She Played for Free

Jovan gravely took the dollar from his mom’s fingers and put it in his own pocket. She wouldn’t have changed her mind and taken it back, but why risk it? He wasted no time—first, a brisk yet polite walk to the end of the aisle where his mom was browsing for picnic napkins. Then, once he passed the discount plastic tablecloths and turned the corner onto the supermarket’s large, central thoroughfare, he did that funny speed walk he did in school to get to recess, moving at jogging pace but able to argue that he was walking if anyone claimed otherwise.

The claw machine was near the entrance, a pile of pure joy stuffed inside fingerprinted glass. Jovan got almost itchy with excitement whenever he approached the store’s automatic swinging door, knowing that even just a glimpse of stuffed giraffes and mini basketballs inside would brighten a day. And a glimpse was normally all he’d ask for; Jovan was the kind of person who rationed requests for money, doling them out carefully in a way that would shock most kids. Those kids didn’t know what Jovan knew, though, that his mom had bigger things to do than to finance his popsicles and admission fees to the neighborhood pool. She had their house to buy. She’d taught him what a mortgage was around the time most kids were learning to tie their shoes and the two of them were in it together; extra cash went towards owning that house outright. Jovan was probably the only 9-year-old who gave up his allowance by choice, to put it towards the home he figured he’d live in forever. He was probably the only 9-year-old who knew there was $20,000 to go and then that house would be theirs, and theirs alone. It would be worth all of the forgone trips to the claw machine. This would only be Jovan’s third go at it, ever in his whole life. The joystick that you have use to move the claw is jerky and tough. Once you push the button to send the claw into the toy pile, your fate is in the gods’ hands. The first two tries he’d come up empty.

Seeing the little blond girl at the machine, Jovan slowed, put the dollar in his pocket, and swiveled to make it seem like he had been coming to find the items on the shelves in front of him, which happened to be candles. The blond girl hadn’t noticed Jovan, he didn’t think; he could easily keep an eye on her while pretending to candle shop. She looked like someone had just taken an adult and squished her down a little. He thought they were about the same age but her face looked more grown up, and she was wearing these khaki pants that looked like they’d maybe just been someone’s mom’s pants and they’d sewed them smaller to fit.

Jovan got several clipped glances at the little blond girl before he started to get a little irritated that she was standing there in front of the machine but not playing it. Her hands were just on her hips. Jovan wondered what she was doing, wondered if she even had a dollar to play, but he wasn’t about to ask. It wouldn’t be like Jovan to talk to a stranger. Especially this shrunken adult in mom pants. The girl tilted her head towards the machine in way that reminded Jovan of his cat, Magik, when she watched hummingbirds at the feeder outside their window. Jovan picked up a candle and pretended to look at it but actually watched the little blond girl lift up her heels, her hands still on her hips, getting a slightly different view into the toy cage. That was when Jovan realized the claw was moving.

The girl narrowed her eyes and parted her lips a little as she eyed the claw. It moved away from her at first, gliding along the track at the top, then it dropped from the cage top down to the treasures below. The girl hadn’t touched the drop button, hadn’t even had her hands anywhere near the joystick. Jovan stopped being able to pretend that he was just there for the candles. He held his breath as the claw closed and rose up from the toys with a pink and white stuffed ice cream cone in its grip, and he almost shrieked a little when the cone suddenly came free from the claw, as his first two toys had done, and dropped back to into the pile.

The little blond girl clapped, once, like she was disappointed but still happy, the way Jovan’s mom did when he beat her at gin rummy. Jovan forgot to not stare and he watched to see what she’d do next, now that she’d played for free but hadn’t won. He watched as she reached down to the little metal slot where the successfully clawed toys would be dropped. Her hand reached in but it didn’t come back empty like Jovan thought it would; it pulled out a small black notebook. Now, Jovan had only played the claw machine twice, but he knew what was in there, and there was no small black notebook. It looked leathery and maybe even old, and the girl looked at and turned it over in her hands and brought it up to her nose while she breathed in. And then she turned and looked right at Jovan.

He should look away, he knew. He had this feeling, though, this sensation in his bones, that she had something for him. The little blond girl in her mom pants started walking over to Jovan. He was still holding the candle but couldn’t seem to turn away from the girl to put it back on the shelf. When she got to him there was the smell of something like his grandma’s old house, a clean but dusty scent with some cinnamon, too. Real cinnamon, not like these supermarket candles. Jovan felt himself start to speak but the girl reached out and took one of his hands, and that made him stay quiet instead. They stood there a moment, and her hand felt warm and light in his hand.

The small black notebook was in her other hand and she held it up a little, in between them, to show him. Its cover looked buttery and soft, and it belonged in the girl’s hand, it was meant to be there. The two of them looked at the notebook and Jovan smiled at it, because it was just what the little blond girl had wanted. How did he know this?

“It’s your turn now,” she said, and she gave his hand a little squeeze. He looked at the claw machine and before he had a second to find his voice she had skipped off, spinning a DVD rack and turning out of sight, into the giant grid of the supermarket.

Jovan set the candle back on the shelf. He went to the claw machine and looked all around it. It was plugged in and the light was on. The green-lit $1.00 was flashing above the little opening that eats dollar bills. The dollar in his pocket felt heavy, like it didn’t want to be taken out and given to the claw machine. Jovan even tried; he put his hand in his pocket and felt the dollar, but he couldn’t make himself pull it out. When did money get so heavy? This dollar must be a different kind of dollar and he just didn’t notice at first. There just wasn’t going to be any way to play today, Jovan realized. The girl had another way to play, but not Jovan. He’d go back to his mom and give her the dollar back, tell her it’s for the house.

Before he went, though, he felt he should check the slot. Why did he feel that way? He knew the girl had found her notebook in there, and she would have pulled anything else out that was in there, so it would be empty now. But Jovan still wanted to check. He reached into the toy slot expecting to run his hand over the smooth metal once, maybe twice to be sure, but what his hand hit on the first sweep was clearly paper. A folded-up piece of paper, thick paper, like the kind of cardstock his teacher sometimes gave him for his paper airplanes.

It was yellowish and almost crackly, and Jovan wondered why the things that came out of the claw machine all seemed to be old now. He unfolded the paper once, twice. At the top he could read American Express Company and on the sides it said SHARES 100 DOLLARS EACH and CAPITAL STOCK 200 SHARES. All the rest of the writing was in such a fancy cursive that Jovan couldn’t read it, but that didn’t matter; he knew that this was just what he had been hoping for from the claw machine.

Later, when Jovan’s mom would tell the story, she’d say it was magic—how her baby found an old bearer bond hidden away in the supermarket, and how they’d taken it to the bank and asked if it belonged to anyone, and the bank said they’d check with their lawyers but they were pretty sure it belonged to her now, and that ended up being right. And it ended up that Jovan and his mom had walked into the bank with the yellowing, crumbling piece of paper, and walked out with a cashier’s check that made them the official, only and forever owners of their house. Magic, she’d say. And Jovan was one of the only people who knew she was right.