LITMIR.BIZ

      “S’B’LLA?”—SOFTLY MARTINE CALLED CUPPING HER HANDS TO her mouth.

      Standing on tiptoe in the alley outside her great-grandmother’s ground-floor apartment on Eleventh Street. It was a wild chance Martine was taking but you had to figure if Sybilla had been sent away, likely it was here. Martine had been sent away to Grandma Tice’s place herself more than once, when her mother didn’t have time for her or was in the women’s shelter and Martine didn’t want to live there with her and the other pitiful beat-up women and kids.

      “S’b’lla? Hey? It’s me.”

      From where she stood in the alley, she couldn’t see into the room behind the window. But this would be Sybilla’s window if Sybilla was staying here.

      Somewhere close by a dog was barking furiously, God damn thing she’d have liked to murder. If Grandma Tice came to the window instead of Sybilla and saw her, she’d send Martine away with a scolding.

      Like a cooing pigeon Martine called gently, stubbornly—“S’b’lla! It’s Martine.”

      Suddenly the window was tugged up. And there was Sybilla leaning out to Martine looking surprised and happy—like a little girl surprised and happy.

      “M’tine! Jesus! Hi.”

      “S’b’lla! Jesus.”

      This was a shock: her girl-cousin beat-up.

      Almost, Martine might not have recognized Sybilla.

      Both Sybilla’s eyes were puffy and discolored, her upper lip was puffy and scabby, one of her eyebrows was shaved and stitched like a weird horror doll, and her hair was cut jagged like a weird horror wig. It was like Sybilla had been dragged from the rear of a vehicle like they told of black people being dragged in the terrible old days in the South or some nasty place like Texas.

      Sybilla tugged the window a few inches higher so that she could lean out, to pull Martine up and inside. Gave a little gasp of pain, blood rushing into her face must’ve been hot and heavy, and just leaning down the way she was seemed to be hurting her back. Martine grabbed hold of the window ledge and swung her legs up like a monkey, crawled through the window and fell into the room giggling into Sybilla’s arms.

      “Oh M’tine! It’s you.”

      “Yah I been missin you, S’b’lla. Why’re you here?”

      “Mama made me come here.”

      The girl-cousins were the same age. Same height and same size except Martine registered shock, hugging Sybilla tight and feeling that Sybilla was skinny.

      “Fuck baby, who hurt you so bad?”

      “Jesus, M’tine! Shh.”

      Sybilla wriggled out of Martine’s arms. Had to pull down the damn window quietly so Grandma wouldn’t hear and bust in on them.

      Pearline Tice was some ancient age but sharp-eared and sharp-eyed. People said admiringly of Pearline you can’t put anything over on that lady. She’d had seven children, twenty-one grandchildren, more great-grandchildren than anyone could count scattered through the State of New Jersey and beyond.

      “You OK, S’b’lla?”

      “Yah. Aint gonna die, I guess.”

      Sybilla climbed up onto the big bed which took up most of the room. Only a few inches so the door could be opened, and a few feet for a battered old chest of drawers and an ugly old radiator. Martine climbed up beside her breathless and dazed.