CHAPTER 7 - THE BOX
Cressid stares at the distant red window.
Whoever lives there has to be a hooker;
no normal person would paint a place that
color. Hooking, now there’s a job.
You make good money and get to have sex.
It’s what her mother probably thinks
she does anyway. The dispenser of birth
control pills clicks softly in her hand.
Tina’s always having sex. But then,
she’s 23 with a boyfriend. Tina
doesn’t know how old Cressid is.
Cressid wishes she didn’t either.
In the gospel according to Mom anyone
who’s 30, still a secretary, and
not married has to be breaking some kind
of law.
She squints at the container trying
to read the imprint on one of the pills.
Why steal from your only friend? For
that
matter, why give up your virginity to
two sixth grade boys in the shop storeroom?
Cressid remembers their grunting nervousness
and bleeding on a pile of towels. Everything
would have been fine if she hadn’t
borrowed that steak knife and made those
little, practice cuts on her leg. Blood
on the sheets and not from her period.
Which is how she met the psychiatrist. “Low
self esteem.” That always cracked
her up. With mom bitching about the cost
every time she had a session. So that was over in a month. So, yeah, fuck Tina!
She’s going to wind up with half
a dozen kids anyway. Might as well start
sooner rather than later.
Tonight the box receives a last offering,
and tomorrow she will empty it. Someplace
dangerous this time. Down by the river
maybe. A shiver of anticipation runs
down her back as she closes the blinds.
The
fluttering in her chest begins. No
matter how many times the ritual plays
out
she always feels like maybe she’s
going to be sick. She faces the closet,
takes
a breath, and opens it. The smell
of clothes is comforting as she reaches
in between
and finds the box.
Minutes later, the lights are out
and it rests in the center of the
coffee
table. It’s from Pakistan, made of inlaid
wood, taller and deeper than a shoe box,
with a top that folds back to form a shallow
tray. She opens it. The scent of incense,
musk and sweat drifts out. She puts candles
in two finger-sized metal cups mounted
on tray and lights them, follows with
a stick of incense, and begins emptying
the box. First out is a hardwood ruler
which she places carefully on the sofa.
Next come five pairs of girl’s
panties, these are placed one by
one on the lid.
A travel sized tube of toothpaste,
a piece of pound cake (still in
its wrapper),
a red and yellow Swatch wristwatch,
a colorful Caribbean Top shell,
and a silver-dollar-sized
button sporting the words: My
Karma Ran Over My Dogma are put on the
coffee table
to the right of the box. These are
followed by a tampon carrier containing
three of
a possible four tampons, a framed
photo of a little boy, an open pack
of roll
aids, and a butterfly pin made of
Sterling silver filigree which are
placed on the
left.
Except for the panties all the items
have been stolen. The five on
the right represent “little” thefts,
those on the left, “big.” Little
thefts are relatively meaningless, like
the toothpaste (a quick shoplift in the
drug store), and the button (taken from
the wall of its owner’s cubicle
when she was out to lunch). “Big” is
reserved for more complex endeavors, when
the act causes serious embarrassment,
emotional pain, or someone else gets blamed.
Tonight she’s going through
big ones.
The roll aids: Her boss’s boss has
a terrible acid problem and a hateful
assistant who complains endlessly about
running personal errands. By stealing
them on the day of a particularly harrowing
meeting, she made sure the condescending
bitch had to hurry to the store for an
emergency purchase. That one almost didn’t
count.
The tampons vanished at the absolutely
wrong moment and precipitated
an embarrassing accident for a
girl
at work she didn’t
like.
The little boy in the photo is
the nephew of Fat Margot in word
processing.
The
butterfly pin was just to see
if she could do it and carries
a lot
of baggage.
A
sweet, older woman who runs the
costume jewelry counter at an
indoor flea-market
thinks Cressid looks like her
granddaughter. It was easy to
steal the pin. Now
she hates herself for it.
It’s time to begin.
She places Tina’s birth control
pills in the center of the empty box,
removes her jeans and underwear, and,
making sure she can see herself in the
bookcase mirror, she bends over sofa and
reaches for the ruler.
