Free Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford Page A

dark outside, except for the moon, so it must have been my bedtime. Ah-ma sat me up and I wobbled as she stretched and tugged this nightshirt over my head that must have been too small because I recall my ears throbbing afterward. I don’t even know if that actually happened. I was little. It’s been so long. I barely remember anything. I might have imagined it all.”
    William paused and cleared his throat. Then he went on, speaking more slowly.
    “But there was another time I’ve never forgotten, years later, I was older … maybe five, I’m not sure … she was helping me get dressed and I heard a knock on the door. She turned and walked away. A man’s voice was shouting something … in Chinese, and my mother shouted back even louder. I heard glass breaking. Then my world turned sideways, the ceiling became the wall, and the wall became the floor. My head hit something, and everything went dark. I wanted to cry but couldn’t inhale, or exhale.”
    “Who was that man?” Charlotte asked.
    Was that my father? “I … don’t know,” William said instead. He chewed his lower lip. “But I touch the side of my head whenever I think of that moment, even to this day.” He removed her hand from their shared mitten and guided her fingers to a crease on his temple, just below his hairline.
    “That’s how I know it’s a real memory,” he said. “Because I still have the scar.”
    He closed his eyes and felt Charlotte run her soft, delicate fingertips along his old wound that had been so neatly hidden.
    “We all have scars, William. You. Me. I’m sure Willow has more than her share.”
    She gently kissed his blemish, then wished him good night.

Velvet Rope
    (1934)
    William and Charlotte woke the next morning and turned on the light, to the vociferous complaints of their neighbors in the next room. They quickly turned off the bulb and gathered their meager belongings. William could barely knot his tie in broad daylight, yet somehow Charlotte and her amazingly dexterous fingers managed to craft a perfect bow in the gloaming. Eager to leave, they left the flophouse midmorning, shooing away a flock of pigeons that had been picking at earwigs crawling on the cold steps that led up to the street. The sidewalks were less crowded than the night before, though there were now men of every age, sleeping in gateways or raggedly snoring beneath nearby bushes with sheaves of old newspaper stuffed into their coats to stave off the crisp, damp Puget Sound air. How they remained asleep was a mystery, especially as the Salvation Army marched by, banging their loud bass drums. They formed a semicircle in the square, where the brass instruments lit into a heaven-splitting hymn that William barely recognized as “Solemnize Our Every Heart.” Charlotte grinned from ear to ear as the two of them sat on a vacant bench and listened to the men and women in their strange, bright uniforms playing bugles, trumpets, cymbals, and trombones. Before the song was over a stout woman passed a tambourine among the crowd asking for donations for thepoor and downtrodden. William regarded the homeless men sleeping in the gutters and put in a nickel.
    William thought his companion should eat as they walked uptown, so they stopped at a lunch counter and ordered shredded wheat with cream, sprinkled with salt, and shared a cup of Ghirardelli chocolate. He let Charlotte have most of the hot cocoa and barely touched the cereal. His stomach was a knot of excitement and anxiety. As he glanced around the diner, he worried that grownups might question why they weren’t in school, but then he looked outside and saw dozens of kids their age, many younger, shining shoes, delivering newspapers, and sweeping up in front of stores. Public school is free , William thought, but even that has become a luxury some can’t afford .
    At the counter, William asked a stranger for directions, then guided Charlotte toward the new Skinner Building, where the 5th Avenue