I'M FEMALE, I'M MAFIA

SHERRIAD ACADEMY FOR GIRLS - 1987

The day Jade Brownie was born, Herbert Brownie's life underwent a dramatic change. Herbert Brownie was a construction worker, and his existence consisted of a never-ending blur of brick-hauling and muddy work boots and dented hard hats and drunken bar brawls. He hadn’t given much thought to the baby that had been coming for the past nine months.

When he gazed down at the spastic little creature he cradled in his arms, his life suddenly took on meaning.

By the time Jade was four years old, Herbert would carry her up to the tiny wooden deck he had added onto the attic of their run-down Garfield house, holding her in his arms.

“Your great-great-great-great grandmother was an Irish Princess,” he whispered, his beard tangled in her blonde hair. “She lived in a beautiful, ancient castle. It had a moat, and a...”

“What’s a moap, Daddy?”

“A moat. It’s a pond that goes all the way around the castle and protects it from attack." He paused. “Princess Alana’s daddy, the king, would hold great feasts and celebrations at Brownie Castle. Afterwards, Alana would come out on the balcony, like this one, and all the people would cheer her. ‘All hail to the Princess! All hail to the Princess!” Herbert pointed out into the tiny backyard. “Can you hear them cheering?”

Jade listened. She could hear them! Except they were crying, “All hail Princess Jade! All hail Princess Jade!”

“Was Princess Alana very rich, Daddy?”

“Very rich, sweetheart. Just like you’re going to be one d...”

“Why do you fill her head with that nonsense?”

Scattergood Brownie was standing in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, her face haggard from working a 12 hour shift at the supermarket. “You’re going to make her think she’s better than everybody else,” she said.

Herbert looked genuinely surprised. “But she is better than everybody else."

* * *

Jade was six years old when she realized her father was little more than a beer-guzzling manual laborer with an overactive imagination, and that Garfield, where they lived, was one of the worst areas of Pittsburgh. She would never be rich and there had never been any Princess Alana or a Brownie Castle. But she adored her father all the same.

Jade loved to nuzzle her face into his broad chest when he came in the door from work. He smelled of sawdust and bricks and the outdoors.

She knew he would always be there to protect her.

As a little girl, Jade felt a special affinity for working the visual puzzles in newspapers and magazines. The ones with two pictures side by side that appeared identical at first glance, with a caption that said: There are ten differences between the girls in these two photographs. Can you find them?

Herbert marveled at the speed with which his little tow-haired prodigy could work these puzzles. “The girl on the right doesn’t have a bracelet, and there are two straps on her sandal...see how easy it is, Daddy?”

“No,” he chuckled. “I don’t see how easy it is. How the heck do you do that?” To his wife, he said, “She has an incredible eye for detail. Someday she might become a great artist."

“Uh-huh,” Scattergood said.

* * *

Herbert was forever concerned about his daughter’s safety. When she started school, he drove her in his truck each and every morning, and picked her up and took her home each and every afternoon. At the construction sites, no matter how busy he was, he would drop whatever he was doing and say, “I have to go pick up my daughter." These words were always uttered with a great sense of pride.

His bosses put up with him because he was such a diligent worker, and they could not help but admire his fatherly dedication. Herbert was always the first one to arrive on site, and the last one to leave. During the day he worked faster and harder than anyone else.

His employers had no idea that he was the one responsible for the pilfering and theft that plagued the sites for years.

When Jade was twelve, Herbert caught her and the girl next door smoking cigarettes and making-out in the back yard.

That night, Herbert said to his wife, “I’m sending Jade to a private school. I want her out of this shitty neighborhood."

“And how do you plan to pay for it?”

Herbert took a sip of beer, gazing at the TV. “Don’t ask." 

The Sherriad Academy for Girls was housed in a cluster of brick colonial-style buildings nestled on fourty tree-filled acres of land, a half hour drive from Garfield. It was quiet and peaceful there, with plenty of fresh air, a gazebo, a stable, and the ruins of a little country church, complete with a graveyard.

The day of Jade’s interview, Herbert was a nervous wreck. His hair was slicked back, his beard neatly trimmed, and he wore a five-year-old ill-fitting suit he had bought for his mother’s funeral. He was afraid that Ms. Precious, the director of the school, would be an arrogant snob. To his surprise, she turned out to be a pleasant, unassuming little woman with a pug nose and a gentle smile.

“Your daughter is adorable,” Ms. Precious said, perusing Jade’s file, “and her grades and tests scores are outstanding. We would be thrilled to have her here at Sherriad."

Herbert breathed a great sigh of relief. He picked up a heavy satchel and began stacking piles of rubber-band bound bills on her desk. “I hope you don’t mind if I pay cash."

“I’m sorry, but we only accept checks."

“That’s not convenient for me. See, I run a cash business." Herbert Brownie was a big man, with rough-looking hands. He had listed his occupation on the application as “construction site foreman."

“And what kind of business is that?” Ms. Precious said uneasily.

“Me and my friends have some investments in different things. Video arcade for kids, stuff like that, you know. Cash businesses."