Cinnamon Girl

by Lawrence Kessenich

  As I sat there, deep in thought, Claire came in, coffee and cigarettes in hand, and sat down on the couch, opposite me. She had put on some shorts and a red tube top.

  “You have an argument with your mom?”

  “Just the usual bullshit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, you know, she wants me to call in at night, she doesn’t like the way I talk—that kind of stuff.”

  “Must be tough still living at home. I couldn’t do it. You’ll get along with them better once you’re out on your own.”

  “I wish I could do it, now. I don’t know, though … I’m a little freaked out by the idea of supporting myself. Did you feel that way when you first moved out?”

  She chuckled.

  “I still feel that way, and so does Tony. It’s scary.”

  “It must be even scarier when you’ve got a kid to support, huh? How do you manage to deal with him, along with all the other stuff in your life?”

  Claire took a long drag on her cigarette, blew out the smoke, then shaped the ash on the edge of the green glass ashtray, which she’d balanced on the back of the couch.

  “I can’t tell you how easy it is to do things for him. It’s hard work, but you don’t even think about it, you just do it. It must be in our genes, or something. As far as jobs go, you do worry a little more about having one, but you also have a reason to go to work, and that makes it easier to face the jobs. You planning to have kids, someday?”

  “When I find the right person. Right now, I have enough trouble handling myself.”

  “I can relate to that. Having a kid doesn’t make that any easier.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, which I’d neglected. It was lukewarm. I set the mug on the floor.

  “Don’t you worry about your problems fucking up Jonah?”

  “All the time. But what can I do about it? He’s here and he’s stuck with me. I do the best I can.”

  “I wish I could be so accepting of life.”

  “Have a kid.”

  We both laughed.

  “No thanks,” I said. “Not just yet. I have enough on my mind. Which reminds me—shit!—I’ve got to read a novel for American Lit. this morning! I completely forgot about it!”

  I stood up, abruptly. “You don’t happen to have The Red Pony by Steinbeck, do you?”

  “I’m afraid not. We don’t have a lot of books.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About eight. There’s a clock on the back of the stove.”

  I zipped in there, saw it was ten after eight, and zipped back out.

  “Look, Claire, I hate to run off like this, but I’ve got to go. We’re supposed to write an essay on the book in class, and it’s a teacher I really like. I looked for it at the library, yesterday, but all the reserve copies were checked out. Then I forgot to go to the bookstore for it. It’s short, so I still have time to read it, if I can get it right away.”

  Claire tamped out her cigarette calmly and rose to say goodbye.

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” she said. “You seem like a pretty smart guy.”

  “Thanks, but I won’t look too smart if I haven’t even cracked the book. I’ll give you and Tony a call, soon, okay?”

  “I hope you do. We just moved in, so we’re not in the book, yet, but you can get our number from information.”

  I promised I would and scurried down the steps and out onto Brady Street. I knew if I double-timed it over to Prospect and stuck out my thumb, I’d get a quick ride to UWM. The day was already sticky, so by the time I hit Prospect, I was sweaty and uncomfortable—probably as much from nerves as heat. I was picked up almost immediately by a guy in a beat up black Volkswagen bug with a white peace symbol painted on the side. He dropped me right behind the bookstore, so I hurried in, found The Red Pony, and headed for the checkout counter. As I did, I reached into my jeans pocket for money. Two quarters. That was it. The sum total of cash I had on hand.

  I swore out loud to myself. There was no other bookstore nearby, the library copies were gone, and I didn’t know anybody in the class who might have finished the novel and could lend it to me. In short, I was out of luck. Unless … Unless I just ripped off the book. Could I justify doing something like that? I thought about the ridiculous prices the store charged for textbooks and decided I could. Besides, it was a desperate situation; I didn’t see any other choice.

  I went behind a bookshelf, bent over as if I were looking at something on the lowest shelf, pulled my shirt out, slipped the book inside the waistband of my jeans, and pulled my shirt down over it. Then I sauntered toward the front, trying to look casual, past the checkout counters, and out the front door. Home free. Then I felt a heavy hand slap onto my shoulder. I froze.

  “Hold it right there, son.”

  My stomach went to my throat. I whirled. It was a middle-aged security guard in uniform, with the name Schumacher on a black tag above the pocket. I don’t know how I could have missed seeing him on the way out.

  “I know you’ve got a book under your shirt. Let’s have it.”

  People were walking by as we stood there, but Schumacher’s posture was so unthreatening that no one seemed to notice what was going down. I saw a trash barrel not far away and fantasized about running to it and dropping the book in before Schumacher could actually see it on me. Then I realized it was hopeless scheme. I pulled the book out of my pants and handed it to him. He looked at it closely and shook his head.

  “This is it? For a ninety-five cent paperback you risk getting arrested? I’ll never understand you kids.”

  “I have to read it for a class this morning, and I didn’t have enough cash on me. I know it was stupid.”

  “You can say that again.”

  He looked at the book again and shook his head.

  “Come with me. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  Meekly, I followed him into the store and all the way to the back. He kept slapping the book against his thigh as he walked along in front of me. A few people looked at us curiously, but most didn’t even notice us, since Schumacher was thoughtful enough not to lead me by the wrist and make it obvious what was going on. Still, my face was burning with humiliation.

  The security “office” was a tiny bookstore file room, full of three-drawer filing cabinets, with a gray metal desk and two thick wooden chairs crammed into the back. The desk contained a torn blotter, an old black rotary telephone, a pad of paper, and a few manila file folders.

  Schumacher directed me to the chair beside the desk, sat down himself, tossed the offending book onto the blotter and picked up the phone receiver. He dialed a few numbers and waited, picking up the book and shaking his head as he did.

  “One lousy buck,” he mumbled.

  I felt like an idiot. But, most of all, I was scared. I’d never been arrested. The worst thing I’d ever faced was a speeding ticket. I had little doubt that the consequences for theft—even petty theft—were more serious.

  “George? This is Art Schumacher. I caught a kid lifting a ninety-five cent paperback here. He says he was supposed to read it for a class and didn’t have enough cash on him to buy it. He looks pretty scared, so I doubt he’s ever pulled anything like this before. How about we let him off the hook this time?”

  He listened for a moment and got a disgusted look on his face.

  “Aw, come on, George. He can’t mean anybody. Let’s give the kid a break.”

  He listened again. His face didn’t change.

  “Okay, okay. But I think it’s stupid. See you later.”

  He hung up the receiver, took off his hat, and set it on the desk.

  “I’m sorry, kid. The manager of the bookstore insists that we prosecute shoplifters, no matter what they take. We’re going to have to book you.”

  My stomach dropped. How was I going to explain this one to my parents? I could only hope I wouldn’t have to.

  “Have you got your student ID?”

  I pulled out my wallet. My hand w
as shaking, but I managed to get out the ID and hand it to him. He took a cheap ballpoint pen from his pocket and started writing on the little pad in front of him.

  “Okay, John,” he said, “I’m going to write down your name and student number, then send you over to the campus police office. They’ll take your fingerprints and a couple of photos and check you for priors.”

  I felt like I was on a TV police procedural. It seemed unreal. Schumacher handed the card back to me.

  “Now, don’t get any funny ideas about skipping out, instead of going over there. With this information, we’ll just come and find you. You know where the campus police office is located?”

  “It’s just up the street on Maryland, isn’t it?”

  “That’s correct. You go ahead, now.”

  “One more thing, Mr. Schumacher. Do my parents have to find out about this?”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Then it’s up to you. But, if you want my advice, tell ’em. They’ll probably find out, sooner or later, and then they’ll be twice as mad.”

  I appreciated his candor, but I was willing to take my chances. I didn’t relish the confrontation if my dad found out I’d been arrested.

  I thanked Schumacher for trying to get me off, and then headed for the campus police office. It was one in a row of bungalows the university had bought for office space. It looked disturbingly like my family’s house. The guy who dealt with me inside was not as considerate as Schumacher had been. He didn’t use my name once, and he practically broke my fingers as he rolled them on the inkpad and fingerprint card. But being photographed was the most humiliating part. He hung a small placard with a number on it around my neck and flashed away without saying a word, except for, “Turn sideways.” By the time he gave me the paper with the date and place of my arraignment, I was dying to get out of there.

  When I hit the street, I found I was hungry. I’d never eaten breakfast. I went over to the student union cafeteria and, with my last fifty cents, bought a bagel and carton of yogurt. I took it out onto the lawn beside the union. A couple of skinny, bare-chested freaks were tossing a Frisbee from one side of the lawn to the other, while a big black Labrador with a red bandana around his neck chased it back and forth between them, panting in the heat. I sat down under a tree, wolfed down my food, then pulled out the arraignment slip. It said I was to appear at the county courthouse, downtown, on Friday, September 10, at 10:00 a.m. A terrific way to celebrate the first week of fall classes, I thought. I crammed the offending slip of paper back into my pocket.

  I cut the English class that had led to my troubles—there didn’t seem much point in showing up. Instead, I hung out in the library reading room perusing a couple of new magazines, Rolling Stone and Psychology Today, and some literary magazines until it was time to go to work at Siegel’s. I went early, so I could collect my paycheck, cash it with Mrs. Siegel, and eat a decent lunch before I started working.

  It was a hot day to be tossing around cases of beer and wine and liquor, and most of the customers were grumpy from the heat, too, so the tips, when I got them at all, were pitiful. The only bright spot in the afternoon was when I drove down Brady Street and spotted Claire walking Jonah in a stroller. She was pretty hard to miss with her strawberry blonde hair and red tube top.

  I honked and pulled over in front of India Imports, where we chatted through the window of the van for a few minutes, until Jonah got impatient with sitting still in his stroller. She told me Tony had called on his lunch break and said how much he’d enjoyed hanging out with me. She invited me for homemade pizza the following night. I accepted enthusiastically, promising to bring along a six-pack. I was flattered that they seemed as interested in me as I was in them.

  I arrived home at ten o’clock that night, thoroughly exhausted. My parents were sitting on our open front porch in lawn chairs, the porch light off to keep bugs away, so all I could see as I walked up the driveway were their silhouettes.

  “The prodigal son returns,” said Dad, as I came up the steps.

  I laughed weakly. “That’s me,” I said.

  Even on the porch, standing right in front of them, I could barely make out their faces.

  “Are you home for the night,” asked Mom, “or are you off gallivanting around ’til all hours, like last night?”

  I didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m in for the night. I’m beat.”

  I remained standing, instead of perching on the railing, as I did when I was feeling more sociable. I was just about to go in when my father spoke up. “Say,” he began—and even from that single word I could sense there was trouble coming—“you don’t know anything about this Water Tower Park foolishness, down by the hospital, do you? I saw on the news that the police had to chase a bunch of kids out of there last night.”

  My dad was a bureaucrat with the county water department and a “weekend warrior” with the National Guard. He took civic pride and patriotism quite seriously. We’d been engaged in a running political battle ever since my junior year in high school, which was when I’d come to the conclusion that Milwaukee was a racist city and the Vietnam War a stupid, and probably immoral, war. I should have ignored his leading question, but I was too tired to be smart.

  “Yeah, I know something about it. I was one of the people who got chased out.”

  “You what?!” he exclaimed, rising a little from his chair, then sitting back down, scraping the aluminum frame on the concrete. He was so surprised by my response that Mom beat him to the punch with the first sarcastic question. “And what was so important in that park that you kids had to gather there and disturb the patients in the hospital?”

  “We weren’t disturbing anyone.”

  “That’s not what they said on the news.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear on TV. The loudest thing there was an acoustic guitar. That’s the way it always is, just a bunch of people hanging out. The cars that go by the hospital, day in and day out, are louder than we were, and nobody tries to keep them away.”

  Dad cleared his throat.

  “You didn’t answer your mother’s question, son. Why do you have to gather there? This city has one of the best park systems in the world. Why do you have to go to that one, when the city doesn’t want you there?”

  “The question isn’t why, Dad, it’s why not? The city built the damn park, presumably for people to use, but as soon as kids with long hair and beards started showing up, they slapped a stupid ten o’clock curfew on it. Why should we go someplace else? It was still a free country, the last time I looked.”

  I could sense my dad was getting agitated. He was swatting at imaginary mosquitoes. “It’s a free country, but it’s also a country that believes in law and order. If the city has decided you shouldn’t be there, then there must be a good reason. It’s your duty as a citizen to obey the law, even if you don’t like it.”

  I was getting pretty agitated, myself. It had been an exhausting twenty-four hours, what with the park incident, meeting new people, smoking too much dope, being arrested for shoplifting, and tossing around liquor boxes for hours. My fuse was short, and the duty to obey line blew it.

  “God damn it, don’t you see that that’s exactly what people said in Germany under Hitler?! Everybody just—”

  “Don’t you swear at us, young man!” my mother cut in.

  I ignored her.

  “Everybody just did what they were told and went on with their petty little lives, while the Nazis hauled away Jews and Gypsies and socialists and homosexuals and anybody else they didn’t like. They made laws to cover themselves and people obeyed the laws—good little citizens doing their duty.”

  I was talking loudly and vehemently enough for our neighbors in the tightly spaced houses to hear me.

  “I saw this great thing at a guy’s apartment, a couple weeks ago. He had a picture of Hitler in a gold frame on his desk and down at the bottom of the picture he’d taped a s
trip of paper with the words, ‘Before you obey, think!’ That’s what I think of laws, that they’re something you’d better think about before obeying, not something you just assume are right and blindly obey.”

  My dad leaped from his chair and put his face into mine, close enough that I could see his eyes flashing, even in the dim light.

  “You listen to me, John Meyer. Don’t you ever compare this country to Nazi Germany. I was there. I fought the Nazis. I know what they did to their country. There has never been anything like that here, and there never will be, if I have anything to say about it. We’re talking about good laws in this country, fair laws. You have no right to disobey those.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my sister Marion’s face in the window of my room, above the porch. Our arguing must have woken her up.

  “Only good laws and fair laws, huh? What about segregation? I suppose it was good and fair to discriminate against blacks for hundreds of years? Or to put Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during World War II?”

  “What do you know about World War II? Those camps were necessary, then. And we’ve passed laws against segregation, now.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “I voted for Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Those are the presidents responsible for enforcing civil rights laws.”

  “You only voted for them because they were pro-union. You always said black people shouldn’t be allowed to move into this neighborhood.”

  “They don’t want to live here—except for a few trouble-makers. They want to live with their own people. And don’t change the subject. I’m talking about being a good citizen, about obeying the laws, something you don’t seem to know anything about.”

  “Oh, yeah? In case you’ve forgotten, I won an American Legion essay contest on citizenship when I was in high school.”

  God knows where that statement came from, but its utter irrelevance left all of us speechless for a moment. I looked up to see Marion still at the window.