Read Because They Wanted To: Stories for Free Online Page A

dishes, even though there were only two of them.
    She washed the cereal bowls with a little bit of green steel wool. Then she wiped the counter with it. She looked at the baby, who wasn’t doing anything. She sat at the table by the window. On the table was an old digital clock and an empty bud vase made of clouded plastic. The clock said 9:41. Elise looked out the window. There were people out walking around now, and she watched them. Normally at this time of day she would be walking up and down Granville, asking people for change. Most of the panhandlers her age sat on the sidewalk and begged in groups. They sat huddled as if they were glad to have arrived at the absolute bottom, where it was nice and solid and they could sit. They sat huddled as if protecting something very special, and their begging seemed like an after-thought. Elise much preferred the walking method. People were more apt to give you money if you went up to them and asked themfor it, and besides, she liked the big dumb rhythm of everybody going in the same two directions and, inside that, all the tiny, concentrated rhythms of different walking styles. She liked moving quickly in and out of other people’s rhythms.
    Sometimes she’d have a conversation with someone who gave her money or insulted her, and for a moment that person would loom out of the generality with a loud blare of specificity and then fade back as Elise walked on. Once, she had approached a young guy who had come out of a fast food store and was opening the box of fried chicken he’d bought there. He gave her a dollar. He said he was giving it to her because she reminded him of a girl he knew in San Francisco. “She’s a sex worker,” he said, “a pros-tee-tute.” He dragged the word out singsong style and smiled at her with an aggressive, bristling air as rank and particular as a deep body smell. “I’ve thought of doing that,” she said. His aggression turned into surprise and then into a funny, sour acceptance. He asked her if she wanted some chicken. She said yes and tore all the fried juicy skin off the breast. “Hey,” he said, “it’s no good without the skin,” but he still let her sit with him and eat, even though she’d ruined his chicken.
    Andy ran over to her with his metal chickie. “This is Jago,” he said. “He’s a fighter orphan bird. When the hunters come into the forest to get birds and they see Jago, they scream and run away!”
    “Oh!” said Elise.
    “You pretend to be the hunter,” said Andy. “You’re coming in the woods and you see this bird and you don’t know it’s Jago so you start to shoot, okay?”
    Elise pretended that her finger was a gun and pointed it at the metal chick.
    Andy flipped up one of the chick’s metal wings to reveal Jago written on the underside in felt pen.
    Elise waited.
    “It’s Jago!” prompted Andy.
    “Oh, no!” said Elise. “Jago!”
    Andy ran back to his game in triumph.
    Little kids always wanted to set things up so they got to yell a certain satisfying thing or to make you yell it. When she was little, sheor her brother Rick would yell something like, “Why did Miss Grinch and Miss Butt take all their clothes off?” and the other would yell back, “Because they wanted to!” Then they would roll around, tickling each other and giggling, yelling more questions and yelling the same answer again and again.
    The sunlight shifted, and the surface of the table became warm and bright. Elise extended her arms into the warmth; her pale arm hairs stood up in the air, and the sight made her feel tender toward herself. All those thousands of tiny hair follicles, each earnestly keeping its special hair going. She lifted her arm and rubbed the soft hairs against her lip. Outside, a child flashed down the street, waving something bright in his hand.
    When she was seven and Rick was eight, they would dress in skirts and hats and dance around the mulberry bush in the backyard of their old house, picking the