Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

“What color?”

“Red,” she said.

“Good,” I said, because I didn’t want them having no pink parasols. “Come to Tillie and touch my hands,” I said again, but the babies never once got off her lap. I begged and begged but the more I begged, the more they turned towards her. I guess maybe the prison frightened them, the guards and all.

The woman gave a smile that pinched her face some and said it was time for them to get going. I wasn’t sure if I hated her or not. Sometimes my mind sways between good and bad. I wanted to lean across and smash the glass and grab her nappy hair, but then again, she was looking after my babies, they weren’t in some horrible orphanage, starving, and I could’ve kissed her for not giving them too many lollipops and rotting their teeth.

When the bell rang she held the babies across to kiss me, against the glass. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the smell of them coming in through the little slot at the bottom of the glass, so delicious. I poked my little finger through and little Janice touched it. It was like magic. I put my face against the glass again. They smelled like real babies, like powder and milk and all.

When I was walking back out the courtyard to the pen I felt like someone came and carved my heart out, then put it walking in front of me. That’s what I thought — there’s my heart going right out in front of me, all on its own, slick with blood.

I cried all night. I ain’t ashamed. I don’t want them working no stroll. Why did I do what I done to Jazzlyn? That’s the thing I’d like to know, Why did I do what I done?

What I hated the most: standing under the Deegan among all those splotches of pigeon shit on the ground. Just looking down and seeing them like they was my carpet. I flat-out hated that. I don’t want the babies to see that.

Corrie said there are a thousand reasons to live this life, each one of them fine, but I guess it didn’t do him no good now, did it?

My cell mate ratted me out. Said she was worried about me. But I don’t need no prison-house shrink just to tell me that I ain’t gonna be alive if I leave my feet dangling in the air. They pay her for that shit? I missed my calling. I coulda been a millionaire.

Here comes Tillie Henderson with the shrink hat on. You been a bad mother, Tillie, and you’re a shitass grandmother. Your own mother was shitty too. Now give me a hundred bucks, thank you, very good, next in line please, no I don’t take checks, cash only, please.

You’re manic-depressive and you’re manic-depressive too and you, you’re definitely manic-depressive, girl. And you over there in the corner, you’re just plain fucking depressive.

I’d like to have a parasol the day I go. I’ll hang myself from the jolly pipes and look all pretty underneath.

I’ll do it for the girls. They don’t need no one like me. They don’t need to be out on the stroll. They’re better off this way.

Jolly pipe, here I come.

I’ll look like Mary Poppins swinging underneath.

They got these religious meetings take place in the Gatehouse. I went this morning. I was talking to the chaplain about Rumi and shit, but he’s like, “That’s not spiritual, that’s poetry.” Fuck God. Fuck Him. Fuck Him sideways and backwards and any which way. He ain’t coming for me. There ain’t no burning bushes and there ain’t no pillars of light. Don’t talk to me about light. It ain’t nothing more than a glow at the end of a street lamp.

Sorry, Corrie, but God is due His ass-kicking.

One of the last things I heard Jazz do, she screamed and dropped the keyring out the door of the paddy wagon. Clink it went on the ground and we saw Corrigan coming out to the street with a muscle in his step. He was red in the face. Screaming at the cops. Life was pretty good then. I’d have to say that’s one of the good moments — ain’t that strange? I remember it like yesterday, getting arrested.

There ain’t no such thing as getting home. That’s the law of living far as I can see. I bet they don’t have no Sherry-Netherlands in heaven. The Sherry-Never-lands.

I gave Jazzlyn a bath once. She was just a few weeks old. Skin shining. I looked at her and thought she gave birth to the word beautiful. I wrapped her in a towel and promised her she’d never go on the stroll.

Sometimes I want to stab my heart with a stiletto. I used to watch men with her when she was all growed up. And I’d say to myself, Hey that’s my daughter you’re fucking. That’s my little girl you’re pulling into the front seat. That’s my blood.

I was a junkie then. I guess I always have been. That ain’t no excuse.

I don’t know if the world’ll ever forgive me for the bad I slung her way. I ain’t gonna sling it the way of the babies, not me.

This is the house that Horse built.

I’d say good-bye, except I don’t know who to say it to. I ain’t whining. That’s just the fuck-off truth. God is due His ass-kicking.

Here I come, Jazzlyn, it’s me.

I got a knuckle-duster in my sock.

BEFORE THE WALK, HE WOULD go to Washington Square Park to perform. It marked the beginning of the city’s dangerous side. He wanted the noise, to build up some tension in his body, to be wholly in touch with the filth and the roar. He secured his wire from the ribbed edge of a light pole to another. He performed for the tourists, tiptoeing along in his black silk hat. Pure theater. The sway and fake fall. Defying gravity. He could lean over at an angle and still bring himself back to standing. He balanced an umbrella on his nose. Flipped a coin in the air from his toe: it landed perfectly on the crown of his head. Forward and backward somersaults. Handstands. He juggled pins and balls and flaming torches. He invented a game with a Slinky — it looked like the metal toy was unwrapping itself along his body. The tourists lapped it up. They threw money in a hat for him. Most of the time it was nickels and dimes, but sometimes he’d get a dollar, or even five. For ten dollars he would jump to the ground, doff his hat, bow, throw a backflip.

On the first day the dealers and junkies hovered near his show. They could see how much he was making. He stuffed it all in the pockets of his flares, but he knew they’d roll him for it. For his final trick he scooped up the last of his money, put the hat on his head, rode a unicycle along the rope, then simply pedaled off the ten-foot drop, onto the ground and away through the Square, down Washington Place. He waved over his shoulder. He came back the next day for his rope — but the dealers liked the trick enough that they let him stay, and the tourists he brought were easy hits.

He rented a cold-water apartment on St. Marks Place. One night he strung a simple rope across from his bedroom to the fire escape of a Japanese woman opposite: she had lit candles on the ironwork for him. He stayed eight hours, and when he emerged he found that some kids had tossed shoes up on the wire, a city custom, the laces tied together. He crawled out on the wire, which had grown loose and dangerous, but was still taut enough to hold him, and walked back in through his window. He saw immediately that the place had been ransacked. Everything. Even his clothes. All the money was gone from the pockets of his pants too. He never saw the Japanese woman again: when he looked across the candles were gone. Nobody had ever stolen from him before.

This was the city he had crawled into — he was surprised to find that there were edges beneath his own edge.

Sometimes he would get hired to go to parties. He needed the money. There were so many expenses and his savings had been plundered. The wire itself would cost a thousand dollars. And then there were the winches, the false I.D.’s, the balancing pole, the elaborate ploys to get it all up to the roof. He’d do anything to get the money together, but the parties were awful. He was hired as a magician, but he told the hosts that he couldn’t guarantee that he’d do anything at all. They had to pay him, but still he might just sit there all night. The tension worked. He became a party regular. He bought a tuxedo and a bow tie and a cummerbund.