The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Taking an intersession class. What are you doing?”

  Anthony stepped in between them. “Well, Coop … we’re gonna gather up Elly’s things and then get the heck out of here. Okay?”

  “Elly? Who is Elly? Eleanor, what’s he talking about? You never said you were leaving school. Are you leaving school?” Cooper’s eyes were twitching with black anger. He took a purposeful stride in Elly’s direction.

  Anthony put his hand on Cooper’s shoulder. “Whoa fella.”

  Cooper turned around and belted Anthony across his face with his forearm. Anthony fell back into a bookshelf. He shook the surprise off and charged at Cooper.

  “Stop!” Elly yelled.

  Both young men froze a moment apart. “Anthony, can you give us a second?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Anthony, his nose flaring, his body ready for a serious fight.

  “Please? You can wait right outside the door. I’ll yell for you if I need you.” Elly pleaded with her eyes. He had no idea how dangerous Cooper was. Elly had to protect him.

  Anthony smoothed back his black hair and pushed his shoulders back. “You won’t even have to call. I’ll just know. You hear me, Anglo?” He left, walking backward out the door and glaring at Cooper the whole time.

  Elly smiled a little, warmed by his concern. But then turned her attention to Cooper. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I know, I’m sorry. Just … it took me by surprise. And who is that? Are you sleeping with him?” The question came out like a whine.

  Elly looked at the ground. Hot tears of rage and embarrassment stinging her eyes. “You were the first. You know that,” she whispered.

  “Well, where are you going then? Why are you leaving school?”

  “I’m not leaving school. I’m just moving in with my grandmother. She needs some help. She’s recovering from hip surgery.” The lie came out surprisingly easy. I have a bit of Carmen in me after all, she thought.

  “Well, okay. But I have to get to class. Oh, and if you’re going to be with someone else, try not fucking that wop. It’ll bring down my status.”

  Hair on the back of Elly’s neck rose, but she controlled her temper. And her fear. “Okay, see ya.”

  He flicked her forehead with his fingers, and then he was gone.

  A shock of memory went through her.

  * * *

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  All Babygirl saw was the painted ceiling of the church. The aunts and Mimi held her body as if they were pallbearers and she was a coffin. Babygirl had been to plenty of funerals, all Mommy’s friends who died of the sex disease. Babygirl wondered if she was dying. And it was so hot! But then water dribbled over her forehead and she was being kissed and hugged by soft skin and cotton dresses.

  * * *

  “You okay, Elly? You look weird. Did rich boy say something mean to you?” Anthony came back into the room and started hastily throwing books into boxes.

  “No, I’m okay. I was just remembering something.”

  “Me again?”

  “No. A part of that summer Mimi insists I lived with her. I think I just remembered my baptism. Ten’s a little old to get baptized, no?”

  “Come to think of it, I might have pictures of us from that summer. I’ll find them when we get back. Maybe it’ll help…” Anthony searched for the word, “You know…” He tapped his forehead.

  “Jar my memory?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Anthony, boxing up more books. “What did that creep have to say?”

  “Not much. Wanted to know if we were sleeping together. Then he called you a wop and I almost had to hit him.” It felt good, joking away her fear. She wanted to believe she could hit Cooper if she wanted to.

  “He called me what? What?”

  Elly realized her mistake too late. “Calm down.”

  Anthony banged the wall with the heel of his palm and then went to the window and yelled out onto the quad, “Nice! Hey there, Cooper? You gonna call your kid a wop, too?”

  Cooper stopped dead in his tracks halfway across the quad, turned around and bolted back toward the dorm. Elly gasped “Oh! Christ, Anthony! No!”

  “What? You didn’t tell him?” asked Anthony, sounding panicked, his cool gone.

  “No, I didn’t tell him. God!”

  Cooper was back in the room fast and out of breath.

  “What did this ginzo say?”

  “Okay. That’s enough,” said Anthony, before he gave Cooper one swift punch to the head and knocked him out cold. “Grab what’s important and let’s roll. Okay? He’ll be fine and I got a bruise on me says this fight was mutual.”

  Elly leaned down to touch Cooper’s face and was hit with the red, throbbing rage from his unconscious mind. There was no softness, no worry. Confusion, blackness, frustration. She saw him for what he was, finally. ESP? She wondered, and then didn’t care. She couldn’t get back to the Bronx fast enough.

  Elly grabbed bags of clothes and photo albums, her texts for class and her paintings off the walls. They were packed in record time. Back and forth they went to the car, Anthony stopping her every five seconds to ask, “You okay?” … which Elly didn’t find annoying.

  They were running so fast up the stairs and down, to the car and back that they started laughing. When the trunk of the car was squashed shut and the backseats brimming with her past, the two stole away like thieves into the afternoon.

  “You don’t seem too upset I toasted your boyfriend,” said Anthony.

  Elly was laughing. She had the window open and felt light for the first time in months. “He’s not my boyfriend. And he hit you first. If anyone had it coming, he did.”

  “I do like you, Elly. I like you a lot. Always have, always will.”

  He reached over and held her hand. She didn’t pull it away.

  7

  Itsy

  I didn’t mean to fall in love with a colored boy. I fell in love with a boy who happened to be colored. It was fate, really. He lived two blocks away from us in the Bronx and his family had a summer cottage on Far Rockaway, too. Henry was the same age as George and me, and we all went to the same school. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parochial. It went from kindergarten to the eighth grade, but George and Henry dropped out in the sixth. They didn’t have to finish. Papa and our older brothers made enough money to support our family, and Henry’s family did pretty well, too. They dropped out because of the taunting. It started in fourth grade, the kids being mean to George and Henry. They called George a retard. They called Henry a nigger.

  “George is a nigger-loving moron.”

  “Henry’s a nigger boy kisser who goes out with retards.”

  I’ll never forget how cruel it was. People like to glorify those childhood days, the schoolyard fights. People look back and shrug off their meanness. Use euphemisms like, “rites of passage” and “trials of childhood.” My ass. They were just mean-spirited kids filled up with the devil right there at Catholic school.

  I wanted to drop out, too. I was jealous of their free time, Henry and George. But Mama wouldn’t hear of it. I was going to be educated, like the women in her family up in Massachusetts. The Greens. “They may have been crazy, but at least they were all smart enough to know it,” she used to say.

  He kissed me after my eighth grade graduation. Took me behind an old oak and planted a kiss right on my lips. I’ll never forget it. Sometimes I take these old, paper-thin fingers and trace my dry mouth. My mouth that doesn’t make words, and I feel for his full lips and if I close my eyes tight enough I can still feel them there. His lips on mine. His words in my ear that day.

  “Itsy, say you’ll be my girl. My secret. Oh, please, say it.”

  “Yes, Henry. I’ve always been your girl.”

  Mama knew, of course. And she didn’t approve. It took me by surprise, her immediate and quiet rage. We sat at the table and she made toast. It was her favorite food. Toast with butter and jam. She h
ad the biggest sweet tooth! She’d eat toast and jam even if she made us a sumptuous roast with all the best side dishes. Papa yelled about it. Told her she ate like “white trash.” She always smiled and pushed aside her toast. But when we were alone, toast it was.

  The day she told me her fears about Henry we were alone and she ate toast. Toast made of the Irish soda bread she baked—not the Italian bread Papa liked so much—and she took out a jar of her very favorite jam. Rose hip jam. Hard to make, we only had a half dozen jars to last us all year. I remember the knife clinking on the rounded glass lip of the jar as she spoke to me.

  “I am not prejudiced, Itsy. No matter what you may think. I am not. But the world is. There is no good that can come of it. And I didn’t foresee it so I know it can be altered. Are you sure this love is something you must pursue?”

  “What should I do, Mama?”

  “End it, Itsy,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I replied.

  Mama hesitated. And I knew why. She was going to suggest magic, and she always meted out her magic sparingly. Honestly? I think it frightened her. “We could try a forgetting spell,” she said. “That would work. How about it, Itsy? Do you want Mama to help you forget him?”

  “I can’t,” I replied again.

  “You can’t or you won’t?” The coaxing warmth was gone from her voice. It made me boil with anger.

  I still wonder about that anger. The kind only love can produce. Boundless anger coming from love. It doesn’t seem right. So I said, “I suppose I can’t and won’t.”

  “There’s a time for stubborn and a time for giving in. Look at me. I give in all the time with Papa but I get things in return. Safety, stability, unconditional love. You are throwing away all of that with this particular devotion.”

  “Not the unconditional love part. I’ll have that,” I said without thinking first.

  Mama dropped her composed façade. “That doesn’t pay the bills. That doesn’t keep you warm at night. That doesn’t do much of anything.”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  Mama stood and raised her hand. I knew she wanted to slap me. And I deserved it. I’d never back talked to my parents. I crossed my arms in front of my face for protection.

  She sat back down.

  “Do what you will.” The bread was dripping with rose hip jelly. She was maniacally spreading it around with the knife. “Henry’s been a great friend to George. I’m sure you can find some kind of joy. But you won’t let this play out in front of your father. You won’t bring shame on this house. No matter how silly I think it all is, society is society and we are not free of the burden of hate. I have enough to worry about without this. So I’m done. If you pursue it, pursue it quietly. And you must follow my directions or I will end it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama. What do you want me to do?”

  “You will graduate high school and go to teachers college. You won’t be able to marry him, so you’ll have to have a profession. When you graduate you will move to the Far Rockaway cottage. It will be yours.”

  “Is that all?” I asked

  “Don’t you sass me, Itsy,” she said.

  I got up, eager to escape the kitchen and her disapproval.

  “Itsy?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Don’t flaunt this. Keep Henry a secret.”

  My heart flew into my throat.

  “Aren’t secrets bad, Mama?”

  “No. Secrets are important, and wonderful, and … well, secret. Promise me?”

  And so I promised her. And I’ve been a good secret keeper and a good promise keeper too.

  I still have secrets, you know. Not big ones. Small ones. Sometimes it’s the smallest secrets that hold the most hope, the most fun, and the most danger.

  Carmen gave birth to Babygirl right here in NYC. In a hospital in Manhattan. She called Mimi, but Mimi was at church. I answered the phone. I knocked the receiver against the wall three times to let the person calling know it was me and that I was listening. The line was fuzzy like always, but I knew what she was saying. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. So I went to her, to Carmen.

  “Where’s my mother?” she asked. So beautiful with her dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Her face devoid of makeup was simply illuminated by her perfect features. She had the child later in life. Forty, I think, but you’d never know it. She didn’t look a day over twenty-five. She held a bundle. My heart hurt and I had to stop my hands from going in between my legs. I scribbled on my pad instead: She’s at church cleaning the pews.

  Carmen sighed. “Of course she is. Does she know? Did you tell her?”

  I shook my head no.

  Carmen turned her head toward the window. I could see her fighting back tears. It broke my heart a little.

  “Take her then. Get a good look at her so you can report back to the rest. I’m leaving for Europe in the morning.”

  I thought about writing her a note telling her not to go. I would beg her. Tell her how much Mimi could use this in her life. But in the end I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Damage is damage. I took the baby from her and sat down in the chair by the side of the bed.

  She was perfect. She looked right into my eyes and my old lady throat rasped out a sound I didn’t recognize. Mama’s eyes. Green like the seas her family crossed to come to America. The baby’s fist came loose from the swaddling and seemed to reach out to me. I kissed it. I kissed that small fist and saw the child’s death. Only she wasn’t a child. She was a grown-up woman, pregnant? Yes. Dear lord. No. Enough. No more for this family.

  I never wanted to speak more since the words took flight, than I did at that moment. So I held her up and placed my lips against her forehead and mouthed the words I wanted to say: I don’t know you, but I love you. I will never leave you. I will think about you all the time, every day. You will never be alone. I will not let the fates have their way.

  Carmen turned back to me and held out her arms. “Give me my baby, old woman. Stop the mumbo jumbo. You people, I swear.” She rolled her eyes.

  I handed over the incredible bundle and turned to leave. I scribbled, Come by the building before you go.

  “Sure I will,” she answered. But we both knew she wouldn’t.

  For years, I couldn’t get that baby’s eyes out from behind my own. Truth is, I still can’t. Something was reborn in me the day I held her. A joy and a horror.

  And that summer she came back when she was all of ten years old? Well, we all lived again that summer. Such a miracle. Such a gift. It was because Elly came home. It was a bit of unplanned magic. I didn’t want her there at first, it’s true. I knew the dangers of her being in the building. But in the end? She figured out a way for me to keep my promise and my secret. She’s such a sharp, clever child.

  And then my spell was tested! Oh yes, it was. When Carmen showed up on our doorstep when Eleanor was no more than thirteen, I thought I’d expire right there from the nerves. But the girl didn’t remember anything. Nothing at all. She was awkward and nervous, and there was an obvious chasm between mother and daughter, but she looked at all of us as well as the building with a sparkle in her eyes that told me she was seeing it for the first time. Even though she wasn’t. Even though it was as much a part of her as it was of us. Every brick of the place. I remember how disappointed Anthony was that she didn’t remember him. But that was nothing in comparison to George. His face just lit up when they swept in. But when her timid hand reached out to shake his, he knew. He knew she didn’t have any memories. Because if she had? If she had, she’d have run to him and knocked him over with pure love. Poor George. How I robbed him of that love. I’ve never really figured out if it was the right or wrong way to go about protecting her. So many were hurt in the process.

  But now she’s back again and I’m faced with the same dilemma. I wish George were still here. Something tells me he’d know what to do. He’d tell me to keep her safe, no matter what.

  I will, George. I will. Thi
rd time’s the charm, right? She was here when she was ten, then for a moment at thirteen, and now. Three visits.

  I’ve kept Babygirl safe all these years. In the end I failed George, but I refuse to fail this girl. Just plain refuse.

  8

  The Sisters Amore

  “If you’re going to live with me, you’re going to go to church,” said Mimi. All three old ladies were sitting at the kitchen table wearing black and pointing crooked fingers at Elly.

  “I will not,” she said, her arms crossed in front of her like a child.

  “Yes you will,” said Mimi with Fee and Itsy nodding right along.

  “Every day?”

  Mimi snorted. “Don’t be a smartass. Just Sunday. You’ll have to come on Sundays.”

  “But I don’t believe in all that crap. It will be like lying. I won’t go. You can’t make me.”

  “You will go,” said Mimi and Fee in unison.

  Itsy scribbled a note and gave it to Elly.

  You could always just go you know. Nothing is forcing you to stay here.

  The frustration of everything welled up inside of Elly. So much had changed in such a short period of time. And now the perfect refuge was shaken all akimbo with this weird religious twist and one of the aunts actually asking her, in so many words, to leave.

  “Ah! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you and you … You are crazy! And I was crazy for coming here. Carmen was right!” she screamed and then ran into the hallway and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She skidded on the bath mat and her knees slammed down hard against the black-and-white octagonal tile. Tears came unbidden and soon she was crying so hard the phlegm choked her. She hugged the clean toilet basin and heaved up a heavy breakfast. She heard the door click and open, and then shut as rubber-soled shoes squeaked across the tile. The water in the tub turned on.

  It was Mimi. Elly knew it without even turning around. She recalled the exact same moment years ago. Babygirl, the child she’d been but couldn’t remember being, ran away from them. Elly felt her grown-up self rise to the ceiling as she watched the two scenes play out. Then and now overlapping … with Elly stuck on the outside.