THE INSIDE OF Woolworth's almost mesmerized, by seeing it, as if i ching a magician drawing is swimming pool green. i breathe in were wat leeve. we leave out of his never the smell the store hand soap store, my mother says, I'm der plastic. skillet grease the with you again coming shopping hort, anxious uffs. I am searching three pr le moving along the first ais is always tired. She has for my sister Patry, four years older My mother raines Social me varicose veins the than baby-sits children and a job at exhaust afternoon with her friend Rebecca. ofhce all of which is, who They have trained me to shoplift, and Security brother, that seems I have ht on w ceeding their her. All except my than me and my caug than is one year younger slower, The first isle, lower Boys mature a younger. the others, reaches high on me. repeats defensively, explaining ations. There are eyebrow pencils and artificial mother the grades I nails and false eyelashes encased in why he never matches True hard plastic. And lipsticks made the previous year at school Red. Pink. Warm Toast. I George has curly brown hair, His hurry on to the next aisle, where I see dark eyes, and a begu ling smile. T shoulder blades jut out beneath his that the store manager, a man in green, a tendency to eat a has caught my sister and Rebecca and shirt, since he has then push his is scolding them. I walk up to them, few forkfuls of dinner, and he holds me gently by the plate away with a bored sigh. We all eat shoulders, squatting down to look in his favorite foods because he won't eat my eyes. "You shouldn't play with these at all if they aren't served. My sister and girls. They're very bad girls," he says. I l, both more robust, call him Runty. nod, feeling he is somehow right about We don't see our father much. On them although I can't say why. My weekdays, he rarely comes home before underpants are full of lipsticks. we're in bed. On those days, we carry Next, remember Easter week and a our dinner plates into the shadowy storekeeper and my mother both living room and watch TV. But when staring down at me. "Turn out your he is home, he likes us to eat together pockets," my mother says, and her at the kitchen table. These meals tend voice seems to come from to have and, tense quality; a long way cramper away I pull on the pocket of my George especially hates missing turquoise stretch pants, and out comes programs, and the rest of us are not in a long, multicolored, bunny-shaped the habit of making table conversation balloon. Even though I put it there just After war we all scatter while my moments earlier, I feel surprise father heads for the living room The Quickening well-groomed hand any parent whose drift if it were alumna might shake and be ing cautiously around as waiting room of a doctor's offce d. In one PT class Mrs. and any moment m ght bring an reassure this subtler form of unpleasant His shyness Medford explains"I obviously don't makes diagnosis charity by saying, go and give your nervous. Sometimes to though I know better now used to expect you girls Street and think he was mad at me. oh, no, of allowances away on th Course not my mother wo uld reassure Amsterdam Avenue. a warm me impatiendy. "You know how he is. I feel my face heating up like That's bath. Amsterdam and th: When I am twelve, I take a test an near where I live, that's where the post office that's bad Win a partial scholarship to Kingston, neighborhood. I decide to tell her, to mall private school for girls on Fifth say, That isn't a Avenue, far from our apartment. My raise my hand and people there hborhood. The neig bad brother and sister stay in nearby money." But she parochial schools, of our woul dn't want your subject. When friends in the neighborhood g moves along to another girls gather Occasionally, I stan the class is disrn issed, four about the recess, remembering my old school around her with questions for a how it had no cafeteria d long I linger on the outskirts folding metal tables had to an the room day at eleven on the be set up minute, then turn and leave is varnished In the eighth grade, everyone planks of the gymnasium floor and exchanging turquoise friendship rings how steaming meatballs were served on I mine with Andrea Spencer-a big round metal plates and the room tall, quiet girl with flame-colored hair. Smelled of sneakers d sweat. The Andrea doesn't make trouble, and all an the teachers like her for this but also boiler hissed: voices roared At Kingston, our behavior reflects because her family were killed when not only on us but on the school itself their BMW missed a turn near Ajaccio Charity is stressed. Not the petty sort Now she lives with an aunt in an apartment with long dark corridors of charity that consists of giving a few near the school. During the summers pennies here and there. That, in fact, is she visits relatives from her fathe