Fall Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

awaken that woman’s compassion, Della. You gave her a gift. Never forget that.’
    I looked up at my father’s wise eyes, then down at the note folded in my palm. I placed it carefully on the desk next to the stone.
    â€˜You can have it,’ I said. ‘It can go in the kitty, with everyone else’s.’
    â€˜Of course it’ll go in the kitty,’ said Ruby, and she walked around the desk with her hand outstretched.
    My father shut his eyes for a moment, and pursed his lips. While Ruby waited he opened the bag to return the emeralds then picked up the note, spread open my fingers and placed it back in my hand. He curled my fingers into a fist around it.
    â€˜This one time you may keep it. Buy something that you fall in love with, Della. We define ourselves by possessing things of beauty. But I want you to think carefully about this. Remember, who makes the laws of this society?’
    â€˜The rich and the heartless,’ I said.
    â€˜And why do they make these laws?’
    â€˜To protect their own privilege, which is the result of the luck of their birth and generations of oppression of the weak.’
    â€˜And what do we think about these laws?’
    â€˜We reject them,’ I said. ‘Utterly.’
    He stood then, and set me on my feet, and walked over to Ruby and squeezed her empty hand. ‘You did well today Della. No lessons this afternoon.’
    Ruby opened her mouth to object and I ran in case he changed his mind, as fast as I was able back up the stairs to the kitchen. It was late afternoon now but I did not stop for a biscuit. I ran down the hall to the front of the house and up the grand staircase all the way to my attic bedroom. I did not look back although I could picture Ruby standing there, one hand on her hips, watching, thinking my father was too easy on me. All at once I was exhausted. In my room I lay on the bed, I curled into a ball. I fell asleep almost instantly.
    The next day Ruby drove me to my father’s friend Felix’s house. In Felix’s backyard was a long corrugated iron shed with rows and rows of trestle tables spread with piles of things: televisions, jewellery, toys. Not secondhand rubbish taken by drug addicts when people are at work. New. Still in boxes from broken shipping containers or backs of trucks or department stores.
    While Felix and Ruby chatted and sipped tea, I walked the aisles with Timothy, Felix’s son, who was Sam’s age and who stayed half a step behind me, hands folded behind his back. He wore a child-sized apron, the pocket filled with pens, and he nodded at my choices like a miniature shopkeeper. I picked up this and touched that, thinking how best to spend my ten dollars, wondering which thing of beauty would define me. I came home with colouring books of fairy-tale princesses and a purple tin of imported chocolates, each one individually wrapped in foil the colour of emeralds.

We are all in the diningroom at our home on Cumberland Street, at our usual Thursday night family meeting where everyone takes turns discussing the work they are doing and the tasks they need the rest of us to do. My father sits at the head of a table not dissimilar to the one in the Metcalf mansion, but Cumberland Street is not aloof or pretentious. Our house is one of us, part of our family. It has been our home since before any of us can remember, although it is old now and has seen better days. The grounds were once a smallish apple orchard with privacy and space but the trees are uncared for and litter the ground with their fruit, wizened and sharp-sour. None of us is a farmer.
    How Cumberland Street came to belong to us is a story my father is fond of telling. Over one hundred years ago, there was an ancient forefather who was a canny speculator. Through his friendship with a member of parliament, he knew in advance the direction a new rail line would take south toward the bay, and he showed remarkable foresight in buying up