The Awakening

by Allen Johnson

  On the way to her bedroom, Lupita passed Diego who was still standing at his door, grinning like a boy remembering his first kiss. She furrowed her brow as if to say, “And what is on your wicked mind?”

  Diego raised both palms in defense of his innocence. “Goodnight, Lupita.” he said singsong.

  “Goodnight, Tito,” Lupita mumbled, escaping into her room.

  “Goodnight, Antonio,” Diego called out, shaking his head as he circled and returned to his bed.

  Antonio heard Diego’s goodnight wishes. It made him smile, and he silently returned the greeting: “Goodnight, Diego.”

  When Antonio slept, he journeyed again—deeper, deeper into the roots of his life. They were night visions that he would not remember, could not remember and survive.

  Although Tony Rossi was seven years old, he still had not learned to tie his shoes. So he made a square knot and forced his feet in and out of his worn and crusty tennis shoes with a grunt. They did not slide easily; he did not wear socks; he did not own socks.

  On this hot East Harlem night, he tugged the canvas shoes off his feet, tossed them under the bed, and because there was nothing else to do, he cradled his right foot and drew it to his face for closer inspection. There was an angry blister on the curve of the foot below the big toe. Tony poked at the milky center of the blister and winced, but did not whimper. Then he pressed his finger into the wound again, intrigued by how the pus oozed in all directions.

  Tony examined his toes with interest. He did not know them by name; they were not “little piggies” who “went to market” or “had roast beef.” Nor were they soft and white. They looked more like the toes of an old man: scuffed and bruised and calloused, the consequence of running barefoot more often than not in and out of the backstreets and alleys of East Harlem.

  Tony was still peering at his toes, when the urge to sleep swept over him. He rolled his body to all fours on the hardwood floor and lifted himself onto the bed, a rat’s nest of clothing, stained bed sheets, whiskey bottles, and the smell of alcohol and piss. Tony was hungry, but he was already half asleep. He lay on his side, his skeletal back curling around his knees in the depression in the middle of the bed.

  Once again, the boy dreamt about stickball, which was truly a dream, for most of the big kids would not let the scrawny Dago play any of their street games.

  “He’s too little,” one of the older boys would complain.

  “And too stupid,” another would add.

  Then everyone looked to the self-appointed, twelve-year-old leader of the block. His name was John Mancini, but no one knew him by his real name. Everyone called him Jackoff, a name he neither denied nor despised. His unquestioned authority was based on one facility: he knew more about the dark side of Pleasant Avenue than any other kid in the neighborhood, and he used that information like a weapon. If another boy challenged his right to command, Jackoff would counter with a deadly retort: “Oh, yeah. Well, maybe you’d like a visit from Louie De Luca.” And that was all it took. Most kids didn’t even know Louie De Luca, but that didn’t matter. The way Jackoff said the name, like a forbidden curse word, was enough to change the attitude of any would-be rival. Discussion over.

  So whenever Tony wanted to play stickball, Jackoff always had the same response, offered in a sickly sweet tone of voice. “Hey, don’t be messin’ with the kid,” he would say. “He’s not all bad. Are youse kid? After all, Louie De Luca says your mama’s the best fuck on the block—and cheap too. Ain’t that right kid?”

  At seven, Tony did not know what it meant to be the “best fuck,” but he knew it was not good. He knew it was dirty: something vile and unimaginable.

  One day, after Jackoff had spoken the dirty words, Tony’s eyes turned hard. He lowered his head, converting it into a battering ram, and launched himself into the crotch of the block leader. It was a direct hit. Jackoff fell to the ground as if every muscle in his body had gone to mush. He rolled in agony for a long time in the middle of the street, until a beautiful woman with pitch-black hair strutted out to the boy, cupped her hands under his armpits and lifted the groaning bully to his feet. It was his mother, Mrs. Mancini. “You get-a you skinny culo back-a home,” she pronounced in a husky Sicilian accent.

  As the two marched to the brown-brick tenement house, Mrs. Mancini backhanded her son’s backside, but Jackoff saw the blow coming and he tucked in his butt just in time. Having just missed her mark, Mrs. Mancini took an extra step and pinched her son’s ear between thumb and forefinger. She led him that way across the street, like a dog owner escorting a reluctant hound into the dreaded kennel. Every boy in the street knew that the pain of being tugged by the ear was short lived; the public humiliation was eternal.

  In all of that, Mrs. Mancini asked no questions. She seemed to know instinctively that whatever pain her son endured, it was something he fully deserved. “Why you do dis to you mama, Mist’r Jackoff?” she scolded, having long ago picked up on the neighborhood nickname. “Why you do dis bad thing?”

  But on this night in Tony’s dream, there was no Jackoff. There was only he, Little Tony, tapping the manhole cover that served as home plate with the tip of his broomstick and swatting the handball into the heart of Manhattan. SMACK.

  Tony was awakened with a rude whack to his butt. He opened his eyes and stared into the round, ruddy face of a redheaded stranger.

  “You’ll be gettin’ your bum out of bed,” the stranger said, more of a command than a request.

  Tony looked past the man at his mother, who was propped against the bathroom door. Her head fell forward and lifted, again and again, as if she were fighting sleep and losing. Her arm lay limp at her side, an uncorked bottle of whiskey in her hand. She loosened her grip, and the bottle fell to the ground and poured through the cracks in the wood floor.

  The stranger turned and strode directly to the overturned bottle, moving sideways with his shoulder pointing at the target. He swept up the bottle by the neck.

  “’Tis enough o’ that,” the man said. He leaned over Tony’s mother, bracing himself on his forearm and pushed the tip of the bottle neck under her jaw. “God help me, I was payin’ good money for that whiskey. You’ll not be servin’ it to the rats. Are you hearin’ me?” he said, pressing the bottle spout deeper into her neck.

  Tony’s mother did not move nor protest.

  Tony felt a surge of anger in his throat: the same feeling he had when he head-butted Jackoff in the balls. He bounded out of bed and at full speed tackled the legs of the stranger. The blow made the man stumble a step, but no more. He turned and slapped the boy across the face with his opened hand.

  Tony did not cry, but the smack made him dizzy for a moment, and he did not know what to do.

  Tony’s mother raised her head. Her eyes focused for the first time that night. She went to the boy and held him by both shoulders. In Italian, she said, “Go out and play, Tony. We no be long. You come-a-back when he-a be gone.”

  “But it’s the middle of the night,” Tony protested.

  “I know what-a time it is. That no matter. You-a listen to you mama. I be the only mama you-a got. Now you-a go.”

  Tony crossed the room to retrieve his shoes from under the bed.

  “No,” his mother said. “You-a go now.”

  “But my shoes.”

  “You no need you shoes,” she said. “You no need anything.”

  Tony turned and glared at the redheaded stranger. If he were only bigger, he would kill him and not think twice about it. Then he left the room. He walked down the three flights of stairs, punching the handrail with the side of his fist at each step. He opened the front door and sat in the middle of the stoop, his hands supporting his face. Once again, he stared at his toes: toes that did not belong to him, that belonged to some old man, to someone else—but not to him.

  “Momma’s right,” he said to himself. “I no need anything.” And then, with the anger and the shame and the hunger raging in his gut, he added, “I no need nobody
—not now, not ever.”

  TWO WEEKS PASSED. IT HAD not been easy for Lupita. Since the stranger’s arrival, she had scrambled from the house to clinic to the house again. For a physician with less vigor, it would have been impossible; for Lupita it was merely exhausting. But at the end of each day, Lupita welcomed her weariness with a kind of satisfaction. Yes, she had worked hard, but she was making a difference.

  Happily, Antonio’s medical condition improved with every new day. His left arm was no longer taped to his body, but rather comfortably supported in a sling. The piercing pain that had stabbed him with every false move had thankfully diminished in number and intensity. As for the bruises on the back of his legs, they had almost entirely disappeared.

  The best news regarding his recuperation was that his voice had returned. Granted, it was a bit soft and raspy and could not be overused, but he could speak. The notepad was discarded.

  Antonio had free run of the house, which was a simple all-white, single-level home cut into the hillside. He was particularly fond of the view from the terrace, where he enjoyed reading in the late afternoon.

  In fact, reading was his primary pastime. The living room was conspicuous in its absence of a television. In its place, against a twelve-foot length of wall, was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, stocked with world classics. Although there was a fine collection of European, American, and Russian novels, the heart of the library focused on philosophy, theology, and history, including both ancient and modern masters. Finally, there was a section reserved for Lupita’s medical books. In brief, it was not a library for someone looking for a breezy diversion.

  What was more, the library was heavily used. When Antonio opened a book, he invariably found comments penciled in the margins. It was not unusual for Lupita and Diego to spend two or three hours a night poring over works ranging from ancient history to modern ethics. This was a family that put a high premium on knowledge.

  With the return of Antonio’s voice, one thing was clear: He was not Spanish—not with his accent. The Garcias discovered that he was not only fluent in Spanish, but also French and English, the latter appearing to be his mother tongue. Although nothing was certain, Lupita reasoned that he was most likely British or American. Beyond that, they still had no other clues about his identity.

  Antonio was still without personal memory. He could comment on world affairs and decipher mathematical equations, but he had no recollection of his personal life. That was frustrating, sometimes agonizing, for him. And yet, Diego and Lupita were so kind and really so much like family that he was not altogether sure he wanted another home. He had not admitted this to Lupita and her grandfather, but it was on his mind.

  Antonio had been moved to a smaller room in the home, allowing Lupita to recover her own bedroom. Antonio was happy for that. The family had given so much to him that he no longer wanted to be an imposition; he hoped that he might find some way soon of repaying their generosity.

  “How would you like some fresh air?” Lupita asked at breakfast.

  “That would be wonderful.”

  It was the first time that Antonio had left the house. The front door opened to a narrow cobblestone street. Antonio looked across the road and up the hill at the village church. Just then, the bells rang out announcing morning mass, which rousted the pigeons from the belfry and sent them zigzagging in formation across the sky.

  Lupita backed her small car into the street and drove slowly down the hillside. The lane was lined with houses, all painted white and attached to the next house, an ancient construction method that preserved both energy and space.

  Antonio noticed a woman standing at her open door, the morning sun on her face; she shaded her eyes and peered down the street. Then he spotted a second woman and a third—all squinting their eyes toward the corner at the bottom of the hill.

  “What are the women waiting for?”

  “The bread truck.” Then after a moment, Lupita pointed to a compact van with the back doors sprung open. “There it is.”

  At the back of the van, a man in his thirties with a flat cap and a white apron was drawing out sticks of French bread from one of three straw baskets. The women were gathered around him like hens pecking at a fertile piece of ground.

  At a plateau halfway down the hill, the street opened up to a long rectangular plaza. It was accented with park benches and oak trees and a large fountain at the far end. Seated on the benches were old men in brown sport coats and open collars reading the newspaper or talking passionately with a friend about sports or politics. Some shouted morning greetings to the women standing at the doorways. Sometimes the women shouted back, often with a quip about the old men’s impertinence, which made everyone within earshot laugh.

  Lupita rolled through the plaza, down the hill, and out of town.

  “Where are we going?” Antonio asked.

  “I do have other patients, you know,” Lupita said, smiling.

  “Really. I thought that I was all you could handle.”

  “Oh, I think I can manage just a tiny bit more.”

  “I am sure you can.”

  Lupita had both hands on the wheel, looking like a woman in charge. “I am taking you to a small village. I have a patient to see who is no longer able to leave his home.”

  “What does he have?”

  “Lung cancer. He will most likely die within the month.”

  “That must be tough for you.”

  “It is all part of life.”

  “Still, it has to be difficult.”

  “Sure. When I lose a patient there is always a time of grief, but never despair. I cannot imagine being a doctor and not having a philosophy of hope. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  The village was little more than a single street that traced the side of a mountain. Under a cantilevered section of the mountain was a cave house. Lupita knocked on the front door and entered. “Hola, Armando. May we come in?”

  The home was small, just three rooms carved into the mountain and thoroughly whitewashed. There were no doors—only rounded archways that Armando’s father had chiseled out from the earth a hundred years earlier. Armando was a frail skeleton of a man with a sallow, pocked-face complexion, but despite his years—ninety-two, he claimed—there was mischief in his eyes.

  “Ah, Lupita,” the old man said, pulling himself up in his bed. “I was wondering when you were going to get around to me.”

  “How could I forget my favorite patient?”

  “It looks like you brought another patient with you this time.”

  “This is Antonio.”

  “Buenas días, Antonio.”

  “Buenas días, señor.”

  “My father was señor. You must call me Armando.”

  Lupita sat down at the side of the bed and drew out a stethoscope from her bag. “Let us hear how those lungs are doing today.”

  Lupita listened first to the man’s heart and then placed her hand behind Armando’s back and gently pulled him forward. “Breathe deeply.” She listened to the sound of one lung struggling to draw in air and then the other. During this time, Armando’s head was bent forward, his forehead resting just below the doctor’s neck. With both hands the old man reached up and slowly fondled Lupita’s breasts.

  Lupita did not move away from Armando, nor did she scold him. In fact, it seemed to Antonio, who witnessed the scene, that Lupita prolonged the examination.

  “Big breath,” she said. “And again. And one more time.”

  When she had finished and returned her stethoscope to her bag, Armando said, “Thank you, Lupita.”

  “You are welcome, Armando. Now do not forget to take your medication. Do you need more?”

  “No, I am all right. Thank you.”

  Lupita glanced at her patient’s nightstand and spotted a pack of cigarettes. Armando saw that the doctor had found him out. They exchanged a look, Armando hunching his shoulders as if to say it was all out of his control. Lupita did not berate him�
��not even with her eyes.

  “Is your daughter still coming in to see you every day?” she asked.

  “Yes, God bless her.”

  “Good.”

  On the road back to Espejo, Antonio asked Lupita about her patient. “I saw what happened back there.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I noticed that you allowed Armando to feel your breasts.”

  “Does that trouble you?”

  “No. I was just wondering what you thought about it.”

  “He is an old man, Antonio. He does not have long to live. If I can give him pleasure, if I can help him forget his pain for just one moment and remember another time when he was young and lay with a woman, if I can do that, I have done well.”

  Antonio was silent for a moment. “You are a good woman, Lupita.”

  The doctor pursed her lips. “I am a woman. I know something about healing and something about the heart.”

  “Yes,” he said, more to himself than to Lupita. “What do you know about my heart?”

  “I think you are a good man.” Then, after a pause, “But it may be too early to say for sure. Are you?”

  Antonio looked out the window at the perfectly aligned rows of olive trees. “I do not know what I am. I hope so; I want to be.”

  “Then you will be.”

  “Is it that easy?”

  “Do you not think goodness is a choice?”

  “I guess it is. I have never thought about it.”

  “Then think a moment. All choices come from one of two places: the ego or the heart.”

  “And your choices with Armando today?”

  Lupita smiled. “I will let you decide for yourself. But I will give you this hint: The heart has nothing to prove.”

  Antonio shook his head in amazement. “How did you learn these things?”

  Lupita chuckled. “From my grandfather, of course. He is the man that you must come to know.”

  “I would like that very much.”

  Lupita made two other house calls and then suggested they stop at the next town to have lunch. They found a table outside a café facing the village church and began to talk about more personal things.