here’s a ritual I go through every year the night before school begins. I light some candles, small ones that smell of lavender or sandalwood, stretch out on the couch and close my eyes. Names start running through my head. Cindy Rabin. Marc Tompkins. Fred Garcia. Felicia Green. By now, all twenty-six of my new crop of third graders know, from my letter to them, about my summer on Cape Cod. I know a little about them—Fred is a wise-ass, Felicia works hard for her A’s—but more important to me is what I don’t know.

Soon I start to see faces. Crinkled smiles. Summer-spotted cheeks. Wisps of hair streaked with leftover sunlight. Invariably I’ll hear a voice. You probably think it’s luck, Charlotte says to me, but it’s really much more.

When I first laid eyes on Charlotte, I did not know what to make of her. She was wearing a short muu-muu, yellow and gold (with accents of red), white anklets and Keds. The year was 1958, I was eight years old, and the setting was a Brooklyn neighborhood of attached row houses surrounding the middle income housing project in which my family lived. All of which is to say conformity ruled.

"Here comes Charlotte," said Sally, pointing to her mother, a skinny-legged woman who was skipping into the playground with her four-year-old brother, David. "And the brat." Sally’s finger tripped the rhythm of the jump rope. Alicia let go of her end, traced a circle around her ear, pointed to her head. Quickly retrieved the rope before Sally could spin around to see her making fun of Charlotte. Nobody could keep jumping as Sally long as could. Nobody could change direction with such ease.

"Is she going to tell fortunes?" asked Alicia, squinting in my direction, past Sally. I’d been home in bed the past two weeks with measles. It was Alicia who called to tell me about this new girl in our class. And her crazy mother, who told fortunes.

Sally shrugged, still jumping. Changing direction, like a whirling dervish. When she stopped, suddenly, I half-expected her to drop to the ground. "Don’t you get dizzy?" I asked. She shook her head, told me the trick was to keep your eyes focused on one thing. Charlotte, I thought, as Sally headed toward the bench where her mother had settled herself. Through all the jumping, through all the spinning, she’d never taken her eyes off Charlotte. Alicia motioned me to follow her as she ran through the playground announcing Charlotte’s arrival. Within minutes she was surrounded by a circle of young fortune seekers. David tugged at his mother’s arm as if it were a bell pull. "I want to go on the swing," he whined, trying to spirit her away, keep her for himself.

"In a little while," said Charlotte, holding David close to her on the bench where she had positioned herself. She had a commanding voice that ranged an octave above middle C. "But first we have to take care of business." She clapped her hands. "Okay—who’s first?" Tommy waved his hand in Charlotte’s face.

"Okay, okay." Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, put her finger to her temple. "I’m concentrating," she said, "so nobody say a word." Sally had catapulted herself onto the back of the bench, hovering over Charlotte like a guard. The rest of us remained in a hush, huddled around her. Where was her crystal ball or her deck of magic cards? I wondered. And didn’t fortune tellers usually wear head scarves with dangling coins? Brenda, who was nine and proud that she knew what soothsayer meant, insisted that Charlotte’s powers came from chewing gum while she conjured up fortunes. Alicia said they came from twitching her nose.

"Did you see?" Alicia whispered, elbowing me when Charlotte opened her eyes to tell Tommy he was going to be an ice cream man when he grew up. "Did you see her nose twitch?"

I shook my head. "Uh, uh." Alicia was disappointed.

It was now Michael’s turn for a prophecy.

"Michael, I think your mother’s going to give you a sister soon," predicted Charlotte.

Michael groaned, "I want a brother!"

Charlotte shook her head. "Unless I’m wrong, you better get used to the idea of having a sister."

My turn finally came and I moved forward timidly. Charlotte closed her eyes. This time I watched really closely and saw that Alicia was right. Her nose did twitch. Charlotte shook her head. I’m not getting a clear message," she said, opening her eyes. "Give me your hand." She took my hand in hers, opened my palm, which was clammy, and traced the lines in it with her finger. "See that long line?" My palm tickled from her touch. "It means lots of kids." I examined my palm, counted all the little lines, wanted to know more—how many would be boys? how many girls?—but Charlotte’s skills were, by her own admission, limited. "You have to study this stuff for years to be really good at it," she told me. "I’m just a beginner. Sometimes I’m wrong—but mostly I’m right. You probably think it’s luck, but it’s really much more."

After telling everyone’s fortune, Charlotte engaged us in a bubble-blowing contest. "The largest bubble wins," she announced, scooping out handfuls of Bazooka and Dubble Bubble from a brown paper bag. "And only one piece in your mouth at a time." Wrappers went flying, jaws began chomping. To someone outside the world of childhood, it must have looked like some bizarre, primitive ritual. Tongues working the gum, stretching it to just the right consistency—not too thick, not too thin—till pink pearls of air billowed forth. Charlotte was the winner, blowing a bubble almost as large as her entire face.

Michael was not a gracious loser. "I saw you put two pieces into your mouth!"

"No, you didn’t," Charlotte said adamantly.

Yes, I did!" he insisted.

"Well, then, you did—but I still win."

With that assertion she was off, surplus gum in one hand and two adoring children clinging to the other.

In the short time Charlotte, Sally, and David would end up living in our neighborhood, they kept mostly to themselves. I walked to school with Sally, and back, and when the weather was good we went to the playground together. She never invited me home with her, and if I asked her to come home with me, she always had some excuse. My mother said it was probably better that way, since nobody really knows who they are, where they’re from. When I told her I knew—that they’d lived in a bungalow in Rockaway before coming to Brooklyn, she said That explains everything. To me it explained nothing. I became angry when I overheard her repeating to Alicia’s mother what I’d said. Before long, I started hearing about the condemned bungalows being torn down to make way for a hi-rise building. Charlotte’s family was one of the last holdouts (so I heard). There was talk, too, of a husband who’d left before David was born.

"That’s if he ever married her," said Mrs. Joseph, who was sitting with Mrs. Albert and Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Rosoff, on the chipped green wooden bench in front of Charlotte’s building, which I had to pass on my way to and from the playground. All day, in spring, summer, and fall, they sat on the bench or on beach chairs, sputtering like the wire service machines in newspaper offices. Sometimes they set up a bridge table in front of the building to play mah jongg.

"Oh he married her all right," insisted Mrs. Jones, who wore small glasses that made her eyes look like slits. "He had to." She turned to Mrs. Albert, who lived across the hall from Charlotte.

Mrs. Albert’s hair was stiff and gray, and seemed held together like a bird’s nest. "It’s a shame," she said, patting her hair after a gust of wind had made the sides stick up. "For the children, I mean."

"At least he gave them a name," Mrs. Rosoff piped in.

"What good is a name?" said Mrs. Joseph. "Children need a father." The father, in this case, was assumed to be blond and handsome (given little David’s fairness), and his disappearance, said Mrs. Myers with authority, was really no surprise.

"No man likes to be forced to do anything," she explained, "least of all marry a nut job like her."

Mrs. Albert had another theory: Charlotte always made TV dinners, she said, so who could blame a man for leaving?

Mrs. Rosoff agreed. It was obvious (to her) that a grown woman who rode a bicycle as much as Charlotte did had no time to cook a decent meal. "She’s got a screw loose, that’s for sure." And a black cat, said Mrs. Albert, that screeched day and night.

"I bet they never sleep," said Mrs. Joseph. "Look at the bags under their eyes." She knew Sally could hear her, we were only two feet away, swinging on the low chains surrounding the square patch of grass that separated our buildings. David was running around in the grass, the only green in an otherwise rough, brown landscape.

Mrs. Myers nodded. "And they’re so skinny! What does she feed them?"

Sally got up, walked over to Mrs. Myers. "Wanna know what my mother feeds us?" She reached into her pocket, pulled out a handkerchief filled with marbles, and dangled it in front of Mrs. Myers’s face. "Snakes eyes and lizards," she said. "Wanna try some?" I smiled. Mrs. Myers let out a shriek, Mrs. Rosoff patted her heart, Mrs. Albert shook her head (mumbling something about "no respect"), and Mrs. Joseph squinted so hard the veins on the side of her head bulged. Sally then handed me the marbles, said she wanted me to keep them. She winked. "This makes you an accessory." Her mouth quivered, somewhere between tears and pride. I rolled the marbles in my palm. Thought about what it meant to be an accessory. Poppit beads, the kind I made into necklaces and bracelets were an accessory. So were the assorted handbags my mother kept in her closet for special nights out. Silk and fake alligator clutches, some with matching shoes. An accessory seemed to complete things, and I liked that Sally thought of me that way.

It snowed a lot that winter, I recall, and there were lots of days out of school. Mornings would find us knee-deep in snowdrifts at the playground. Charlotte, looking like a blow-up doll in her ski ensemble, was the only parent who ever joined us. "Nothing like fresh snow," she would say, tossing snowballs into the air. My mother loved it, too. From inside, looking out. Afternoons we’d converge on Michael’s basement, for hot chocolate and hours of Monopoly. Sally never joined us. To Michael (who did get a sister) this was clear proof that her mother had cast some spell on her. In a way, he was right, though the spell was on all of us, not just Sally. What else could explain Alicia’s constant jeers about Charlotte’s stringy hair and funny-looking clothes? "The Salvation Army," said Brenda. "That’s where they get their clothes." Where did this cruelty come from? I began to wonder, listening to them go on and on about the cat turds all over Charlotte’s apartment. Not to mention the weird meals she made. The fact that no one we knew (with the exception of Mrs. Albert who lived across the hall) had ever been in the apartment was irrelevant. "Ever get a whiff of that woman’s b.o.?" Michael pinched his nose. Alicia and Brenda started laughing. "She belongs in a looney bin, that’s for sure."

"You don’t know what you’re talking about," I finally said one day. I was losing at Monopoly. I was tired of playing the long, boring game.

"Well what makes you so smart?" said Michael.

"I just know . . . things . . ." No one but I had seen Sally stand up to Mrs. Myers and her cronies whose sole purpose in this world seemed to me the wholesale distortion of other peoples’ lives. They sat. They watched. They commented. On everyone and everything. How many times, until that day, had I cringed whenever I passed them? How many times, when I walked past them, had I wanted to look them in the face, tell them they were the real witches?

"Prove it!" demanded Michael. Being ahead in the long, boring game of Monopoly gave him the illusion that he knew all about risks. "Prove what you know."

"Okay," I said. I picked up the die, rolled it in my hand. Threw it. Moved my token three spaces, landing in jail. "This game is boring." I got up to leave.

"Don’t be such a sore loser," said Brenda.

"Prove it," insisted Michael. "Prove what you know."

Only cowards accept dares, I kept thinking as I took slow, deliberate steps toward Charlotte’s building. Why else was my heart rumbling in my chest? Why else did I feel as if a thousand butterflies had invaded my stomach?

It was a blustery March afternoon, a week before spring. Some snow remained, pushed to the edges of the walkways that led from one building to another, distinguished only by address. I made my way into the small lobby of Charlotte’s building, stood staring at my reflection in the round window on the door of the elevator till I mustered up the nerve to push the call button. I was scared, not so much of disobeying my mother as of confronting the rumors. What would I do if there was any truth to them at all?

Sally answered the door, looking surprised. "You want to play with me here?" she asked, beaming and blushing at the same time. "Here—in my house?"

I nodded, a little uneasy. How would she feel, I wondered, if she knew it took a challenge to make me so brave?

My bravery was put to the test immediately when the biggest cat I’d ever seen began rubbing against my legs. I stood in place, feeling very tense. I come from a family in which the only acceptable pets were dogs. Cats were supposedly treacherous, and, according to my grandmother, they smothered babies in their cribs. The one weaving her way through my legs was black, no less. It could only mean a thousand years’ bad luck if I made the wrong move.

"Natasha’s going to have kittens any day now." Sally kneeled to pet her. I joined her, never before aware of how soft and smooth a cat felt to the touch. She licked my finger, and I giggled. It was nothing like the wet lick of a dog or of any of the animals I’d fed at the petting farm upstate. It felt more like moistened sandpaper, and it tickled.

The doorbell rang.

"Who is it?" Sally called out.

"It’s me—Charlotte."

"She always makes me call her Charlotte," Sally whispered. "Never lets me call her Mommy."

"Why?"

Sally frowned. "She says if God wanted her to be called anything else, He would have told her so." She looked at me intently. "What do you think?"

I laughed out loud, trying to imagine calling my mother by her first name. Esther, may I please have breakfast. Esther, may I please go to the candy store? Esther, would you please tell my brother I’m going to kill him if comes into my room without my permission? She would think I was delirious with fever. Or that I’d been reading too many strange books. "Maybe there are enough mommies around," I said. "Everyone I know calls their mother 'Mommy’—except Kathy Quinlain, who always says, ‘Mother.’"

Sally unlocked the door. "That’s just what Charlotte says—there are enough mommies around."

"A visitor?" Charlotte exclaimed. "Do we have a visitor?" David trailed behind, preoccupied with a lollipop. Charlotte brought the bags directly to the kitchen. As she passed me, I was able to identify a faint odor that pervaded the apartment. Mothballs, I thought. Old disintegrating mothballs. I was relieved. That wasn’t so terrible. No worse, in fact, than the way our apartment smelled when my mother cooked cabbage.

"We have to celebrate," Charlotte said. "We have to do something special in honor of Janie Rosenthal’s visit. I know—we’ll make pizza. Oozing with cheese. But first we’ll show Janie the galaxy."

They led me through a foyer of dark green walls. The floor was covered with a drab green linoleum cracking at the edges. At the end of the foyer were two bedrooms. Sally and David’s room had bunk beds and the walls were full of scribblings. Charlotte’s room was very dark: black curtains on the windows, blue-black walls, and a large mattress on the floor.

"Lie down," Charlotte coaxed me.

Uh, oh, I thought, here it comes. The hypnosis. Charlotte was kneeling next to me and I looked into her eyes, which were large and brown and infused with all the mystery of moon craters. Hypnotic was the word my mother had used the day we bumped into Charlotte and Sally and David at the bakery. Her eyes are hypnotic.

"Close your eyes," said Charlotte. I shut my eyes tight. The image of Charlotte’s round face, which seemed weighted with sadness even when she smiled, lingered.

"Now open them."

My eyelids fluttered. I wanted to open them but was afraid. Would I find myself in a trance? What would I do? Finally I blinked, opened my eyes, looked around the room. Above me, rotating around the bed, was a mobile resembling the solar system. Beyond that, on the midnight blue ceiling, was a galaxy of glitter.

"Do you see the Milky Way?" Charlotte asked. "It’s over there." She pointed to a belt of glitter, arranged so that it sparkled unevenly, like clumps of stars.

"And there’s the North Star." David pointed to a large bright star.

"It’s not the North Star," argued Sally. "It’s a planet."

"It is so!"

"It is not!"

Charlotte clapped her hands to silence David and Sally. "Is this the way we behave in front of guests?"

David bowed his head and Sally looked at me. I felt embarrassed for them. Charlotte then reached for a book lying on the side of her bed and turned on the light. It was a volume on astronomy. She opened it to a page that her universe had been modeled after.

"You two figure out if it’s a planet or a star," she said. "In the meantime, Janie and I are going to start the pizza."

She led me to the kitchen, which had pink cabinets and light green walls. As she began slicing English muffins, I noticed unusual marks on each wrist, which, at the time, I could not identify as scars. She opened a jar of spaghetti sauce and told me to spoon a little sauce on each muffin half. Sally’s job would be to top the muffins with cheese. I hadn’t gotten very far when David came running into the kitchen, Sally at his heels.

"It’s the sun," he said, sticking his finger into the jar of sauce and licking it. My mother would have threatened to break my fingers if I did that. Charlotte didn’t even seem to notice.

We ate the pizza on a picnic blanket Charlotte had spread on the living room floor. The living room contained very little furniture: a worn tweed sofa, a TV, and some oversized floor pillows. A rainbow that Charlotte had painted filled one wall, and there were three cardboard boxes against another wall, one labeled "Charlotte," one "David," and one "Sally." In each box was a collection of newspapers corresponding to their birthdays. Charlotte had begun collecting "birthday papers" on her twenty-second birthday, when she found out she was pregnant with Sally. "It’s good to know what’s in the news on your birthday each year," she explained. "Makes them more special. And it helps you remember them better."

After we finished snacking Charlotte launched a surprise tickle attack on David, who began tickling Sally, who began tickling me, until we were all rolling on the floor tickling one another, our ribs aching from laughter. Too soon, it seemed, it was time for me to go.

"Sally’s staying home from school with Charlotte and me to watch Natasha have kittens tomorrow. Are you gonna come?" David asked as I was leaving.

"Maybe she has to ask her mother," said Sally.

"I’ll see," I answered. "Anyway, I can always come after school."

As I walked home, I began thinking about what I would tell my friends. I would tell them about Natasha (who didn’t smell funny), and I would tell them about the pizza (which obviously didn’t kill me and in fact tasted better than when my mother made it). But for reasons I admitted were selfish, I didn’t want to share all of what I’d seen. I’d come upon a wonderland, a secret hideaway I wanted to keep to myself. Years later, when I came to understand how a truth, simply told, gets distorted into a rumor, I realized it wasn’t just selfishness that motivated me. It was my way of protecting Charlotte.

The next day in school was endless. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. All I thought about was Natasha and the kittens whose birth I desperately wanted to witness. At three o’clock, when we were dismissed, I dashed out of the classroom and ran to Charlotte’s.

"Were they born?" I could hardly catch my breath.

"I think they’re waiting for you," said Charlotte, smiling.

It wasn’t until two days later, at exactly three twenty-one, that Natasha gave birth to her first kitten. For those two days I had been there, with Sally, David, and Charlotte, standing watch. It was the first time I’d played hooky. I was nervous, but I figured that as long as I remained indoors, at Charlotte’s, there was no chance of a neighbor tattling on me.

Natasha had seven kittens, and I was in absolute awe as I watched them come out, saw the way she cleaned them, nursed them, and hissed when David made the mistake of trying to pet one.

"They look like mice," I said, "not cats."

Charlotte said they’d change. Very quickly.

For the next four weeks I visited Charlotte every day. I played hooky three more times, unaware of the suspicion I was creating by taking off the same days as Sally. I suppose I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be around those kittens as much as I could. There was an orange one I developed a particular affection for. I wanted him; but I knew my mother would never let a cat into our apartment.

I should have known my truancy would catch up with me, but I never expected it to happen the way it did. It was a Friday afternoon, toward the end of the day. Mrs. Reynolds, a stern teacher with white hair that flaked dandruff onto her dresses, was reminding us of a book report that was due the following Monday. Suddenly Charlotte walked into the classroom, unannounced. David clung to her side. I remember the laughter when Brian, a freckle-faced runt, pointed to her sagging anklets and Keds. Better judgment told her to put on a yellow polished cotton skirt instead of her baggy shorts or muu-muu; but there was no voice within Charlotte strong enough to make her substitute pumps and stockings for sneakers and socks.

Mrs. Reynolds looked at her watch. "You’re a little early, Mrs. Bernstein—"

Charlotte cut her off. "My name’s Charlotte."

Mrs. Reynolds, clearly uncomfortable, glanced at Sally, who looked only at her mother. I tried to imagine what she was thinking or feeling. If she burst into tears—right then, right there—I would have jumped out of my seat, run to her side, slipped my arm around her shoulder. In a way, I think I wanted her to cry, maybe get up from her seat, lead Charlotte and David out of the room. But she just sat there, arms crossed, lips quivering, her eyes directed like an impenetrable beam at the only person in the room who could decipher it.

"All right, then." Mrs. Reynolds cleared her throat. "If you prefer, I’ll call you Charlotte."

"I prefer," Charlotte nodded.

The class giggled.

"That’s enough!" Mrs. Reynolds reprimanded us. She turned to Charlotte, asked her to wait outside until class was dismissed. Charlotte politely obliged.

Curiosity over Charlotte’s visit could not be contained, and Mrs. Reynolds ended up dismissing us a few minutes early. Only Sally and I were detained.

"Me?" I asked."You want me to stay?"

"That’s right, Jane." She pointed her chalky finger at me. "You."

I was dizzy now, filled with panic. My eyes darted toward Sally, who had her eyes on the door. In a minute, her mother would return, followed by my mother, our principal, Mr. Weller, and vice principal, Mrs. Birmingham. My mother glared at me, not saying a word, and I felt like crawling under my desk. I prayed for a fire drill or some other emergency to divert attention from this one. But there was no way out for me.

Mr. Weller, a stout man who lacked personality and had a habit of spitting into his handkerchief, began the inquisition. "Mrs. Bern—"

Charlotte interrupted him. "I prefer Charlotte."

Like Mrs. Reynolds, Mr. Weller was uncomfortable with informality. He almost never smiled, certain as he was that familiarity would somehow weaken his authority. "I understand that your daughter, Sally, has been absent twenty days this year," he began again, as though he hadn’t even heard Charlotte. "And recently—a coincidence perhaps—Jane Rosenthal has been truant on the same days." I wanted to kick him.

"Truant?" Charlotte’s eyes widened. "Sally hasn’t been playing hooky. I let her take off."

"You don’t seem to understand," Mrs. Reynolds interjected. "Her education is at stake."

Charlotte twitched her nose. "I think you’re wrong. She learns a lot when she’s with me. We take walks, we go to Prospect Park and the Botanical Gardens. One day we took a bus to the museum."

"Don’t you think it’s bad for Sally to miss so much school?" asked Mrs. Birmingham. She had a powdery face and always reminded me of fresh lilac.

Charlotte shook her head. "What’s bad about watching our cat give birth?"

The grown-ups all looked at each other, their foreheads one collective wrinkle of misunderstanding. Who was this woman, and why was she suddenly talking about a cat giving birth?

"I don’t think you realize what you’re saying. There are rules, Mrs. Bernstein. And you don’t want Sally to be left back, do you?"

Charlotte looked confused, began scratching her head. "She’s not truant. She’s with David and me."

Mrs. Birmingham, the only one who seemed to sense the delicacy of the situation, suggested that the children leave the room. Mr. Weller shook his head emphatically. "This is about the children," he said. He gave me a sharp look.

"Now, Jane," he said, "I want you to tell us why you were absent on Wednesday."

My stomach felt like a sour malted had settled in it. Under normal conditions, if I told my mother I had a stomach-ache, she would have made me feel better by rubbing my belly and feeding me some coke syrup. Now, just looking at her angry, disappointed face, made my stomach churn. "The kittens," I squeaked.

"The kittens?"

I nodded. "Natasha had kittens. I wanted to be with them."

"Natasha’s our cat," David piped in.

Nothing more needed to be explained. Mr. Weller said that watching over kittens was an unexcused absence and there were to be no more of them. He was particularly harsh with Sally; if she missed another day, he wanted a doctor’s note. Otherwise she would not be promoted.

Charlotte, backed against a wall now, picked up a ruler and slammed it on Mrs. Reynolds’ desk.

"You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do to me? To my children?" She slammed down the ruler again.

"You see, I can be a teacher, too. I can hold a ruler. I can write on a blackboard." She took a piece of chalk from the ledge and screeched it across the board. ‘I AM MY CHILDREN’S MOTHER AND I KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR THEM.' For a moment she stood staring at what she’d written, then began to laugh until her laughter turned to gasps. Mrs. Birmingham ran from the room to get her some water. My mother grabbed me by the arm.

"I don’t think you need us here anymore," she said to Mr. Weller. "I’ll see to it that Janie doesn’t miss another day of school."

We left the building, a sheet of cold, icy silence between us. The walk, only five blocks, seemed endless. When we got home, I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and sobbed for what seemed like hours. Finally my mother came into the room. The worst punishment was already upon me, so if she told me that I would get no allowance for a month or that I would have to come home directly after school, I could take it in stride.

She said nothing, just held me and asked if I wanted to talk about Charlotte. I told her all about the kittens and the glitter-filled ceiling and the birthday papers. And I cried some more.

The following Monday, Sally acted as if she didn’t even know me. "Wait up!" I shouted when I saw her a block ahead of me on the way to school in the morning. She just kept walking, picking up her pace with every step. I went over to her desk just before class began. She was reading, and said she couldn’t talk, had a lot of catching up to do. Finally I cornered her in the lunchroom, where she was sitting by herself.

"The kittens are doing fine," she said coolly before I even asked.

"And Charlotte?"

She looked away from me, started to chew her fingernails. "Charlotte’s okay," she finally said. "The doctor gave her some pills. As long as she takes them, she’ll be okay." She opened her lunch box, unwrapped a tuna fish sandwich. Two chocolate Kisses spilled out. She handed me one, then politely asked me to leave her alone.

For the remainder of the school year I walked past Charlotte’s building every day, hoping to bump into her. Or I went to the playground, only half-expecting to see her. She never showed up. On the last day of school—the only day Sally was ever absent again—I found a chocolate Kiss on my desk. I pictured Charlotte slipping into the classroom early that morning, with Sally and David, making this one last stop. Their ‘middle-of-the-night’ disappearance (it had to be the middle of the night, said Mrs. Rosoff) would be the talk of the neighborhood for most of the summer. Mrs. Joseph said that Charlotte had received an inheritance from a distant aunt and took her children to California. Mrs. Albert said they were forced to move because of the mess they made of the apartment.

My mother said nothing.

A few months later, on my ninth birthday, I remember my father sitting at the table with the newspaper, doing the crossword puzzle. I asked him if I could have the paper when he was finished with it.

"You want the comics?" asked. "You can have them now."

I shook my head. "I want the whole paper."

He looked at me curiously. "What do you want with the paper?"

"It’s good to know what’s in the news on your birthday," I answered. "Makes it more special.

"Besides, I added, "it helps you to remember."

© Deborah Batterman