"Dulcie and me, we're not orphans, you know. Our parents are still alive. At least, I know my dad is—he's in jail, and last I heard Dulcie's father was around. He lives in Vegas, I think. Our mom is a crackhead—or, she used to be, until about a year ago she started shooting up, and things got a little crazy. She'd bring these really creepy guys home, real narfs, you know? and they"d… Well, anyway, I finally got pissed off and told her she couldn't do that, not with Dulcie there, and I… I kinda beat one of them up, so she started just not coming home. I had a job, just part-time at a building site, but I had to give it up because I couldn't leave Dulcie home by herself. I mean, I know people do, but she'd get scared, and when I got home she'd just be lying in her bed shaking, and she wouldn't eat her dinner. I used to wish Mom would get arrested so the city would step in and take care of things, but I couldn't go asking for food stamps or child care or anything because then I'd have to tell them why Mom wasn't the one doing the asking, and then she really would get arrested.
"I got… I don't know. I guess I get kind of fed up after a while, trying to do the school thing with Dulcie and no money. I thought I deserved a break. Some time for myself, you know? I mean, all the other guys I knew used to spend hours just hanging out, not dragging their little sisters to all the games and wondering where their damn mothers were half the time. I know most of them don't have fathers and a lot of them have moms who work or spend time in jail, but there's always grandmothers or the welfare or something. Dulcie and I just had us."
He turned and gave her a hard look. "I'm not complaining, you know? I'm just telling you. Okay?"
"I understand."
He looked as if he doubted that, but he continued.
"Anyway, I started to go out sometimes at night after Dulcie was asleep. I never went anywhere, not far, because I kept thinking, "What if she woke up and went looking for me?" or "What if there was a fire?" I'd just sort of hang out with the guys who lived around us, listening to music and stuff.
"And then one night… God, I still can't believe I could be so stupid. We hadn't seen Mom for about a week, and there was almost no food in the house, and school wasn't going too good, and—I don't know, a lot of stuff. So after Dulcie went to bed I went out with some of the guys. And one of them stole a car. And I went for a ride with him, and the stupid bas—he crashed the car.
"We were miles and miles from home, and it was about two in the morning, and all I could think of was Dulcie waking up, and I just kind of lost it and started beating on him. And"—he shook his head—"somebody called the cops. Probably a good thing, or I would've killed him, but instead of letting us go they arrested me, 'cause I was the one with blood all over my hands, and they took the kid who'd stolen the car off to the hospital.
"As soon as they closed me in the back of that cop car I knew I'd really done it. I had to tell about Mom, or else Dulcie would wake up in the morning and find an empty house and go nuts. She did go kind of nuts, I guess, with this strange woman showing up at the door with another cop and no brother in sight, because after a while they brought her to me to settle her down. Some psychologist came along and told them it'd be a bad idea to put her in a foster home by herself, so we got to stay together. We were in and out of half a dozen places, but for some reason nobody wanted a little girl who didn't talk and her brother who liked to beat people up, so we ended up at Change."
"Did you like to beat people up?"
"No! It's just, sometimes you don't have a choice, you know? I used to think that, anyway, but Steven's been helping me see that I really do have a choice, that I hit people because it's easier than not hitting them. Steven told me that sometimes what looks like being strong is really being weak, and what looks like weakness takes greater strength. There's some stuff in the Bible about it."
" 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.' "
"That's it. And if he wants to sue you for the coat off your back, give him your shirt as well."
A loose translation, she thought, but a happy one.
"He also talked a lot about what you said, about thinking before I get mad."
Ana took a deep breath. "Have you had a blood test, Jason?"
"A blood test? Oh, you mean because I was in that fight?"
"And the other one, with your mother's… friend."
"Sure. I had two, six months apart. I'm clean."
"That's a relief. I should tell you that I am, too. Your hand," she said when he looked at her, puzzled. "You cut your knuckle on my face. If I had HIV, you'd have been exposed. Something else to keep in mind next time you're tempted to pound some drug addict into a pulp."
"Yeah," he said. His face suddenly relaxed into a crooked smile that would have melted stronger women than Ana. "Next time I'll wear gloves."
She laughed. "So, do you like it at Change?"
"It's okay. There's a lot of rules, but I'm learning a lot. And Dulcie's happy."
Dulcie is happy, and Dulcie's brother shoots baskets and runs in the morning, and fantasizes about living the unencumbered life of a Gypsy, sleeping when he likes and surviving on Cokes and hamburgers.
"You know," she said after a few minutes, "I went to Japan one time. It's a very crowded little country, the cities anyway. When you get on the subway during rush hour, they literally push the passengers in the door to pack them solid. Traditionally the Japanese lived in houses with walls made out of paper, and right on top of each other.
"People can't survive like that, though, so they developed methods of achieving privacy for themselves when surrounded by people. Small areas, like a language that is filled with double meanings—they can say thank-you in a way that means "piss off" with nobody to know or be insulted. There are elaborate forms of politeness and dressing—all ways of hiding in a crowd. Even their art reflects this. In the West we've developed big, sweeping art forms, things that catch at you and won't let you walk by. Japanese art tends to be subtle and intense, so a person has to be looking for it to see the beauty of a teapot or a stroke of calligraphy.
"It's a little like that bird you did on the side of the mug I bought," she said as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her. "Controlled lines that say just what you wanted them to and no more, no less. The essence of 'quail'; with no superfluous decoration. I like that cup very much."
He nodded, a motion closer to a squirm. After a minute of staring off into space, he said casually, "Steven said I could draw again if I wanted to."
"Did he? That's good to hear. Do you generally do a lot of drawing?"
"Not a lot. Sometimes, when I see something I like. Once I… um. I made this book for Dulcie once, for a Christmas present. She wanted this doll, but there wasn't enough money, so I drew her a story about the doll, making it have all these adventures and stuff. She still has it somewhere."
"I'll bet she does." She probably slept with it. "The reason I ask is that Japanese idea of privacy. If you were gifted at poetry, I might suggest that you… oh, write a poem about how Bryan made you feel at the museum that day, for instance. Since your form of expression seems to lie in your hands rather than with words, you might think about using them to create a place that is all yours, a place that is Jason Delgado's alone. Small, intense drawings that capture how you really feel about things. You see, I've lived in communities like Change for a lot of my life, and although I do understand the importance of participating in communal life, I know also that if you don't keep a little piece of yourself apart, you go a bit nuts."