Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

—Yes? I’m waiting.

  —The investigation revealed that there was a matter of mistaken identity.

  —Whose identification?

  —Well, we have a confession, Your Honor.

  —Okay. Don’t bowl me over with your certainty about this, Mr. Concrombie. So you’re dropping the case against Miss, uh, Miss Jazzlyn Henderson?

  —Yes, sir.

  —And all parties are agreed?

  A little nodding field of heads around the room.

  —Okay, case dismissed.

  —Case dismissed?

  —You serious? said the young girl. That’s it?

  —That’s it.

  —Done and dusted? He’s cutting me loose?

  Under her breath he was sure he could hear her say: Getdefuckoutta-here!

  —What did you say, young lady?

  —Nothing.

  The Legal Aid lawyer leaned across and whispered something vicious in her ear.

  —Nothing, Your Honor. Sorry. I said nothing. Thanks.

  —Get her out of here.

  —Lift the rope! One coming out!

  The younger hooker turned to her mother, kissed her square on the eyebrow. Strange place. The mother, beaten down and tired, accepted the kiss, stroked the side of her daughter’s face, pulled her close. Soderberg watched as they embraced. What sort of deep cruelty, he wondered, allows a family like that?

  Still, it always surprised him, the love these people could display for each other. It was one of the few things that still thrilled him about the McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 269

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  269

  courtroom—the raw edge it gave to life, the sight of lovers embracing after beating each other up, or families glad to welcome back their son the petty thief, the surprise of forgiveness when it shone in the core of his court. It was rare, but it happened, and like everything, the rarity was necessary.

  The young hooker whispered in the mother’s ear and the mother laughed, waved over her shoulder again at the white man in the spectators’ section.

  The court officer didn’t lift the rope. The young hooker did it herself.

  She swayed as she walked, as if she was already selling herself. She brazened her way down the center of the aisle toward the white man with graying flecks at the side of his hair. She took off the black shirt as she went, so that only her swimsuit could be seen.

  Soderberg could feel his toes curl at the sheer audacity of it.

  —Put that shirt back on, right now!

  —It’s a free world, ain’t it? You dismissed me. It’s his shirt.

  —Put it on, said Soderberg, leaning close into his microphone.

  —He wanted to dress me up nice for court. Didn’t you, Corrie? He got it sent down to me in the Tombs.

  The white man was trying to drag her across by the elbow, whispering something urgently in her ear.

  —Put on the shirt or I’ll pull you up on contempt. . . . Sir, are you related to that young woman?

  —Not exactly, said the man.

  —And what does not exactly mean?

  —I’m her friend.

  He had an Irish accent, this gray- haired pimp. He raised his chin like an old- fashioned boxer. His face was thin and his cheeks were sunken.

  —Well, friend, I want to make sure that she keeps the shirt on at all times.

  —Yes, Y’r Honor. And, Y’r Honor . . . ?

  —Just do what I say.

  —But, Y’r Honor . . .

  Soderberg slammed the gavel down: Enough, he said.

  He watched the younger hooker as she kissed the Irishman on the cheek. The man turned away, but then took her face gently in his hands.

  A strange- looking pimp. Not the usual type. No matter. They came in all McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 270

  270

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  sizes and packages. Truth was, the women were victims of the men, always were, always would be. At the essential core, it was idiots like the pimp who should’ve been jailed. Soderberg let out a sigh and then turned toward the assistant D.A.

  An eyebrow raise was language enough between the two of them.

  There was still the matter of the mother to take care of, and then he’d get to the centerpiece.

  He flicked a quick look across at the tightrope walker sitting at the benches. A befuddled gaze on the walker’s face. His own crime so unique that he surely had no idea what he was even doing here.

  Soderberg tapped the microphone and those in the courtroom perked up.

  —As I understand it, the remaining defendant, the mother here . . .

  —Tillie, Y’r Honor.

  —I’m not talking to you, Miss Henderson. As I understand it, counselors, this is still a complaint with a felony. Is it going to be acceptable to dispose of it as a misdemeanor?

  —Your Honor, we already have a disposition here. I have discussed it with Mr. Feathers.

  —That’s right, Your Honor.

  — And . . . ?

  —The People are moving to reduce the charge from robbery to petty larceny in exchange for the defendant’s plea of guilty.

  —Is this what you want, Miss Henderson?

  —Huh?

  —You are willing to plead guilty to this crime?

  —He said it’d be no more’n six months.

  —Twelve is your maximum, Miss Henderson.

  —Long as I can see my babies . . .

  —Excuse me?

  —I’ll take anything, she said.

  —Very well, for the purpose of this plea, the outstanding charges are reduced to petty larceny. Do you understand that if I accept your plea pur-suant to this decision you’ve made, that I have the power, that I could sentence you to up to one year in jail?

  She leaned over quickly to her Legal Aid lawyer, who shook his head and put his hand on her wrist and half smiled at her.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 271

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  271

  —Yeah, I understand.

  —And you understand you’re pleading to petty larceny?

  —Yeah, babe.

  —Excuse me?

  Soderberg felt a stab of pain, somewhere between the eyes and the back of the throat. A stunned flick. Had she really called him babe? It couldn’t be. She was standing, staring at him, half smiling. Could he pretend that he didn’t hear? Dismiss it? Call her up in contempt? If he made a fuss, what would happen?

  In the silence the room seemed to shrink a moment. The lawyer beside her looked as if he might bite her ear off. She shrugged and smiled and waved back over her shoulder again.

  —I’m sure you didn’t mean that, Miss Henderson.

  —Mean what, Y’r Honor?

  —We will move on.

  —Whatever you say, Y’r Honor.

  —Keep your language in check.

  —Cool, she said.

  —Or else.

  —You got it.

  —You understand that you are giving up your right to trial?

  —Yeah.

  The Legal Aid lawyer’s lips recoiled as they touched, accidentally, against the woman’s ear.

  —I mean, yessir.

  —You have discussed pleading guilty with your lawyer and you are satisfied with his services? You are pleading guilty of your own free will?

  —Yessir.

  —You understand that you’re giving up your right to trial?

  —Yessir, you bet.

  —Okay, Miss Henderson, how do you plead to petty larceny?

  Again, the Legal Aid lawyer leaned across to school her.

  —Guilty.

  —Okay, so very well, tell me what happened here.

  —Huh?

  —Tell me what occurred, Miss Henderson.

  Soderberg watched as the court officers moved to reduce the yellow-McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM
Page 272

  272

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  back form to a blue- back for the misdemeanor crime. In the spectators’

  section the reporters were fidgeting with the spirals on their books. The buzz in the room had died slightly. Soderberg knew that he would have to move quickly if he was going to pull out a good performance for the tightrope walker.

  The hooker raised her head. The way she stood, he knew for certain she was guilty. Just by the lean of the body, he knew. He always knew.

  —It’s a long time ago. So, I was, like, I didn’t want to go to Hell’s Kitchen, but Jazzlyn and me, well me, I got this date in Hell’s Kitchen, and he was saying shit about me.

  —All right, Miss Henderson.

  —Shit like I was old and stuff.

  —Language, Miss Henderson.

  —And his wallet just jumped out in front of me.

  —Thank you.

  —I weren’t finished.

  —That’ll do.

  —I ain’t all bad. I know you think I’m all bad.

  —That’ll do, young lady.

  —Yeah, Pops.

  He saw one of the court officers smirk. His cheeks flushed. He lifted his glasses high on his head, pinned her with a stare. Her eyes, suddenly, seemed wide and pleading, and he understood for a moment how she could attract a man, even in the worst of times: some layered beauty and fierceness, some history of love.

  —And you understand that by pleading guilty you are not being coerced?

  She tottered close to her lawyer and then she turned, heavy- eyed, to the bench.

  —Oh, no, she said, I ain’t being coerced.

  —Mr. Feathers, do you consent to immediate sentence and waive your right to presentence report?

  —Yes, we do.

  —And, Miss Henderson, do you wish to make a statement before I give sentence?

  —I want to be in Rikers.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 273

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  273

  —You understand, Miss Henderson, that this court cannot determine which prison you will be in.

  —But they said I’d be in Rikers. That’s what they said.

  —And why, pray tell, would you like to be in Rikers? Why would anyone like . . .

  —Cuz’a the babies.

  —You’ve got babies?

  —Jazzlyn’s got.

  She was pointing over her shoulder at her daughter, slumped in the spectators’ section.

  —Very well, there is no guarantee, but I’ll make a note to the court officers to be so disposed. In the case of the People versus Tillie Henderson, the plea is guilty and I sentence you to no more than eight months in prison.

  —Eight months?

  —Correct. I can make it twelve, if you like.

  She opened her mouth in an unsounded whimper.

  —I thought it were gonna be six.

  —Eight months, young lady. Do you wish to adjust your plea?

  —Shit, she said and she shrugged her shoulders.

  He saw the Irishman in the spectators’ section grab the arm of the young hooker. He was trying to make his way forward in the court to say something to Tillie Henderson, but the court officer prodded him in the chest with a billy club.

  —Order in the court.

  —Can I say a word, Your Honor?

  —No. Now. Sit. Down.

  Soderberg could feel his teeth grind.

  —Tillie, I’ll be back later, okay?

  —Sit. Or else.

  The pimp stopped in the aisle and looked up at Soderberg. The pupils small, the eyes very blue. Soderberg felt exposed, open, unlayered. A blanket of quiet fell over the court.

  —Sit! Or else.

  The pimp lowered his head and retreated. Soderberg let out a quick breath of relief, then turned slightly in his chair. He picked up the calen-McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 274

  274

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  dar of cases, put his hand over the microphone, nodded across to the court officer.

  —All right, he whispered. Get the tightrope walker up.

  Soderberg glanced at Tillie Henderson as she was escorted out the door to his right. She walked with her head low and yet there was a learned bounce in her gait. As if she were already out and doing the track.

  She was held on each side by a court officer. The jacket she wore was crumpled and dirty. The sleeves were way too long. It looked as if two women could have fit inside it. Her face looked odd and vulnerable, and yet still held a touch of the sensual. Her eyes were dark. Her eyebrows were plucked thin. There was a shine to her, a glisten. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time: upside down, the way the eye first sees, and then must correct. Something tender and carved about the face. The long nose that looked as if it might have been broken a few times. The flare of her nostrils.

  She turned at the door and tried to look over her shoulder, but the court officers blocked her.

  She mouthed something toward her daughter and the pimp, but it was lost, and she gave a little winded sigh as if she were on the beginning of a long journey. Her face seemed for a second almost beautiful, and then the hooker turned and shuffled and the door was closed behind her, and she vanished into her own namelessness.

  —Get the tightrope walker up, he said again to his bridge. Now.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 275

  C E N T A V O S

  There is, at least, always this: It is a Thursday morning.

  My first- floor apartment. In a clapboard house. In a street of clapboard houses. Through the window, a quick flit of dark against the blue sky. It is a surprise to me that there are birds of any sort in the Bronx. It is summertime so there is no school for Eliana or Jacobo. But they are already awake. I can hear the sound of the television turned high. Our ancient set is stuck on one channel and the only program playing is Sesame Street. I turn in the sheets towards Corrigan. It is the first time that he has ever slept over. We have not planned it: it has just happened this way. He stirs in his sleep. His lips are dry. The white sheets move with his body. A man’s beard is a weather line: an intersperse of light and dark, a flurry of gray at the chin, a dark hollow beneath his lip. It amazes me how it darkens him, this morning beard, how it has grown in such a short time, even the little flecks of gray where there was none the night before.

  The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.

  One arm of Corrigan’s shirt is on, one arm off. In our haste we have not even undressed properly. Everything is forgiven. I lift the weight of his arm and unbutton the shirt. Wooden buttons that slip through a cloth loop. I pull the shirt along the length of his arm and off. His skin is very white, the color of newly sliced apple, beneath his brown neck. I kiss his McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 276

  276

  C O L U M M c C A N N

  shoulder. The religious chain around his throat has left a tan mark, but not the cross, since it sits underneath his shirt, and it looks like he wears a necklace of white skin that finishes in midair. Some bruises on his skin still: his blood disorder.

  He opens his eyes and blinks a moment, makes a sound that is somewhere between pain and awe. He pushes his feet out from under the sheets, looks around the room.

  “Oh,” he says, “it’s morning.”

  “It is.”

  “How did my trousers get over there?”

  “You drank too much vino.”

  “¿De veras?” he says. “And I became what—an acrobat?”

  From upstairs, the sound of footsteps, our neighbors awakening. He waits out the sounds, the eventual thump of their feet into shoes.

  “The children?”

  “They’re watching Sesame Street. ”

  “We drank a lot.”

  “We did.”

  “I’m not used to it anymore.” He runs his han
ds over the sheets, comes to the curve of my hip, draws away.

  More sounds from above, a shower, the fall of something heavy, the click of a woman’s high heels across the floor. Mine is the apartment that receives all noises, even from the basement below. For one hundred and ten dollars a month, I feel as if I live inside a radio.

  “Are they always this loud?”

  “Just wait until their teenagers wake.”

  He groans and looks up at the ceiling. I wonder what it is Corrigan is thinking: up there, his God, but first my neighbors.

  “Doctor, help me,” he says. “Tell me something magnificent.”

  He knows that I have always wanted to be a doctor, that I have come all the way from Guatemala with this intention, that I was not able to finish medical school at home, and he knows too that I have failed here, I never even got to the steps of a university, that there was probably never a chance in the first place, and yet still he calls me “Doctor.”

  “Well, I woke up this morning and diagnosed a very early case of happiness.”

  “Never heard of it,” he says.

  McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 277

  L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

  277

  “It’s a rare disease. I caught it just before the neighbors woke.”

  “Is it contagious?”

  “Don’t you have it yet?”

  He kisses my lips, but then turns away from me. The unbearable weight of the complications he carries, his guilt, his joy. He lies on his left shoulder, his legs tuck into a bend, and he puts his back to me—he looks as if he wants to crouch and protect himself.

  The first time I saw Corrigan, I was looking out the window of the nursing home. He was there, through the dirty panes, loading up Sheila and Paolo and Albee and the others. He had been in a fight. There were cuts and bruises on his face and he looked at first glance like exactly the sort of man I should stay away from. And yet there was something about him that was loyal—that’s the only word I knew, fidelidad—he seemed to be loyal to them because maybe he knew what their lives were. He used wooden planks to roll the wheelchairs up into the van and he strapped them in. He had pasted his van with peace and justice stickers: I thought maybe he had a sense of humor to go along with his violence. I found out later that the cuts and the bruises were from the pimps—he took their worst punches and never hit back. He was loyal to the girls too, and to his God, but even he knew that the loyalty had to break somewhere.