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María leaned against the scarred wall of the alleyway and picked at a scab on her elbow. As she pulled at it, it began to bleed. It wasn't ready yet but she tore it off anyway. It made her feel hot behind the ears. She looked up and squinted at the blue square of the sky. It was taking longer than usual for Gilberto to return. He told her to guard his soccer ball until he came back, but that was hours ago. Though she knew she was not allowed to play with it, she began kicking it angrily against the wall. The dogs began to bark, so she kicked the ball down the alleyway and watched them chase after it. They bit at it and pushed it around with their noses. She ran among them and lifted the ball over her head, and they yelped and jumped on her and snapped at her ankles. Then she sat on top of the ball and rocked, digging her shoe into the dirt. Her stomach began to growl.Gilberto finally arrived. He ran into the alleyway and braced himself against a wall, pressing his palms against the cool bricks. He was sweaty and gasping for breath. When he finally turned his head toward María, he was smiling. He took a wallet from his jacket and waved it in front of her.
Of all the wallets Gilberto had taken, this one was the prize. He laughed and said that the turista was so fat that he had not noticed that his wallet was slowly inching out of his back pocket with every step he took. There had been so many robberies in São Paulo that many of the businessmen kept their jackets on in the hot sun. But this man carried his over one arm. He was so busy wiping his face and swearing to himself that Gilberto was already halfway across the bridge before the man even realized that his wallet was gone. Gilberto could still hear him yelling for the police as he made his way along the river bank. It was only a few minutes more before he was back in the alleyway, close to their home. "Ah, María!" he laughed, coughing as he tried to catch his breath, "I swear this wallet was talking to me, saying `Take me! Take me!'"
Gilberto opened and closed the mouth of the wallet and it talked to her, too. "María," he sang, "You can have anything you want. A new radio? Or a bicycle and new jeans and magazines and - what else - cigarettes and makeup? You can have whatever you want." She drew her arms up over her head and chewed the inside of her cheek. No, she could not have whatever she wanted. She knew her brother would not give her very much. It used to be different. They would have steak and ice cream at the train station. He used to say that he had to keep his strength up if he was going to play professionally. He would buy striped soccer shirts and shoes and socks in all different colors. He bought a big poster of some famous soccer player and taped it over his bed. He would then give her enough to go downtown to buy jewelry and nail polish, sometimes new clothes or shoes. But that was before.
Many times, she tried to think of how she could get more from him. She could tell him that she would let the other boys know where he hid. If they knew he had money they would beat him for it. But she did not dare. María knew what Gilberto did when he had money now, and she did not want to make him angry. When he was high, she was afraid of him.
Gilberto examined the wallet before counting the money. He removed a plastic accordion of photographs and tossed them to his sister. "Here. This counts as part of your share." He laughed and started counting the money.
Each picture was inside a plastic sleeve. The sleeves were yellow and stuck together so each one had to be pulled apart from the other. Inside some of the sleeves were brown specks. As María took a photo out, small flakes fell to her lap like dark snow. When she wiped off the photos, her hands smelled like cigarettes.
The first picture was of a man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He wore socks under his sandals. He did not look so fat here. He was smiling. He looked handsome. For a moment she was sorry Gilberto had robbed him. There was a woman in the picture, too. Her eyes were squinty, but it didn't look so bright outside. She was wearing a checked dress and had a scarf on her head, tied around the back instead of in front. There were two girls standing in front of them. One was missing her front teeth. Probably they had fallen out. The man had his arms around their shoulders. They were all smiling.
"Is this the guy?"
"Yeah. He loves you. He wants to give you a kiss. He wants to make babies with you." Gilberto snatched the photograph from María's hand and making kissing noises, he pressed it to her cheek. It stuck there for a second before she could slap it away.
She moved away from Gilberto and sat down in the dirt. She took the photographs out of their yellow jackets one at a time. She studied each picture carefully before putting it in her lap: A big house with a car in front, a dog, a baby, a girl with a paper crown on her head. María thought about this girl; what it was like living in that big house and what kind of parties she had there. She then lined the photographs up against the wall.
Gilberto finished with the money. By the smile on his face, María knew that there was a lot. He counted off some bills and held them out to his sister. "Here. This is yours." Without counting it, she folded the money in half, then in half again, and put it in the bottom of her shoe. She would count it later.
"Are you gonna keep the cards?" she asked.
"What do you think? They're no good anyways."
You had to use credit cards right away or else they could catch you and even then you had to have someone older to help you. Cesar used to do it, but María had not seen him for a long time now. One time when Cesar used the cards, Gilberto gave him a list of the things he wanted, but all Cesar brought back were soccer shoes that were the wrong size and no good.
María examined the cards lying on the ground. On one of them there was a picture of a bird. When she tilted the card from side to side the bird looked like it was flying. Its color seemed to change in the fading sunlight from green to inky blue to black. She slipped the card between her waist and the elastic of her skirt.
"You going out tonight?"
"What do you think?" Gilberto folded the money and put it in his pants pocket. "You got what you want, right?" He picked up the wallet.
"Yeah."
"You keeping those pictures? If anyone finds them you better tell them you found them somewhere. You understand? I don't wanna get caught 'cause of you."
Gilberto began kicking the ball. The dogs did not get up. They did not play with Gilberto anymore.
"Hey, María, think fast! Bom!" Gilberto kicked the ball into the row of photos. They hovered in the air for a moment before landing face down in the dirt.
"Quit it! You'll ruin them." María turned her back on her brother as she gathered her paper family together, spitting on her fingers and wiping the dirt from their faces.
"Bambina! What're you gonna do? Cut them out and make dollies out of them? No, forget it. You're not keeping them. You'll get caught. Give them to me."
"No, they're mine. Leave them alone."
"I said, give them to me." Gilberto wrenched the photographs from María's hand. "What do you wanna keep 'em for? To get me in trouble?" He uncrumpled a picture of a grinning, toothless girl. "Why you wanna keep this?"
"I don't know."
"Are you crazy? You wanna get me caught? Go on, rip 'em up. Don't be a baby. Rip 'em up."
He opened María's clenched fist and thrust what remained of the family into her open hand. His fingernails left small red crescents in María's palm. Looking down at the ground, she ripped up the photographs and placed the remains into her brother's cupped hands. He shoved the pieces into his pocket. Before he turned to leave, he looked at his sister as if he had only now just recognized her. He stared at her, took the fold of money out of his pocket and counted out four more bills. He held the money out to María. "Remember. I'm taking care of you, now. I take good care of you, yes?"
"Yeah." She took the money.
"What do you say?"
"Thank you."
"O.K. If you see her, tell mama I'll be home late." He turned the corner and was out of sight. He left his soccer ball in the alley.
María took the money from her shoe. This was the least Gilberto had ever given to her. She sat there a long time before starting home. It was dark now. She walked past the boys on the corner. She turned to the stairway leading to the front door of her building. She climbed past the drunks, careful not to step in any piss or vomit they might have left on the steps. She was not afraid of them and they left her alone. When she got upstairs, she called for her mother, but she was not home. She would not be back until morning. The shopping still had not been done. Tomorrow she would go out and buy herself some breakfast.
She opened her mother's dresser drawer, and after digging past the dried bottles of nail polish and empty bottles of cologne, she found a small pair of scissors. She took the credit card from the waist of her skirt and cut out the picture of the little bird. She cut the rest of the card up into little pieces and buried it in the bottom of the garbage can. She climbed up on a chair and found her grandmother's sewing kit on the back shelf of the closet. María untangled a bit of bright yellow thread from a multi-colored web. Sitting on the kitchen floor, she pierced the top of the picture with a thick needle and ran the thread through, knotting the two ends. She put the necklace around her neck, crawled into her mother's bed and turned out the light.
The glare from the streetlight lit up the room, and María held the little pendant up in front of her and watched the bird fly as she tilted it back and forth. If she thought hard enough, maybe should could make herself dream of the big house, of the smiling man who wore sandals with socks, and of herself, wearing a big paper crown. As she drifted off to sleep, she wrapped her arms around the neck of the big bird, and he took them off together as the night sky went from green to inky blue to black.
Denise McCarthy comes to Austin from New York City. An actor and director, she has performed in off-Broadway plays and on the London stage. She can be seen in the upcoming production of The Sisters Rosensweig at the Zach Scott Theatre. This is her first short story. (July 1995)
