Because It Is My Blood

  “Annie?”

  “It wasn’t anything.” I was emphatic. “I was waiting for you.”

  He stopped walking and looked at me. “You’re lying. You’re awfully good at it, but you forget—I know what you look like when you’re being deceitful.”

  What did I look like when I was lying? I’d have to ask him sometime. “I’m not lying, Win. It’s only an idea I had, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet,” I said. “While I was waiting for you, I thought I’d run a couple parts of it by your dad because it has a legal component to it.”

  “Well, he certainly owes you the free advice.” He took my arm again, and we resumed walking. At some point, we got to talking about our plans for what was left of the weekend.

  “Win,” I asked, “would you mind if we went to a legalize-cacao rally some time?”

  “Sure … But why would you want to do that?”

  “Mainly curiosity, I suppose. Maybe I’d like to see what it’s like on the other side.”

  Win nodded. “Does this have anything to do with what you were talking to my dad about?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I admitted.

  When I got home, I found out the next Cacao Now meeting was Thursday night.

  The tough part was that I didn’t want to be recognized. I wanted to check it out without making a spectacle of myself. Noriko lent us wigs and dispensed makeup advice. I had a stick-straight blond wig and red lips. (I had abandoned my mustache in Mexico, of course, not that I would have wanted to unveil my mustachioed look in front of Win.) Win wore dreadlocks and a mesh cap, a modified version of what he’d worn to visit me at Liberty.

  Win and I took the bus downtown to the abandoned library building where the meeting was being held.

  We were a little bit late so we slipped in at the back.

  About one hundred people were there. Standing behind a lectern in the front of the hall was Sylvio Freeman, who was in the middle of introducing a speaker. “Dr. Elizabeth Bergeron will speak about the health benefits of cacao.”

  Dr. Bergeron was a pale, skinny woman with a high-pitched voice. She wore a long tie-dyed skirt down to her ankles. “I am a doctor,” she began. “And it is from this perspective that I will speak tonight.” Her lecture dealt with many of the same things Theo had said to me in Chiapas. I looked at Win to see if he was bored. He didn’t seem to be.

  “So why,” she concluded, “if there is so much enrichment to be found in natural cacao, should it be illegal? Our government allows the sale of plenty of things that are completely toxic. We should be using common sense and not money to determine what we consume.”

  The Cacao Now people did not overly impress me. They were disorganized, and their main plans seemed to involve standing outside government buildings and passing out leaflets.

  On the way back uptown, Win started talking about next year. “I’ve been thinking I want to do premed,” he said.

  “Premed?” I’d never heard anything about that before. “What about your band? You’re so talented!”

  “Annie, I hate to tell you this, but I’m only okay.” He looked at me shyly. “The band still doesn’t have a name and, had you been around, you’d know that we’ve barely played this year. At first, because I was hurt, and then I just wasn’t all that interested. And, well, a lot of guys who have bands in high school would be better off not making a life of it. I’m into other things, too, you know. I’d never want to do what my dad does, but I would like to help people. That doctor at the rally. I was watching her and thinking how great it would be to do that.”

  “Do what exactly?”

  “Help people be less ignorant about their health, I guess.” He paused. “Plus, if I do stay with you, medical skills would probably come in pretty handy. Everyone’s always getting hurt when you’re around.”

  “If…”

  While the bus was stopped at a traffic light, I studied Win out of the corner of my eye. The streetlights lit up different parts of his face than I was used to seeing.

  From two rows behind us, Daisy Gogol, who’d been trailing us the whole night, chimed in. “I thought I was going to be a singer, but I’m so glad I know Krav Maga.”

  “Thanks for the support, Daisy,” Win said. “What should the pro-cacao people do instead?” he asked me.

  “I know that they think too small. They need lawyers. And money, lots of it. Standing in front of a courthouse with dirty hair and pamphlets isn’t going to do anything. They need ads. They need to convince the public that they deserve chocolate and that there was never anything wrong with it to begin with.”

  “Anya, you know I support you, but aren’t there bigger problems in the world than chocolate?” Win asked me.

  “I’m not sure, Win. Just because something is a small problem doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed. Small injustices conceal larger ones.”

  “Is that something your father used to say?”

  No, I told him. It was my own wisdom, and something I had learned through experience.

  * * *

  Sunday after church, I went to talk to Fats at the Pool. His stomach was distended and his eyes were red. I worried that he might have been poisoned. “You feeling all right?” I asked.

  “I look that bad to you?” He chuckled, then patted his gut. “I’m an emotional eater.”

  I asked him if anything specific was bothering him.

  He shook his head. “Nothing to concern your pretty little head with. Been working nights at the speakeasy and here in the days. Let’s just say there’s a reason guys in my position don’t live that long.”

  Fats punctuated that remark with a laugh so I suppose it was meant as a joke. I reminded him that my father had been “a guy in his position.”

  “Didn’t mean any disrespect, Annie. So what’s on your mind?” Fats asked.

  “I’ve got a proposition,” I said. “A business proposition.”

  Fats nodded. “I’m all ears, kid.”

  I took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of medicinal cacao?”

  Fats nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe.”

  I described what I had learned from my discussions with Mr. Delacroix and the man at the market.

  “So what’s the big idea?” Fats asked.

  I took another deep breath. I had not wanted to admit to myself how invested I was in this idea. Before she whacked me over the head, Sophia Bitter had called me the “daughter of a cop and a criminal” who would always be at war with herself. It was a cruel thing to say, but it also happened to be true. It was cruel because it was true. I felt it in my every impulse, and I was incredibly tired of living that way. This idea, for me, was a way to end the war. “Well, I was thinking that instead of selling Balanchine chocolate on the black market, we could open a medicinal cacao dispensary.” I looked at Fats to see what he thought of the idea, but his face was blank. “Eventually, maybe even a chain of them,” I continued. “It would all be aboveboard. We’d hire doctors to write the prescriptions. And possibly even nutritionists to help us come up with recipes. And the only chocolate we’d use would be Balanchine, of course. We’d also need pure cacao, but I know a great place we could import that from. If the dispensaries were a success, maybe this could even go a long way toward changing public opinion and convincing the lawmakers that chocolate should never have been illegal in the first place.” I snuck another glance at Fats. He was nodding a little. “The reason I came to you is because you know all about the restaurant business and, of course, you’re the head of the Family now.”

  Fats looked at me. “You’re a good kid, Annie. You’ve always been a good kid. And I can tell you put a heck of a lot of thought into this idea. And it’s definitely an interesting one. I’m glad you came to me. But I got to tell you, from the semya side of things, this will never work.”

  I was not yet ready to let this go. “Why won’t it work?”

  “It’s real simple, Annie. The machinery of Balanchine Chocolate is set up to service a market where cho
colate is illegal. If chocolate became legal or there even became a popular way to get around its illegality—à la the medicinal dispensaries you propose—Balanchine Chocolate would be out of business. We exist to serve a black market, Anya. The only way I know how to run a restaurant, if you want to call it that, or any sort of business at all is under the conditions of illegality. Chocolate is legal, Fats is obsolete. Maybe someday chocolate will be legal again, but I honestly hope I’m dead by then.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Fats looked at me with sad eyes. “When I was a kid, my senile old grandma used to read me vampire stories. You know what a vampire is, Anya?”

  “Kind of. I’m not sure.”

  “They’re like these superhuman beings that enjoy drinking human blood. I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but Grandma Olga was mad for them. So, okay, there’s this one vampire story I remember. Maybe the only reason I remember it is because it’s the longest. This human girl falls for this vampire boy, and he loves her, but he kind of wants to kill her, too. And this goes on for a really long time. You wouldn’t believe how long! Should he kiss her or kill her? Well, he ends up kissing her a lot—you wouldn’t believe how much! But ultimately, he kills her and turns her into a vampire anyway—”

  I interrupted him. “What is your point, Fats?”

  “My point is, a vampire is always a vampire. We Balanchines are vampires, Annie. We will always be vampires. We live in the night. In the dark.”

  “No, I disagree. Balanchine Chocolate was around before the chocolate banning. Daddy wasn’t always a criminal. He was an honest businessman, dealing with obstacles.” I shook my head. “There has to be a better way.”

  “You’re young. It’d be wrong for you not to think that,” Fats said. He reached out his hand across the table. “Come see me with your next big idea, kid.”

  I walked home from the Pool. It was a long walk, past Holy Trinity and through the park. The park looked about the same as the last time I’d been there—sere, seedy. I jogged across the Great Lawn, and I had just about hit the south side of Little Egypt when I heard the sound of a little girl screaming. She was standing by a graffiti-covered bronze statue of a bear. She didn’t have shoes on and her only clothing was a T-shirt. I went up to her. “Are you okay? Can I help you?”

  She shook her head and started to cry. That was when a man jumped me from behind. I felt his arm around my neck. “Gimme all your money,” he said. Obviously, he and the little girl were a team. It was a shakedown. I can only attribute my imprudence to the fact that I had been preoccupied and dejected because of Fats’s rejection of my idea.

  I only had a little money on me, which I gave to the man. I did have my machete but I wasn’t going to kill someone over a small amount of money.

  “Stop,” a brassy voice called. “I know her.”

  I looked in the direction of the voice. A girl with mousy brown hair cut short looked at me. My old bunkmate, Mouse.

  “She’s okay,” Mouse said. “We were at Liberty together.”

  The man loosened his grip. “Really? Her?”

  Mouse came up to me. “Yeah,” Mouse said to her colleague. “That’s Anya Balanchine. You don’t want to mess with her.” Mouse smelled foul and her hair was matted and dirty. I suspected that she had been sleeping outside.

  “Mouse,” I said. “You talk now.”

  “I do. I’m cured, thanks to you.”

  I didn’t need to ask her what she’d been up to. She was obviously a member of some kind of band of juvenile criminals.

  I asked her if she had ever called Simon Green.

  “Yes,” she told me. “But he didn’t know who I was so he basically blew me off. I don’t blame you. You had a lot on your hands.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” I said. “If there’s ever anything I can do to help…”

  “How about that job?” Mouse asked.

  I told her I was out of the family business, but maybe I could help her financially.

  Mouse shook her head. “I don’t take handouts, Anya. Like I told you at Liberty, I work for my keep.”

  I definitely owed her. “Maybe my cousin Fats could give you a job.”

  “Yeah? I’d like that.”

  I asked her how I could get in touch with her. “I’m here,” she said. “I sleep behind the statue of the bear.”

  “It’s nice to talk to you at last, Kate,” I said.

  “Shh,” she said. “The name’s classified.”

  When I got home, the first thing I did was contact Fats at the Pool. He said he was surprised to hear from me so soon, but that he’d be happy to give my friend a job. Despite the fact that he’d abjectly rejected the idea I thought was going to save us all, Fats was a good guy.

  Win came over that night. “You’re quiet,” he said.

  “I thought I’d come up with something really smart,” I said. I described my idea to him, and then I told him the reasons Fats had said it wouldn’t work.

  “So that’s what the cacao rally was about and why you’ve been so secretive,” Win said.

  I nodded. “I really wanted it to work.”

  Win took my hand. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way but I’m kind of glad that it didn’t work. Even if there were a legal way to justify selling chocolate, you’d end up in court all the time. You’d be fighting City Hall and public opinion and even your own family, it sounds like. Why would you want to take on all of that? Not having anything to do after high school is not a good enough reason.”

  “Win! That’s not the reason! How stupid do you think I am?” I shook my head. “It might sound silly to you, but there’s some part of me that always wanted to be the person who returned Balanchine Chocolate to the right side of the law, I guess. For Daddy.”

  “Look, Annie. You gave the business to Fats. Sophia and Mickey are gone. Yuji Ono, too. You really can be free of this now. It’s a gift, if you choose to see it that way.”

  He kissed me, but I didn’t feel like being kissed.

  “Are you angry at me?” Win asked.

  “No.” I was.

  “Let me see your eyes.”

  I turned them on him.

  “My father’s the same way.”

  “Don’t compare me to him.”

  “He’s done nothing for the past six months because he lost the election when really, losing the election was a gift to all of us. Me. You. My mother. And especially him, if the bastard could just open up his eyes and see it.”

  I didn’t say anything for such a long time that Win finally changed the subject.

  “Graduation is next Wednesday. Are you coming?” Win asked.

  “Do you want me to?” I replied with a question of my own.

  “I don’t care,” Win said.

  But obviously he did want me to come if he was bringing it up.

  “I’m giving the salutatorian speech if you’re interested,” Win continued.

  “That’s right. You’re smart. I forget that sometimes.”

  “Hey.” Win smiled.

  I asked him if he knew what he planned to say.

  “It’ll be a surprise,” he promised.

  That was how Natty, Noriko, and I found ourselves at Trinity’s high school graduation.

  Win’s speech was, I think, in part directed at me and in part directed at his father. It was about questioning what society tells you and standing up to authority and other things that have probably been said at countless other graduations. He had acquired his father’s gift for oration, so in terms of the crowd’s response, it barely mattered what he said. I clapped as much as anyone else.

  Did I feel a twinge at the sight of my classmates walking across the stage? Yes, I did. More than just a twinge actually.

  Scarlet waved to us as she accepted her diploma. After some amount of back-and-forth, the administration had allowed her to walk at graduation while pregnant. Cap-and-gown was basically like a maternity dress, so Scarlet didn’t stick out much anyway. And from the
point of view of Trinity, it was far worse not to keep one’s baby than to keep it. Gable met her on the other side of the stage to help her down the steps.

  When they reached the bottom, Gable got down on one knee.

  “Oh no,” Natty said. “I think Gable’s proposing again.”

  I dismissed her. “Gable wouldn’t do that here.”

  “He is. Look, he’s taking a little jewelry box out of his pocket,” Natty said.

  “Romantic,” Noriko said. “So romantic.” And I imagine it did look romantic if you didn’t know either of the parties involved.

  “Poor Scarlet,” I said. “She must be so embarrassed.”

  At that moment, a cheer went through the gymnasium. We were sitting toward the back, so I could no longer see Scarlet or Arsley. “What?” I asked. “What just happened?” I stood.

  Scarlet and Arsley were kissing. He had his arms around her.

  “Maybe she’s letting him down easy?” I said. But even as I said it, I knew that she wasn’t.

  After graduation was over, I scrambled to the front to find Scarlet but she’d already left. I spotted Scarlet and her parents outside. They were standing in a coven with Gable Arsley’s parents. I grabbed Scarlet’s hand and pulled her away.

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked as soon as I’d gotten her alone.

  Scarlet shrugged. “I’m sorry, Annie. I knew how you’d feel but … with the baby coming, I just got worn down.” She sighed. “I’m worn out. I even wore flats to graduation. Can you imagine me—”

  “I told you that you could stay with me!”

  “Could I really? It’s a nice offer, Annie, but I don’t think I could. Leo’s wife is there. And Leo will be back. And there won’t be any room for me and a baby.”

  “Yes there will, Scarlet! I’ll make room.”

  She didn’t say anything. Even in flats, she was taller than me. She looked over my head. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything specific other than not at me. Her expression was even and the set of her mouth was firm.