my hands and smashed on the blacktop.
I broke away from her, knelt down, the bottle broken inside its silver cage, perfume already soaking the pavement. I put my hands in the puddle. My childhood, my English garden, that tiny piece of something real.
Marvel gripped my arm, hauled me to my feet, screaming, 'You ungrateful thing!'
I grabbed her around her arms and yelled in her face. 'I hate you so much, I could kill you!'
'How dare you raise your hand to me!' She was much stronger than I had thought. She broke my hold in a second, smacked my face so hard I saw patterns. She caught me under the armpit and marched me back home, kicking me every few feet. 'Get in the house, get in there!'
She opened the door and shoved me inside. I sailed into the wreckage of Christmas Eve, dirty glasses and bowls and gift wrapping. The kids looked up from their new toys, Ed from his football game. I staggered into the knickknack shelf and Marvel's Little Women plate fell off and smashed.
She screamed and hit me on the side of my head, I saw patterns again. 'You did that on purpose!' She shoved me on the floor, I was afraid she was going to grind my face in the broken glass. She kicked me in the ribs. 'Pick it up!' The kids were screaming.
'Assi —' Caitlin ran toward me, arms spread. Marvel snatched her away. She bundled them out to the yard while I picked up the pieces, crying. I hadn't done it on purpose, but I might have if I'd thought of it. She'd broken my perfume, something real, by appointment to the Queen, made from pounds of English spring flowers, not a copy of a copy of a kid's book illustration. When she came back she threw the broom at me. 'Now sweep up the rest.' She turned to Ed. 'God, you can't believe where I just found her. Coming out of that nigger's house, she spent the night there. This is what we get, for all the work and trouble?'
Ed turned the sound up on the game.
I threw out the big pieces, Jo and Amy and Beth, the other one, and Marmee. Broken. Well, that's the way it is, Marmee. One little accident, and it's all gone forever. Jo won't like foster care, she'll get moved around, shot. Amy'11 get adopted, she's cute, but you'll never see her again. Beth'll croak and the other one'11 turn tricks in a park for dope. Say good-bye to the fireside, welcome to my life.
I swept the shards into a pile, careful not to leave any slivers, Caitlin always went barefoot.
'And when you're done with that, start cleaning this place up. I'm going to go give that nignog whore a piece of my mind.' I watched out the kitchen window as Marvel marched from our yard into Olivia's, heard the chain-link gate slam but not click, bang open again. She was hammering on Olivia's door, screaming, 'Wake up, whore, you rat's ass, piece of living crap. You stay away from that girl, hear me, nigger?'
Everybody in the neighborhood was home on Christmas morning, listening to this as they celebrated the birth of the newborn King. Nice, Marvel. You go, girl. Show everybody what you're really made of. My only consolation was that Olivia couldn't hear it, passed out as she was at the back of the house.
Marvel tore out handfuls of Olivia's flowers as she stormed back to our house, flinging the uprooted plants at the shuttered windows.
Nauseated and headachy, I nevertheless spent the rest of the day wadding up foil gift wrap and stick-on bows, vacuuming popcorn and Styrofoam peanuts, hauling trash and washing sink after sink of dishes. Marvel wouldn't let me lie down. She kept saying, 'You made your bed, now sleep in it.'
Later in the day, the cops arrived. Schutzstaffel. The kids wanted to see them, but Marvel stepped out and closed the door. We watched from the living room as Marvel's mouth flew and she gestured to Olivia's with a meaty arm.
'What do they want?' Justin asked. It was three in the afternoon and he was in his pajamas, glassy-eyed from TV and sugar and new toys.
'Someone lost a dog,' I said.
Marvel opened the door and called me.
I went out, burnishing the sapphire of my hatred. 'Jawohl, 'I said under my breath.
Marvel's eyes sprayed me with Mace, my skin blistered under her gaze. The older of the two white men drew me aside. 'She says you spent the night with the woman next door. It's technically a runaway.'
I shifted from leg to leg, the throb of my headache accompanying each heartbeat. If I breathed carefully, I could smell English flowers. The football announcer shouted excitedly from the house, and the cop's eyes flickered briefly in its direction. Then he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and they returned to me.
'This woman gave you alcohol?'
'No. Marvel and Ed had a big Christmas Eve party last night.
The eggnog was spiked.' The sparkle of my sapphire, Officer Moody. See how it shimmers. Nothing up my sleeve. 'They make you work on Christmas?'
'Triple overtime,' he said. 'I've got child support you wouldn't believe. So what did you do next door?'
'Listened to records, talked.'
'And you spent the night?'
'Well, it was too noisy to sleep over here.'
He pulled his fleshy earlobe. 'You go over there a lot?'
I shrugged. 'She's nice, but she's busy. She travels a lot.'
'She ever introduce you to her friends?'
I shook my head, let my mouth go slack, a little moronic, as if I had no idea what he was getting at. You mean, did she ever set me up on a date with one of her Johns? Did she ever sell me to the BMW man on a cake platter like Pretty ?afy? I wanted to laugh in his face.
'She ever talk to you about what she does for a living?' He said it quietly, stroking his brushy mustache.
