The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  Eleanor clamped her hands over her ears. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do … I don’t know what to do,” she whispered to herself.

  Carmen took a deep breath and smoothed back her hair. She faced the mirror again, pulled a little at her thick eyelashes and regained her composure. Eleanor looked up just in time to see Carmen paste a pleasant, motherlike smile on her face. It felt eerie to Eleanor who could still clearly see through the façade, a rendition of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

  “Eleanor,” she crooned, joining her daughter on the couch, “I know I’m being hard on you, but really, baby—listen to me. Kids are life suckers. They suck up your life and then forget all the good things you did for them. All the fun times you had.” She reached forward and took a cigarette out of the pack on the coffee table and lit it with a fancy silver lighter.

  “Mom. My memory loss is not my fault.”

  Carmen took a long drag from her cigarette, “You know, I read an article on kids and memory loss. Said sometimes they make the whole thing up for attention.” She put her fingers to her mouth to remove some invisible tobacco, a habit she still had from smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

  “Are you kidding me?” Eleanor leapt up and paced the room. “You are the parent, Mom. You’re supposed to know what happened to me.” In all the years Eleanor and Carmen had quietly struggled with getting back her lost childhood Carmen was never able to answer Eleanor’s questions. “Did I hit my head?” “Did I fall down a flight of stairs?” “What happened?” It still aggravated her to no end and a ball of anger bubbled up as she looked at her mother.

  Carmen exhaled and squinted through a fog of smoke. “Forget it. Oh, wait, you already did.” Carmen laughed, a sound that resembled diamonds cutting glass. “The thing is, you can’t come with me if you’re going to keep this baby.”

  “So where do you propose I go?” asked Eleanor.

  “I’m not proposing anything. I don’t support this decision. Case closed.”

  Eleanor’s knees went weak. Her forehead began to sweat and itch under the hat. What am I going to do? she thought, her mind racing. She couldn’t, wouldn’t tell Cooper. Endangering herself was one thing; her baby was another thing entirely. Carmen was her last, best hope—and now it was gone.

  She walked around the room in circles as Carmen smoked and poured herself another drink. Eleanor stopped in front of a photograph propped up on a table in front of her. A photograph she knew well, it was always wherever Carmen was. It was one of two constant things in their vagabond life. The photo and the rocking chair.

  The rocking chair—Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love, with, you … Carmen rocked and sang to baby Eleanor. She could feel the love pour out. The sweet satisfaction of chubby hands wrapped in silky hair …

  Eleanor shook away the stinging tears. Tears from a memory she couldn’t place. A feeling she’d never known with her mother. I swear, I’m adopted, she thought for the millionth time. She picked up the photo. A younger, overly stunning Carmen, standing on the steps of her family’s apartment building on 170th Street, stared back at her. A voice Eleanor had been hearing for weeks now came through stronger than ever.

  Come home.

  The words echoed through Eleanor’s head.

  Come home.

  “I know what I’ll do,” she said, her voice ringing loud against the stark silence and startling Carmen. “I’ll go back there.” She picked up the picture and pointed at it for emphasis. “Back to the Bronx,” she said, realizing she’d been thinking about it all along. A dim, lacy notion taking hold.

  “You will not,” stated Carmen, chain lighting another cigarette off the first.

  “Why?” asked Eleanor, forcefully. “You grew up there. And they liked me. That one time you took me there. Well, the time I remember, anyway. They liked me, I could tell.”

  “That Anthony boy sure liked you,” said Carmen.

  Eleanor blushed. “No, really, Mom. I think I fit in there somehow. Don’t you remember? You gave me this hat…”

  Said I was pretty …

  “Do I remember?” spat Carmen, standing up to look her daughter in the eyes, her hands waving around sloshing bourbon out of the glass. “I remember how crazy Aunt Itsy clawed at her neck. I remember how hot it was in there that Christmas. I remember you playing all kissy face with that boy in the hallway. I remember what a fucking mistake it was going back there to begin with.”

  Eleanor focused on the glass in her mother’s hand. How it wove around. How it spilled itself out to punctuate Carmen’s thoughts. Even the glass has more backbone than me, she thought.

  “Your mistake, Mom. Not mine. I had a good time that night.”

  Carmen wasn’t listening. Again. She’d turned her back and was pouring herself a third drink at the bar, “Freaking Yogis in India making me believe I had to make some sort of peace with them. God, what I would give to take back that whole bohemian stage. I was a little old for a midlife crisis.”

  Eleanor had been a “late in life” baby, born when Carmen was on the heels of forty. A fact she never really let Eleanor forget. “You were lucky I even decided to have you…” she’d say.

  “Okay then. It’s settled,” said Eleanor, slapping her knees and going for the door.

  “What?” Carmen dropped her cigarette and then stooped to snatch it up, spilling her drink out onto the floor.

  Eleanor felt the panicky rise of nervous laughter crowd her chest and flutter at the base of her throat. “I’m going back. I’ll be with your mother if you need me.” She knew the last bit would sting and the words felt bitter and acidy as they came out.

  Carmen placed her hand over her daughter’s on the doorknob. Eleanor looked down at the white knuckles contrasted against long nails coated in “Honeymoon Red” nail polish. The nails dug into Eleanor’s hand. There was a moment of complete and utter still before Eleanor yanked at the knob, throwing her whole body into Carmen to push her away.

  “Don’t go. There’s something wrong there and you know it!” yelled Carmen as she fell against the wall next to the door.

  Eleanor threw open the door but stopped to look at her mother crumpled against the wall. Tears formed in the corners of Carmen’s eyes. Just as Carmen could always read fear on Eleanor, she could now read fear all over her mother. The tears met with thick liner and created little congealed black clumps. She didn’t even look like Carmen anymore. Her lips were thin and trembling; her eyes open and full of truth. “Don’t go,” she said. “Really. There’s something wrong there, they … those women, they can see things. They can do things. Things normal people can’t do. Things people ought not to do.”

  “The only thing wrong there is that you left it behind. I’m not you. You know that better than anyone. And…” Eleanor hesitated.

  “And what? Have you heard anything, seen anything strange?” asked Carmen, perking up even as her voice wavered. “It runs in the blood you know. I don’t have it, but these things … they can skip generations I guess. What have you seen, Eleanor? Tell me!”

  Come home.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

  Come home.

  They’d talked, during quieter days, about Carmen’s childhood. How the building on 170th Street was haunted and how the women there were witches. But Eleanor never believed Carmen … not really. She just assumed it was one more dramatic flair Carmen was adding to her personal bio. But lately, with all the strange things happening in Eleanor’s own mind, she wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m leaving, Mom,” she declared as she walked through the door trying to slam it, but Carmen was right behind her.

  Eleanor ran to catch the elevator, Carmen chasing after her.

  She leapt into the open elevator and sighed with relief as the doors began to close. Carmen threw her arm in between the elevator doors, wedging them open.

  “What do you want from me?” yelled Eleanor.

  “They’ll eat your baby,” Carmen
said through clenched teeth. “They will. I don’t know why I’m alive. Think about it, Eleanor. I’m the only one. The only living child. There were eight of them. Four girls and four boys. You’d think there’d be a gaggle of kids, right? That I’d have cousins galore? Well I don’t. What does that tell you?”

  Eleanor grabbed at Carmen’s hand trying to push it out of the way so the doors would close and she could be free. A thought—clear-as-crystal—surfaced in Eleanor’s mind as she wrestled with her mother’s hand.

  “You never belonged there, did you? No matter how you tried, they ignored you, didn’t they?” she asked.

  Carmen’s hand dropped but this time Eleanor kept her own arm in the door. “But me? They love me! And that kills you somehow, doesn’t it?”

  “Look,” Carmen said pointing a shaking finger at Eleanor. “I don’t care what you think you know. There’s some sort of curse on that building. On that family, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor pulled her hand back and waved good-bye at her mother. The doors started to close. “Suit yourself then,” Carmen said turning around, “They’re nuts.”

  She watched her mother through the narrowing view and saw Carmen sweep back into her suite on stocking feet until the shiny metal closed in front of her face making her mother disappear completely.

  * * *

  Eleanor Amore took the Metro North train from Union Station. It was deserted. The conductor tipped his hat and said “Merry Christmas, honey.” The honey made her want to cry. Everything made her want to cry lately. Damn hormones.

  She got off in Stamford and could have taken a cab, but didn’t. She transferred onto the 125th Street train and got off on Fordham Road. Eleanor’s legs knew where to go. Her mind did, too. A few months back, Eleanor had flipped through her mother’s address book looking for any trace of family that might be there. She looked up Amore. Nothing. She looked up mom, and then aunts. Nothing. Then she went to the “B” section. And there it was, the address, 1313 170th Street, Bronx. Only it wasn’t listed under “B” for Bronx, it was listed under “B” for “Batshit, Crazy.”

  * * *

  Eleanor stood very still outside her family’s building on 170th Street. The night was mild for December but the snow fell anyway, glittery dancing dust. It rested in delicate layers, coating Eleanor’s hat and oversized sweater. She kicked the snow and faced her past.

  She pulled her hat down close over her ears as she gazed at her grandmother’s home. Its smallness made it stand apart. Only two stories sandwiched between larger, more modern apartment buildings. And it had a peaked roof, where the others were flat. The iron grates on the lower-level windows curled and curved into everlasting vines. Two chimneys rose tall and old-fashioned on either side of the roof and stood out black against the purple, snowy sky like sentinels. Eleanor thought she could remember holding onto those metal bars, the coppery smell of sweaty little girl hands when she let go—but then—then it was gone. The building looked surprisingly lovely coated in the fine, sparkling December snow, with warm lights pouring out. Eleanor almost wanted to go in.

  Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” came floating out of a window, propped open just a crack. The building in front of her bustled. Eleanor’s artist eyes saw a moving still life; a work of performance art. The majority of activity streamed out in sound bites of laughter and clinking glasses from the window on Eleanor’s right. The colored lights from the Christmas tree pooled out through the window and bled onto the white ground in a jewel-toned watercolor wash. The apartment to her left was colder. The light, austere. The inside of the front room was devoid of curtains making the shabby room clearly visible.

  Peeping Tom Eleanor always had a love of walking around at night. Especially in New Haven. She’d walk around and peer into the houses. Watch the families gathered together making dinner. Watching television. Being normal, whatever that meant.

  Eleanor tipped her head up to get a view of the windows on the second floor. One dark, like a black eye. The other dim, but she could see a figure. It moved, the shadow, and Eleanor knew where it was going. Snow fell in her eyes.

  She gave the snow an annoyed kick and crossed her arms as she sat on the front stoop of the building. “Crap! I’m not ready for this!” she yelled at the snow.

  The large front doors opened and people poured out like bugs. A priest and some old ladies, all laughing and saying goodnight. Someone brushed against her and said, “Excuse me.” Eleanor didn’t move. She sat still on the stoop.

  Her grandmother, Mimi, stood in the doorway, handing out Tupperware containers of food and saying broad good-byes to her guests. Only when they were gone did she turn her attention to her granddaughter. “Babygirl, you’ve been out here a long time. It’s getting cold now. Come in, won’t you? I’m so excited to catch up.”

  Eleanor craned her neck to look at her grandmother. Mimi looked exactly as she remembered. Short and round. Black hair set against an old face. Old but kind. Eleanor felt torn between the solidness of the stoop and the liquid happy that wanted her to fly into Mimi’s warm arms. Why am I so determined to love it here? she wondered for the six hundredth time that night.

  Babygirl. The name made her heart sing. That’s what they’d called her. Eleanor shook her head “no” hard enough to send a layer of snow flying. It was all too much. Carmen was afraid of this place, and Eleanor was increasingly convinced that she was going insane, so she didn’t know what to think, or who to trust. A part of her, the sane part, weighed the options. It was either the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel, or the Rabbit Hole from Alice in Wonderland. Either way, it was dangerous.

  “Okay,” said Mimi. “But the door is unlocked. I’ll be cleaning up. You come in when you’re ready.”

  One of the front windows screamed open. Aunt Fee poked her head out and yelled to her, “Get inside! You’ll freeze your skinny legs off!” Eleanor sat still. Fee can’t hear well … She remembered.

  Stubborn and staring at the snow she marveled over how each individual crystal was different from the next. She remembered reading somewhere that Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. Eleanor wished there were a hundred ways to say her name. She thought, maybe, if her name was howled from all the corners of the world, in a million different voices, that she might explode into a cloud of snow. Light and separate, her parts floating down onto the world in a series of beautiful crystalline moments.

  “You know somethin’? The Eskimos have a hundred words for snow,” said Anthony sitting next to her.

  His voice rumbled like low thunder, echoing her thoughts. She wondered momentarily if she’d thought out loud … How? It didn’t matter. Everything was muted and far away. Eleanor, hiding under her hat, didn’t want to come back from inside her dream of being snow. And she certainly couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him she was sure she’d disappear. Don’t look at me. Don’t figure it all out. Keep me in your memory like I was when we were kids. I’m damaged now. Broken. Please. Eleanor hadn’t considered this part when she was making the rash decision to come back to this place. She didn’t think about how it would affect the other people.

  Maybe her grandmother didn’t want a pregnant granddaughter?

  Maybe her aunts didn’t need something else to take care of at their age?

  Maybe Anthony was hoping she’d be a successful, beautiful, grown-up woman, instead of a hopeless, homeless, cloud of snow.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. “Or at least it’s good to see this person who I think is you.” He leaned over and picked up the brim of her hat, forcing her to look right at him.

  She held her breath. She’d planned this moment a hundred times in her head since she was thirteen. The big reunion. But in her mind they’d be on a beach, or he’d see her browsing in a bookstore. She never imagined it would be like this. Sitting in a heap on a cement stoop.

  Eleanor turned her head and looked at him.

  Shocked, she closed her eyes for a moment so she wouldn’t make an ev
en bigger fool of herself. She had to take all of it in. Years passed by under her eyelids. Until the moment she looked at him she was completely, ridiculously, expecting to see a thirteen-year-old boy. And the person who’d just slid in next to her like a cat was no boy. She opened her eyes again to drink him in. His beauty. It made Eleanor want to die. Her artist eye knew this was perfection. The balance of features, hard jawline, full lips, Roman nose. His hair was longer, it fell in his eyes. And he was taller, too. She wanted to paint him.

  “Hey, there you are!” he said. “I thought I’d lost you for a second.”

  “Hey back,” she said and pulled on her hat.

  He cleared his throat; there was an awkward silence. “Welcome home,” he said, finally.

  “Do you still live here?” asked Eleanor. Small talk, that’s good. Keep it all small talk … she thought.

  “Yep. Upstairs. Next to where Uncle George used to live.”

  Eleanor felt a knot of sudden sorrow in her stomach, though she didn’t understand why. “Used to?” she asked.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Carmen never told you? He died two years ago,” said Anthony, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  Eleanor shrank away from his touch. “I don’t know why it bothers me. He was just a smelly old man.”

  Anthony looked away from her. “Not always,” said Anthony. “Still no memory of our amazing summer?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “You remember that?”

  “Do I remember that you don’t remember?” laughed Anthony. “That sounds kind of like ‘Who’s on First—’ you know, that Abbott and Costello act?”

  Eleanor put her face in her hands. “Ugh! I don’t know how to do this! I don’t know how to even have this conversation. Aren’t you married or something?” she asked.