Penny from Heaven

by Jennifer L. Holm

  It’s Frankie. He’s dirty, and his clothes look like he slept in them. He starts talking fast, and he’s not making any sense at all.

  “The police been here?”

  “Police?”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking around nervously. “You seen any?”

  “What are you talking about? And why are you hiding in the bushes?”

  “I been waiting for you all morning,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you come through the front door, then?” I ask.

  “’Cause people are looking for me,” he says in a low voice.

  My stomach sinks. “Frankie, what did you do?”

  He closes his eyes and swallows. “I figured I’d just, you know, borrow some money from the collection. Help out at home.”

  “You robbed St. Anthony’s?”

  “I was gonna give it back! Honest! But when Father Giovanni came in, I panicked. It was dark, and I knocked over this bookshelf and all these hymnals fell on him.”

  “Was he hurt?”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, but I don’t think he’s too happy about the window.”

  “The window?”

  “I smashed a window to get out.”

  “Uncle Ralphie’s looking for you,” I tell him.

  “I’m a wanted man!” he says wildly.

  “Frankie, you’re just a kid. They can’t send you to jail. We’ll tell them it was an accident.”

  There’s a dull look in his eye. “Guess I should just turn myself in.”

  “You can stay in the basement,” I say quickly. “No one will ever know.”

  He shrugs, resigned already. “They’ll find me here. First place they’ll look.”

  We both stand there for a minute.

  “Come inside,” I say. “We’ll call Uncle Ralphie. He’ll know what to do.”

  Frankie hesitates and then nods.

  “Where’d you sleep, anyhow?” I ask.

  “Behind that bush,” he says, scratching his arm fiercely. “You got some mean ants back there.”

  We go onto the porch and Scarlett O’Hara lifts her head.

  “Why’s she wearing a diaper?” he asks. “You playing house or something?”

  “She’s sick,” I say. “She can’t move her back legs.”

  He kneels down and scratches her on the chin.

  “Scarlett, don’t let no cats see you in these diapers. You’ll be the laughingstock of the neighborhood.”

  “The doctor said she might die,” I whisper.

  “You can’t give up on her,” Frankie says sharply, looking up at me. “You can’t never give up on someone, even if they are a dog, right, Scarlett?”

  Scarlett O’Hara whines low in her throat as if she couldn’t agree more.

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask Mother that night at dinner.

  Uncle Ralphie picked up Frankie and took him down to the police station. “He’ll probably have to go to reform school, Bunny. You can’t just go around robbing churches.”

  I want to shout and say it’s not his fault, that he was just trying to help out.

  “You know I never liked you spending so much time with him,” she says. “He’s been in and out of trouble for years.”

  “Like father, like son,” Me-me says, shaking her head. “That whole family has more trouble with the law than—”

  “Mother,” my mother snaps, cutting her off.

  Me-me purses her lips.

  “Frankie’s not a criminal,” I say.

  “He is now,” my mother says.

  “He’s my cousin!” I say.

  But when I look around the table, no one will meet my eyes.

  After lunch, I go over to Frankie’s house.

  I ring the doorbell but nobody answers. I can hear the baby screaming inside, so I ring again.

  “Who is it?” Aunt Teresa shouts through the door.

  “It’s me, Aunt Teresa. Penny.”

  The door opens abruptly. Aunt Teresa has baby Michael in her arms, and there are bags under her eyes.

  “Is Frankie home?” I ask.

  “Frankie!” she hollers, and walks away.

  Frankie comes to the door, and he looks terrible.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “I’m sunk,” he says. “They’re gonna send me away.”

  “But don’t you get a trial? You have to tell them why you did it!”

  He shrugs. “It won’t matter with this judge. He told me last time he’d better not see me in his courtroom again.”

  “There’s gotta be something we can do,” I tell him, but his face looks defeated.

  “Frankie!” Aunt Teresa calls. “Get in here, now!”

  “We’ll figure something out,” I say urgently. “You know—”

  “I better go,” he says in a tired voice, and shuts the door.

  When I get home, Pop-pop’s waiting for me on the porch. He puts a hand on my shoulder and looks down at me.

  “Scarlett O’Hara” is all he says.

  My mother comes into my room when she gets home from work. I’ve never actually seen her cry, but she doesn’t look too good. Her eyes are red and she’s real pale.

  “Pop-pop just told me about Scarlett O’Hara,” she says, and chokes. “She was such a good dog. I had her before I had you, you know.”

  “My father gave her to you, right?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, and looks past me, at the wall. “It was probably for the best. This way she didn’t suffer long. At least she died at home, surrounded by people who love her.”

  That night as I lie in bed, all I can think is how none of this is for the best. How is Scarlett O’Hara dying and Frankie going to reform school good for anyone?

  I imagine Frankie in some horrible boys’ home on a cold iron bed, and I know for certain that if he goes in there, he’ll come out bad. That he’ll never survive something like that—there’s just no way. He’s like a tree that’s got a crack in it.

  One good storm and he’ll fall right over.

  The next morning I go to Nonny’s. Uncle Dominic’s sitting in his car, doing a crossword puzzle. I slide into the front seat.

  “You gotta help Frankie,” I tell him. “You can’t let them send him away.”

  “I don’t know what I can do, Princess,” he says.

  “But the police don’t know the real story! Uncle Angelo lost his job again and they need money, and he was just going to borrow it. Frankie’s not a criminal! He was just trying to help.”

  Uncle Dominic doesn’t say anything.

  “Please,” I plead, and my voice is getting louder, higher. “You know Frankie. Why won’t anyone stand up for him?”

  “Princess—”

  I’m crying now. “He’s just a kid! He’s my best friend! And Scarlett O’Hara’s dead, and everyone keeps saying it’s all for the best, but it’s not! It’s not!”

  And then Uncle Dominic is wrapping his arms around me and letting me sob into his shirt.

  “It’ll be okay, Princess,” he says again and again. “It’ll be okay.”

  Frankie comes over to my house that afternoon.

  “It’s all over! I ain’t going away!” he says.

  “Really?”

  He nods and I’m so happy that I just hug him. He tolerates it for a brief moment before pushing me away.

  “Aw, c’mon already,” he says. “You’re worse than Nonny.”

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “Way I hear it, Uncle Dominic talked to Uncle Nunzio, and Uncle Nunzio is buddies with the bishop, and the bishop agreed to drop the charges.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “So you won’t get into any trouble?”

  “Nah,” he says, and then frowns. “But Uncle Nunzio said I’m going to have to work at the factory to pay for a new window at St. Anthony’s. And I have to apologize to Father Giovanni.” He looks a little glum. “I don’t think I’m gonna be an altar boy anymore.”

  “It could be worse, right?”

>   He smiles then, the first smile I’ve seen since all this happened. “Guess what! Uncle Nunzio told Pop he has a friend who’s looking for someone to drive a truck and did he want the job and Pop said yes! Ain’t that great?”

  “That’s swell,” I say, even though I know it won’t last. Still, I don’t want to say anything that will take that smile off his face.

  He suddenly notices that the dog bed is empty. “Say, how’s Scarlett?”

  I don’t say anything; I just look at him.

  “Aw, geez,” he says. “Some rotten week, huh?”

  “And how.”

  “Where’d you put her?” he asks.

  “Pop-pop said she’d keep better in the basement until we bury her. I don’t know where she should go.”

  Frankie’s face lights up.

  “I know the perfect place,” he says.

  I ask Mother, and I’m surprised when she says it’s all right.

  Uncle Dominic digs a grave for Scarlett O’Hara in Nonny’s backyard, right next to where all the Kings and Queenies are buried. Our cousin Sister Laura comes over to Nonny’s and says a prayer over the grave, and Frankie puts the record player in the window and plays Bing Crosby singing “Here Lies Love.” It’s not Shady Grove, but it’s real nice.

  “She’ll have lots of company,” Uncle Dominic says to me after he’s finished patting down the earth.

  “Yeah,” I say, and feel a little better.

  That night when I go to sleep, I dream of Scarlett O’Hara with all the Kings and Queenies. She’s chasing them around, nipping at their heels, squirrels running everywhere.

  The happiest dog in all of Heaven.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A Punishment Worse than Death

  It’s a steamy August day.

  After we finish work at the store, we bicycle back to my house for lunch. It’s so hot that I’m soaked straight through and go change into a fresh blouse and a pair of pedal pushers.

  When I come out, Frankie’s sitting in the kitchen with Pop-pop, eating one of Me-me’s liverwurst sandwiches. He must be pretty desperate.

  “Say, you ever get to use those bazooka guns?” Frankie is asking Pop-pop. “I tell ya, if I ran into a Jap or a Nazi, I’d use a bazooka gun on him! Bam!”

  I don’t know who’s worse, Frankie or Pop-pop.

  “What?” Pop-pop says. “What’d you say?”

  “I said, ‘Did you get to use those bazooka guns?’” Frankie shouts.

  “Why you want to know? You planning on shooting someone?” Pop-pop asks suspiciously.

  “Nah,” Frankie says. “Give me a hymnal any day.”

  “Frankie!” I say.

  “My nephew, Mickey, was a pilot in the war,” Pop-pop says. “Air force.”

  “Like Gregory Peck in Twelve O’Clock High?” Frankie asks.

  Pop-pop nods.

  “I like Gregory Peck,” I say. “He sure is handsome.”

  “When Mickey told me he was going over to Europe, I said, ‘Mickey, eat as much as you can,’” Pop-pop says.

  “Why’d you tell him that?” Frankie asks.

  “’Cause that way if he got shot down and captured by the Nazis, he wouldn’t starve to death.”

  “Good advice. So’d he get shot down or what?”

  “Over Germany. Didn’t survive the crash.” Pop-pop’s voice breaks, and his eyes get all watery. “Sticks in my craw just thinking about it.”

  “Guess he didn’t have to worry about starving,” Frankie says under his breath.

  Pop-pop sees Frankie and me staring at him and shakes himself and says, “Go on. Don’t you have someplace to go? Stop bothering me.”

  We grab our sandwiches and head out to the front porch.

  “What do you wanna do?” I ask, looking up at the hot sun beating down.

  “Go ask Me-me if you can go to the pool,” Frankie says.

  “Esther Williams would have to show up and personally invite me before I’d be allowed to stick my big toe in the pool,” I say.

  Like I said, some people think you can catch polio from swimming in public pools and one of them is my mother, which is why I haven’t set foot in a pool all summer. My mother tells me all the terrible stories about what it’s like to have polio; how the kids who get it have to stay in an iron lung and are crippled and even die. Far as I can tell, the only thing nursing school did for my mother was scare her about everything.

  “Go on,” Frankie says. “Ask her. Me-me’s a softy. Maybe she’ll let you go.”

  Me-me’s paying bills when I go inside.

  “May I go to the pool?” I ask. “Please?”

  She shakes her head. “You want to end up in an iron lung?”

  So much for her being a softy.

  “It can’t be hotter in an iron lung than it is here,” I mutter, and go back outside.

  “Well?” Frankie asks.

  “At this rate, I’ll be a hundred before I get to see the inside of a swimming pool,” I say.

  We sit on the porch and play cards in the shade. Frankie’s the better card player, mostly because he cheats. His father taught him all sorts of card tricks that he learned when he was away in jail.

  “Knock it off already,” I say after he wins the fifth hand in a row.

  “What?” he says, all innocence.

  I give him a look. “I saw you pull that card out of your pocket.”

  “What card?”

  “The ace,” I say.

  “You’re just a sore loser,” he says with a small snicker.

  “Am not.”

  Me-me comes out wearing a hat, Pop-pop at her side.

  “We’re going over to see the Harts,” she announces. “We won’t be back until five o’clock.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  She eyes Frankie. “You’ll be all right here on your own?”

  “Yes, Me-me,” I say. “I promise not to do anything exciting.”

  She presses her lips together as if she’s unsure about leaving me with Frankie.

  “What’re we waiting for? My hair to grow back?” Pop-pop asks.

  “Don’t get into trouble,” Me-me calls over her shoulder as they walk to the car.

  The minute the car’s disappeared around the corner, Frankie grabs my hand and says, “Let’s go!”

  “Go where?” I ask.

  He screws up his face. “The pool! Where else?”

  “But Me-me said I can’t go.”

  Frankie has a devilish gleam in his eye. “Just think of all that nice cool water going to waste.”

  I hesitate. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” Frankie says. “We go now and get back before Me-me and Pop-pop return, see?”

  I look at him uncertainly. “What if my mother finds out?”

  He winks at me. “She’ll never know.”

  I’m floating on my back, looking up at the blue sky, a smile on my face.

  After changing into our suits and grabbing towels, we rode our bicycles over to the pool. It seems like every kid in town is here today. I guess the other mothers don’t share my mother’s worries. Either that or they can’t take their kids’ whining.

  But the biggest surprise of the afternoon is finding out that Jack Teitelzweig is a junior lifeguard here!

  “Hi, Penny,” Jack says.

  I’m so startled, I don’t know what to say; I just sort of nod at him. Luckily he can’t see my horrible hair because I’m wearing a bathing cap.

  Now I can’t stop thinking about Jack. He’s got an awfully nice smile. All of a sudden I’m having these crazy ideas about Jack asking me on a date or taking me to a dance. I almost blush when I imagine what it would be like to kiss him. Then I realize I really must be dreaming because I hear Jack calling my name.

  “Penny,” he calls.

  I just keep floating, but he calls my name again, and this time I open my eyes.

  “Penny Falucci. Please come to the lifeguard stand,” he calls through the bullhorn.

  I can
’t believe my ears, but when I look up, I see Jack standing at the side of the pool waving at me. I wave back at him and then freeze. Because standing right next to him is . . .

  My mother.

  All the kids in the pool start laughing and clapping, and a few even whistle as I make my way over. Veronica’s sitting on the side and gives me a little wave.

  And that’s when I know for certain that ending up in an iron lung can’t possibly be any worse than dying of pure embarrassment.

  My mother lectures me the whole way to the house. Apparently, she came home early to surprise me, but when she couldn’t find me, she got suspicious.

  “I am so disappointed,” she says. “Wait till Me-me hears about this little stunt of yours.”

  I don’t say anything; I just stare straight ahead.

  “This is what we get for trusting you to behave? To do the right thing?” she demands.

  “An iron lung can’t be any worse than living like this!” I shout. “I can’t go to the movies! I can’t go in the pool! It’s like I’m a prisoner! You won’t let me do anything!”

  “We’ll see about that,” she says grimly.

  I’m not allowed to leave the house for the rest of the summer, and it’s only the beginning of August. The only places I can go are the store and Nonny’s house.

  “How was I supposed to know she’d have a spy?” Frankie protests when he finds out.

  After spending the morning at the store, I go straight home and make myself a cream cheese and grape jelly sandwich and go out to the front porch to eat it. This is the most exciting my day will get. It’s only been a week, but I can honestly say I know what it feels like to be in jail. No wonder Uncle Angelo is such a wreck. How can anyone do anything after such torture?

  Me-me opens the front door and smiles. “Would you like some cake?”

  I shake my head.

  “Maybe we can make a new bedspread for your room this afternoon,” she suggests. “You’ve been saying you wanted something different.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Me-me sighs and closes the door reluctantly.

  I know Me-me is trying to cheer me up, but a new bedspread isn’t going to make up for the plain fact that my life is ruined. Every other kid in town is having a great time, and I’m stuck at home with Me-me and Pop-pop. I have weeks of this to look forward to, not to mention all the teasing I’m going to get when I go back to school. And that’s not the end of it. Mother’s dating Mr. Mulligan again! I thought I’d gotten rid of him, but he showed up at the door last night.