were you looking at?” she asked CeCe.
“My dress.”
“What does is look like under there?” Scuff looked down to assess the bench.
“Waffles,” CeCe said matter-of-factly.
“Waffles?” Scuff repeated, raising her eyebrows. “Clever girl, Crimson. Clever girl.”
Scuff was a stocky woman, sausaged into a maroon skirt suit. CeCe could see the bulge of her trying to leap from behind the buttoned shirt and blazer. Scuff introduced herself as Tanya Boylin, a social services agent who came to make sure CeCe would be enrolled for school.
“Like the big kids?” CeCe asked, wrinkling her nose and letting her heavy plaits pull her head to one side. She was the youngest person in the complex, but watched the older kids head off with their books and satchels.
“Crimson,” Boylin continued, with a chuckle. “You are a big kid. That means you get to go to school, too.”
CeCe felt her insides tingle. Some lost inner layer begin to warm.
School.
“Am I going to school tomorrow?” CeCe asked, hopping down from the bench.
“Not tomorrow,” Boylin said, smiling as she hoisted one thick leg over the other. “School isn’t open yet, Crimson, but it will be soon. We want to make sure you’re ready for the first day.”
“How many Thursdays?” CeCe asked.
“Thursdays?” Boylin repeated, her cheery smile fading. “Do you mean how many weeks?”
“Thursdays,” CeCe corrected, pulling her own short legs onto the bench and crossing her ankles into a pretzel. After a moment, CeCe remembered Mrs. Castellanos and tugged at her sundress to cover her panties. “I don’t want to miss school when it opens, so I have to count my Thursday tabs.”
Boylin regarded CeCe for a long time, reading her rounded, pecan features as if doing some kind of ancient calculations. Finally she asked, “Would you mind showing me your tabs, Crimson?”
Without another word, CeCe returned her sneakered feet to the dusty ground and headed toward the apartment door. Boylin followed. Carla sat with her arms folded atop their kitchen table, staring into a cup of coffee. She didn’t look up when CeCe and Boylin walked by, but CeCe hadn’t expected her to.
In the bedroom CeCe and Carla shared, she moved to stand beside a wall calendar from a neighborhood deli. “If you want the best, buy your meat from Burgess!” was scripted across the top with a photo of the butcher store’s front window. Boylin commented that she passed the shop all the time when she came to visit other little kids in CeCe’s neighborhood.
The complimentary calendar, with tear-pad sheets for each month, was from the previous year. December 1975 was the only square sheet still fastened to the thick cardboard. The rigid calendar sat on a slim strip of wall between the bed and the tall chest of drawers. Dangling from the same single nail holding the outdated calendar was a long chain of soda can tabs.
There was a blue milk crate on the floor in the corner. Boylin slowly entered the room as CeCe pulled out the crate and climbed on top. She still had to stretch her arms to reach a handle-less coffee cup resting on the otherwise bare dresser top. CeCe hooked her tiny wrists to the edge of this mammoth pine chest, her hands patient and relaxed as Boylin moved in closer.
“I have this many Thursdays,” CeCe said, tipping the coffee cup toward Boylin to show its content of soda can pull tabs.
“Can you tell me about this cup and the Thursdays, Crimson?” Boylin asked, perplexed.
CeCe teetered on the blue crate to turn and face the nail in the wall, holding its outdated calendar and chain of soda pop tabs. CeCe was careful as a schoolteacher as she explained how she moved the tabs from the cup to the wall every Thursday, after walking with Mrs. Castellanos to the store for her lottery tickets and small groceries.
“When I have only one left, then I’ll know to get ready for Santa,” CeCe said, tapping the chain absently. Watching it swing, CeCe turned to Boylin, eyes wide with a sudden realization. “Do you know about Santa Claus?”
Boylin smiled and confirmed that, indeed, she knew all about Santa Claus.
“How did you hear about him?” Boylin asked.
“Ms. Cas-teanose.”
“Mrs. Castellanos?”
CeCe nodded.
“She told me all about Santa after I missed him last time.”
“You missed him, honey?” Boylin asked, amusement fading from her eyes.
“Mmmhmm,” Cece replied, giving a small nod. “And he only comes one time every year, y’know.”
“You make sure you ask for your mama’s permission before you eat this, dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said each week before handing CeCe her weekly salary of fruit punch soda and a Chick-O-Stick for helping with her grocery bags.
“OK,” CeCe said. They both knew CeCe’s mother never heard about the treats.
CeCe enjoyed Mrs. Castellanos. She knew lots of songs and made up smart games. She had sat next to CeCe one day in the courtyard when she was four and stayed her friend ever since. CeCe didn’t have any other friends, since the other kids were so much older and she and her mother didn’t know any other kids. CeCe only waved at Mrs. Castellanos for a long time. When she introduced herself to CeCe, offering to read her a story the next day, CeCe had been thrilled.
Mrs. Castellanos read stories in her decorated accent, still waxed heavy with Puerto Rican roots. Sometimes, CeCe would play quietly on the bench next to her while Mrs. Castellanos read a newspaper. One week she didn’t meet CeCe out in the courtyard and CeCe thought she had somehow made her friend angry.
“Last Thursday was Christmas,dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said, squatting next to CeCe on the dusty ground next to the bench. “Don’t you remember when Santa came to visit?”
CeCe pinched her face together trying to remember a visit.
Mrs. Castellanos gasped a little. “Dulce CeCe, you didn’t get anything from Santa for Christmas?” she asked.
CeCe shook her head slowly, beginning to wonder if she was in trouble somehow. She didn’t know anything about this Claus.
CeCe sat with her friend until lunchtime, until CeCe’s stomach was empty and her mind full of images of happy, fat men hauling around gifts with her name on them. Mrs. Castellanos told her good little girls were allowed to send their wishes to Santa, too. Having her mother back was CeCe’s number one wish. Roller skates was her second.
“When is he coming back?” CeCe asked.
“We’ve got a ways to go, dulce,” Mrs. Castellanos said, watching the cloud fill the child’s face. “Christmas is always December twenty-fifth and that was only one week ago. We have to wait until next year.”
CeCe considered.
“How
