On a warm June evening in 1900, a boy and a girl sat holding hands on the roof of the Mulberry Street lodging house, the image of young romance. The girl wore an old green scarf around her head to conceal her hair. This was an unusual practice for someone whose blue eyes and pale skin suggested someone of Western European decent. The boy, a teen with greasy hair and dirt smudged face, said something and the girl laughed.
"Sparrow," the boy said, "why won't you let anyone see your hair?"
The girl, Sparrow, stopped laughing. "I've told you a hundred times, I just don't want ..." She paused. She was horrible with words, horrible at expressing emotions, and reluctant to reveal too much to anyone. But she thought she really loved the boy. She wanted to trust him and felt awful keeping secrets from him. "If I show you, do you promise not to tell anyone?" He nodded, confused by yet inexpressibly in love with his girlfriend's eccentricities.
Sparrow slowly untied the scarf from around her head, revealing a mass of waist length, wavy, sage green hair intertwined with leaves and twigs. The boy stared at her, speechless. "It's not just my hair," the girl began. "When I'm around trees and flowers, weird things happen sometimes. I don't know why but ..."
"I ... I think I'm going to go inside," said the boy.
He stumbled inside, glancing back at the girl who had suddenly become a stranger.
Sparrow stayed outside for a while longer, watching the sunset.
The next evening, Sparrow returned to the lodging house after a day of selling papers. She walked inside and to the front desk to pay for that night's lodging.
"Sorry, there's no room."
"But I've lived here for the past two years, how can there be no room?" said Sparrow in disbelief.
"Just take your things and leave. Maybe there's a lodging house in Coney Island that'll let you stay."
As if in a dream, Sparrow walked up the familiar steps to the girls room. She packed her few belongings and headed downstairs, unsure of what to think or how to feel. She walked for a few blocks, and reality slowly set in. She was alone, an outcast. She had nowhere to go so she simply continued walking aimlessly through the dark streets.