We lived in a basement apartment in an immense old house on the Wyckoff side of the alley that should have razed after the War. It stood five floors with an attic just above Dumbo’s place. Built for a rich family at the turn of the century, it had fallen on hard times and was converted into apartments during the Depression. The place was always threatening to burn itself down but never got around to it; the overloaded fuses were constantly blowing and you often caught a whiff of a smoldering mattress wafting through the halls because everyone smoked in bed. Our unit had three rooms and a bath–the rent was something like fifty bucks a month. There was only one (often rain-swollen) door, which opened into the kitchen. Being mostly underground the place was a cave and the walls sweated no matter the weather; but it was fairly cool in the summer.

It got too hot to hang out in Fort Oxenfree so we went home and were surprised to see Mom seated at the kitchen table talking on the phone, most likely with her best friend Nora. She usually disappeared on the weekend, ostensibly leaving us under the guardianship of perpetually Percodan gacked Anna Lou, who lived a few blocks up the road; she’d call once in a while but seldom dropped by. If it was early in the month there’d be a five dollar bill under the toaster, sometimes food stamps we sold for half value–but mostly we were left to our own devices.

“Let me call you back, hon–double trouble just blew in.”

This was around the time when Mom had stopped speaking directly to me unless absolutely necessary, or was pissed off enough to do so. Tess had the charm of ten and served as our go between.

“Hiya Mom,” Tess said.

“Hi yourself,” Mom said, cradling the phone. “Goddam old bat Graydon came by a while ago. Said she looked out her window and saw you two lift a bunch of empties from behind the store this morning.”

Mr. and Mrs. Graydon ran the little store in our neighborhood. He had one arm and she was a Jesus freak. Both were as plump as old Elmo and continuously sweaty no matter the season; Mr. Graydon must have had the cardiovascular systems of a tin of Crisco; he was perpetually in recovery from his latest heart attack.

We never boosted anything from inside the store, nor was Graydon’s a prime source for returnables. But those bottles, all with a nickel bounty on their heads, were just lying there in the shadows, screaming “Steal me!” Which we did, first thing that morning. (I later suspected funny business: no one ever told us to give the bottles back or inquire about them in any way. This made me wonder if Mrs. Graydon had set a trap; though planning such would have pushed her limited brain power to the max, she was the sort of person who’d do such a small, shitty thing.)

“Oh, Mom,” Tess laughed, “we didn’t know they belonged to the store.” Unlike Mom, Tess told convoluted, outrageous lies that not even a mental defective like Dumbo would buy. Yet her lies were like TV wrasslin’–you knew it was bullshit but you played along anyway. “We thought someone must’ve left them there by accident.”

I was nosing about in the fridge. I found a Nesbitt’s orange soda that I opened by holding the edge of the cap against that of the counter and giving a good whack with my palm. Unlike the nasty tiki punch, it was cold and I drank half in one swallow then gave the rest to Tess. “Miz Graydon’s soft in the head,” I said to the room in general. “She thinks my name is Susan.”

“Good thing they go by numbers where you’re headed,” said Mom, sufficiently pissed to speak to me.

For a second I almost told her about it. All of it. The Elmo’s business, the shoplifting and the breaking into cars. Tess was a blue-eyed strawberry blonde who resembled the man in the photo album we were told was our father. Although I already had six inches on Mom, we had the same dark hair and eyes, startlingly identical faces and similar personalities. And neither of us liked that–it intruded on our individuality. For decades, she and I successfully explored each other for the evil we knew was in our own hearts. And we were pretty close in age, for she was married and a mother while only a teen. If it was just me I’d have fucked with it, but there was Tess to consider.

Yet I had to say something.

“Maybe you can stay home and we’ll attend church as a family tomorrow.”

It was still another few months before we began swinging at each other. I’m pretty sure something would have happened then if Tess hadn’t been able to defuse the bomb.

Sensing danger, Tess wrapped her arms around Mom’s shoulders from behind, kissed her on the cheek, nuzzled her ear and offered her a drink of orange soda. “We’re sorry Mama,” Tess laughed, “puleeze don’ give us to the cath-lick orph-nage with the mean nuns.”

It was funny to watch Mom, who, next to lying, took pride in her ability to manipulate people (mostly men) get played herself, utterly ignorant that it was happening to her. She was as smart as she was shrewd and amoral, but it was as though her atrophied sensitivity and subdued credulity gathered only for Tess–who could innocently and, eventually, ruthlessly, play Mom like a fifth ace.

A sinister smile appeared on Mom’s face. She had something to play herself. She never smiled like that unless she held the advantage.

“No orphanage,” she said, “but I did agree to send you guys to some Christer thing the Graydon biddy runs called ‘Good News.’”

Before I could protest, Mom raised her voice, just a touch. What she said next was both the best and worst in Mom; it still rings fresh in my mind after more than fifty years.

“I woulda told any other Christer to fuck off. But since Graydon lets us have credit, and since you guys prefer eating to starving at the end of the month, you can go till the check comes.”

Religion was one subject on which I had respect for Mom’s point of view. She’d been born in Canada, was orphaned and became a ward of the Catholic Church. For reasons never made clear until the end of her life, Mom was “shipped” to the United States. She ran away from Saint James Academy in Seattle for good at seventeen (although much, much later, she confessed that her actual age was two years younger), got married soon after, had me at eighteen and was a widow with two kids at twenty–and learned late, like so many, that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother because she didn’t like children. Though Mom habitually embroidered the Dickensian details of her war with the nuns, the soul of the experience sounded true enough. One thing was for certain, the great hostility she had for all things Christer was unimpeachable.

Still, Mom wasn’t an idiot. She knew Tess would do as told, but my attendance hinged on Tess’s strange ability to get me to do things I would not normally do. I don’t think Mom cared much as long as one of us went; she figured it would be enough to shut Mrs. Graydon up, thus protecting our account. Besides, a potential fifty percent Spahr sister conversion was better than a reasonable Christer would hope for.