When Dolly Hutton needed to go out drinking, she would have to bring her son Jack with her. The Kit-Mar Club was no place for a nine year old, people would say reprovingly, but Dolly hoped to catch the eye of a decent man in one of Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street beer joints. One who could turn their difficult lives around. It was 1959 and she was forty-eight years old. With no small effort, Dolly went through a woman's whirligig of curlers and cosmetics, of foundations and frocks, all to convince herself and the world that she still had some looks left. The result? Men bought her drinks, however, it rarely went beyond that. At one time, some had said that she had a great pair of legs, and even gave pinup starlet Betty Grable a run for her money. But that was long ago.

The Kit-Mar played loud country music on a jukebox. Jack scaled an open barstool. He watched the skirting of tinsel that ran below the bar's long mirrored liquor shelves, how the silver strands swayed to the breeze from adjacent fans. And how expertly the bartender grabbed first this bottle and then that bottle, and yet another, like a juggler with his pins. Despite being the only kid in a crowd of rowdy, drunken adults, Jack didn't mind beer joints. Nice people would sometimes buy him a little box of pretzel sticks, a fountain Coke, or if he were really lucky, a hamburger that would stop his stomach from growling. But the bartender shooed him away, made him go back to his mother's table. Jack looked at the clock above the jukebox. It was nearing ten. His mother needed to think about getting them home.

"We ride a bus to get here, Mommy, why do we have to take a cab home? Cabs are expensive." He felt too old, perhaps, to still be calling her Mommy; Mom sounded much better. But something made him do it. Maybe it was because he took a look around and realized growing up might not be a pleasant thing to do. It certainly wasn't because he was a sissy. That was the worst insult of all. A drunk man at The Fox Lounge had called him that once, because he was so clingy with his mother. The jibe cured him; he no longer sought her affection in public. Drunk men were trouble. Why did she spend so much time talking to them?

"The bus to our apartment stops running after eight, Jack. Yes, cabs are expensive, but it's the only way we can get home at night."

"Don't know how that boy keeps his eyes open this late," said Madge Willson, one of Dolly's pals. Madge was a large woman with wiry red hair that she kept in bulky pig tails. She rouged her cheeks clownishly in order to cover spider veins, blemishes brought on by her heavy drinking.

"Oh, he rarely goes to bed before eleven. He's always been this way," said Dolly, tousling her son's white blonde curls. The boy was overdue for a haircut. He was a bright child who could beat any adult in chess at the AA club. She had met his father a decade ago at The Blue Mirror Grill. The man said he loved her, so they drove out to Ellicott City, Maryland, to get married by a Justice of the Peace. But he was AWOL from the army, she learned, and then he started getting rough with her. She told him to leave and he did. He never even knew she was pregnant. Dolly would have to raise Jack on her own.

"It's getting near ten, Dolly, you really should get that boy in bed," said Madge.

"Is it that late already? Madge, dearie, I was hoping I could borrow seventy-five cents from you. For the cab ride home." Dolly gave Madge a pleading look. Borrow meant give, and they both knew it.

"Hmph, big surprise. That's okay, I'm going to cover you, Dolly Hutton. For the umpteenth time. But it's really getting old, I want you to know. I'm not like you, pestering men to buy me drinks. I pay my own way." Madge shook her head slowly and passed the silver into Dolly's hand. Dolly placed the quarters in a small, brown rubber change purse that was shaped like a flattened football. Compressing its ends opened its maw; releasing them secured the coins. Then the change purse went into her larger white pocketbook. Dolly never went out without her white gloves, her white pocketbook, and a hat. She was determined, despite her life, to show she had a little class.

Dolly took Jack by the hand and led him toward the door, waving "Toodle-loo!" to people she thought were her friends. But Delores Hutton had developed a reputation as a mooch, and people were reluctant to look her in the eye.

The door to The Kit-Mar Club closed behind them and muffled the sounds of the jukebox. 14th Street was laced with a webwork of old flashing neon that contrasted with the organic swirls of newer, Atomic Age signage. The clamor of screeching, honking cars was constant. Two competing movie houses, the Tivoli and the Savoy, stacked the golden letters of their names vertically to the heavens. Dolly led Jack to the nearest corner and raised her free hand to hail a taxi. With her other hand, she held on firmly to her boy. She sensed that he needed this when they were out on the hectic streets of nighttime D.C., but in fact, it was she who needed him. Oh, did she need that boy. God hadn't been very good to her, but He gave her this wonderful child and she never regretted it for a moment. Just to be a mother and hold her child's hand was the best feeling she could possibly have.

They climbed into a Yellow Cab. That worried Jack. He seemed to recall that Yellow Cabs were sometimes more expensive than other taxis. And why did they call it a Yellow Cab when it was clearly orange and black? There were a lot of questions that were hard to answer. For instance: why was the cupboard at home always bare? Tomorrow Jack would have to scour the neighborhood for empty pop bottles. When he found five of them, and that might take several hours, he would cash them in for two cents each at the corner grocery store. Ten cents would buy a whopping big can of baked beans. It would make a satisfying dinner for him and his mom. But they would have to eat them cold because she hadn't paid the gas bill.

The cab driver, a stout, middle-aged man with a pimply, bulldog neck, drove them from the Northwest bars over the Michigan Street Bridge and into the Northeast section of D.C. where they lived. Entering their neighborhood brought the immense National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception into view. Its ornate, blue and gold, Byzantine dome seemed to Jack like something from the futuristic world of the Buck Rogers serials. Dolly began to open her pocketbook as the cab driver stopped in front of their apartment on Rhode Island Avenue. She fumbled for her change purse, that little rubber floundery thing, and retrieved the borrowed three quarters from it. Her fingernail rimmed its insides, hoping to find more coins. But there were none.

"That'll be one dollar, ma'm," he said. Jack glanced at the driver in the rearview mirror. The man's pupils were dilated, gleaming; his downturned nose and mouth were all business. As soon as he proclaimed the fare, Dolly huffed and grunted and snapped her pocketbook shut.

"One dollar? We have never paid more than seventy-five cents to get home. Never!"

"You crossed two zones to get here, that comes to one dollar. It's been that way for a while."

"We've always paid seventy-five cents! That's all the money I have. I'm not paying a dollar." The cabbie simply sat and said nothing. Dolly hemmed and hawed but he showed no sympathy whatsoever. He heard it all the time, people trying to skinflint him. Dolly had cracked the cab's door so that the overhead dome light came on. The soft glow revealed deep worry lines on her face. Jack started to cry.

"Now look what you've done, mister." Dolly pulled a handkerchief from her pocketbook and wiped Jack's face with it. They sat in silence for several minutes more, then the cabbie exhaled and shook his head slowly. A lot of people shook their head at his mother, Jack noticed.

"Alright, lady. Gimme the seventy-five cents. Just remember that from now on, the fare from where I picked you up to here is a dollar. And kid, here's a stick of Juicy Fruit for you. No hard feelings, okay?" He smiled at Jack, but it seemed as if his mouth was working against a greater gravity than what the rest of the world knew. His grin collapsed; he resumed his scowl.

"Thank you mister, thank you," said Dolly. She hurried the two of them out of the taxi and up the steps. The Yellow Cab sped away.

"That cheap chiseler. Remind me never to take a Yellow Cab anymore, sweetie. They're too dear." Men made Jack cringe. They were huge, ugly creatures with their razor burned necks and nose bristles, their warts and moles, their smeared tattoos and vaccination scars. Their angry roars, their monster's eyes. Their big, greedy hands.

Inside the apartment, it was dark. She hadn't paid the electric bill either. They fumbled their way toward the bedroom, where Dolly lit two candles and tucked Jack into bed.

"Do you want to say your prayers?"

"I don't think so."

"No? Why not?"

"I don't think God hears prayers."

"Of course He hears prayers. He gave me you. You were the greatest gift God could have given me."

"I prayed for a hamburger tonight and I didn't get it."

"Oh. Nobody fed you? Those tight crumbums. I could make you a little oatmeal."

"Then we won't have anything for breakfast." He was right. Dolly would have to go to the rectory at The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception tomorrow morning and put on a show of tears. It was humiliating. After she had groveled enough, the priest would chastise her for her drinking and then write out a check for five dollars. September was only two months away, and Jack would start school again. After that, she could look for a job. Things would continue to be tough until then. Would anyone hire her? She had struck out so many times, trying to find work. Employers knew an alcoholic when they saw one. The lines in Dolly's face wrote a strange alphabet of despair. Jack yawned, closed his eyes, and pretended to fall asleep. His face was angelic in the candlelight. She kissed him on the nose and on the forehead. That boy was the whole world to her.

Jack wasn't sleepy. Something besides hunger gnawed at him. It was something that he had been having a hard time with. A strange feeling that he had been noticing for a while. The image of all those drunks in the beer joints stuck in his head. The winter his mother tramped through the snow to the corner pay phone and begged the gas company not to turn off the heat. Eviction notices. Bill collectors banging on the door. Move after move after move, each place more run-down and roach-ridden than the last. So many crises. There were little things, too. The slowly widening holes in the soles of his sneakers that he kept patched with cardboard. Shirts and pants he had outgrown, but still had to wear. Kids that made fun of his long hair. He searched through his feelings and a realization made him swallow nervously. He was learning, ever so slowly, not to love his mother. It would take some time, but the day would come when he wouldn't love her at all. There was nothing he could do about it. His indifference to Delores Hutton was just going to happen. He was sure of this, as sure as he was of anything in this lousy, rotten world.