Bowery Girl by Kim Taylor Page B

interest.”
    â€œThat’s rent money.”
    He tilted his head. “You’re getting slow, aren’t you? I took you for a talent at one time. Now I’m not so sure.”
    â€œI know you don’t care one way or the other about me. But don’t take away the rent money. I’ll pay you back, I swear to God.”
    He hesitated, then folded the money in half and placed it back in her coat. “Guess it’s twenty-seven you owe me now. I want it next week. Unless you decide to play with me. It’s just a matter of opening a door. Thought you’d like the challenge.” He lifted his derby to her and started for the street. “Oh, and tell Annabelle I miss her. I can trust you to tell her that, can’t I?”
    He swaggered away, whistling some tune as he went.

HOW MOLLIE FLYNN CAME TO BE
    THE HAD BEEN TOLD many stories, some simple, some filled with wonder. Her favorite story began with a beautiful woman and a million stars.
    The beautiful woman was her mother; her name was Calliope. She had light hair that shined in the moonlight. Her eyes were light, too, and if anyone took the time, they’d see all her thoughts and secrets. Calliope tried to keep many secrets. But her eyes gave her away, and Mollie often damned her, for her own eyes were just the same.
    Calliope’s big secret was Mollie. Calliope was a lady, still under her father’s fine roof. She was promised to an older man with graying whiskers and ten thousand dollars in the bank. They had never so much as held hands.
    Calliope would sit in the parlor on a horsehair-and-velvet couch, listening to the tick of a rosewood clock, reading some bit of poetry. Her left hand held the book to the light. Her right hand was spread across herself, her palm feeling the tiny beat of Mollie’s heart.
    As Mollie grew bigger and bolder inside her (for Mollie was quite a courageous child—that’s what the Sister had told her), Calliope paid her maid ten dollars to sew her dresses with lace and roses and many flounces meant to hide her secret.
    On Saturdays she was handed into a shiny brougham that took her around Central Park. She threw bread to the birds.
    When it was time for Mollie to appear in the world, Calliope walked from Washington Square to the Lower East Side. The heels on her soft leather boots tore off somewhere, and soon Calliope stumbled. There were men looking her over, staring with loneliness from under the brims of their slouch caps. Others were half drunk with whiskey, half drunk with greed, who saw her silk dress and wondered if there was money clinking in a pocket or two. But then she’d walk under an oil lamp, and those men would see the blood staining the fine fabric and they’d turn away.
    She could barely breathe. The sweat that matted her hair did not come from the heavy July heat, but from Mollie, now writhing and twisting, trying to tear her mother in two.
    She finally reached the river. The tight streets and tilting wood buildings ended. In front of her, ships swayed in their moorings. She breathed to the creak of wood hulls and prayed to the tall masts, which looked much like the crosses in the church, what with their sails furled and only their vulnerable skeletons showing.
    And then Mollie came—too soon, before Calliope was ready. She had meant to drown them both in the river. Instead, her child slid from her body to the street and down the slope to the water, in an oily mess of blood that would not stop flowing.
    Calliope grabbed the cord, that lifeline between mother and child, and tore at it with her teeth. She watched Mollie slide away.
    Mollie fell into the water with a tiny splash. There were a million stars that night, wondrous stars, God’s light welcoming her to the world. Mollie knows her mother would have caught her up and held her tight, had she the strength. She knows her mother would have saved her, had she not died in the act of letting go. She does not