was quiet for a
Saturday. Only Mrs. Calderón was out, pruning her blooming
roses. She’d recently explained to me that she had to cut them
back so they could grow. Mr. Middleton smiled in her direction
and entered the house.
“I’m home alone,” I said. It seemed best if I made that
clear right away.
“I won’t stay long. You see, I was just in the neighborhood
and thought I’d drop by.”
That was reasonable to me, but it seemed out of character
for Mr. Middleton, who operated purely, I thought, on
formality and routine. “Would you like a glass of iced tea with
lemon?” I asked.
“No, thank you.”
He wasn’t sitting, so I didn’t sit, unaware that I might
have offered him a seat. The expression on his face was, as
always, neutral, and he didn’t return my stare. I felt I was
doing something grossly wrong—I was still unfit to be a wife,
unable to handle company on my own. My mother would scold
me if she knew I’d received him in a T-shirt from last year’s
spelling bee and purple shorts stained with Kool-Aid.
I tried again. “How’s business?”
He smiled and lowered himself to my height, his hands
coming to rest on his knees. “Very well, thank you,” he said.
“But today, you see, I was thinking of you. I thought you might
like to show me your Barbies.”
No adult had ever asked to see them, and, to my
knowledge, they’d never been mentioned in his presence. My
mother allowed no visitors, other than my friends, into the
basement. She had warned me that the Barbies would have to
go when I went to Mr. Middleton. To head off my tears, Dad
had added quietly that perhaps, for a while, they could leave
them set up in the basement for when I came to visit.
I watched for some sign in Mr. Middleton that he was
joking or only humoring me, but he reached out a hairy arm
and took my hand. His wasn’t sweaty, though the day was
muggy and humid, and his skin was surprisingly soft. On the
narrow stairway he didn’t let go; my arm strained and pulled
behind me as I led him into the basement. His knees cracked
as he took the stairs.
The basement was unfinished, just hard tiles, exposed
beams and many-legged insects. Stacie complained about the
centipedes, but they appeared less often than the spiders.
Strips of sunlight came in through the windows along the
driveway, where you could see feet pass on their way to the
side door.
Mr. Middleton dropped my hand and approached the
Barbies’ houses slowly, as if in awe. The toys sprawled from
one corner of the room to the other, threatening to take over
36
even the laundry area; the foldout couch, which I maintained
took up valuable space, sometimes served as a mountain to
which the Barbies took the camper. There was one real Barbie
house, pink and plastic; it had come with an elevator that
would stick in the shaft, so I had converted the elevator to a
bed. The other Barbie home was made of boxes and old
bathroom rugs meant to designate rooms and divisions; this
was the one Stacie used for her family. The objects in the
houses were a mixture of real Barbie toys and other adapted
items: small beads served as food, my mother’s discarded
tampon applicators were the legs of a cardboard table. On a
Kleenex box my Barbie slept sideways, facing Ken’s back; both
were shirtless, her plastic breasts against him.
Mr. Middleton asked about the construction and
decoration of the rooms. He said he admired my reuse of
materials. “A creative way to cut costs,” he noted.
I shrugged. “Mom and Dad won’t buy me anything else.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You work well within limits.”
“I guess,” I said, but I was pleased. He was admiring my
mind.
“Well, you have quite a talent for design—I’ve seen
professional blueprints more flawed.” He suggested that in the
future we might have a home built, one I could help plan.
Then he leaned down and stroked Barbie’s back with his
index finger. “Do they always sleep this way?” he asked.
I blushed and only shook my head. Sometimes they lay
entirely naked, as my parents slept. Sometimes Barbie slept
on top of Ken, or vice versa.
“Can you show me another way they might sleep?” he
asked.
 I hesitated, then picked up the dolls and put their arms
around each other’s bodies in a rigid hug. I tilted Barbie’s head
and pressed her face against Ken’s, as if they were kissing,
and laid them back atop the Kleenex box. Mr. Middleton
watched with his detached interest.
“Your Barbies must love each other very much,” he
observed.
I’d never really thought about it that way. They were just
doing what my parents and people on television did because
they were married. But sometimes, when I was alone, it gave
me that fluttery, almost sick feeling deep in my stomach, and I
took the dolls apart.
Mr. Middleton stood and turned away. He help up his
wrist to the sun strip, examining his watch, for what seemed a
long time. “Well, thank you for sharing them with me. But I
should be on my way.”
I nodded, then recovered my manners. “Can I walk you to
the door?”
“No, thank you, Mary Ellen. I’ll show myself out.”
On Sundays he’d shake my parents’ hands before he left,
and now I wondered if I should offer mine. But instead he
reached out and patted me on the head, once, twice, then the
last time just smoothing my hair, as my mother would to fix a
stray strand, but much gentler.
When I heard the front door close, I knelt in front of the
Barbie house. It was difficult, as my Ken’s arms were straight,
not bent like some, but I moved his arm so that it stroked
Barbie’s back. I startled when my mother called from the top
of the stairs. I hadn’t seen feet in the windows or heard a key
in the door.
37
I didn’t tell them that Mr. Middleton had been over, and
the next day when he came for Sunday dinner he didn’t
mention it either. It didn’t occur to me until years later that
the whole thing might have been prearranged. I could find out
now; Mr. Middleton tells me anything I ask. He may tease, but
he knows when to stop. It’s quite possible he’s even learned to
fear me. For all his skill in the world of business, I think he
understands less about the world without than I do.
***
That September, with Stacie back at school, my days were
spent alone with my mother. She was nervous about the
upcoming ceremony and would sit with me at the kitchen table
for hours with catalogues of flowers and dresses.
“Do you like these roses? Or something more unique—
orchids? But so expensive.”
I would shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”
Depending on her mood, she would either become angry
(“If it doesn’t matter to you, who does it matter to? Pick out
some flowers!”) or take my reticence as deference to what she
thought was best (“The orchids are lovely, but we’d best be
practical, hmm?”).
Once, paging together through pictures of dresses, she
became so frustrated with me that she disappeared into the
bathroom for almost an hour. Finally I knocked on the door.
“Mommy? I left it open to the one I like.” I heard water
running, and when she came out she caught me around the
shoulders and held me against her, my face nuzzling her
stomach. “That’s my good girl,” she whispered above my head.
One afternoon was spent sewing, another polishing silver.
The cooking lessons took on new vigor, and she had me
reducing wine-based sauces, braising meats, and chopping
fresh herbs for most of the day. Dad would come home, see
everything that had been set out on the table and everything
that still simmered on the stove and roasted in the oven, throw
his hands up in the air and say, “I don’t know how you expect
us to consume all this, Donna. Maybe you could lay off her a
bit.” But then he’d sit down and attack the food with an
appetite that had the air of duty, sighing and unbuttoning his
pants for dessert.
Stacie came over after school a couple of times a week, but
she brought Cassandra; the Chan twins had forsaken me,
believing my imminent wifehood to have changed me already.
With only two Barbie houses, Stacie, Cassandra, and I couldn’t
play together fairly. Besides, I didn’t want Cassandra and her
ratty hair anywhere near them. Instead we sat on the porch
eating gingersnaps—just talking and not playing anything.
Other girls who’d been promised spent their time in this way.
Cassandra wanted to hear about Mr. Middleton. She
believed her parents to be sealing up a deal with a Mr.
Crowley from the neighboring town. I recounted Mr.
Middleton’s afternoon visit to sate her interest and swore them
to secrecy. They didn’t seem particularly impressed or
unnerved. I yearned for either response, to anchor my own.
“Well, is he cute?” Cassandra asked, twirling a dishwater-
blond lock.
I didn’t know how to answer her. Unlike Stacie and me,
Cassandra had always liked boys—but husbands were not like
boys. I didn’t know how to make her understand what it was
really like, but I also had the feeling that Cassandra would
handle things much differently when it was her turn. I was
thankful when Stacie changed the subject to school, with
38
stories of pencils stolen from the teacher’s desk and guest
story-readers, even though they made me both wistful and
angry, and Stacie knew it.
The night before the ceremony, my parents entertained
their friends with chilled rosé wine and a CD of lulling, smooth
jazz on repeat. My mother dusted my cheekbones with her
dark blush and checked my back to make sure I wore a
trainer. I was to greet guests at the door until everyone had
arrived, and then Stacie and I could retreat to the basement to
play Barbies together one last time. According to tradition, Mr.
Middleton was not invited; it was to be his last bachelor night
alone. But Mr. Woodward and Esmerelda came, and Mr.
Silverstein, and Stacie’s and Cassandra’s parents, eager to
know how it had all been pulled off. Mr. Baker said, as if
surprised, “You look very pretty tonight, Mary Ellen,” and
then he and Mr. Weir stood together in the corner, shaking
their heads. The Calderóns arrived last. Mr. Calderón was so
old his eyes constantly watered, and he could barely speak or
hear anything. Mrs. Calderón was a young grandmother, her
braided hair still long and black. She bent to me and
whispered, “You’re not getting cold feet now, are you dear?”
“Cold feet?” I asked. I peered down at my slipper socks,
embarrassed I’d removed the Mary Janes.
“I tried to run away from this one.” She winked at her
husband, but his expression didn’t change. “But then, I always
misbehaved.”
Mr. Calderón held tight to her arm, and she guided him
patiently toward the drinks. She kissed his shaking hand,
then placed a glass of water in it.
In the basement, adult feet shifting above us, I understood
that Mrs. Calderón had been saying that she knew me and
that she understood. From tomorrow on, that would be me
upstairs, like Esmerelda and even my mother, laughing a
stupid laugh and making frequent trips to the bathroom, with
an eye on my husband and his eye on me. Mrs. Calderón had
issued me a playful dare and made no promises; but if it was
the last childlike thing I did, I would take her up on it.
“Stacie, I need your help.”
She stopped pushing her Barbie car, a convertible she’d
acquired from me in a trade, and said with suspicion, “You
do?”
As I explained what I wanted to do, Stacie’s eyes began to
gleam. At one point she took my hand. I felt close to her, until
she said, “You won’t be married first after all!” But still she
was my confidante, my partner with her own stake.
What we came up with wasn’t much of a plan, but we did
identify the basic elements required in running away: a note, a
lightly packed suitcase, and utter secrecy. My mother had
already packed most of my clothes into a luggage set
embroidered with my new initials, M. M. I removed the
lightest bag from the pile by the side door and had Stacie
sneak it back home with her. After slipping away, having
deposited the note in a spot both clandestine and sure to be
eventually discovered, I would call Stacie from a pay phone
and have her meet me with the suitcase. For this purpose, I
used my new skills to sew a quarter into the hem of my dress,
which hung, long and white, like a ghost, outside my closet
door.
Beneath the covers with a flashlight that night, I
composed the note to Mr. Middleton. I could not tell him, as
they did in fantasy romance movies, that I had met someone
else. What I wrote was this:
39
Dear Mr. Middleton,
I am sorry to leave you at the alter. You seem very nice but
I can not be a wife. Please do not try to find me and please try
to go on with your life.
Mary Ellen
I thought it sounded quite grown-up and made running
away on cold feet seem a serious and viable act. I wasn’t
worried that we hadn’t decided where I would go. I didn’t
consider then that I knew of no woman who was not a wife,
that anyone I might turn to would turn me in, that breach of
contract was serious business and punishable by law. I
believed two things: that getting away would be the hardest
part of the game, and that you could only plan as far as you
could see. I don’t know if I believed that I would make it, but I
believed that I would try.
I might have left that very night, cutting Stacie’s ties to
my venture, but I had a romantic notion of wearing that dress.
I pictured kicking off the white patent-leather shoes to run
faster, and the small train flailing behind me. I pictured that
the dress would dirty as I ran; it would rip and tear, and then
I would know I was free.
***
When we arrived at the chapel, I spied Mr. Middleton’s
car in the parking lot. During a covert trip to the “potty,” I
slipped the note beneath its windshield wipers. It had always
made me laugh that my parents never noticed an
advertisement attached in this way until they were driving.
In the bride’s room, Dad, his eyes shiny and red-rimmed,
was smoothing out the fold from the contract, to which my
signature was to be added. “Why don’t you go sit down,
Frank?” my mother suggested, but she stayed with me,
adjusting my dress and hairspraying my hot-roller curls, until
the final moments. She hovered in the doorway. “You are
wearing, aren’t you, all the things we talked about? You
remember how it goes? Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence for
your shoe?”
“I remembered,” I said, thinking of the sewn quarter. If I
wasn’t careful to keep my skirt held as I walked, the coin hit
the floor with the barest knock. “Mommy, can I have a few
minutes alone? This is a very big day for me.”
She looked surprised, but her face softened. “Boy, kid, you
really have grown up.” She kissed my cheek, then rubbed it
furiously to remove any trace of lipstick. I felt sad, at that
moment, to think that I would never see her again, and
wondered if she would privately count me lucky or only be
disappointed.
The air outside smelled like a fall barbecue, charring corn
and sausages. In the bright blue sky flew a V of birds. Just as I
took a breath to run, I spotted Mr. Middleton across the lot
next to his car. The collar of his tuxedo was misaligned; he had
skipped a buttonhole and set the whole thing off. Facing the
sun, he held one hand to his face—to shield his eyes?—and in
the other was my note. His shoulders seemed to be shaking
with laughter. Had he been about to run away himself when
he came upon my note? This possibility, however remote,
might have been what led me to walk straight toward him,
slowly, steadily, wholly of my own volition. I hate to believe,
especially now, that it was as simple as holding to my nature;
that I was just a good girl who did always as she was told,
without hope and without design.
40
“Mary Ellen?” he said. “You’re still here.” I saw as I came
closer that he’d actually been crying, not laughing; a tear
dropped from the left-side curl of his moustache. I thought of
something Dad often said, when, much younger, I’d get caught
up in venturesome play with inevitable consequence: “It’s all
fun and games, isn’t it, until someone gets hurt.”
“I’m still here,” I said. I raised my arms to indicate I
should be lifted and let Mr. Middleton cradle me against his
chest. I felt his wildly beating heart, and he began to stroke
my hair as if I needed calming down. But my stomach felt only
the faintest rumble of hunger, an emptiness. I knew that I had
done the right thing, the only thing I could, but still, I felt
foolish. If I were really as smart as everyone believed, I would
never have found myself in this situation, with a ridiculous
man I was obligated to care for. My escape would have been
better planned and better executed. He would never have
taken an interest in the first place.
“Mary,” he said, “you do know that I—”
“What?” I struggled to sit up in his arms, impatient
suddenly, and restless. I wanted to go inside, where everyone
was waiting, and get it over with.
He set me down on the hood of his car and began again. “I
think you’ll be very pleased with the life I want to give you.”
I stared through his windshield at the tan leather seats,
sculpted to hug a body as the vehicle took the curves. I saw
where the top would fold down. This car would take me to my
new home.
“You do understand, don’t you, that the deal is
irrevocable? If you were to run off, your parents would owe me
a great deal of money. They could never hope to come out of
debt.”
 I knew that was a threat, and thought less of him for it. She and Cassandra were thick as thieves then. “Save them for
But then he said something I look back on now as the your kids,” she said, and we couldn’t help but dissolve into
beginning of my new understanding of my life. “I’m yours, panicked laughter. By the time she was taken, at age fourteen,
Mary Ellen, and if you stay, all that is mine will be yours, too.” she was serious about having children. It is her husband who
In answer, I rebuttoned his shirt. insists they wait. If we see each other now at the market,
grocery baskets in hand, we merely nod in greeting. We have
***
so little in common.
As I signed the contract, my eyes slid down the page, its
Mr. Middleton has made me apprentice to his business,
tiny print in a formal, inscrutable language. The sum my
which he says one day when he is dead, I will take over. Even
parents had provided to Mr. Middleton seemed enormous,
if—and the decision to have children is entirely up to me, he
though I know it now to be less than the cost of my childhood
says—one day we have a son. This is highly unusual and very
home and much less than the worth of Mr. Middleton’s
progressive, Dad has told me. He patted my head and told me
company. Men who’d planned poorly would seek a much larger
he was proud. I looked for something like greed or jealousy in
dowry and might suffer for it in their choice of wives. But it
his eyes, but found only love. My mother admitted, over
was our parents, always looking toward the future, who put
afternoon tea, that she wishes Dad had done something
money first. The dowry, like a child that would grow, was
similar for her. As far as I can see, he long ago reached his
ultimately an investment.
height on the ladder. What could he have done for her?
I handed over the paper for the minister to stamp, and he
“I have good business sense, a ruthless mind,” she
pronounced us man and wife.
insisted, and gestured to the piles of butterscotch-chip scones
***
she’d baked for a block sale. “But I suppose I’m lucky, in that
Mr. Middleton has kept my note folded in his sock drawer, we fell in love.”
and for years he has teased me for having misspelled “altar.”
I nodded in agreement, though I knew what would
Putting away his clean laundry, I look at it sometimes, not
provoke her: But isn’t it easier if we don’t think of love?
with wistfulness or shame, but because I want to remember.
Visiting is difficult because, although they think they act
The contract itself is in a safety-deposit box; I’ll receive a key
differently, my parents still treat me like a child, a newlywed
for my eighteenth birthday, a day now close in sight. The
bride. They don’t recognize what I’ve become, but they won’t
Barbies, of course, are long gone. Dad succeeded in overriding
argue when the time comes to face it, when Dad retires and I,
my mother, and the toys stayed in the basement a year into
with Mr. Middleton’s money, am in charge of them. Their
my marriage. But I rarely played with them—they seemed to
investment in me will have its rewards. I want the best for
have lost their allure, and I never knew what they wanted to
them, as they’ve managed for me.
do or say or wear. Stacie still hadn’t been promised, and I
offered them to her, but she pretended not to be interested.

41
 After a morning spent at home with my private tutor, Ms.
Dundee—whose husband succumbed when she was much
younger and much prettier (she says) to a condition she won’t
speak of—I change into a navy skirt and Peter Pan–collared
blouse, hop on my bike and head to the office. Mr. Middleton
has given me a fine car, of course, but I normally prefer the
exercise. So far I just prepare after-lunch coffee and bring it in
on a tray, each cup made to the preference of each board
member. Mr. Middleton sits at the head of the table. His
moustache, after all these years, remains; he would shave it if
I asked, but I suspect that issuing that demand would expose
me somehow. Once situated beside him, I’m encouraged to
listen in and, if so inclined, take notes. But it’s the quiet power
struggle that interests me, the way his inferiors look at him
and how they cover their desires with neutral jargon, loyal
reports. He takes for granted, I think, the way things are now.
“You’ve learned a lot so far from just watching and
listening,” he says to me, winking, as I take out my pad of
paper. I turn away and roll my eyes: he believes we’re always
42
in on some joke. This one is meant to be in reference to the
nights I join him in his bedroom, on the floor above mine.
Mostly I just lie there while he touches my hair or my back, as
he once demonstrated with the doll. He has mentioned in
those moments love, and a feeling of fulfillment. For him they
may be the same thing. Yet even with me around, taking care
of things, I sense he’s still a lonely man. I feel guilty
sometimes, offering so little reimbursement for his attentions,
though he receives more pleasure from them than I do, and
I’ve made attempts to do for him what other girls and young
wives have described. Now I believe that the hardest part of
the game is staying in it, holding on to your stake. And that
you can’t plan too far into the future. I’ve taken this down in
my notes: The benefits mature with time. I’ve begun to
appreciate just how much work parents invest in their
children, and wives in their husbands; it’s only fair for the
investor to become a beneficiary.
———-