The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

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  For my husband, William, who taught me that once I started something, I could finish it as well

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people associated with bringing this story into the world, and I’d like to take a moment to give thanks. To my early (nonwriter) readers: Jan Nichols, Tahisha Porter, Kathy Viani, Mary Giannotti, Michelle Esposito, Lynne Hodgson, and Rita Palmieri.

  To the writers who read this novel and gave me constructive advice on how to make it better: Lou Florimonte, Loretta Nyhan, Amanda Bonilla, Sarah Bromley, Kari Lynn Dell, Simon C. Larter, Sarah Wylie, and Joanne Rendell.

  To my literary agent, the keeper of my dreams, Anne Bohner. You sold four of my novels in one day. Did I win the literary agent lottery, or what? And on that note, to Sally Wofford-Girand, who believed in my stories and encouraged me to keep writing no matter what.

  To the entire team at St. Martin’s Press and Griffin, your enthusiasm has overwhelmed me and made me, in turn, want to make this story shine as brightly as possible.

  To my editor at St. Martin’s Press, Vicki Lame. You are made of glitter, Glitter. And you sprinkled it throughout this book. I am so happy to have made a “book baby” with you. Also, I made a friend. And that is always a good thing.

  To my family: Husband William (I told you I would do it and I did), I love you, babe. To my three daughters, frequently referred to as “My Coven” or simply: Oldest Witch (Rosy), Middle Witch (Tess), and Littlest Witch (Grace Louise). You are more than patient with my odd ways. You are magnificent and your mother loves you.

  Also, thanks to Richard Denton, who helped with the title.

  To the writers I admire: Stephen King, Alice Hoffman, Marge Piercy, Peter Straub, Ray Bradbury, and Anne Rice. All of you helped a lonely young woman (me) feel a little less lost. Thank you.

  To both my father figures: Robert L. Mele (my godfather in all the ways) and James Sterling Cooper (my father via biology, charisma, and green eyes). And to the Coopers down south: Kim Cooper, my brother Talmadge James, and my first cousins, especially Lana. I love you.

  To the entire Palmieri clan who took me in and gave me a name to showcase my culture. Especially my mother-in-law Margaret Palmieri, father-in-law William Louis Palmieri, Jr., sister-in-law, Amanda Palmieri Linski, and my very favorite great-aunt, Rita (Louisa) Palmieri.

  Mostly, though, this book belongs to my mother, Theresa Anne Germanese Cooper, and to her mother (my grandmother), Fay Depaul Germanese Barile. You taught me kitchen magic and introduced me to my great-aunts, Carmel, Anna, The Other Fay, The Other Carmel, Mary, and Annemarie. You raised me to respect my Italian-American heritage and reconcile it with the Alabama in my soul. If I have layers, it is only because you layered me. Thank you.

  “I’m a Lost Witch, are you a Lost Witch, too?”

  —Suzanne Palmieri

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part One: Winter

  1. Itsy

  2. Eleanor

  3. Itsy

  4. Eleanor

  5. Itsy

  6. Elly

  7. Itsy

  8. The Sisters Amore

  9. Elly and Liz

  10. Itsy

  11. Elly

  Part Two: Spring

  12. Itsy

  13. The Sisters Amore

  14. Itsy

  15. Elly

  16. Itsy

  17. Babygirl

  18. Elly

  19. Itsy

  20. Elly

  21. Itsy

  22. The Sisters Amore (Past)

  23. Itsy

  24. Elly

  Part Three: Summer

  25. Itsy

  26. Elly

  27. Itsy

  28. Elly

  29. Itsy

  30. Elly

  31. Itsy

  32. The Amore Sisters

  33. Itsy

  34. The Day the Amores Died

  35. Liz

  Fall

  Reading Group Guide

  Praise for The Witch of Little Italy

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Winter

  1

  Itsy

  All the Amore siblings had The Sight in varying degrees, and its fickleness got us into trouble sometimes. Like the time when I was young (and still talking) and I called my friend’s husband to give my condolences about her death in a trolley crash, only my friend was still alive and the trolley wouldn’t crash until the next day.

  It was hard to explain that one, and harder still to keep my friend off the trolley the following day even though I knew her life was at stake. Regular people have such a hard time listening to the low hum of instinct. Don’t get me wrong, I tire of the magic now that I’m old. But still, if I’d had it all to do over, I’d choose magic ways. Especially now, when another, more precious life is at stake.

  She’s coming back now, the girl. She’s coming back and bringing my memories with her. Maybe she won’t remember anything. Dear God, don’t let her remember. If she remembers, she’ll land straight back in harm’s way. If she remembers, my promise will be broken. And that’d be too bad because it’s one of my best skills, promise keeping. And secret keeping. And cartwheels, too.

  I used to be able to do cartwheels. When we were little, my sisters couldn’t but I could. I can still feel how the air shifted as I kicked over my head and moved my hands. I liked to do things upside down. It bothered Mama. “All the blood will rush to your head!” she would yell. Not to mention Papa and my skirts. “Cover yourself, child! If I can see your bloomers so can the whole block!”

  I cartwheeled through my childhood. We weren’t poor, but we lived close together. We all lived here on 170th Street in the Bronx for the better portion of our lives. Mama and Papa bought the building when they married. Well, Papa won it. In a fight. They used to fight for money in the streets back then, and one day the wager was a building, and practical Papa, who’d never fought a day in his life, took off his shirt and threw it into the ring.

  When we were very young, in those strange, magnificent years between World War I and World War II, we all lived in apartment 1A. Ten people and two bedrooms. Those were the days. Mama was the magic one. She gave us her abilities to see the future, to grow herbs and flowers that held all sorts of possible magical preparations, but the most important thing she gave us was the gift of each other.

  But we’re old now, Mimi and Fee and me. We’re all that remain of the Amore children. Three children left out of eight, each of us carrying the burden of that day in our own way. And as we grow ever older, The Sight grows stronger.

  On a cold, dark December night, we woke with the same dream and sat around the kitchen table looking into a bowl full of water. Our old lady hair pinned back, my knobby fingers scribbling on my pad with the pen that’s always fastened to my chest.

  She’s coming, I wrote.

  “She’s coming,” said Mimi.

  “On Christmas?” asked Fee.

  “Maybe…” said Mimi.

  She’s coming. I underlined the words on my pad twice, for emphasis.

  Mimi was afraid to believe, afraid to get excited. Her girls so rarely came to see us. But our Sight is strong. It grew as we grew. She should know better than to doubt it.

  Th
e Sight helped us through our darkest days, and our magic gardens made our lives wild like rambling roses. But our roses had thorns. Thorns sharper than those who live without magic could ever fathom. Like how Mama knew, even before the fortune-teller told her, that 1945 would be a very, very bad year for the Amores.

  In the end, no amount of Sight could prepare us for the trouble that arrived. And those of us who were left carried the burden of “The Day the Amores Died” in our own way. We suffered our own tragedies and kept our own secrets. Secrets that scattered pieces of us into the winds for the sparrows to collect and keep, until the day the girl returned.

  2

  Eleanor

  Eleanor Amore took the home pregnancy test on Christmas Eve in her mother’s room at the Taft Hotel. Carmen was in a show at the Shubert Theatre that ran straight through the New Year, so Eleanor had the room to herself. Away from her dorm room at Yale. Far from prying eyes. And, more important, far from Cooper.

  The Taft was in walking distance from her dorm, but it was a one-way street. Carmen never came to campus. If Eleanor wanted Carmen, she had to go to Carmen.

  Crossing the Green, she looked up at the enormous Christmas tree, its lights glowing even though it wasn’t fully dark outside. The festive tree set against the remainder of the pink sunset struck Eleanor, making her lose track of her thoughts. Contrasts always did that to her. She sat down on the cold concrete and dug into her large, velvet patchwork bag for her sketchbook and charcoal. Leaning against a park bench she began to move the charcoal over the white paper in soft smudges. The black on her fingers always made her hopeful, giddy with possibilities. If Eleanor hadn’t been so immersed in her impromptu piece of art, she’d have noticed the pigeons cooing and clustering all around her. And what they saw through their small, black eyes was a very different girl than Eleanor believed herself to be. Working away, she smiled as her own eyes sparkled under her knit hat. She drew with broad, confident strokes, her fingers moving with freedom and skill. Eleanor wore fingerless gloves so her fingers would be able to move freely when she wanted them to.

  Soon the sun set completely, and it was too dark to draw. Eleanor sighed and closed her sketchbook, buried it with the charcoal in her bag, blew on her fingers to warm them up and finished her walk to the Taft.

  She’d been to the hotel enough for the doorman to recognize her, so he let her into the suite even though Carmen wasn’t home from the theatre yet. He was nice to her, looked at her with those sad eyes. The ones that said, “What’s happened to her?”

  Even at Yale, no matter how impressed other students or instructors were with her artwork, she couldn’t paint over her own insecurities. No matter how hard she tried to join the crowd, play pool at the Gypsy, she couldn’t fit in. The sound of her own fake laugh made her sick. The ironic nature of this “loner” status wasn’t lost on Eleanor. Carmen needed to live inside thronging crowds where Eleanor wanted to live in a submarine. Periscope up, periscope down.

  Eleanor switched on a soft lamp and took in the posh surroundings of Carmen’s suite. Overdone, but entirely comfortable. She made her way to the marble bathroom and ripped the waxy, white pharmacy bag open with shaking fingers, carefully avoiding looking at herself in the mirror.

  She peed on the stick and said a silent prayer with her eyes closed. “If there is a God there will not be a pink plus sign.”

  She peeked through one eye. There was a pink plus sign.

  “Crap!” Thoughts ran through her head in odd angles, bumping against one another. A baby? A baby. A life was growing inside of her. She’d known it—somehow felt it—the moment she conceived. And in a way she’d cradled the notion like Golem ever since. Her life would change. That wouldn’t be so bad. It was the rest of it, the logistics that were an issue. And the idea of telling Carmen twisted her stomach into knots.

  Eleanor balled up the evidence and threw it in the trash under the bathroom sink. The cabinet pulls were crafted out of pale, pink glass, like sea glass. Sea glass … a twinkle of a memory flashed … children giggling and wrapping wire around pieces of sea glass. Strange bits and pieces of memory had been coming back like errant drops of water since the moment she felt she might be pregnant. Eleanor didn’t know what to make of them, or of anything else. Her world, her lonesome restless world, was turning upside down.

  She shook her head and walked slowly back into the living room. Switching off the light she looked out the window at the city below. The center downtown Green glistened, heavily lit with Christmas decorations. “Merry Christmas to me…” she said to the glass, fogging it up with her breath and drawing a Christmas tree in the gray mist with her fingertip.

  Eleanor sat on the couch to wait for her mother in the dark. She put her hands on top of her head feeling for her familiar knit hat. Eleanor tugged on it, pulling the folded brim over her eyes and then unfolding it again.

  Carmen had given her the hat when she was thirteen. The last time she’d been to the Bronx to visit with her mother’s family. The first time she remembered spending any time with the Amores at all.

  Eleanor couldn’t remember anything solid from before she was ten years old. There existed a sort of misty haze that lit here and there, mostly in the time between sleeping and waking, and mostly in images and faint whispers. They haunted her, those ungraspable, streaming facets of lost time.

  Her first “hard” memory took place on the stoop of their brick building in the Bronx. She’d spent a summer there alone with her great aunts, grandmother, and great uncle. Eleanor didn’t remember that summer, she only recalled leaving them standing on the stoop while Carmen scooped her up and deposited her in the back of a checkered cab.

  They didn’t visit the Bronx again until Eleanor was thirteen. It was fun, that night. For Eleanor at least. Not so much for Carmen, who drank too much wine and became loose-lipped.

  “A nice soft green for you, Eleanor. Like your eyes. So pretty,” she’d said as she gave Eleanor the hat and a rare compliment from her beautiful, self-absorbed mouth.

  Eleanor knew enough about pop psychology to understand her attachment to the hat, but it comforted her, so she wore it. If she had to take it off she’d keep it close. Tuck it into a back pocket, or in her bag.

  Keys clattered against the door.

  Eleanor took a deep breath and tried not to sweat. Carmen could always smell fear on Eleanor and used it against her. She needed to be strong. Stand her ground. For once.

  The door opened. The room flooded with light.

  “How’d you get in here?” asked Carmen.

  “The doorman, Mom,” Eleanor sighed. “And Merry Christmas to you, too.” Off to a great start, she thought.

  “Screw Christmas,” said Carmen, shrugging off a black mink coat and kicking shiny black heels across the floor. “And look at you. You’re a mess. That hat? Really? Did anyone see you come in?”

  “Um, the doorman?” I’m invisible to her.

  Carmen made her way to an ornate cabinet and opened it, revealing a bar. She poured herself a drink in a chubby rocks glass and then looked at herself in the mirror that hung over the bar. She sipped and stared. Eleanor saw her own face next to her mother’s reflection.

  Carmen was German Expressionism: bold, angular, exotic, exciting. Eleanor was Impressionist watercolor: softer, rounder, pastel. A washed-out version of her mother. Her nose small—Carmen’s Roman. Her hair an ordinary dark brown—Carmen’s a jet-black mane. And now? Another disappointment to confess.

  Eleanor stood. “I’m pregnant,” she told Carmen’s reflection.

  There was a slight stiffening to Carmen’s back, and a shift in her eyes … subtle, like a draft … a surrealist portrait, Carmen’s eyes were windows with sheer curtains moving in the breeze revealing the rooms behind. Empty rooms.

  Carmen turned and leaned against the bar. Long and lean. Dark and beautiful. “Have you told Cooper?”

  “God, no.” said Eleanor.

  Carmen took a sip of her drink. “Is he still hitt
ing you?”

  Eleanor didn’t answer.

  “You shouldn’t let him do that to you, treat you like that. Call the cops, get a restraining order for Christ’s sake,” said Carmen.

  “It’s not that easy, Mom.”

  “Yes it is. You make it harder than it needs to be. Get some self-esteem, Eleanor. It’ll do wonders for your love life.”

  “Look, Mom,” said Eleanor pushing through the caustic remarks, “I know this is all so out of the blue. And I know you and I don’t get along that well, but I’m in a really bad position and I was wondering…” Eleanor paused, a mistake, she knew. A weak spot that her mother could use as leverage later.

  Carmen placed her hand to her temples, massaging them. She closed her eyes and asked, “Wondering what? Please enlighten me.”

  Eleanor let the words tumble out, “I was wondering if I could come with you when you leave in January. Go back to Europe. I can still go to Florence for my internship this summer.” Carmen opened her eyes when Eleanor mentioned Europe. Eleanor knew that was the key. Carmen had been trying to persuade her to come back to Europe after Yale for years. Eleanor knew she couldn’t live up to Carmen’s expectations, but she also knew Carmen didn’t know that yet. With Carmen’s false hope on Eleanor’s side, she asked the real question. “If you’ll help me.”

  “Help you with what?” Carmen asked, genuine confusion furrowing her brow.

  “Well,” Big breath. Go on, you have nothing to lose … “I’d need help with the baby.”

  The word baby fell hard into immediate icy silence.

  “How dare you?” asked Carmen through clenched teeth, her eyes on fire.

  “Please, Mom?”

  “Please? Please what?”

  “Please calm down and consider this for a second.”

  “What the hell do you want from me? What reaction did you expect? You come here, drop this baby bomb, and then ask me if you can come back with me to Europe?” Carmen’s hands tightly gripped the lip of the bar behind her. “And I’m like, sure … and I almost, almost thought you were going to be normal. To react to this thing like a normal young woman would. You know … have an abortion and then get on with it. And I thought, just for a split second, that we could actually get along again, you know? But, no. You want me to be your fucking nanny?”