by A F Carter
the specks of dust lying out in the meadow. I arch my back,
lift my head, reaching up, until my something looks back for a time too short to measure, and my brain whispers: alright, alright, alright.
I don’t speak a word of this to il Dottore, not a syllable, not a whisper, my posture at all times submissive, the flower child at night, her petals folded. “Color,” I tell him. “My job is to supply color.” From a distance, I hear Victoria applaud.
“And do you succeed?”
“Of course. The gray of our lives is sequential, flowing
from light to dark, so that a single yellow rose in the center is a thousand yellow roses, enough to light a room.”
Halberstam nods, his dismissal apparent, I’m the obvious
nutcase described by Martha when I made her late for her
appointment, a self rarely in control of the body, a self on the way out, don’t let the door hit you in the ass. He takes me
through the abuse routine—do I remember—knowing that
my response will only be more of the same. The body had
been around for more than two decades before my appear-
ance. That job belongs to Tina.
“And will I see Tina soon?”
I want to say only the shadow knows, but I remember
Victoria telling me in the plainest language not to get in il Dottore’s face, the man believing that patients should always be told, should never tell. He’s bored with me besides, the
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real stars absent—Tina, Eleni—and won’t they have stories
to share. I finally note the lust in il Dottore’s gaze, his flat blue eyes now sparkling.
Ten minutes later I’m on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhat-
tan, still in control, a big surprise because I can feel Victoria’s breath in my ear, a sure sign my time on Earth is almost
over, at least for now. But Victoria’s whispering: “You did
good, honey child. You told him exactly nothing. You didn’t
give him a single excuse.”
It comes to me in a flash, the revelation: my sister loves
me, loves us all, even Eleni, even those she’s marked for
elimination, for death, because love doesn’t matter here,
only survival. Victoria wants to survive, Martha, too, their combined will to live, no matter how bleak the conditions,
far more powerful than my own.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARTHA
I give the elevator button a nudge on my way to the stairs.
I’m not expecting much because the elevator’s been down
for a week. No biggie. The elevator’s broken about half the
time and we’re used to the stairs. Not this time, though.
The blue light above the call button flickers and I hear the elevator descend from somewhere above. It bangs against
the housing, a hollow boom that echoes in the hallway.
The elevator door slides back a few seconds later to reveal
Roberta, whose last name I don’t know. Roberta’s a black
woman well into her seventies. She’s been living here longer than any other resident and she knows everyone. I watch her
move into a corner when the door opens, pulling her shop-
ping cart along. I’ve also brought my shopping cart, which
I wedge against the back of the elevator. Then I ride down
with my butt against the door.
In New York, food stamp grants are posted to an account
accessed through your Medicaid card. That transforms Med-
icaid cards into a temporary credit cards, dispensing dollars until your allotment runs out. Which it always does. Making
the day your card refills a spontaneous holiday.
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Some people spread their stamps out over the month,
but I’m a splurger. I like to fill the shelves, the refrigerator, the tiny freezer. Never mind that two weeks from now I’ll
be cursing myself because there’s no money. I just need to
see the cupboards full. I need abundance, no matter how
temporary.
“Hey, Carolyn, how you doin’?” Roberta says. “You off to
C-Town?”
“Uh-uh, Pathmark.” It’s mere coincidence that our cards
are filled on the same day, but we meet fairly often to dis-
cuss what’s on sale. Mostly, I look forward to Roberta’s company, though I prefer to do the actual shopping alone. I like to weigh every purchase, to calculate and recalculate. One
hundred dollars to last a month. Every gram counts.
“Woman come by askin’ about you.” Roberta’s tone is
neutral, her eyes turned away. “Name of Porter. Wanted
to know if y’all was trouble, makin’ noise, confrontin’ your neighbors. Wanted to know if y’all have a lot of visitors.”
I nod, but I’m too humiliated to say anything. Roberta’s
not familiar with the others because I do all the shopping.
But she knows something’s wrong when a healthy, childless
woman receives food stamps.
“I told that Ms. Porter, ‘Lady, if this is all you got to do, find another job for yourself and save honest taxpayers the
cost of your pension.’”
“What did she say?”
“Nothin’, just laughed fit to burst.” Roberta smiles. “Now
there’s a woman don’t take a bluff.”
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* * *
We linger in front of the building for a few minutes. Discuss-
ing what items are on sale in which stores. Roberta’s face is a mass of wrinkles. Her bony frame leans to the left, the result of a small stroke. I watch her finally move away, using her
shopping cart for a walker, her left leg dragging. The odds
are stacked against Roberta. She’s an old woman, poor all
her life, her kids far away. But she keeps going no matter
what life throws at her. Like us.
I finally head off in the opposite direction. We’re into
August now, with the temperature at ten o’clock already
above eighty degrees. I’m sweating before I reach the end of the block. But I don’t mind. With no air conditioner, we’re
used to sweating out the summer months. Still, it’s a relief when I step into the air-conditioned Pathmark on Atlantic
Avenue. I stop near the entrance for a moment as the sweat
evaporates. To my left, I see Crespo, the manager. Crespo
sometimes flirts with me, but he’s wasting his time. If I have eyes for anyone, it’s Violetta, who works a cash register.
Today I have eyes only for the chuck roast, which is on
sale, $3.25 a pound. With just a few cheap ingredients, you
can turn a chuck roast into a pot roast good for a lunch and four dinners. I buy two, four pounds each, $25 in total, a
quarter of my stamps. As a general rule, I don’t measure
my shopping by time, thirty days until new stamps come
through. I measure the month in meals, ninety-three meals
in July to be exact. I know I can’t make a hundred dollars
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A. F. CARTER
produce ninety-three meals, but I can turn a whole chicken
into three dinners and four lunches by making chicken
stock from the carcass and adding a little rice. Brown rice is a Grand household stapl
e. I buy it in twenty-five-pound bags at a wholesale grocery for about $20. In an emergency, a cup of rice fried up with some onion, peppers, and garlic will
pass for lunch. Add an egg, you’ve got dinner.
I take a certain satisfaction from my skill at making do.
Even though I have no idea who will eat the dinner.
I wander into the produce section. In truth, except for
basics like onions and carrots and celery, we can’t afford fresh fruit or vegetables on the first go-round. Instead, I try to set a few dollars aside from our disability check to buy produce from the city’s many sidewalk vendors, a bag of cherries, a
head of cabbage or broccoli, a few peaches. The produce is
cheaper and fresher.
I’m completely absorbed, turning over bags of carrots,
looking for any sign of rot, when I happen to glance up and
see my father at the other end of the produce aisle. Instantly, the lie we’ve been telling each other all these years—the one about only Tina having to relive the past—falls away. My
bowels contract, every organ quivering, and I feel an enor-
mous pressure on my chest. For a very long moment, my
lungs are completely paralyzed. Nothing has been lost, noth-
ing. The memories, the images swirl around me, circling
faster and faster as the words repeat.
To a child, to a child, to a child . . .
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CHAPTER TWELVE
ELENI
The body is in full panic mode when I come aboard.
Serena, Victoria, and Martha have fled and Kirk is
nowhere to be found. That leaves me or Tina to face the
emergency and it ain’t gonna be Tina. Still, they’ve picked
the right sibling. Although terrible images continue to shred what little mind I possess, I force my brain to calm. I’ve been in tough situations before. That’s what I tell myself. I’ve been in tough situations and I’m still around and you can kiss my ass.
Besides, who’s to say it’s Hank Grand? Like Kirk, I’ve seen
the mug shot taken when our father was arrested. He was
forty at the time. Now he’s sixty-seven.
I study the man on the other side of the store. He’s stand-
ing before a display of refrigerated jars, probably salad dressing. I can see the resemblance, but I also find differences. In the mug shot, Hank Grand had a full head of hair, but this
man’s nearly white hair is receding front to back. He’s sporting a gut, too, whereas the Hank Grand on those movies was
trim. The nose is softer as well, and the jowls entirely new.
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I watch him take a jar from the shelf, watch him spin it
in his hand as he examines it. The gesture is so casual that I’m unprepared when he looks up, his head slowly turning
until his dead eyes meet mine. I’m expecting to find pure
malevolence but instead discover calculation, the look of a
man weighing his options. I reach into Martha’s purse and
wrap my fingers around a canister of mace given to me by
a cop who didn’t say no. The canister reassures me to an
extent, but it doesn’t tell me what to do.
From somewhere off in the distance, I hear Tina whisper,
“Daddy’s come to get me. Daddy always comes to get me.”
I’ve never had all that much patience with Tina. Maybe
she mopes for all of us, but she still mopes. Me, I want to
live. I don’t want to be a mope or a prune, either. Indecision doesn’t become me.
Okay, it’s time to confront, time to look the bastard in the eye, to gauge his intentions, to measure the threat. After all, the man’s on parole. If he admits to being Hank Grand, he
can be arrested. According to our lawyer, parole violators are not eligible for bail. Hank would remain behind bars until he receives a hearing that won’t take place for six to eight months.
Even better, if the scumbag’s charged with violating an order of protection, years can tacked on to his original sentence.
“Oh, hey, Carolyn.”
The voice comes from behind me. It belongs to a creep
whose name badge reads Crespo. He’s smiling what he
imagines to be a seductive smile.
“What do you want?” I demand.
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He draws back, offended. Tough shit. “I just wanted to
tell you that we’re having a flash sale on tuna fish.”
I shake my head and mutter, “Jesus Christ.”
“Hey, sorry.”
Crespo’s eyes widen as he raises a hand and backs off.
Good riddance, but when I return to Hank Grand, I find him
gone.
Now what? I’m standing in a supermarket, leaning over a
shopping cart loaded with groceries, wearing a hideous
housedress, my sweat-soaked hair pinned to the side of my
head like a fucking helmet. I hear voices, Martha and Vic-
toria rapidly approaching. They want the body returned to
their care, but I’m not ready for exile.
“Get your cowardly asses back where they came from,” I
tell them.
I’m shocked when they quickly retreat, leaving me to a
shopping cart loaded with groceries. My first instinct is to abandon the cart where it is and head off. I haven’t been out of the apartment in weeks and playing housewife is not on
my agenda. But I have to go home anyway, what with the
dress and the hairdo. Plus, when you get right down to it, the body has to eat. It’s my body, too.
I check out, using the dollars in Martha’s wallet to pay
for an eight-pack of generic paper towels and two bars of
soap. The rest, $67.80, comes off our food stamp allow-
ance. Outside, I cross to the shaded side of the street before heading home. The sidewalks are almost deserted, what
with the heat and the humidity, but I’m still scanning the
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pedestrians—mostly male but occasionally female—for
suitability. That said, I’m not the “drug-fueled” nympho-
maniac described by my dear sister.
If there’s to be a sexual life for us—the way there is for
everyone else in this world—the sex will always be casual.
It’s either that or cross your legs and try to forget. And that’s because a true relationship between caring human beings
is a nonstarter. No man would put up with the identities
rotating through Carolyn Grand’s body. Or woman, for that
matter.
Maybe two months ago, I met a banker named Mario
Spaulding at a club in Lower Manhattan. I was sitting by
the bar when he asked me to dance and I said yes without
thinking too much about it. Mario wasn’t a great dancer,
wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t a hard-body athlete. But something
in his manner convinced me that he not only knew where he
wanted to go, he knew he couldn’t get there unless I came
along with him. Partners in crime, both vital to pulling off the job.
The club was on the first floor of a hotel and Mario, a
native New Yorker, already had a room. I teased him about
his arrogance on the way to the elevator. He refused to deny the charge, but when the door closed on an empty car, he
took me in his arms and I felt his er
ection pushing into my
belly. I was thrilled. No performance anxiety tonight. Right to work.
Upstairs, Mario was in no hurry. Me, either. We played
with each other’s bodies, fingers, hands, mouths, and
tongues, until I couldn’t bear it for another second. I fell onto 60
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my back and he slid inside me, taking his time, moving oh
so slowly, filling me, pulling back to the very edge. I reached up, took him by the shoulders, and drew him down so that
our chests and bellies met. Smiling, he wrapped an arm
around my back, pulled me tighter against him, then leaned
down and kissed me, our mouths forming an instant part-
nership. After a very short time, without Mario speeding up, I came so hard my toes were still curled five minutes later.
We went at it all night. Sex, food, drink, sex, food, drink, talk, talk, talk. I found myself really liking the guy, body and soul. I wasn’t a conquest. I wasn’t to be dismissed, as I’d been many times before. Our talk was light and teasing, full of promise, of exploration. It continued until shortly before dawn when Mario asked for my phone number. As I kissed
him and said goodbye, I rattled off the first set of numbers to cross my mind. I only remember they began with 212.
Imagine Mario trying to call me at our real number.
Who would answer? Would they know of his existence?
Even the simplest connection—let’s get together next week
at the same place—doesn’t work for a woman with restricted
access to her own body.
Nope. Gals like Eleni Grand, we gotta take our lovin’
whenever and wherever. But not, as the prunes insist,
however.
I listen to the squeaking wheels on the cart as I make my
way home, but I’m thinking of my father. It’s pretty obvi-
ous that his appearance wasn’t some kind of coincidence.
He must have followed Martha and that means he knows
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where we live. So, what next? I hear Martha now, very dis-
tinctly. There’s a Post-it note attached to the refrigerator, she explains, with the phone number of a hotline written across
the face. If I would be so good as to relinquish the body, she will use that number to report Hank Grand’s appearance.
The relinquishing part isn’t going to happen. I waited too
long to get here. Besides, there’s something else that needs doing. The files Marshal hacked are yet to be read because