When she was five, Jasmine traded her vanilla ice cream cone for a rock her neighbor Darryl had found on Long Branch beach. It was gray-brown-black with a white spiral, as if someone had twirled mayonnaise on it. Darryl downed the cone in five bites and said they could be best buddies. But Darryl’s family soon moved to Kansas, leaving Jasmine friendless. She nagged her parents to take her to Long Branch, a place she associated with Darryl. Around that time, Jasmine’s mom started drinking vodka in the afternoon.
Jasmine bartered the beach rock for a ball and jacks when she entered Franklin Elementary. The jacks had been the property of Becky, the tallest kid in class. Jasmine played with the jacks until two skittered under the refrigerator, and Rufus the Dog chewed the ball until it ripped in two. Jasmine’s dad was with another woman by then, and she bought Jasmine a replacement set of jacks. The new ball was the wrong color and never bounced right.
When Jasmine donated the jacks and ball to a foster children’s home, her mom rewarded her charity with a Scrabble game. Unfortunately, Jasmine was a bad speller, and all the game did was demonstrate that. SACRID is not a word.
Within half a year, Jasmine exchanged Scrabble for a backgammon set in a swap sponsored by the Seventh Adventist Church, where her mother hauled her every Sunday. Jasmine half-learned the rules and promptly lost $20 to her classmate Angie. There’d been money arguments at home since her mom had been fired from CVS. The backgammon set grew dust in the closet, leaning against some unexchangeable galoshes.
Jasmine brought the backgammon set back to life when she played a round with her first boyfriend, a jock named Logan. Opening her home board, she lost her virginity but broke up with Logan only after a D&C at the clinic. In the process, she gained the support of her neighbor, Kathy, who handed out Planned Parenthood leaflets after school.
Jasmine traded that support for a part-time job at Duane Reade, where Kathy’s uncle Ralph was the manager. She was proud of her title, “sales associate.” When Ralph put the moves on her, she threatened him with a box cutter.
Using her anger, Jasmine bulled her way into a shitty job at Mickey D’s, where her vocabulary was restricted mostly to “You want fries with that?” and “What would you like to drink?”
Jasmine spent some of her savings on an adopted mutt she named Rufus Too. He was loyal but stupid. All she could teach him was “sit,” in return for a milkbone. He repaid her kindness by chewing her shoes.
Rufus Too and Jasmine attracted the notice of Thomas, walking his terrier when their leashes snarled. Soon they were living together in Thomas’s less crummy apartment. They got hitched because Jasmine didn’t want to abort this time. Her mother muttered under and over her breath about Thomas’s “pansy-ass” looks. Her father, now on his third wife, said he’d had it with her, and that was their last conversation.
By the time the marriage soured, Jasmine had acquired Baby Sam. He was mischievous yet wonderfully photogenic. Jasmine would never trade Sam for anything, but she did push him into photo gigs at the Fresh Face Modeling agency.
When Rufus Too ran halfway across the street and got hit by a panel truck, Jasmine didn’t replace him.
But the modeling money allowed Jasmine to uproot herself and Sam from Thomas’s apartment and move to Queens, where she met a plump, jokey redhead named Molly. Sex with Molly was a revelation, though one of Molly’s friends couldn’t help asking, “What took you so long, hon?”
Jasmine stayed with Molly for 20 years. Sam grew up distrusting men and sleeping with them. In 2010, Molly found a lump in her right breast and died from cancer a year later. Molly’s final joke was that the life insurance money would be a lump sum.
Jasmine used the funds for a rent-controlled apartment in Bed-Stuy, where she found work as a nanny. For fun and to keep her mind occupied, she took an economics course at the College of New Rochelle, where she learned terms like quid pro quo and zero-sum game. “What something’s worth is what you’re willing to give up for it,” chalked the professor on the board. Months turned into years, and life was quiet until gentrification, when dumb boutiques and their hipster customers sprang up like high-priced weeds. Sam came to visit, sometimes bringing a friend. Jasmine met nobody who interested her as much as Molly.
When Jasmine was in her late sixties, she had a stroke and had to trade mobility for a walker. After a second stroke, when her left leg and arm dangled like damp laundry, she had to swap her apartment for a fruitless stay at the Morgenthau Rehabilitation Center, then a nursing home called Safehaven. The dead-end hallways at Safehaven smelled of bad breath and urine and something more serious. She met a twinkly octogenarian there named Sal who reminded her of Molly, but both were too infirm to go anywhere with it.
Though she still needed help dressing, Jasmine traded up with congestive heart failure. In the few months left to her, she spent a lot of time wondering about the exchange value of her life. “Life’s a set of tradeoffs till you’ve nothing left to trade,” Molly had once declared.
Jasmine’s final swap was her bed for a decorated urn to contain her ashes. Sam, now a middle-aged guy who lived in Jasmine’s old apartment, picked her up at Morgan’s Funeral Home. A month later, he drove to Long Branch beach, which his mother had often spoke of, and flung handfuls of her ashes over the bay. The wind took the ashes and returned saltwater spray, the scent of hot sand, and the far-off, plaintive cry of a gull.
