We took TVs until we had enough of those. We took jewelry and movies we wanted to see and bottles of liquor and stuffed animals that stared at us, saying, “Take me with you!” We could have taken a lot more with the intention of selling it, but we behaved modestly. It was the thrill we were stealing most of all. It was that rush.

In the alley or the woods we rubbed dirt into the hems of our skirts and dusted our sandaled feed so they were an ashy gray. At home we exclaimed our wonder at what people would throw away, and what they’d just drop off at the dump. Our fathers smiled at the new TV, but our mothers knew that any self-respecting proprietor of that trash heap would have kept that TV for himself. “Eleanor, you can’t keep a stuffed bunny from the dump. You’ll get red fever or cholera.” She pronounced “cholera” with a “ch,” and when we heard that noise our minds felt vindicated. We’d shrug and hug the animal tight, then place it in the arms of our little sister, and she’d run off and our mother would give us a look like, “You’ve just murdered your sister. Hope you’re happy.” And we were. Not because we were killing our sisters but because we knew how our mother was failing.

In the winter, we’d plan. The snow slowed us down. We had big downy coats to hide our bounty in, but we hadn’t figured out how to avoid leaving footsteps around the houses. We barreled around each others’ rooms, sifting through the jewels we’d purloined, letting loose an expensive kind of laughter. Our mothers would knock on our doors. They were convinced we were getting high, but no smells shaped the right way. They’d walk around the outside of the house looking for our windows to open, for toilet paper tubes with dryer sheets to be aimed out into the winter air, but they were always shut tight. We saw our mothers in the sideyards making tracks of their own and we waved enthusiastically, the wide expanses of our faces undamaged by fear of being caught. Our mothers inhaled sharply, their nostrils stamped together by the freezing wind, their khakis wet to the knee for not having bothered to put boots on instead of their house sneakers.