The experience of Jasmine’s running away lingers. Shelby feels haunted by her own ragged emotions. Is this what love does to you? Makes you feel accountable for things you can’t control? All week she wakes in the middle of the night, worried about the future. She opens the closet door and looks at the jar of fortune cookies. She takes one, then quickly tosses it back in the jar.
One afternoon when a cold rain is falling, Shelby heads for the deli in Union Square. Since she quit work, she’s missed the place. There’s a chill in the air, so Shelby orders a container of chicken noodle soup.
“Make it two,” she decides at the last minute. Maybe that tattooed girl is out there; maybe she’s hungry and cold.
It’s the time of year when the trees are still bare. Shelby is wearing a heavy sweatshirt and boots. The brown paper deli bag is threatening to tear under the weight of the two containers of soup. The tattooed girl is indeed there, huddled beneath the overhang near the subway. She’s got on striped leggings and an army jacket. As Shelby approaches, she spies a little white cat perched on the girl’s shoulder, just sitting there, as if it weren’t raining. Shelby’s allergic to cats, she doesn’t even like them, she’s a dog person, but she feels something inside her that is like an electric shock.
“Hey, I brought you something,” Shelby says to the girl. She crouches down and takes out one of the containers of soup; the cardboard is burning hot. She places it on the cement while she fishes around in the bag for a plastic spoon. The air is foggy and gray. The cat is most likely drugged. That’s why it ignores the rain. It’s tiny and drenched.
“Is that a kitten?” Shelby asks.
The tattooed girl grabs the soup and opens it. Some hot liquid spills on her hands. “Shit. Why is this so hot?”
“Does that kitten belong to you?” Shelby feels the breaking thing inside her that always leads to trouble.
“Why don’t you kiss my ass, bitch?” the tattooed girl sneers. “One cup of soup doesn’t buy you anything.”
That’s it. Shelby grabs the kitten and runs. She runs so hard and so fast she nearly slips on the wet pavement. Her pulse is pumping and there’s a thud inside her ears. She hears the tattooed girl screaming at her, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care that she’ll be so allergic from having the cat tucked inside her sweatshirt she’ll have to get herself a bottle of Benadryl. There is nothing that could stop her, really. Not a bullet, not a police car, and certainly not a beggar girl.
Shelby runs to Seventh Avenue, to Penn Station. You rescue something and you’re responsible for it. But maybe that’s what love is. Maybe it’s like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running. It’s dusk now, and the puddles are filled with neon. It’s only thirty minutes by train to Valley Stream. Don’t make a noise, Shelby whispers to the cat when the conductor comes around. Soon you’ll be sleeping on a velvet pillow. You’ll be looking at the rain from behind the window where there are blue silk curtains. You’ll be glad there was a thief like me.
CHAPTER
7
It’s May and the world is green and lush, even in Valley Stream. There are daffodils in the gardens and birds in the willow trees. Shelby takes the train out for Sunday dinner, even though Maravelle’s mother, Alba Diaz, hates her. Shelby knows this because whenever she walks in the house Mrs. Diaz, an opinionated, no-nonsense widow in her fifties, hightails it into another room. She’ll come out for dinner, but she won’t speak. Not in English at any rate. Not when Shelby’s there.
“Come on, Abuela,” Jasmine always says to her grandmother on these occasions. “Shelby won’t bite you.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that,” Mrs. Diaz says, her glance burning through Shelby. “If anything I’ll bite her.”
Maybe she hates Shelby because she thinks Shelby is a bad influence, or maybe it’s because Shelby gave Jasmine the cat, Snowball. Mrs. Diaz hates cats as much as she does Shelby.
“Mami, please,” Maravelle always says. “Behave yourself.”
As for Shelby, she keeps her mouth shut until Mrs. Diaz retires to her room.
“Geez Louise,” Shelby says. “She is tough.”