Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [58]
And where is Vinnie to sit? Reluctantly she lowers herself onto the only available horizontal surface, a ledge of dirty-looking cement alongside the school building.
Clutching the coin, the mauve-haired girl darts down the alley to scan the now-empty playground, then back in the other direction toward the street. Perhaps it was all a begging trick, Vinnie thinks. But after surveying the scene the child sidles back up the passage.
“Okay,” she says.
“Just a moment, please.” Vinnie opens her notebook. “Could you tell me your name?”
“Wha’ for?” The child takes a step back.
“It’s just for my records,” Vinnie says in a reassuring tone. “I’m not going to tell anyone.” This isn’t strictly true: in her published work she always identifies and thanks her informants, and over the years more than one child, coming across Vinnie’s books or articles later, has written to thank her in turn.
“Uh. Mary, uh, Maloney.”
The manner of delivery makes Vinnie certain that this is not the child’s name; but she writes it down. “Yes. Go ahead.” “Mary Maloney” bends toward her and says in a hoarse whisper:
“Mother, mother, mother pin a rose on me,
Two little nigger-boys are after me,
One is blind and the other can’t see,
So mother, mother, mother pin a rose on me.”
It would be idle to pretend that Vinnie likes this rhyme. But since she has never heard it before she records the lines and then, as is her custom, reads them back for confirmation.
“Yeh. You got it.”
“Thank you. Would you like to say another one?”
Mary Maloney slouches against the sooty bricks above Vinnie, mute. The ripped hem of her skirt hangs down on one side; she wears sagging pink bobby socks and scratched red plastic clogs, and her thin white legs are prickled with gooseflesh. “You want more, you gotta pay for more,” she whines.
Now it is Vinnie’s turn to be silent; the sordidness of the transaction has overcome her.
“I betcha you’ll get more brass ‘n that when you sell my stuff.”
“I don’t sell these rhymes.” Vinnie tries to say this pleasantly, to keep both distaste and rebuke out of her voice.
“Yeh? What d’you do with them, then?”
“I collect them, for, uh”—How can her life’s work be explained to a mind like this?—“for the college where I teach.”
“Oh yeh?” The girl gives her the look one gives a liar whose bluff one has decided not to call. It is clear that she believes Vinnie to be collecting dirty rhymes for some dubious, even perverse purpose. It also seems likely that for enough money she would sell Vinnie, or anyone else, anything they wanted—that she would say and do horrors. “Okay.” A peeved sigh. “Tenpence.”
Now that she is in so far Vinnie feels somehow constrained to go on. She reopens her purse and extracts another tinny, debased coin. Mary Maloney leans closer, so close that Vinnie can see the dark, dandruff-clogged roots of her synthetic mauve hair, and smell her sour breath.
“I wish I wuz a seagull,
I wish I wuz a duck,
So I could fly along the beach
And watch the people fuck.”
Vinnie’s pen pauses in its transcription. She likes this verse even less than the preceding one: not only is it vulgar, it contradicts her thesis. A few more of these and her theory about the difference between British and American playground rhymes will be down the tube, as they say here.
“Thanks, that’s enough,” she says, shutting her notebook on the unfinished rhyme and rising to her feet. “Thank you for your help.” She gives a tight smile. A cold wind has begun to scour the darkening playground and funnel through the passageway, blowing shreds of paper rubbish with it.
“Hey, I ain’t finished.” Mary Maloney follows her out into the street.
“That’s all right; I have enough now, thank you.” Vinnie begins to walk down Princess Road; but the girl follows closely, clutching at her coat.
“Hey, wait! I know lots