Excercise for Gotham Writer's Class

Antonia’s favorite candy growing up was Jolly Ranchers— watermelon flavored. She didn’t like to eat an entire one, however. What she liked was the initial thrill of the numbing syrupy taste that clung to her gums like jelly shoes on a bare, wet foot. When she’d sucked the candy down to a transparent, gem-like nub, she would remove it from her mouth and place it back in its wrapper; and then she’d shove the wrapper in the pocket of her jeans, her corduroys, her flannel PJ pants. Her housekeeper would come upon the caramelized pink deposits in the laundry room later as she stood there folding Antonia’s things, and she would think that Antonia hid these candies in her pockets because Mrs. Kauffman became anxious around candy. So the housekeeper never said anything to Antonia about the many pairs of sullied pants that she folded over the two years that she worked for the Kauffman family, and Antonia went on leaving half-sucked candies in her pants until she got into Dadaist poetry her junior year and decided that (blast it!) she agreed with her mother. Candy was for kids.