“Oh, yes,” she said.
A thousand I.M.U. indefinite was probably unusual in this area, and I hoped she wouldn’t say the amount aloud. She didn’t.
“Let’s try again,” she said, and pushed my card back into the slot. And once more the buzzer went and the card was vomited out.
People were piling up behind me. They muttered, unfriendly, and I blushed like fire. Even though my heart was growing cold, I already knew what had happened.
“Well,” said the girl, “looks like someone’s blocked your account at the other end. Anyone have authority to do that?”
I reached for the card, blinded by shame and fright.
“Do you want to pay for your things in cash?” she asked lazily. She seemed to be holding the card just out of my reach. In a moment I might leave it with her and run away.
“I haven’t got enough money on me.”
“No,” she said. She gave me the card. She thought the people I worked for, since in this part of town generally only firms issue credit cards to employees, had fired me, and I’d been trying it on to get free groceries.
I walked out of the shop, guilt blazoned on my face, trembling. In the street I literally didn’t know which way to turn, and went randomly leftward, and so into another raining street, and so into another, without knowing or looking or caring where I was going.
Demeta, of course, had stopped my card as soon as she could, on the first of the month. Why not? She had every reason. I’d run away from home with scarcely a goodbye. I couldn’t expect to go on taking her money. I could see that now as clearly as I could see nothing else. How could I have reckoned to get away with it? It was some silly childhood thing that had prevented me from guessing. Some part of me had still believed the implication she’d always given me that, because I was her daughter, her money was mine. Stupid. Of course it wasn’t.
Why then was I hesitating at this phone kiosk, standing in the rain until the woman came out, and then moving in myself and closing the door. Altogether I had ten units left in cash. Not enough to pay my rent. More than enough to call my mother’s house.
Even as I put the coins in and pressed the buttons, I thought, But she’s so busy, she might not be there—and then I thought: She’ll be there. She’ll be sitting there waiting for this call. Waiting for my voice, for my frantic weeping words: Mother, Mother—help me!
And then I didn’t feel afraid anymore, only dreary and small and very tired. It was true, after all, wasn’t it? I’d rung her for help, for forgiveness, to plead with her, or beg her.
I leaned my forehead on the cold dank glass that someone had cracked on the outside with a stone. There was no video in this part of the city. She couldn’t see me. Was that good or bad? I counted the signals. She made me wait through twelve of them before she turned on the autoanswer that, left to itself, replies after two.
“Good morning. Who is calling, please?”
“Jane,” I said. Rain had fallen on my lips, and I tasted it for the first time as I spoke. Jane. A pane of crystal, the sound of rain falling on the silken grain of marble, a slender pale chain— “Please wait, Jane. I will connect you with Demeta’s studio.”
My humiliation had sunk, and I was hollow. I heard her voice presently. It was politely warm, almost approachable. It said: “Hallo, Jane.” Like the lift.
I clenched my hand so hard on the speaker of the phone it seemed to melt like wax in my grip.
Jain, Mother. Jain.
“Hallo, Mother,” I said. “Isn’t it lovely weather?”
An interval.
“I’m sure, dear,” she said, “you didn’t call me to discuss the weather.”
I smiled bitterly at my dim reflection, bisected by the crack.
“Oh, but I did. And to say hallo, Mother. Hallo, Mother.”
“Jane. Try to be sensible. Your recent actions have been rather unusual, and very unlike you. I’m hoping that this will be an adult exchange.”
“Mother,” I said, “I’m sixteen. Not twenty-six. Not ninety-six. Sixteen.”
“Indeed? Then why have you acted like a child of six?”
I shuddered. I’d drawn her. She’d lashed back at me, neatly and calmly—and decidedly. The rain drizzled. I could smell onions frying and wet pavements, and… La Verte. La Verte filled up the kiosk.
“I really just called you,” I said, “to tell you how happy I am.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I held them inside me, and they drained away.
“I’m sure you actually phoned me, dear, to ask why your monthly I.M.U. credit has been stopped.”
I felt a surge of awful triumph.
“Oh,” I said. “Has it?”
She wouldn’t believe me. She knew she spoke the truth and I was the liar. But still, she’d had to say it, and not me.
“Yes, Jane,” she said patiently. “Your account has been frozen. Permanently. Or until such time as I unfreeze it.”
I stood and watched the rain. My hand had left the speaker, and I was drawing a rabbit on the steamy flawed glass.
“Jane?” she said firmly.
“Mother, why did you call me ‘Jane’? I mean, why not Proserpina? That was Demeta’s daughter in the legend, wasn’t it? Didn’t you think I’d be glamorous enough to be called Proserpina, Mother?”
“Where are you?” asked my mother suddenly. It was a trick. I was meant to blurt out a location.
“In,” I said, “a phone kiosk.”
“And where is the kiosk?”
Too late, Mother.
“The kiosk is on a street, and the street is in a city.”
“Jane,” she said, “have you been taking an illegal drug of some kind?”