Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  MID-DECEMBER DAYS grow dark within an hour and a half of our coming home from school. Now that Tyler sleeps until dinner time, I go outside and play a game of hide-and-seek with my friends, or we get out our roller skates and fly recklessly down the Nilan Street sidewalk leaping over the cracks until we reach Chandler. If there is—Oh happy day—snow, then we make a snowman, or have a snowball fight, or if there’s more than six inches, sled down the backyards of Nilan Street, starting between the lilac bushes in my yard, across Eddie’s backyard, across the Nelsons’, across my friend Joyce’s, and into Bobby Turner’s. Bobby is skinny and a victim of bullies; they call him T-bone Turner on an oil burner. We sledders must stop because of the hedge between the Turners’ and the next house down.

  Beginning the day Miss Bowie gives us to understand that Irene is dead, the children in the neighborhood aren’t allowed to play outside except in their own yards, which means we aren’t allowed to play with each other.

  The winter the body of my friend Irene is found in the Proccacinos’ yard, there will be no snow throughout December and it’s a good thing since we children are all trapped indoors.

  On the day Irene’s body is found, I walk home with my Nilan Street friends from school and go in my door as my mother flies out to her car to drive to C.G. But on that day she speaks to me: Stay in the house, Mickey, and don’t go out.

  My mother only knows the rumor that Irene is missing. The doors are not locked though, rumors being what they are. The power of positive thinking. The door will be locked tonight, however, when everyone will learn that Irene has been murdered.

  I do not feel comfortable in my house. What is going on?

  In the collective plan to pretend everything will be normal if we all act normal, parents refrain from walking us home from school, and mine even leave me alone in my house with my brother until my father arrives home from work.

  I do not feel safe or unsafe in my house. What I feel is confused: What happened to Irene?

  Today, of course, I would be counseled. In the fifties, revealing one’s thoughts and emotions is a sign of weakness and lack of maturity. And of course, complaining is verboten. Yet, the news of Irene’s murder is held until the children can get to their classrooms in order to hear that information from their teacher rather than each other. We are protected from the scandal of talking to each other about rumors while at the same time a killer is out there somewhere who can kill any one of us on the way to school.

  Poor Kathy Delaney tried to kibitz with me, but beyond the ban on discussion of Irene, I am well trained in silence. Denial is my family’s religion, my brother Tyler our god, and the Reverend Dr. Peale our pastor.

  IN AN IRONIC TWIST, an ordinance voted into law in 1945 by the Hartford city council that prohibits unaccompanied children from loitering on the streets is put into effect by the council called into emergency session. But there are no children loitering in the streets. Only a murderer is loitering in the streets.

  I find that out when the Hartford Times arrives just beating out my father’s hurried arrival home from work.

  I am the only member of my family prepared for the police to come to our door. I know the police will come because they came to our door once before. When Tyler was nine and I four, he decided it would be a splendid idea to rouse his lazy troops by pulling the fire alarm at the box on Chandler Street. My mother uses the term “false alarm” to describe any expected event that doesn’t come about. Like if she goes out with her umbrella and it doesn’t rain, she comes home, jams it into the closet, and says, False alarm. I think the poetic lilt to the two words strung together as one—falsalarm—enchants Tyler. I think this because when I am in college, my American Literature professor tells us that Edgar Allen Poe’s favorite words were cellar door and so he gave his female characters names with that same lilting assonance: Lenore, Annabel Lee, Eulalie, and Ulalume.

  After Tyler pulled the false alarm, when the fire trucks arrived, we were all outside scanning the sky for the smoke. It must have been a weekend because my father was home. Tyler said to my parents, Whoops, false alarm!

  They asked him how he knew that and he giggled and confessed to breaking the glass and pulling the handle in the alarm box. My father hustled him into the house and made him promise never to do it again or he wouldn’t see another book for the rest of his life. Tyler could tell my father was genuinely angry. He said, I promise never to pull a false alarm again.

  But he didn’t understand the point in promising to behave. If it felt good, why not do it? Tyler had no morals, had no idea why he should be punished for something that was fun.

  After the fire trucks left, a police officer came to our door surrounded by a dozen kids—sort of like the Pied Piper only the kids were leading him rather than vice versa—leading him to the culprit, singing out gaily when they reached D-106: Here’s Tyler’s house!

  I ran into the living room and hid behind the sofa because I thought we’d all have to go to jail where we would have nothing to eat but bread and water and have to go to the bathroom in front of everyone on a toilet with no seat. My Uncle Chick worked at the Hartford County Jail and his description of the facilities stayed with me.

  I heard Tyler promise the police officer he’d never do it again. But my father said to the cop, Those kids out there put him up to it.

  My mother said, They encouraged him.

  Maybe they encouraged him but I knew it was Tyler’s idea. I knew by the way he’d always eye the alarm box when we’d walk by it, how tempted he was.

  The policeman said, A child like this shouldn’t be out wandering the streets.

  My father said, I thought he was playing.

  I was thinking, He was.

  The policeman offered no mercy: Keep him inside so he’s not a menace.

  That is what he said instead of advising my father to supervise Tyler more carefully. This was a turning point in Tyler’s life. My father decided the policeman was right so Tyler was no longer allowed outside except with my father who, when Tyler reached puberty, decided it would simply be best if Tyler didn’t go out at all, supervised or otherwise. No more commandeering the elevator at G. Fox, for sure.

  Two days after Irene is murdered, children direct the police to my house, but this time they aren’t allowed to accompany the two officers who come knocking at the door. I peek out the window and see the cruiser, its engine running.

  It’s near to suppertime. My mother is at C.G. My father is in the kitchen frying chicken wings. He turns the burner off and dries his hands. I run up to the top of the stairs. The stairway is just inside the front door. I don’t hide behind the couch because I know I won’t go to jail. The upstairs landing will make a good listening post.

  Tyler has recently developed an antagonism toward the number four. If the phone rings four times, he bites his wrist until my father reaches Uncle Guido and has him call back so Tyler will hear a fifth ring, which allows for the erasure of the fourth. Sometimes Tyler says he didn’t hear the phone’s fifth ring and my father and my Uncle Guido repeat the routine. We all come to realize that when people knock on the door, they invariably knock four times: knock-knock-knock-knock. My father puts a sign out on our door: Please Don’t Knock. Use the Bell.

  The police choose to knock. Consequently, the first thing my father does before he opens the door is give it a good solid knock number five. I imagine that proves disconcerting to the police but they don’t mention it.

  They say to my father, You have a son?

  Yes.

  How old is he?

  Fourteen. He’s retarded.

  So we’ve heard. Where is he?

  There is a pause because my father finds that to be such an utterly stupid question. He says, He’s right here.

  Where?

  In his den. He never goes out.

  He doesn’t?

  No.

  Why not?

  This cop is clearly not the same guy who gave my father advice on what you do with a
retarded kid who pulls fire alarms.

  My father says, I told you. He’s retarded. It’s better that he doesn’t go out.

  Does he attend school?

  No.

  Why not?

  They won’t let him come.

  Why not?

  They said he was too disruptive.

  Pause, number two. Then: We’d like to speak to him.

  Yet another pause. My father can’t imagine this is actually happening so now it is his turn to ask, Why?

  One of the cops says, Routine questions concerning the murder of the little girl. We’re talking to all the neighborhood boys.

  My father begins to say something, but doesn’t. He says something else. He says, I’ll get my son.

  I’m thinking, this should be interesting.

  I hear my father go to Tyler’s den and then he and Tyler come out. My father is saying to Tyler that there are gentlemen from the police department who are talking to everyone on the street and they have to talk to him too.

  Tyler immediately announces to the police officers, I promise I’ll never do it again.

  The policemen listen to my father’s explanation as to what it is Tyler will never do again.

  Then one of the cops asks Tyler, Where were you on Wednesday evening between six and eight o’clock?

  In my den.

  What were you doing?

  Playing my new Jean Marie Kabritsky record, an oberek.

  An oberek is the Polish version of a waltz to be played when polka dancers are in danger of keeling over from exhaustion.

  Before the cop can ask another question, Tyler says, Which branch of the service did you serve in?

  First, the cop answers, Army, as Tyler’s voice can be very authoritative. Then there is a nonplussed silence before one of them says to my father, Where is your wife?

  She’s at work.

  At work?

  Yes.

  Where?

  C.G. She’s on the housewife shift.

  After further conversation that goes nowhere, the last thing the cops say is, We’ll be back.

  They won’t. My father says to Tyler: You were a very good boy to the policemen.

  Tyler, never a slouch, asks, When will my extra book come?

  Tomorrow.

  My father has a stash of bribery books in the cellar.

  That night, my father doesn’t recite a poem or sing one of our favorite songs: “My Blue Heaven,” “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover,” “Oh, the Music Goes Round and Round,” “C’è la Luna,” or “The Sidewalks of New York.” Instead he tells me a bedtime story, an adventure of Odysseus, the one with the Cyclops. My father would like to do to Irene’s killer what Odysseus did to the Cyclops. Then we say the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and then he says, I called Uncle Guido. Tomorrow night, we’re going to have a bagna cauda.

  He will celebrate staving off yet another threat to Tyler.

  During the bagna cauda, which I don’t enjoy for the first time, he says to my Uncle Guido, Good thing that poor kid wasn’t killed on Thursday or Tyler would be in the hoosegow.

  What he means by that is Tyler’s newly developed aversion to the word Thursday as well as the number four. If he overhears you say Thursday, he comes running out of his den, squealing frantically for us to relieve his torture: Say Friday, say Friday! Therefore, if the cops had asked Tyler, Where were you Thursday night? They would have had Tyler in their faces, jabbing his finger at them, commanding they say Friday.

  My Uncle Guido says, And thank God she wasn’t you-know-what.

  Raped.

  AFTER MY MOTHER comes home from C.G at ten-thirty, my Auntie Margaret arrives to pick her up so they can go off to their weekly midnight bowling league. I eavesdrop while my mother changes into her bowling shirt, which has the name Frank’s Restaurant embroidered across her back, and Florence on the chest pocket. (Frank’s Restaurant is the best Italian restaurant in town and my family will take me there following high school graduation ceremonies.) My mother’s duck pin bowling team won the national championship between the time Tyler and I were born. The tournament was held in Baltimore. Baltimore is the farthest my mother has ever been or will ever be from Hartford. She kept a scrapbook and included in it was a Western Union telegram from my father: Bring ’em to their knees, Flo. The Frank’s Restaurant team wins and is noted in the Guinness Book of World Records for their record-breaking combined team score in one of the tournament games.

  Margaret, my mother says, I can understand the need for foot patrols, but now the D section is demanding lights in their backyards. And they want them on all night! Oy gevalt.

  Oy gevalt is a popular expression in the fifties because everyone watches Molly Goldberg on TV.

  Auntie Margaret says, But I heard a woman at church say her son was approached by a pervert in their backyard so she couldn’t let him out after dark anymore.

  Margaret, do we have lights in our backyards? No. I blame the government.

  You’re right, Florence.

  Besides, she says, children should be inside their houses after dark . . . I have to say I blame the mother there.

  Auntie Margaret doesn’t concur on that one. My mother expands, What was that woman thinking letting her daughter go to the store at eight o’clock at night? Why didn’t she call the police when the girl didn’t come home? What possessed her to wait until nine-thirty?

  Even though my mother feels free to criticize Irene’s mother, there is no mention of Irene’s father, who deserted the family.

  While my mother is going on and on about maternal negligence, the mothers quoted in the newspaper defend Irene’s mother.

  She’s a good woman.

  Hardworking.

  She took care of her children as best she could.

  And one explains, Her husband left her. She worked as a cleaning woman. She needed her kids to run to the store to pick up a few things now and again.

  By the time Irene’s mother and brother are looking for her in the pouring-down rain, worried senseless that she hadn’t returned home from the store, Irene is already dead. I think of my cousin Jackie, dead before he hit the floor. When Bob Malm strangles Irene with her scarf she falls, dead before she hits the ground.

  I blame the government. No, I don’t. That just comes to me because my mother would say it all the time.

  I remember almost nothing else of the two-and-one-half years to follow. And my mother, though seemingly heartless, stops taking photographs, something she did all the time to mark holidays, special occasions, snowstorms, and summer beach get-togethers. There are dozens of pictures of my extended family before Irene is murdered, and there are next to none afterwards—with the exception of my cousin Cleasse’s wedding the following spring plus one of me a few days later on Easter Sunday in my navy blue coat.

  Part II

  Brain Jog

  Cleasse’s wedding

  twenty-eight

  KURT VONNEGUT ONCE SAID: A writer lives for twenty-five years and then spends the rest of his life writing about it.

  Today I see my brain as a card catalog, the old-fashioned kind now replaced by Google. My brain is a mahogany cabinet with twenty-five little drawers, each with a shiny brass pull. Every drawer is stored with a year’s worth of events, anecdotes, experiences, and details comprising a range from the celebrated to the obscure that work to go into making a novel toothsome instead of oily. But in drawers nine through twelve, two and a half years’ worth of blank cards beginning with Christmastime in fifth grade went missing.

  Just as I know the eye chart has an E on top, I also know that sixth grade existed. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Driscoll, but that is all I remember. I know, too, that I went to a new school after completing the sixth grade at Mary M. Hooker Elementary School. I don’t remember leaving Mary M. Hooker Elementary School, nor do I remember entering Cornelius J. Moylan Junior High. There is a word for such a phenomenon—repression. I repressed life without Irene for two and a half years. I hav
e pictures of my sixth-grade promotion ceremony though I don’t recall the actual event. In the pictures, Gail is wearing a beautiful junior high–style dress, Cuban heels, and nylon stockings. And, of course, her Bulova watch. There are points sticking out the front of her dress; she is also wearing a bra. I am wearing an elementary school dress that buttons down the back, fold-over socks, and Mary Jane’s. Also, an undershirt. But the next thing I remember after Kathy Delaney said to me, I have to go to court, is a day in the month of May, two and a half years later, seventh grade, at Moylan Junior High School.

  My seventh-grade English teacher is Mr. Boyle, my first male teacher ever. He favors girls with developed breasts over those without. He smiles and flirts with them. We, the flat-chested, are invisible entities.

  Our May assignment is to finish one of a list of topic sentences Mr. Boyle copies onto the board from his teacher’s handbook, and then we are to elaborate upon it for three pages. There is a great deal of grumbling since this will be a weekend homework assignment. The handful of us trained by Miss Bowie are prepared for the necessary thought and attempt at clarity required. Mr. Boyle hands out three pages of lined composition paper. On the way home from school, the paper airplanes shooting across the sidewalks that day have lines.

  On Monday morning, we come in with our compositions jammed into our notebooks. Most of the students utilize unusually large script. Some write on every other line.

  It’s neater that way, one girl says. She is a girl with developed breasts so Mr. Boyle stares at her chest and nods his acquiescence at them.

  He orders the kid in the first seat, first row, who happens to be my friend Gail, to begin. Gail starts reading. Mr. Boyle, all disgusted, says, Stand up!

  Gail is a beanpole. Her bra is filled with foam. When she turns left or right, her bra remains aimed straight ahead. She unfolds herself from her desk, bumping her knees and elbows. Gail begins: I have a pet named . . .