Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

  Though Toni was not even a year younger than Frankie, they didn’t see each other much because Toni was in a different cottage. That suited Frankie just fine. Her sister was almost as full of herself as Stella Zaffaro. And Toni didn’t care about getting anyone in trouble. She waved at the boys as if she were signaling for planes.

  Frankie elbowed her in the kneecap. “Stop it!

  Toni’s hand dropped. “Take my leg off, why don’t you?”

  “I’d like to take your head off.”

  Toni knelt down behind Frankie, her bony knees digging into Frankie’s back. “You’re just mad ’cause I have a fella.”

  “That boy?” Frankie said. “He’s just a kid. You both are.”

  “Say, you are jealous.”

  “Say, you are dumb. I’m not mad ’cause you think you have a fella, I’m mad because every time you’re in Dutch with the nuns, I am too.”

  Toni was decent enough to turn red. “That’s not my fault.”

  “Sure it is,” Frankie said. Nobody knew how Toni had managed it, but one afternoon she’d snuck off with one of the boys; Father found the two of them at the candy shop across the street, drinking one soda with two straws. Even though Father and the nuns never found out what, exactly, Toni and that boy had done, Toni was strapped something fierce. Then Sister George made Frankie clean out all the sinks in the washroom even though she hadn’t done anything with any boy. Yet.

  And not long after, Sister had caught Frankie making a face behind her back, shaking her finger like Sister George did when she was angry about something. It was nighttime, and Frankie had her hair all rolled up in rag curlers. Sister George cut off every single one of those curlers. She dropped them in the wash bucket one at a time, where they floated like the mice they sometimes found drowned in the toilets.

  “Did the nuns tell Daddy about your so-called fella?” Frankie said.

  Toni stopped smirking. “Do you think they will?”

  “Yeah. But if they don’t, I will.”

  “If you want me to keep my mouth shut when you get a fella, you’ll zip your lips,” said Toni.

  Frankie figured that, when she had a fella, she would never be stupid enough to sit in the candy shop window where everyone could see her. “Come on,” Frankie said. “It’s almost visiting time.”

  “I wonder what Daddy wants to tell us,” Toni said. “Do you think he got a bigger place?”

  “No,” said Frankie, and shoved at her sister’s knees to get her moving. They climbed back down the ladder. Some of the orphans would go to the visiting room to meet with their fathers or mothers or aunts or whatever distant cousin took pity. The rest would play cards or listen to the radio. They never looked too happy, those kids who had no one to visit them, or no one who wanted to. Frankie decided not to be so mad at Toni.

  At least not today.

  While they waited for their father in the visiting room, Toni could barely sit still. Frankie had to press her hand on Toni’s knee to keep her from bouncing them both off the bench. But as much as she tried not to, Frankie’s knee also had a hopeful twitch. In her pocket was a new a sketch that she thought was better than almost anything she’d done before. And even though she didn’t allow herself to hope for much, she wanted to show her father. She wanted him to see how good it was. She wanted him to say it.

  A few minutes later, Vito came through the door, his cap rolled up in his hand, his fingers still plucking at the itchy woollies. “Hey, girls,” he said, sitting next to Frankie. And then he went quiet. He never used to be so quiet. Lately he acted as if he was a million miles away, far too grown up for his sisters. And then Frankie was angry all over again.

  “Why didn’t you wave to me before?”

  Vito grunted. “You want me to get beat too? Or maybe you just want me to get a haircut like yours?”

  He didn’t say this in a cruel way. “It would look better on you,” Frankie muttered, tugging at it. Again.

  Vito smiled then. “Well, you don’t look half as bad as you should.”

  “No. She looks twice as bad,” Toni said. And then she clapped her hands like a little one in the baby house. She yelled, “Daddy!”

  There he was, striding across the enormous room. He wore a black suit and a long wool overcoat that sailed out behind him like some kind of cape. With his hat tilted at an angle and his tan skin and dark eyes, he looked like one of the movie stars Stella Zaffaro was always going on about, Tyrone Power maybe. He had to pass through the crowd of kids waiting to see their own relatives, and Frankie noticed some of the older girls watching him, tugging on their skirts like they could get him to notice them if only their hems were straight. She wanted to remember their faces so that she could short-sheet their beds later. But she couldn’t be bothered, not really, not with the smell of meatballs and fresh bread in her nose. Not with her father heading straight for them, his huge bag full of food putting everyone in the room to shame.

  “Hello! Hello!” their father called. Dangling from his free hand were the most beautiful green shoes, perfect shoes, women’s shoes, with a good heel. They were for Frankie, she was sure they were. Maybe you should listen to what Father Paul says, she told herself. Maybe you should be more grateful for the things you’ve been given.

  That was when Frankie noticed what was behind her father. Who was behind her father. Hanging on to him like she owned him. And Frankie couldn’t see what she’d been given anymore. All she could see were the things that could be taken away.

  On the Coast of the Moon

  WHAT I KNEW ABOUT MY mother: Her skin was creamy white. She had perfect posture. Her hair went silver by the time she was twenty-five. When she was angry, her lips pulled tight like a row of sutures. Her most prized possession: the set of pearl-and-diamond wedding rings she wore on her left hand. I often begged her to let me try them on. She said that the day my father slipped those rings on her finger was the happiest of her life, and she would never take them off.

  “Not even when you’re dead?” I’d asked.

  Her face was a thundercloud. “There’s something wrong with you.”

  What Frankie knew about her mother: Her name was Caterina Costa. She came to America on a boat from Sicily in 1918. She didn’t know a word of English, she didn’t know a soul except a second cousin who would be taking her in till she got a job. But she met Frankie’s father the shoemaker instead, and she married him. They lived in an apartment behind the shoe shop. She had three children, Vittorio, Francesca, and Antonina. They made her so happy. That was why everyone was shocked when Frankie’s mother took the gun from the drawer in the shoe shop, the gun their father kept in case someone tried to rob them. Shocked that she shot up the room where she and Frankie’s father slept, accidentally wounding Frankie’s father. But she only wanted to see what it felt like to pull the trigger, that was what she told Frankie’s father, what Frankie’s father told Aunt Marion, what Aunt Marion told Vito, and what Vito told Frankie. Frankie’s mother would never try to hurt anyone, she would never commit such a sin. Frankie’s father threw out the gun and placed the children in Guardian Angels so their mother could rest. After a while, she was okay again. Everyone came out of the orphanage. She and Frankie’s father tried to have another baby, but Frankie’s mother died, and so did the baby.

  When Frankie was little, she asked Vito about this so many times he got sick of it. “She’s gone,” he said. “Dad has to work, and Aunt Marion does too. We live in the orphanage now. I don’t want to talk about Mom anymore.” But Frankie still wanted to talk about it. So she told Toni the story, adding details to make it better. She told Toni that she’d seen pictures of their mother. She was beautiful, with long, dark curling hair. Big chocolate eyes. Sun-kissed skin. A laugh that sounded like the chimes in Christmas carols they played on the radio. Delicate hands that fluttered like butterflies when she talked. Frankie said that their mother loved them more than anything. And even when she held the gun just to see what it felt like, she wanted her children to
be happy. That was all she ever wanted.

  Now, in a crowded visiting room filled with forced cheer, the sallow woman who was not Frankie’s mother was holding out a hand that didn’t flutter at all. No pearls and diamonds here, but a thin silver band on the fourth finger.

  Frankie knew what it was. Of course she knew what it was.

  Frankie folded her arms across her chest. “What’s that?”

  The woman looked at Frankie as if she were as dumb as a plant. “A wedding ring, Francesca.” The woman waited, maybe thinking one of them would say something smarter. Wow. Bully for you. Swell ring.

  But they didn’t. The three of them stood there, staring at their father. He’d put the brown bag on the table and was unpacking it. Meatball sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, apples, some homemade peanut candy, hard and sharp enough to scour the roofs of their mouths raw but so good they ate it anyway. Other families gaped at all the wonderful food, their tongues practically flapping to the ground.

  Frankie’s own tongue felt like a scrap of leather. The tongue of a shoe.

  Finally Vito said to the woman, “Congratulations.” He leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  “Thank you, Vito,” she said.

  He had gotten too grown up for the likes of his sisters. Frankie pulled her arms in tighter, like she would never let herself go. No way was Frankie kissing that woman. No way. Her lips would shrivel and fall off, and there she’d be, no hair, no mouth, nobody.

  Speaking of hair. “Francesca, did you have lice?” the woman asked her.

  “No,” Frankie said.

  The woman arched one eyebrow the way Stella did when she was practicing her actress face in the mirror. The blood burned in Frankie’s cheeks. “I just wanted it short.”

  “Oh,” the woman said. “Well. It’s . . .”

  “Horrible,” said Toni. “She looks like a ringy.”

  “A . . . what?” She—Ada, their new stepmother’s name was Ada—never seemed to understand them when they talked. Or pretended she didn’t.

  “A kid with ringworm,” Toni said. “Only if she was a ringy, she’d be wearing a sock on her head too, to hold in the medicine for the worms. Are we going to eat now?”

  Ada’s mouth curled like wet paper. “I don’t know if I’m hungry anymore.”

  Their father smiled, big and bright, as if nothing was going on, as if nothing was different. He ignored Frankie’s folded arms and pulled her into a hug. He curved his rough hand around the back of her nearly bald head. “Bella!” he said. “Bella!” Frankie used to know Italian, the language she spoke till was three. She only remembered a few words, but she knew that one. It made her want to cry.

  He hugged Toni and gave Vito a clap on the back. “Wedding is good news, eh? Everybody happy?”

  Toni didn’t care about anybody’s happiness but her own. “Are those my shoes, Daddy?”

  “For Francesca. Something else for you.” Daddy dug around in his bag. He gave Toni a paper-doll book, an ice skater on the cover.

  Toni squealed like someone just poked her with a fork. “Sonja Henie! Thanks, Daddy!”

  Frankie wished she had a fork, Toni was so dumb and mixed-up and everywhere at once. Running off with boys! Playing with paper dolls! Toni couldn’t decide if she was eighteen or eight. Frankie nudged her, but Toni nudged Frankie right back.

  Daddy pushed the shoes at Frankie. “You try,” he said.

  Frankie didn’t want to, not in front of her, but she kicked off her old shoes and slipped into the new ones. Unlike the other orphans, who had to wear scuffed and donated shoes molded to other people’s feet, Frankie and her brother and sister had new shoes their father had made just for them. As always, these shoes were perfect—more than perfect, delicate and ladylike—which just made Frankie feel worse. She walked back and forth to show him, the shoes heavy as bricks on her feet.

  “Daddy,” Toni whined, already sick of poor Sonja Henie. “I’m hungry.”

  Their father broke off pieces of the peanut candy and gave one to each of them. Then he took off his raincoat and laid it over the back of a chair. He pulled a knife from the bag and started slicing the sandwiches.

  Frankie popped the candy into her mouth, where it sat like a rock. Toni wolfed hers, bits of sugar and nuts spraying everywhere. Vito took his piece and frowned at it, as if he didn’t know what it was.

  Toni reached for it. “If you ain’t gonna eat that—”

  Vito’s dark eyes flashed as he whipped the candy away from Toni. “Cool it.”

  “No fighting,” said their father, though with his accent it sounded like he was saying “No-a, fighting-a.” “Plenty for everybody.” Frankie’s father smoothed the newspaper flat and placed the sliced sandwiches on top. He motioned for them to sit at the table. They all took a slice and started to eat. Nobody said much. The tomato sauce dripped off Toni’s chin as if she were bleeding. She didn’t notice. The meatballs were delicious, as usual, but Frankie’s gut was locked down tight as a submarine. She gave up. She peeled away a part of the newspaper and wrapped her sandwich in it.

  “I hope you’re not going to throw that over the fence,” Ada said. A long time before, Vito used to spit out the terrible orphanage food into his handkerchief, knot it, bring it out to the yard after supper, and throw the handkerchief over the fence. Until someone noticed a strange pile of handkerchiefs on the girls’ side of the yard. One brave nun untied one to find Vito’s name and cottage number written into the fabric. After the nuns got through with him, Vito couldn’t sit down for weeks. He said they used a belt with a heavy buckle. Then the nuns told their father, who just used his hand. Vito said it hurt a lot worse than anything the nuns could do.

  Frankie pulled the sandwich closer. “I’m going to eat this later.”

  Toni wiped her chin with the back of her wrist. “I’ll eat it now.”

  Ada’s lips twitched. “You don’t worry about your figure much, do you, Antonina?”

  A shadow passed over Toni’s face.

  Frankie clenched her jaw so hard that her teeth ached. “Here,” she said, placing her sandwich in front of her sister. “You can have it, Toni.”

  But Toni had figured out what Ada meant. She pushed it back to Frankie. “That’s okay.”

  “No, take it.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Come on,” Frankie said.

  Toni fluffed her curls, pretending she didn’t care. “You have it. You’re way too skinny anyway.”

  “Girls, girls,” their father said. “Everybody just right, eh?”

  Behind their father, a few tables away, a woman was crying. Her hair was dripping wet. I’d seen her before. Frankie had too. Once every few months she showed up, always wearing the same grubby coat, big and long enough for a man. Sometimes she sang, sometimes she talked to herself, sometimes she sobbed. Today, the only thing she had on underneath the coat was a dirty green blouse, loose and watery white flesh hanging from her bones. A girl tried to get her to button the coat, get her to cover up, but the woman slapped the girl’s hands away. The girl was Loretta, the one Frankie had given her breakfast to, the only one who liked sticky, lardy bread. The woman looked straight at us, at me, and wailed even louder, her shriek like a siren, and a couple of nuns came to steer her away. Loretta glanced down at herself, now wet as the madwoman had been.

  “We need some pictures,” Frankie’s father was saying. Though Ada was shaking her head, though she had just shamed Toni, though Frankie didn’t like her and hadn’t liked her from the first minute she saw her, she wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, them being married. Maybe the new apartment they’d get would have a room she and Toni could share. Maybe she’d even get her own.

  The voice in my head said, You will be grateful.

  Pictures done, Frankie’s father picked up Frankie’s hand and patted it. “So grown-up. Is good. You take care of your little sister.”

  She always did. “Okay.”

  “The nuns don’t want Vito n
o more. Too many kerchiefs over the fence,” he said, smiling. “And work for me not so good, here. So I think we move. I think maybe Colorado is nice. Fresh air.”

  “Colorado?” said Frankie, the word rolling around like marbles in her mouth. He might as well have said, “I think maybe Neverland is nice. I think maybe the coast of the moon.”

  “Not so easy to visit,” he said. “I write letters. One a week.”

  “What?” She didn’t understand. The shoes, the food, and Ada with her ring—what was happening? Frankie looked at Vito. His eyes were wide. He didn’t know either. Their father cleaned up the table, tucking the knife under his coat, like a person who thought he might get jumped.

  Ada excused herself and disappeared into the sea of people. On most visiting Sundays, they didn’t see Ada at all. She took her own kids out for walks around the grounds. But today was different. She left, but she didn’t stay gone. Just a few minutes later, Ada was back at the end of their table. Five kids, two girls and three boys, most of them as big as Frankie and Vito, were gathered around Ada like a bunch of crows. They each had a beat-up suitcase with them. The younger ones seemed confused. The oldest boy, taller than Vito, was smirking like he was thinking of a joke. He waved at Frankie, waggling his fingers. His oily gaze slid down her body.

  Toni, who’d been tearing out Sonja Henie’s outfits from the book, too impatient to wait for scissors, stopped. She folded her hands on the table. She said, “When are you going?”

  “Soon,” Daddy said. He held out an apple to Toni and another to Frankie.

  Frankie took the apple, feeling her throat closing up as fast as her stomach had. “You’re going to Colorado? With Ada?”