The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “You don’t remember your uncle? Shame!”

  Elly knew she knew this girl. She didn’t really know how or why, but she knew the glimmer in her eye, the spontaneous fun. It was contagious. “Uncle George is dead.”

  “I know that, silly! Let’s go to the cemetery.”

  It seemed the perfect thing to do on a cold and snowy night in the middle of a dangerous city.

  Liz knew back roads and alleyways. Elly ran next to her new, old friend. Her feet sure on the ground. Soon they were at the gates of Shady Rest next to the Botanical Gardens. “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it?”

  It was. The landscape, already quiet from its burden of heavy stones, was even more subdued from the blanket of soft white. “Come this way. Your family plot is over here.”

  “How do you know so much about my family when I don’t know anything?”

  “I can’t account for your memory loss,” Liz joked, throwing a snowball at Elly.

  “I guess not. I remembered you, though.”

  Liz ran to her and gave her a hug. “Ooh! I knew you would. What did you remember?”

  “You giving Anthony rabbit ears, down by the beach.”

  “Far Rockaway?” asked Liz.

  “I guess so. Mimi said she took me there that summer,” said Elly.

  “Yeah. We all went. It was a great week. Tons of fun.”

  “Anthony says he has pictures, too. That might help.”

  Liz stiffened. “Pictures?”

  “Yeah, why, you not photogenic or something?”

  “No, not really. Anyway … come on! Let’s say hi to George.”

  They stood outside a gated plot under a large tree. Two stones were larger than the rest.

  Margaret Green Amore

  Beloved Mother and Wife

  Born 1895–Died May 8th 1945

  Vincent Louis Amore

  Beloved Husband and Father

  Born 1894–Died May 8th 1945

  “The same day?” Elly recalled Anthony calling it The Day the Amores Died. And then Mimi made mention of “That Day” as well. For a Yalie I sure can be obtuse, thought Elly.

  “Yeah, they all died on the same day, more or less.”

  “All?”

  “Your great-aunt Bunny, her daughter Zelda Grace. You don’t know the story?”

  “No.”

  “Crazy. It’s like mythology around these parts. The Day the Amores Died. Bunny and Zelda are around here somewhere. Wanna say hi to them, too?”

  “All of them?” Elly felt very sad all of a sudden. “I think I want to go back, Liz. I’m cold.”

  “Sure. Of course. Let’s just say hi to good old George, okay?” Liz went through the gate and dusted off a smaller stone. It read:

  George Amore: Always a Child at Heart

  “Boy, did he love you, Elly.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I hope if you remember anything, you remember playing with George.”

  Fee. Fi. Fo. Fummy …

  “But he was an old man when I was little.”

  Liz laughed. “Your Uncle George was never an old man!”

  Elly smiled, and then shivered.

  “Let’s get out of here. You’re cold. What was I thinking taking a full-of-life person to a full-of-death place? Your Mimi would have my head.”

  Did I tell her I was pregnant? Elly wondered.

  * * *

  Elly reentered the building using the front door, unlocking it with a hidden key Liz revealed between some crumbled foundation mortar.

  “See ya later!” Liz called out as she ran down the snowy street.

  Standing in the hall Elly decided to try and remember Uncle George. Not the old, senile, grumbly person she recalled from more recent visits, but the playmate Liz assured her existed during that long, forgotten summer. She padded into the main hallway and then up the stairs. Halfway up she could clearly see the second floor doors. Her Uncle George’s apartment, 2B, was to her left, Anthony’s, 2A, to her right. A whisper of a giggle came from the right. Elly gripped the banister and closed her eyes, a delicious bubble of laughter rising inside her own chest. “Fee fi fo fummy, I smell a girl and girls are YUMMY!” Elly let out a little squeal and ran up the remaining steps, but when she turned around, no one was chasing her. She was dizzy as she knocked on door 2A. She heard a muffled “Wait a minute” and locks being undone. And there he was, Anthony, his hair tousled, his face transformed by the happy surprise.

  “Come on in, pretty lady. I’ve been waiting for you to find me since we were ten.”

  “Don’t get any big ideas.”

  “Well, why are you here if it ain’t for my kisses?” There was laughter in Anthony’s easy voice.

  “I think I’m remembering things,” she whispered.

  “What kind of things?” Anthony took on a serious tone and helped her into his apartment.

  “Did Uncle George play with us when we were kids?”

  “Oh yeah, all the time.” He scratched his fingers through his thick hair and smiled, remembering, too.

  “Can you tell me?”

  “It’d be my pleasure. Oh, and I found the pictures.”

  Elly went inside the dark apartment. It smelled like him, but when he turned on a table lamp in the living room, Elly remembered his mother.

  “She was beautiful. You took such good care of her,” she said, wandering the apartment, re-seeing it again. Exactly the same floor plan as Mimi’s in 1A, yet worlds apart. Smart, low Danish Modern furniture, potted plants, floor to ceiling bookshelves. Anthony’s mother had a bohemian flair.

  “You remember.”

  “Yes. I seem to remember things easier if they have nothing to do with me.”

  “Here, look through these.” Anthony handed her a cigar box filled with Polaroid pictures. “We took them, so they aren’t great.”

  Images of elbows and too-close half smiles. An ice cream truck, the beach. “Oh look! This is Uncle George, isn’t it!” It was a picture of an old man, but not old like in Elly’s recent memory. “He was handsome for an old guy. You know, I swear I felt him chasing me up the stairs before.”

  “Really? That’s a little spooky,” said Anthony.

  “No, it wasn’t spooky at all. It was fun. Did he chase us?”

  “Yeah, he chased us all the time. You mostly. Boy, he loved you. He used to pretend he was a giant and chase you around the building yelling Fee, fi…”

  “… fo fummy. I smell a girl and girls are yummy. I’ll eat that girl and fill my tummy,” finished Elly, laughing with delight.

  Anthony grabbed her and held her tight. “You remember.”

  “Some things. But not everything. There’s so much darkness still there.”

  “Don’t worry, Elly, give it time. It’ll come back to you.”

  “Anthony?”

  “What is it?” he asked, his head nestled against her neck.

  “What if there’s a reason I can’t remember? What if it’s better left forgotten?”

  “Nothing is better that way, believe me, Elly. And whatever it is, bad or good, I’ll be here for you.”

  Elly pulled away from him and leaned her forehead against the window, looking out at the city lights. “Why are you so nice to me?”

  “Because I love you, Elly Amore. And you love me. You just haven’t remembered it yet.”

  10

  Itsy

  I saw her leave the building. Out through the window just like her mother used to. But she’s different. Not like Carmen. She reminds me of Mama, she always has. I’m tired and can’t seem to get a bit of sleep anymore. Fee snores so loud. I try to pretend the sound is the creaking of a ship at sea. It used to work. It doesn’t anymore. My mind is just so full.

  The boys were born first. Three in a row. Mama was scared she’d never have a girl. Papa, too. Then came Bunny, then Fee, and Mimi eighteen months later. They called Fee and Mimi Irish twins. Mama and Papa figured God was done with them. Three boys and three girls seemed a fair amou
nt of children, and all healthy, too. Then came me and George. Twins. I came first and no one knew little George was in there. He waited a whole two days to show up. The cord came with his feet and everything was jumbled. He didn’t get enough air, the midwife said. Not enough air makes you a kid forever. Isn’t that funny? Childhood is all about air. Running with hair blowing out behind, puffs of hot air making fake smoke coming out of your mouth on the first colder days of autumn. But Georgie didn’t get enough and spent his whole life a child. It was wonderful, sometimes, and sometimes not so much. But he was mine, George was.

  It all went swell until 1945. How can a family lose itself in one day? It just happens, that’s how. It isn’t God, or destiny, or bad luck. Some crap just happens to you and you have to figure it all out on the other side. We fell into the deep end. The boys died in the war. Boom, boom, and boom. Mama died when she heard the news. And then Papa, Zelda Grace, and Bunny.

  We’d all spread out by then. Our own version of urban sprawl. Bunny, married with her daughter, sweet Zelda Grace, was living on the second floor in apartment 2A. George was safe across the hall from her in 2B, pretending to be a grown-up man. Mimi lived downstairs in 1B with Alfred, and Fee still lived in our old apartment, 1A, with Mama and Papa. Me, well, I was living out at the Far Rockaway house. As I’d promised Mama. And Henry was living out in his family’s cottage, too. It was the only way we could keep our secret safe.

  For a few years we all felt we might be able to survive 1945. That perhaps, Mama and her fortune-teller friend were wrong. But then the phone rang, the damn phone. I should have never got on the train. Just let them deal with it. But I didn’t. The call of my sisters is powerful. And then, when it was over, I had to come back from my broken-down palace by the sea and move in with Fat Face Fee. Because we needed to stay close. It seemed that the world had an agenda of killing Amores. It seemed saner to stay close, so close we stayed. And insane.

  11

  Elly

  The quiet, magic life of the Amore sisters proved so pleasant that Elly began to go to church every Sunday without discussion. It wasn’t that she had some profound religious epiphany. It was simply the quiet joy it gave her grandmother, and soon Elly began to look forward to it. She liked resting her head against her grandmother’s shoulder like a child and taking in the soft scent of her. Garlic and Shalimar. She liked the forty-five minutes of peace where she could forget her fears. She liked the community and the priest. She liked the strong dark coffee in the church hall after the Mass. She liked the constancy of ritual. She liked sitting so close to Anthony. Sacred and profane. His thigh against her leg made her woozy.

  And then there would be Sunday dinner. Half prepared the night before, she cooked with them and learned the ways of the women in her family. After church they put the sauce on the flame, fried meatballs, made simple greens and an exceptionally large salad full of pickled things. Put chicken thighs into the oven with potatoes and onions and peas. Ran to the corner store for one last loaf of bread. And then they sat down, usually around two, and usually with the priest, young Father Carter, or members of the parish.

  Elly didn’t have time to miss Carmen, or fear Cooper. She spent her days synching with Mimi, falling into the rhythm of their ways, like waves and tides, in and out, vast and corralled in by the ever-present horizon line of the day’s end.

  The mornings were all about magical teas and tinctures and taking inventory of all the tins full of dried herbs in Mimi’s kitchen. Slowly, Mimi began to whisper the Amore secrets into Elly’s open mind. She learned about protection jars and love spells. She learned of darker things that Mama, Margaret Green, warned them against, but taught them anyway—just in case. Elly looked forward to each new day like a kindergarten student. She saw life from these different angels that constantly amazed her.

  The evenings sounded like teacups. Mimi ended her day with a cup of tea and an almond cookie, not homemade, a treat from a package. She’d walk past Elly who liked to curl up on the couch and pick through the cigar box full of old Polaroid pictures Anthony gave her, and kiss her goodnight. Elly stayed up later, straining to remember … looking at half-faded photos taken of hands and feet and the long stretch of beaches on Far Rockaway.

  “A good day. Today we worked hard,” she’d say, and then she’d turn the corner to walk down the hallway to her bedroom, the teacup rattling against the saucer. It usually took a while for the laughing to start. But Elly was learning patience and she was bent on finding out what was behind this mysterious joy. So the laughter would start, and Elly made chase, running through the halls and listening to the walls of 170th Street while the other residents slept.

  And it was one of these lovely preoccupied Sundays that Cooper decided to finally make his big debut.

  The Amore sisters saw it coming. The night before they all awoke from the same dream and gathered quietly at Mimi’s kitchen table to look deep into a bowl of water.

  He’s coming? wrote Itsy.

  “He’s coming,” said Mimi.

  To harm her? wrote Itsy.

  “To harm her!” Fee yelled.

  “Shhhhh!” said Mimi. “You’ll wake her!”

  “Sorry,” said Fee putting her finger in her ear, trying to clear out a wax that could not come undone.

  Itsy scribbled: We must prepare.

  And so, the Amore sisters made an extra pot of sauce.

  * * *

  “Get ready. Be brave. Don’t ask questions,” ordered Mimi when they got home from church.

  “What?” asked Elly. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Just stay calm and be yourself.”

  “Who else would I be?” asked Elly.

  Itsy scribbled and handed Elly a note, That slouchy, wimpy little girl that showed up here on Christmas Eve, that’s who.

  “Nice,” said Elly. “She hates me. I swear it!”

  “She does not. And don’t swear. Hush! He’s here!” said Fee.

  The doorbell rang.

  “He’s here,” said Mimi.

  “I already said that,” said Fee, and Mimi shoved her as she went for the door.

  Mimi went into the hall and threw open the doors to the building. “You must be Baker!”

  “Cooper,” he said pushing the door open, pinning Mimi behind it. He stood in the hallway looking from side to side, not knowing what apartment door to approach first.

  Elly stared at him from the safety of Mimi’s apartment. How could he be here? In this other life she’d painted for herself? He wasn’t even real to her anymore. But here he was, anyway.

  Anthony stood at the top of the stairs. He walked down in a controlled burn. “Hey man, good to see you again. Sorry about the scuffle at Elly’s room. She can make a guy crazy, you know?” He chuckled, nodding his head toward Elly at the same time he held out his hand to Cooper for a shake.

  He’s in on whatever this is … Elly thought.

  Cooper shook Anthony’s hand out of etiquette more than anything else. Elly could tell by the way he licked his lips that Cooper was caught off guard by these strangers. He was nervous. Not a common state for Cooper Bakersmith.

  “You must be Elly’s young man! How handsome you are!” yelled Fee.

  “Yes, well…”

  Mimi, freed from behind the front door, came at him from the rear. “We were just sitting down to eat. Come, be pleasant. You catch more flies with sugar, honey. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”

  Did she actually say that? Elly wondered. These people were so brave.

  Surrounded, Cooper was backed into Mimi’s apartment. Anthony was behind him talking.

  “I’m sorry we got off to a bad start. Elly’s got nothing but nice things to say about you. Don’t you, Elly?”

  “Eleanor?” His eyes found her and she watched him try to drink her in. Her hair pulled up, her clothes and growing tummy. She knew he hadn’t planned on any of this. He was just going to get her. Collect what was his and take her back to New Haven so he could make sur
e she got rid of the kid.

  “Why not sit and have dinner with us, Cooper? Then I’ll get my things and come back with you, okay?”

  Elly could feel the pride coming off her grandmother and great aunts. She didn’t know what she was doing, but whatever it was … it was the right thing to do.

  They ushered him from Mimi’s pretty living room and Elly touched his arm. She felt his surprise by the beauty of this place, that he was expecting matching drapes and wall-to-wall carpets. His class lines were getting blurred. Serves you right, you uptight Anglo, she thought.

  They sat him at the long dining table. Itsy was scribbling. She tore the paper off the pad and pushed it toward Cooper. Anthony stood over his shoulder and read it aloud.

  You must eat with us. It’s only fair. Give and take. That’s how it works. You lose something you have to get something in return. Loss has consequences until it’s found.

  “This is all too crazy,” said Cooper. “I’ll eat, but then she’s coming with me.”

  Anthony sat down and Fee and Mimi placed bowls of pasta on the table.

  “Mimi makes it fresh. Nothin’ like it in the whole world. Have you ever had fresh pasta?” asked Anthony, tucking a fabric napkin into his collar.

  Cooper seemed fascinated by the napkin.

  “It’s antique, you know,” said Elly. “Handmade.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve lived in Italy,” said Cooper, ignoring Elly’s remarks.

  “Good, then you’ll want some more sauce,” said Mimi, ladling more over his meal. It smelled so tempting, that extra ladle. Acidic and hearty. Like hot summer days in Tuscany. Elly motioned for more, too, but Anthony mouthed the word “no.”

  It took exactly three bites. Cooper’s head landed face-first in his bowl of pasta.

  “That was fast,” said Mimi. “How much pine did you put in the sauce, Itsy?”

  Itsy shrugged.

  Elly watched in disbelief as Anthony clapped his hands together, rubbed them for a few seconds, then lugged Cooper over his shoulders and walked out of the apartment. The old women followed and Fee grabbed Cooper’s keys off the dining room table saying, “Only an Anglo would place dirty keys on a dinner table,” as she threw them to Anthony who caught them in midair.