And now, sitting here pretending to be interested in a cheap box of junk jewelry—there weren’t even any truly valuable pieces—no Bakelite bangles or rhodium-finished platinum-look rhinestone pieces, the kind she’d read about in some Sunday supplement magazine—Anna realized that the old woman had chosen her punishment well that long-ago afternoon. A slap or harsh word would have been quickly forgotten by a child, but to this day, the sense of panic, of a treasure almost won and then cruelly lost, had stayed with her, even as she now realized that the jewelry she’d cried over, that she’d begged for, only to be smilingly refused with a solemn, “You’ve lost it, forever,” was only a pile of garbage, of clanking junk. For the denial had hurt Anna—the sense of losing something she could never, ev
