A Song for Mary

by Dennis Smith

  I know I’ll have to go to confession. Some of the guys go to St. Agnes where the priests are from foreign countries and hardly speak English, and confession is a breeze. If you say that you copped a feel in the back row of the RKO, or you Mary-palmed it twice this week, or you murdered the mayor, it’s all the same with them: three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. But to me, confession probably works better with God if you get a priest who speaks your language, at least if you want it to do any good.

  Jeez, I can’t get away from thinking about religion in everything I do. Religion and Jesus and the Blessed Virgin are such a part of my life, like my name or even my legs. Everything I ever learned about God and the saints begins now to pass through a kind of veil that is before my eyes, and I suddenly see Blessed Maria Goretti, that young girl in a plain dark dress on a dirt road, just standing there, minding her own business, like in the photograph of her I saw in school. Even though she had no father and her mother had to slave for bits of food, she did everything she could to make her life decent, so that God would say that her life is okay. And now I see Marilyn Rolleri, sitting with me on a park bench, in a tight skirt and a blouse that is half open, and then I see my guardian angel right there next to me, shaking his head, saying that God would never think that this is okay, and I’m realizing that I don’t want to do this because my mother and Billy and Father Ford and even Sister Urban would not like it if they thought I did something like this, and so I tell myself to think about the DiMaggio brothers or the Marx Brothers or the Brothers Grimm and all those stories, and to think about me and Billy going off to Kips for a Ping-Pong game, anything but this famous boner that everyone talks about. And I think about Ping-Pong and a good slice shot until my eyes are so heavy that I forget where I am.

  I don’t know how long I have been sleeping before I hear an explosion.

  Bang.

  It is frightening, and I jump up out of my sleep, and I can see Billy is out of bed completely in his underwear.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Somebody has kicked the door,” Billy says.

  “Why?” I say. “Why would somebody do that?”

  I was feeling my stomach turning. Where was my mother? Were we all going to get killed?

  Bang, the crash comes again.

  I can feel my body beginning to shake, the way I felt before I punched Shalleski. I wish there was someone here to take care of us, but I know that we are alone. We have to stop whatever is going on, we have to get someone here, some big person. My mother is now up, and she turns on the kitchen light.

  Bang pow.

  Another loud kick at the door, and this time I can see that the wood at the bottom of the door is caving in. I know now that the door is going to be kicked in, and I jump down from the bed, and Billy and I are standing here, both of us shivering in our underwear, staring at our mother, wondering what she will do, afraid to say anything to her.

  My mother reaches for the key to Mike Shurtliff’s apartment, the one across the hall. Besides doing his shirts, she now also cleans the apartment for him once in a while, and she has the key in her hand, and she tiptoes over to us and whispers to me as she hands me the key.

  “I am going to open the door,” she says as quietly as she can, her voice cracking, “and he will rush in, maybe, I don’t know.”

  “Who is it, Mom?” Billy asks. His hand is on her arm, and it looks so small there even though he is thirteen.

  “It’s Quigley,” my mother says, still whispering. “But, Dennis, you have to go into the apartment across the hall. The lock is easy, just turn it and push. There is a phone in Mike’s living room. Call the operator. You understand? Call the operator, and tell her to send the police here, give her the address. Can you do that?”

  Oh, God, I never had to do anything so important as this. I want to get it right.

  “Go in,” I repeat, “and say to the operator to bring the police to 337 East 56th Street, apartment 26.”

  “Yes,” she says, “just do it fast, as fast as you can.”

  “What about Billy?” I ask. “I want Billy to come with me.”

  “I need Billy here with me,” she says, pushing me close to the door.

  “Can I get dressed?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “There isn’t time.”

  Bang. Pow. Bang.

  More kicks to the door, and this time the door is cracked open, and I can see what I just know is Quigley’s brown shoe.

  “Go away!” my mother screams. She is yelling at the top of her lungs. “Go away, Tommy, the police are coming.”

  There is another kick, and this time his foot comes all the way through the door, and the foot is sticking in the kitchen. And then he kicks more and his foot gets higher and higher. The door is getting a hole in it that is getting bigger.

  My mother pushes me to where she wants me to stand, and she puts Billy behind her. She gives me a wild sort of look, and her eyes seem like they are on fire. She then opens the door in one sudden jerk, and Quigley begins to push his way into the apartment. He is grabbing my mother, and I don’t know if I should try to stop him, to hit him with something, or what I should do. I am eleven, and I should be able to beat this Quigley up.

  “Go, Dennis,” my mother screams. “Fast.”

  I push past them and scrape my arm against the side of the doorway. I can see it start to bleed. I run to the door across the hall and try to push the key into it. But my hand is shaking too much. Christ, I am thinking, help my hand put this key in the lock. Finally, it falls into the lock hole.

  I go into the living room and search for the phone, but I can’t find the light. Oh, God, turn on the light for me. I go back into the kitchen and feel around for the string that I know is hanging from the ceiling. I have seen it, and I know it is there, but I cannot find it, and my body is shaking much worse now. At last, I find the string and pull it, and the light shines right on the telephone, and I dial “zero” and tell the operator to send the police because someone is killing my mother. She asks me for the address three times, and she won’t let me off of the telephone.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I have to see what is happening.”

  “You just stay here on the phone,” the operator says, “until I make a connection.”

  “What connection?” I say. “I have to go.”

  “Stay on the phone, dammit.” She is yelling at me. My mother is being killed and this operator is yelling at me.

  A man comes on the phone now, a policeman, I guess.

  “What is the address?” he asks.

  “I already told the operator,” I say. “The operator knows the address.”

  “What is the address?” he asks again.

  God.

  “337 East 56th Street,” I say, “apartment 26, fourth floor.”

  “What is the matter?” he is now asking.

  “What is the matter?” I repeat. “My mother is being killed by Quigley, that is what is the matter. He’s killing her, don’t you understand?”

  I want to hang up the phone, but the policeman on the line won’t let me say goodbye. He keeps asking me why all this is happening, and I tell him that I was just sleeping, and how should I know any of this? How should I know why any of this is happening? I am eleven, and this policeman thinks I am a reporter.

  I am still on the telephone when I hear the police. They are right outside. They are running down the hall. I can see them pass by Mike’s door, and I can hear them wrestling with Quigley.

  I apologize to the man on the phone. I don’t want to hang up on him, but I have to go. I drop the phone and run. At Mike’s door, I see Quigley being dragged by. He is cursing, and the policemen are punching him as they drag him. All the neighbors have opened their doors, and I know that my mother will be mortified to know that all the neighbors were woken up.

  Where is she? I wonder. I begin to panic. I don’t care about the neighbors, and I don’t care if they see me running through the hallway in my underwear. I just wa
nt to see my mother. I want to see if she is okay.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My mother is holding me in her arms. I am eleven years old and my mother is holding me in her arms like I was two. She is sitting on a kitchen chair, and she is just staring at the hole in the kitchen door, and she is rocking. Billy is standing next to her, with his hand on her shoulder.

  “I just have you guys,” my mother says, wiping a tear off on the shoulder of my undershirt. “I just have you guys to help me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I don’t know why kids have to die. I mean, we don’t even know half of what we’re supposed to know yet, and we haven’t even done half the things we’re supposed to do, and still, we can die. Just like that, your guardian angel looks away for just a split second, and then pow, you’re gone.

  I’m in line now with the rest of the class, walking quickly to Frank C. David’s Funeral Home on 55th Street just off First Avenue. It is a warm day, and we have left our coats in the classroom. First Avenue seems very bright as we glide down the hill from 56th Street.

  I feel so sorry for Ann Kovak. I think the whole class does, because no one says the smallest peep as we walk the avenue. She was so nice. She didn’t just say hello in the morning the way everybody does. No, Ann always said, “Good morning, Dennis.” She’d mention your name so that you felt you were a little important with her. And that was good because Ann was so pretty, quiet and pretty, with skin as white as a full moon, and a shy smile that my mother said was like a sweet song.

  She sat between Mary Hanlon and Angela Gaffney in the second row, the three of them always with their hands folded on their desks when they weren’t writing, heads and shoulders straight as boards, looking like they were dolls on a prize shelf at Coney Island, looking like you could pick them up whole with your hands. They never said anything they shouldn’t, and they always had the right answers, like the angels were on their side.

  But Ann died yesterday. She was so thin, and when she tripped on a curb on 57th Street and hurt her spine, she wasn’t strong enough to take the pain. She just smiled and closed her eyes, they told us at school, and passed away.

  And Harry Shalleski just died, too.

  I didn’t really know Harry, and even though I don’t like his brother, I’m sorry he died. He’s just another kid, like us.

  I don’t know what it is to die, and it is something I have never thought much about. I am thinking now, though, that I am feeling pretty spooky because I don’t know what to expect. Not afraid, just sort of weird.

  I suppose everyone in the class thinks it’s weird, too, for there is not much going on, and everyone is so quiet, except for a few of the girls who are crying. I have never seen a dead person, except when Joey Jurgensen’s mother died a couple of years ago, and the whole class came to Frank C. David’s. I remember thinking then that her face seemed to be flat, that the air had gone out of her cheeks. But Mrs. Jurgensen had been sick for a long time before she died, and I guess Joey sort of expected it to happen. He didn’t seem so sad, and he thanked the class for showing up.

  But, here, this is not just a dead person. This is Ann, a kid, like us, and we are not supposed to think about an eleven-year-old in a dead condition. And so this visit to the funeral parlor is a lot different because everyone was Ann’s friend and no one believes it’s her in Frank C. David’s Funeral Home.

  And Harry was just a kid, too. He wasn’t sick a day in his life, and he died from a mistake.

  Harry Shalleski and Michael Harris were sneaking into the RKO up on 58th Street and Third Avenue. Just a few weeks ago. They climbed a fire escape next to the movie as far as they could go, which was five stories up. There they saw a catwalk, I guess a ledge on the side of the movie house, and if they could go along that ledge, they could reach the top exit door and fire escape of the movie house. I heard the catwalk was about four feet long or six. And there were two ropes there, hanging from the roof. Michael grabbed one rope and pulled himself along the ledge to the movie house fire escape. He told Harry to just grab the rope, but Harry made a mistake, and he grabbed the other rope. The other rope hanging from the roof wasn’t tied to anything, and so Harry and the rope fell away from the catwalk, and Harry went down five stories.

  Michael slid down his rope for the whole five stories, and his hands were burned and cut from the rope, but when he got to the yard, Harry was a bloody mess.

  It is in the middle of the afternoon. People are crowded in little groups around the big room at Frank C. David’s. Everyone is whispering. No one is laughing, or telling stories, or remembering good times. I guess you don’t remember good times when a kid is dead like this. I’m straining my neck to see around the crowds, to see if I can see Ann, but I’m also thinking of Harry.

  Harry was Billy’s age. They weren’t friends, but Billy was pretty upset when he told my mother all about it. We were eating spareribs boiled in sauerkraut. Mom made it specially for Billy because he likes the spareribs, which the butcher mostly throws out. But Billy couldn’t eat anything that night. He said he just wanted to go to bed and to sleep because he didn’t want to think about Harry any more that day.

  “Harry was one of those guys,” Billy said, “who you like but don’t think much about. You don’t look to hang around with him, or wait for him on the stoop, or ask him to go down to Kips with you. But now, after this, we’ll never forget him.”

  I remember thinking that I don’t want to die just to be never forgot.

  Harry’s family took him to Philadelphia to have a funeral, and none of Harry’s friends on 55th Street got to say goodbye to him.

  But now we’re saying goodbye to Ann. We are lined up single file, and Sister Cyril is pushing us gently past the casket. The boys and girls aren’t going fast enough and we are being jammed up like sardines. Suddenly, I see Ann. We were told by Sister to say a prayer for the repose of her soul as we walk past, but I can only think that she looks like she is just a pretty girl taking a nap in a white dress. I am stopped now in front of the casket, staring down at Ann. I want to pray and to ask God to make sure she’s happy, but there is something else on my mind, something I don’t like, and I can’t say any prayers as I see her there, her skin more white than the moon, as white as snow, and looking as cold. That’s what I don’t like. She looks so cold lying there, puffs of white silk all around her, under her head, curving around her shoulders, down over the sides of her arms, and then across her waist. She is like a cold angel on these clouds of silk, and I want to make her warm.

  We can’t see her legs. It is like her upper body is lying in a pie plate surrounded with meringue. I wish that she looked warmer and happier, that she was taking one of Sister Stella’s lessons where nothing matters unless you’re happy, and I want to push her thin hand up to her pretty face and put a finger near her mouth, so that Father Hamilton would get angy when he comes with his white socks to say the prayers, and he would yell at Ann and tell her to stop biting her nails, and to put her hands by her sides, and Ann would wake up and laugh.

  We pass by the family, and I see Ann’s mother sitting on the edge of a long row of wooden seats. Her eyes are closed and she is clutching a pair of rosary beads. Tears are coming from her eyes like from a fire hydrant. These are the real tenement tears, I am thinking, tears that come from her insides, insides that must be ripped apart, and I wish the baby Jesus would come to her and sit on her lap, because only the baby Jesus will come to sit on the lap of a mother who is looking at the face of her dead daughter in a funeral parlor.

  Sister Cyril ushers us to the back of the room, where we stand quietly. No one really knows what to say, anyway, and even if we did, we would be careful about speaking because all the mourners are whispering and Sister Cyril would be fast with a hard pinch if we talked.

  You learn two things early with Sister Cyril, the first that she will get you with no exception if you act up in the line, and the second is that if you tense up all your muscles when she approaches, she won’t get as mu
ch skin, and the pinching won’t hurt as much. Some days I walk around the whole day long making muscles like Charles Atlas.

  Father Hamilton enters the room and stands by Ann’s coffin to say a silent prayer. Ann’s hands are by her sides, so Father Hamilton doesn’t yell at her, thank God, because I don’t think Ann’s mother could take Father Hamilton yelling at her coffined daughter.

  Father Hamilton turns to us. I can see his white socks shining out beneath his cassock and I wonder if his feet itch. There is dead silence in the room. He turns his Chinese-apple face from side to side, I guess making notes in his mind about who is here, and what questions about their families he will ask when this is over.

  “Please,” Father Hamilton says, “kneel for the rosary.”

  I pull a pair of rosaries out of my pocket. I don’t know why I call it a pair. Maybe because it has all the beads together with the crucifix, so that there are beads for the Hail Marys, and the crucifix to remember why you are saying the rosary to begin with.

  But, wait a minute, there are also single beads that are used for either the Our Father or the Glory Be. So maybe it’s not a pair. Maybe it’s a set. A set of rosaries, but that doesn’t sound right.

  Most of the class is standing on a thick green rug, but I am off the rug and in a corner of the back of the room. Below me is a floor of hard wood, and I realize this as I kneel. I should have found a piece of the rug. And I realize, too, that my handkerchief is in my jacket pocket, which I left at school, so I don’t even have anything to put under my knees.

  “In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost,” Father Hamilton says.

  All the prayers, I am thinking as I bless myself, sound like one word when Father Hamilton says them. I don’t think he likes the English language very much, because he only speaks slowly when he is saying Latin.

  I am not kneeling for more than ten seconds when my knees begin to hurt.