Free Other Shepards by Adele Griffin

baby-sit.

six
mr. depass and miss pia
    T HE E TRAIN CARRIES a handful of weary passengers who stare at us as we slide into the plastic seats. A few senior citizens, a man eating from a bag of rust-colored chips, and a couple with matching purple Kool-Aid dyed hair and silver rings stuck in their bellybuttons all stare a moment and then dismiss us. I wonder how I appear to strangers: a prissy Catholic-school girl wearing a boiled wool jacket (I couldn’t find my windbreaker) and jeans.
    “We’ll get off at Spring Street,” Annie says. “Decent shopping there.”
    “Shopping?” Geneva asks. Her hands are packaged neatly on her lap. She hadn’t planned on taking the subway; nor had I, but it’s easier for me to adjust to the unexpected than it is for my sister. She looks as if she might be sick. To Geneva, a subway is a filthy, hissing, germ-infested beast far more dangerous than his brother—the barely domesticated but tolerable taxicab. Annie’s insistence that subways are quicker was the last word over Geneva’s protest. Now she chews her lip and tightens herself into the smallest amount of space that her body will permit.
    The advertisements pasted to the subway walls are the wallpaper of a world more edgy than the manicured lap dogs and chicken-wire-ringed shrubbery of our neighborhood. HANDS ARE MEANT FOR HOLDING bellows the type block across one poster, showing a black-and-white photograph of a knuckle-clubbed fist. Phone numbers and addresses of local battered women’s shelters are printed in large type below the fist. Another poster advises people to get regular checkups for the diseases they might or might not have. Still another bulletin lectures on the dangers of needle-sharing. Geneva’s eyes are buggy, staring at the forlorn faces of poster board junkies.
    “I hate this subway,” she whispers. “I need to wash my hands.”
    “Nowhere to wash on the subway. You’ll have to suck it up and wait till we get off,” Annie answers. We both look at her, startled. Did Annie actually hear the secret voice?
    “How much longer?” Geneva asks in the same pitch, testing Annie.
    “More soon than later,” Annie answers, and she opens her face into a giant kidlike yawn, to prove how disinterested she is in Geneva’s needs.
    Geneva tucks her hands in her armpits and whispers Hail Marys until the subway stops at Spring Street.
    Soho is packed with its usual mix of self-consciously fashionable locals and frowzy tourists. The smell of roasted peanuts and spicy falafels wafts from the street vendors’ grills and drifts through the air.
    “Let’s hit the vintage stores,” Annie says after we stop at a diner and wait while Geneva runs into the rest room. Soho has sent a jolt of exhilaration through Annie. As soon as Geneva emerges, Annie breaks into a stride down the street, and it becomes impossible for Geneva and me to keep pace without taking a few jogging steps every half block. Annie holds her chin up and keeps her hands pushed inside her blazer pockets. It is a deliberate gesture; she does not want to hold our hands. Annie does not touch, I have noticed. It might be one of the reasons Geneva has been so quick to adore her.
    “Good shops are hard to find since this part of town’s so commercial lately. The true clotheshound will prevail. I remember once when I was about your age, Holland, I wore a tutu to a Valentine’s Day dance, a semiformal. I found it in a store called the Basement Boutique, but the tulle had gone ratty. So I bought a length of dark blue chenille at one of the fabric shops in Alphabet City, and I recovered the whole dress. Tulle is like a canvas, a base coat. Chenille, on the other hand, sets a mood.”
    “Did you wear ballet shoes, too?” Geneva asks breathlessly.
    “Tap shoes, actually, with the taps still in,” Annie answers. “I made the most noise on the dance floor, even if I didn’t have the best moves. Jack wore a painted tuxedo T-shirt. I guess that sounds awful now,