The Key to the City

All middle age invisible to us, all age

passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs

and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke

some village-elder warning, some rasped-out

Remember me . . . Mute and grey in her city

uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE), the matron

just pointed us to our lockers, and went out.

‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen,

did I get lost with these streetnames! Spruce

Street, Water, or get this, VANderwater—’ Cautiously, coolly,

we lit up, crooking palms for the ashes. All fifteen

or under, all from Manhattan, we loitered bare

to the waist for the X-rays. In the whorling light

from one rainy window, our shapes were mere

outlines from floor to wall, opaque

as plater, white, or terra-cotta, black . . .

‘Names or numbers,’ a skinny white girl with pale blue eyes

shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why come here at all? You think little Susan

(thumb mockingly hooked at herself) needs working papers

to work in my uncle’s diner? If they’d let me off school

at noon now—that’s where the real tips are!’

And she smiled at our objections around her smoking

cigarette (I thought) like some museum mummy,

amber-fingered, fishhook collar bones—

‘What are you talking? Don’t you know the city

keeps like an eye we don’t get overworked?’

‘Yeah, and your Social Security number, that’s

for life, girl, that ain’t worth something to you?’

The skinny girl just cackled, goospimpled arms

huddled against her ribs. ‘Whadda you two, work

for the mayor? What’s this (swinging her locker key

with its scarred wooden number)—the key to the city?’

She meant last week, when they’d offered it

to some visiting queen. Even I snickered. I

was younger than most of them, homesick among the near-

women’s breasts and hair, even the familiar

girls’ cloakroom odors: perspiration, powder, decades

of menstrual fust—‘Well, I’m coming back in six months.’

This was one of the black girls, elbow swivelled

on pelvic sidethrust, finest hair—

filaments, finerimmed, sulky mouth. ‘She’ll be

sixteen, getting married,’ the girl next over

burst in eagerly, ‘He got a store job, still her folks

against it, they say stay in school. But every

afternoon—’ Distantly, the first girl listened to

her own story, only breaking in at the end: ‘I want a real

church wedding. Down here is just for the license, see?’

‘A license,’ said “little Susan,” sourly, ‘like for a job?’

‘His name is Harold Curtis,’ was all she answered, then ‘It too strong

for my parents. They see it too strong for them in the end.’

In our silence, the gutter slurred strangely. And for just one

moment, everyone breathless, the atmosphere grew

almost tender. But nobody knew what to say

except good luck, so we all went on smoking like chimneys

except the one murmur, of old and incurable

anger, ‘Listen. Listen. They get you coming and going.’

Now each girl tilts her face down, contemplating

her own unseen choices, real

tips, the solitary and common

square foot of imaginary chance . . . Outside, the rain

was letting up. The city, like a graph

of its own mountainous causes, climbed in a mist

across our window. And then the matron came, calling

our locker numbers, one by one, for the X-rays.

‘Jesus, it’s late.’ ‘Hey honey, I’m ready!’ ‘Where’d we change

at from the D Train?’ Through the clearing air on the far

side of City Hall Park, I could see a narrow street

and a streetsign: Broadway. Miles to the north

my street had a number, and Broadway was really broad.

In the concrete prows of islands, the innumerable old women

were sitting, lonely as soldiers, silent as . . .

‘What’s up, girl? Goose step on your grave?’

Another number. And now, the room darker, each girl

cast about for the cheering word, when ‘Listen,’ I suddenly

heard my own voice saying, ‘Guess what I saw coming down? A street

called Anne Street.’—‘So what?’—‘So my name is Anne.’

A pause, then ‘Hey kid, that’s really funny!’ They all

grinned, and one of the older girls gave my shoulder

a tolerant punch. I was one of the youngest, and as far

as I can remember, that was all that I said.

Source: The Key to the City (The University of Chicago Press, 1986)