The Warden's Daughter

  My legs felt like spaghetti as I wobbled into my bedroom. I looked into the wastebasket. The butt was gone! So was the one under the bed.

  She found them. She knew.

  And said nothing?

  Of course! How dumb was I! What made me think she would react immediately? She needed time to decide how she was going to handle me. This wasn’t maid stuff. This wasn’t her job. This was personal. Mother stuff.

  I needed to make it easier on her. I needed to make myself as approachable as possible. I needed to hang around, be visible, friendly. I passed up my usual visit to the women’s yard. I tried to lure her into conversation, warm her up. She was, after all, a quiet person, maybe even a chilly person.

  I asked questions while she worked. She gave one-word answers.

  Lunchtime came and went. Still no mention of cigarette butts.

  I made up excuses to follow her from room to room. I said her name a lot. “Eloda, what do you think of—?” “Eloda, did you ever—?” I had learned this from my father. When detectives interrogate a suspect, they make a point to say his name a lot. It helps put the suspect at ease.

  It didn’t work. The scolding never came. All my jibber-jabber did was drive her to run the Hoover so she wouldn’t have to hear me anymore.

  I was fed up. What did a kid have to do to get punished around here? I stormed out of the apartment and down to Reception, spit in the spittoon, grabbed my bike and slammed out to the sidewalk. I went to the candy guy at the city-hall bazaar. I stuffed my mouth with two Milky Ways and I rode.

  Somewhere along the way, as the chewing and pedaling dissipated my frustration, I remembered something I had seen when I’d sneaked my peek at Eloda Pupko’s reception sheet. On the line for family there was one word: “sister.”

  30

  There was a phone booth at Hector and Marshall. I leafed through the directory. Sure enough there was only one listing in the phone book with that name: Pupko. 428 Swede Street. A three-minute ride.

  I pulled up opposite the house. It was a twin. Porch front. Gray siding. Narrow side yard with a black wrought-iron fence. The front windows had venetian blinds. They were closed.

  Even as I steadied myself against the warm hood of a parked car, I was beginning to lose my nerve. Minutes went by with no sign of a sister-looking person, orange hair or otherwise. I had pictured myself pounding on the door and the door would open and I would say…what, exactly?

  I’m the warden’s daughter and Eloda Pupko cleans our house and I want to know what her crime was.

  Why doesn’t she care about finding cigarette butts in my room?

  Is she really hell on wheels?

  Why is she always so grouchy?

  A closed blind on the second floor suddenly opened like a stack of shocked eyelids. My courage vanished. I took off.

  I rode around town. I thought I was aimlessly cruising, but my bike knew better. It was bringing me turn by turn back to Mogins Dip. Mill Street. Since that Sunday I had not stopped thinking about the little kid who “shot” me.

  I paused at the top of the hill. I could see the sky-blue door, halfway down on the left.

  I coasted down the redbrick canyon of row houses. Parked cars lined both sides. No garages, no driveways, no front yards here. This was not the North End.

  A few kids were playing, laughing. Hopscotch. Jump rope. Suddenly something hit me—or rather my bike. Smacked into the spokes. I looked down. An apple core lay on the ground.

  “Bull’s-eye!” A squealy voice came from somewhere. And out he popped from between two cars, the tiny brown gunslinger, charging and firing his cap pistol in my face: “Pow! Pow! Pow!”

  Thrilled as I was to see him, Cannonball Cammie was too combative to gracefully absorb an attack on her bike—from anybody. My hair-trigger temper was about to combust when he holstered his gun and shouted, “Gimme a ride!”

  He wasn’t asking.

  His lips were twisting as he tried to wrench my hand from the handlebars. It took him both hands to pry up my index finger. I released my hold. He was trying to climb on in front of me but he was way too short. I hoisted him. My hands almost went around his body. I could feel his ribs. I sat him on the crossbar of my boy bike. His feet noogled between the downbar and my leg. His arm shot out. “Go!”

  From somewhere behind my heart, a voice whispered, Not a good idea. But it had no chance, as the boy repeated: “Go!”

  We went.

  From the start he wanted to take over. He clamped his hands around the handlebars. He hunched forward till his face was practically over the front tire. “Rmmm…rmmm,” he kept growling. “Faster…faster.” He kept trying to aim the wheel, so I had to fight him on that. But it was easy; he was so little.

  “Turn here!” he called as we approached Washington Street. I turned. Halfway up the block he called, “Stop! Stop!” I stopped in front of yet another brick row house. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Yo, Herbie!” Within seconds Herbie, another tiny brown kid, came out. “Herbie—look at me!” Herbie had barely begun looking when my rider’s hand smacked me twice on the thigh, as if I were a horse. “Go! Go!” I went. “We gone to the park!” he called back. “Monkey Hill!” Leaving Herbie to stew in the green juices of envy.

  Turning at the end of the block, I told him, “We are not going down Monkey Hill.” It was dawning on me that I had this little kid’s life on my crossbar. I had better start acting like it.

  “Main Street!” he called.

  “No,” I said. “Too crowded.”

  “Ribber!”

  So we went down to the river. It hadn’t rained for a month, and the Schuylkill was showing its bones—tree limbs and rocks that in higher water were submerged. I pulled over. I taught him waterside skills. How to pop stones from fringe-water mud to expose pale, darting crawfish. What shore rocks to find salamanders under. How to skip flat stones across the water. When a dead sunny came floating by, I had to stop him from wading out to get it. We had a contest. Who could throw a stone the farthest? I let him win.

  We rode some more, all the way down River Road to Conshohocken, to the steel mill. It was a bustling place in those days. Clanging diesels. Trucks. Smoke. Fire. Endless lines of coal cars. He became quiet. He gaped in wonder up at the brand-new basic oxygen facility, which towered above us like a squared-off, clay-red mountain.

  My own attention was drawn mostly to the little brown head with the side-flap ears in front of me.

  And then he gave me a moment that I treasure still. He let go of the handlebars, hung his arms out in the breeze and leaned back into me. I felt his head against my chest, and my heart sang. I tried to keep the ride as smooth as possible, to preserve the moment, but he flapped his arms twice and leaned forward again into the handlebars.

  For some reason only then did it occur to me to ask the question: “What’s your name?”

  He said it so casually: “Andrew.”

  Andrew.

  A mother named him Andrew.

  He did not ask me my name.

  We headed back to town.

  We were on a weedy stretch of road when he cried out: “Stop!” I slammed the brakes, afraid he was hurt. Before I could stop him, he had jumped down from the crossbar and dashed across the road. He picked something out of the dust. It was an empty soda bottle. In those days kids often earned candy money by turning empty bottles in to stores for a two-cent deposit per bottle. Little businessman, I thought as he climbed back aboard the bike. Farther along, the road dipped under a railroad overpass. Without warning he yelled, “Wahoo!” and hurled the bottle straight up. It shattered behind us against the concrete underside of the bridge.

  I pulled over, braked to a stop, looked back. The shadow of the underpass was littered with glass. Already a car was coming. I grabbed him. My fingers overlapped his tiny upper arm. I shook him. I snapped: “Don’t you ever do that again! You don’t do that! What’s the matter with you?”

  Only when I saw the look of horror on his fa
ce did I realize how I must have appeared to him. I probably mistook his paralysis for obstinacy. I shook him again. “Do you hear me?”

  A peep came out of him that might have been “Yes.”

  I mitted his chin in my hand as I would a baseball. “Do? You? Hear? Me?”

  His face collapsed, and suddenly he was bawling into my chest. “I’m sorry…I won’t do it….I won’t do it….”

  I held him, heaving, and turned to the door-blue sky. I took deep breaths. This was new territory for me. I had just met this kid an hour ago.

  He was sobbing more quietly now, his little arms around me, clutching me. Gently I pulled him away. “All right now,” I told him. “It’s over.” I wiped his tears with my shirttail. “Okay?”

  He nodded. He looked up at me with eyes I had never seen before, eyes I’d have thought only mothers could see.

  “Okay, then…,” I said, looking down the road. “So how about…a Marcy’s?”

  He threw up his arms, his face instantly transformed. “Yeah! Marcy’s!”

  “All right, turn around, then. Grab the handlebars; hold on tight.”

  He happily obeyed, and off we went to town to the beat of his chanting: “Marcy’s…Marcy’s…”

  Marcy’s, home of the world’s best water ice. Andrew wanted root beer. Large, of course. I got it for him. And a medium lemon for me. I wasn’t going to drive one-handed with him on the crossbar, so we sat on the curb in front of Holy Savior Church. Andrew finished his large before I was halfway through my medium.

  Back on the bike. Turn onto Mill Street. Down the hill, the house with the blue door stood out. A woman sat on the front steps. She snapped to her feet when she saw us. The dream vanished.

  I coasted down the hill. She waited at the curb. She wore a checkered apron over a pale yellow dress. Her hair was hidden in a bright lemon-yellow wrap. Her arms were folded. She was not happy.

  Andrew called: “Mommy! Look at me!” Mommy’s expression did not change.

  I coasted to a stop. The woman’s glare nailed both Andrew and me. Not that Andrew noticed. “Mommy, we rided!” he gushed. “All over! We went to the ribber! I won! We had Marcy’s! I had a big!”

  “Get down,” she said. I helped him down. He ran to her, wrapped his arms around her legs, buried his face in her apron.

  But her eyes were only on me. “What’s going on?” she said.

  What could I say? I just stood there on one leg and two bike tires, staring. Not because there were no answers, but because there were too many.

  “What are you doing with my child?”

  “He wanted a ride,” I replied lamely.

  “He’s a baby.”

  Andrew yanked her apron. “I’m not a baby. I’m five and a half.”

  “Who are you?” she said.

  Who are you?

  It was probably the first time I’d ever been asked that question. In my experience, everybody in Two Mills knew who I was. If not by name, then by label. The Girl Who Lives in Jail. The Girl Who Survived the Milk Truck That Killed Her Mother. The Crankiest Kid in Town. The Tomboy. Cannonball.

  “Your name,” she demanded.

  Uh-oh. Dare I tell her my real name and reveal myself as top kid at the county prison?

  I said, “Claire.”

  “Claire what?”

  “Claire…Jones.”

  “Where you live?”

  “Airy Street, ma’am.”

  She stepped forward till she was all I could see. “You don’t just come along”—she was fighting to control herself; I thought she might hit me—“and take my child.” Her lips were clenched to a thin line. Angry breaths came through her nose. “He know you?” Her eyes never left me. “Andrew. You know her?”

  “Yeah, Mommy. She’s my frenn. She buyed me a Marcy’s.”

  “You don’t do it. Unless you ask.” She poked me in the chest. “Did you ask?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  I felt my lip quiver. I prayed: Don’t cry.

  “You don’t.” Softer now: her voice, her eyes. “Take a boy off the streets. Not ask.”

  “I know, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  “I seed crawfishes, Mommy!” He was tugging at her. She stepped back.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve, ma’am. I’ll be thirteen.”

  She took another step back. I felt myself breathe. She seemed to be studying me, thinking. “Andrew, inside,” she said sternly. Andrew flew up the marble steps and into the house. She followed him to the top step, but instead of going in, she just stood there, looking down at me. “You too,” she said at last.

  I didn’t understand. I didn’t move.

  “Now,” she said. “You’re letting flies in. I’m not done with you.”

  I leaned my bike against the brick wall. I climbed the steps, imagining this was what a perp walker felt like. I entered the house. The blue door closed behind me.

  31

  The smell hit me first. Like a restaurant, but not really. Like a flower shop, but not really. My daily smell of scrapple was just that: scrapple. This…this was…a place.

  Then the colors. The room I entered was red, walls and ceiling. The next room was the same sky-blue as the front door. Fringed shawls draped the furniture like peacock tails.

  Plants were everywhere, most with blossoms I couldn’t name. In one corner, rising out of a terra cotta urn that came up to my waist, was either a huge plant or a small tree. Its great leaves were supple and buttery, as if they could be made into baseball gloves.

  And baskets! Woven baskets in shapes I’d never seen, one so big I could have climbed in.

  Two Mills had stopped at the blue door.

  By now Andrew was seated at the table, chomping on an apple. At this point I was not even tempted to tell his mother what he did with cores. I was invited to join him at the table. Sunlight from a riverside window pooled golden on the back wall.

  Between chomps Andrew was gabbing at a girl in shorts, telling her about his ride with me. She was at the stove. She might have been listening to him, but she was staring at me. She looked to me like an older teenager. Seventeen, maybe. Maybe Andrew’s sister. Her skin was lighter than that of the others, closer to the nougat in a Milky Way than the chocolate jacket. Bare feet. Aqua nails.

  “So,” she said, “you kidnapped my little brother.”

  “No,” I protested, “we were just—” and stopped because she was laughing.

  “Hey, didn’t my mother tell you? We been looking for somebody to kidnap him. Give us a break. Take him anytime.” She tweaked Andrew’s nose. Andrew squealed “Ow!” but didn’t look hurt.

  “Don’t joke,” said the mother, taking over at the stove. She was stirring something in a big pot with a wooden spoon.

  “What’s ‘kidnap,’ Missy?” piped Andrew.

  Missy ignored him. “Ginger ale?” she said to me. “Milk? I can make it chocolate. Iced tea?”

  “Ginger ale,” I said. And remembered to add, “Please.”

  She poured me a glass while Andrew said, “I wanna ginger ale.”

  Missy pointed. “Eat your apple and be quiet. You had a Marcy’s.” She studied him for a moment. “You made her take you for a ride. Didn’t you?”

  Andrew squawked, “No!” He appealed to his mother. “Mommy, tell Missy I didn’t make her do nothin’.”

  “Did he break a bottle?” Missy was staring dead-on at me.

  I looked at her. I looked at Andrew. “Uh…”

  Missy smacked a chair top. “I knew it.” She turned to the stove. “Mama—”

  Stirring the big pot, Mama uttered a single word: “Boot.”

  Andrew howled, spitting apple: “Nooo!”

  Missy leaned into his face. Her lips puckered with the word: “Boot.”

  “No, Mama!” Andrew cried. “Not the boot! I didn’t break no bottle! Did I?” He was yanking my thumb; my ginger ale was sloshing.

  From the stove came a second word: “Now.”
br />   Andrew yowled and thrashed and cried out, “Noooo!” But he went. Flailing out of the kitchen and upstairs noisily. When he returned, one leg up to the knee was encased in a rain boot, a rubber galosh. It was so big on him he had to drag it across the floor as if a small animal were clamped to his leg. If I had ever seen anything funnier in my life, I couldn’t think of it. A laugh-snort escaped from my nose before I could cut it off. I turned away. Missy slipped into the seat next to me. “He hates the boot,” she whispered. “It’s the only punishment that—” Her words spluttered into giggles. At the stove Andrew’s mother kept her back to us. Her shoulders were hunched. She stirred faster and faster.

  Glum-faced, Andrew clomped back to his seat and resumed eating his apple.

  “You like chili?” Missy asked me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

  “I’m not a ma’am,” she said. “You’re staying for dinner.”

  Kidnapper to dinner guest. That was fast. Inside I was smiling.

  Missy fascinated me. Like her mother, she wore silver hoop earrings a Ping-Pong ball could fit through. The aqua nails on her hands and feet complemented her beige skin perfectly. I wondered if she got her cosmetics at Woolworth’s. I doubted even Reggie could find something wrong with her.

  “Mama,” she said, “turn Wibbage on.”

  Her mother reached above the stove and flicked on a white radio. Music poured into the kitchen from WIBG, the station all the kids listened to. I pictured Reggie and her pink transistor.

  “So. Claire,” said Missy.

  I looked around. I wondered who Claire was. Then remembered. “Yes, ma’am…sorry…yes?”

  “So what grade are you in?”

  “I’m going into seventh.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. She looked impressed. “Junior high.”

  “Yes.”

  “Gonna be thirteen.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can go back to ma’am. I kinda like it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hear that, Mama?”

  Mama nodded smartly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Missy studied me. “Thirteen.” The sight of me seemed to tickle her. “Teenager.”

  “Get a Job” came on the radio. Missy started bopping her head to the beat. Having finished his apple, Andrew tried to thread the chewed-up core through the hoop of his sister’s earring. It wouldn’t fit. He chewed the core down some more. Tried again. Success!