Leave Me by Dying

by Rosemary Aubert

  “The play is tomorrow,” Arletta breathed. “So we got a crisis here, and if we have to work all night, we will.”

  My mother, without looking up again, nodded deter-minedly.

  “How did you end up in this crisis?” I asked, now trying hard not to smile. The two of them were as intense as a couple of Roman gladiators, if the violence with which they stabbed their needles into the innocent white cloth was any indication.

  “Mrs. Minelli was supposed to sew all the Apostles and all the centurions,” my mother explained, keeping her head bowed. “She took the cloth in February. Nobody thought about it, but maybe we should of, because this was Mrs. Minelli’s first year of working on the pageant. What we didn’t know was that her husband forbid her from sewing.”

  “What?” I asked. “What could be wrong with sewing?”

  “Nothing if it’s for your own family,” my mother explained. “But Minelli knew that some women do piece-work for factories at home. He knew that sometimes the women make a lot of money and buy makeup and perfume and even movie tickets and magazines. He said he makes the money in his house and he decides who spends it and what they buy. So when he saw Mrs. Minelli sewing, he took all the cloth and rolled it up in a big ball and threw it out the back window into the alley.”

  “And Mrs. Minelli had to sneak out of bed after midnight and go down and get it,” Arletta said, picking up the story and telling it with a great deal more disgust than was evident in my mother’s tone.

  “Yeah,” my mother said, “and she hid the costumes in the basement until Minelli went to work. Then she brought them to the church. That was only today. Mrs. Minelli is forbidden to come to the play, and me and Arletta, we got to sew all this by tomorrow morning. The play is at noon.”

  “Can I help?” I offered, stunned.

  Both females burst out laughing as if the idea of my sewing was too funny to contemplate, which, when I thought about the matter, it was.

  “Michele says garment workers are among the most abused employees in the whole city,” Arletta commented. “He says Toronto is full of Italian women working like slaves sewing clothes for rich people to wear and not even getting enough money to buy a new dress for themselves at Easter or Christmas.”

  That sounded like something Michele would say.

  “How come you’re home so early, Gelo?” my mother asked.

  “Early?” I answered. “It’s after six o’clock!”

  Her eyes shot up from her work and sought the ornate clock, an anniversary gift from Uncle Salvatore, that sat on the buffet among the togas.

  “Oh, no!” she cried. “I forgot to cook supper!”

  She looked about to burst into tears. Surely it was the first time in her married life that she’d neglected this duty. Her face was pale, her features bereft, as if she’d spoiled her flawless record and could never now erase the blot on her householder’s reputation.

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you, Ma,” I said. “If it mattered at all, Pa would have been in here complaining by now.”

  “He got mad and left when he found out we were going to help Mrs. Minelli disobey her husband,” Arletta said.

  I felt a stab of anger at this piece of news. I didn’t know what infuriated me more, the Italian men who thought they had the right to control their women or the women who put up with it.

  “I’m going to DeCamio’s to get pizza for us,” I said. “And when I come back, I would really be happy if the two of you took a break from the sewing and sat down with me and Michele and ate. Will you do that?”

  My mother nodded as if to say, When your husband isn’t home, you obey your son. Not much of a victory over the old ways, but at least we did enjoy the meal. It wasn’t until we’d finished that I remembered the black car and the ominous stranger.

  “Oh, I forgot!” my mother exclaimed, jumping up from the table. “That was Uncle Salvatore’s travel agent. He brought the plane tickets for Monday—for New York City!”

  Michele, Arletta and I crowded around my mother, who displayed the exotic items as though they were rubies, which, to us, they were. I hadn’t dared to think much about this trip, in case Uncle Salvatore hadn’t been serious about sending us. But now the trip was a fact and Michele and I had a mere three days to get ready.

  “As soon as the pageant is over tomorrow,” my mother promised, “I’ll help you both pack.”

  We groaned collectively at the thought of our mother doing yet more work, but she pointed out that it would only be a little extra washing and ironing. When Michele mentioned that we’d have to get to the bank to change some Canadian money to American, my mother smiled and gave us a second envelope the travel agent had delivered. It was stuffed with traveler’s checks in U.S. funds.

  I waited until all this excitement subsided before making a move to sneak off to meet Gleason and Billy at the coffeehouse. I should have been concerned about taking a vacation at such a critical juncture in my schoolwork, but a week’s interruption was not going to do my project serious harm, as the libraries at the university would be closed for Easter week anyway. I had hoped to have my proposal ready before Easter, but Professor Kavin seemed to be allowing me more time to work up the Johnson matter. And Kavin wouldn’t be on my back during the holiday. Being Jewish, he didn’t celebrate Easter, but he’d still take time off and so would Magistrate Tuppin, as the courts would also shut down.

  In the end, I was unable to leave the house alone. Not only did Michele tail after me, insisting that Billy was his “client” as much as mine, but so did Arletta. She said that if I really cared so much about the rights of women, I’d make it up to her for being excluded from the New York trip by taking her to the coffeehouse. She said there was no school on Good Friday and promised my mother she would get up at five to finish the sewing if she could go with us. Michele assured my mother that no alcohol was served at the coffeehouse.

  Many years later, when I was an established lawyer soon to be elevated to the bench, I was never seen without my entourage: juniors, students, clerks, secretaries, sometimes even my barber or my tailor if I was really busy and couldn’t see them at their premises. In those days I never thought about my humble beginnings except to be ashamed of them. But now it amuses and touches me to think of my retinue that night: my faithful retainers Michele, Arletta and Gleason, who seemed unusually quiet, almost sullen, as we made our way to St. Nicholas Street and up the narrow staircase of the coffeehouse.

  The place was jammed. Someone had placed a red-and-white-checkered cloth and a candle on each table. In the flickering light, I scanned the room in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of Billy. He’d told me he was there every Thursday and I’d taken him at his word, but finding him was not going to be easy.

  The situation was made worse by the behavior of Arletta, who attached herself to Gleason like a barnacle and kept staring at him with the big moon-eyes she’d previously reserved for George Harrison. To top matters off, Michele ran into one of his buddies and the two of them got into some sort of an argument about whether Dr. King’s boycott of Alabama was hurting his cause more than helping it. They were so loud that the emcee had to ask them to keep it down.

  When we finally got a seat, we were crammed together with three couples at a table near the back. In the frequent breaks between sets performed by earnest folksingers, Gleason asked me more than once what we were doing there. He seemed alternately bored and nervously attentive to the shifting crowd, which eventually coughed up both Billy and Kee Kee.

  I didn’t know which of the two was the more beautiful. I had no notion of the traditional dress of the Cree and I harbored a suspicion that no one else in that packed room did either. But even if their dress was more Hollywood than Indian, Billy and Kee Kee were smashing. She wore a white dress fringed on every edge so that it moved like water at her slightest motion. A swirling design of beads in white, silver, crystal and turquoise radiated from the neck of the dress across her shoulders and down over the curves of her small bre
asts. Her long, thick, perfectly straight jet-black hair caught the low light of the room and shot back glimmers of silver and deep blue. I saw Arletta, who spent a great deal of time ironing her hair, stare openmouthed at the slick curtain that covered Kee Kee’s beautiful head and obscured the features of her face, which always seemed turned away from the viewer.

  As for Billy, it was hard to imagine anyone more handsome. Woven into his fine, long black hair was a slim strip of white leather from which dangled two sleek feathers, one white, one gray, bound together by a narrow string of blue and crystal beads. Billy wore blue jeans like the rest of us, but his fringed white shirt was similar to Kee Kee’s dress and bore the same intricate beading. Later I learned they had made these clothes themselves.

  We had only a few moments for introductions because both Billy and Kee Kee were immediately called to the stage. They were announced as special guests from “up north.” Kee Kee read first, a simple, touchingly naive poem about spring. Her voice was so soft and low that, sitting at the back as we were, we missed half of what she said. Had she not been so lovely, it might have been irritating to listen to her, clearly struggling with her shyness in order to make her point, which I took to be her profound love for the person who made every day a spring day, to wit: Billy Johnson.

  Hard as it was to tear my eyes from Kee Kee, I did so that I could see what effect she was having on my companions. Gleason was studying the couple on stage as if transported to a land inhabited by beings even more beautiful than he. Arletta was staring at Gleason with a disappointed look on her face. Michele was gazing off into space as if his body were in the coffeehouse and his mind on the barricades with Dr. King. Suddenly I was filled with the overwhelming conviction that I was wasting my time, if not my life. I listened to Billy’s poems, which were tiresomely political. I decided there was little to be gained by hanging around here and was about to whisper to Gleason that I was leaving, when the emcee popped into the spotlight and called yet another break, promising that Billy would be “back in five.”

  Before Billy reached our table, Gleason was on his feet with his hand outstretched. The crowd was so noisy I couldn’t hear what passed between Billy and Gleason as they clasped hands and moved away together toward the coffee bar.

  Kee Kee sat down beside me but said nothing. Michele and Arletta were nowhere to be seen. The allotted five minutes of the break stretched to ten and during the whole time, Kee Kee and I sat without speaking.

  Finally, just as the lights dimmed, an animated Gleason took the chair Michele had vacated on the other side of me. “I see what you mean, Portal,” Gleason said. “We can help Billy. We can do this tribal law versus American law thing. We can get Billy to come with us when we present the case to the faculty. We can have him testify on his own behalf—as if it were an immigration-type proceeding. We can . . .”

  I frowned at Gleason. What was he up to now? First he had acted sullen and bored. Then suddenly he bubbled with enthusiasm. I feared he was still toying with me, still condescending, making fun of me, that he had ulterior motives to behave so agreeably. But when the lights dimmed and Billy returned to the stage, Gleason’s attention was even more intense than it had been before. He sat spellbound as Billy read poem after poem of his own, then announced he would conclude by reading a poem written by someone else, a poem that was a favorite of his and Kee Kee’s. He held it up and read:

  If you love me, leave me a kiss in the white cup of morning.

  If you love me, leave me

  As the river leaves rock, flowing free

  But remembering the shape of stone.

  If you love me, leave me

  As spring snow leaves the wood:

  White pulsation, fading to crystal, to mist, to absence.

  If you love me,

  Leave me by dying.

  I could not see Gleason’s eyes in the darkness of the room, but I knew, nonetheless, that he was looking at me, that a message was passing between us, an urgent agreement to get Billy to tell us at once whose words those were.

  But by the time the houselights came up again and the crowd thinned enough to walk through, both Billy and Kee Kee were gone.

  THERE WAS DARKNESS at noon the day Christ died. I once saw a picture captioned, “A rare nighttime painting of the death on the cross.” It wasn’t night then and it wasn’t night now as we assembled in Mount Carmel Church, anxious to see the result of my mother’s hard work, but a gloomy dimness seemed to suffuse the sanctuary.

  Michele, Arletta and I occupied one long wooden pew that smelled of furniture polish. We were among the first, and though we had been trained our whole lives not to talk in church, Arletta seemed unable to keep silent or to keep still, either.

  “How old is he, Gelo?” she whispered. “Just tell me how old he is.”

  “As old as I am. Which means he’s too old for you. So whatever you have in mind, forget it.”

  “Is he seeing anybody?”

  “How should I know?” I thought about the many girls who’d been as interested in Gleason as my sister appeared to be. He certainly could not be said to be “seeing” any of them, though he led an active social life escorting the debutantes of Rosedale to the innumerable balls and cotillions, proms and teas that crowded their calendars.

  “If he isn’t, then maybe I have a chance?” Arletta giggled excitedly and I sincerely hoped she was kidding. She had as much of a chance of dating someone in Gleason’s social league as she had of dating George Harrison!

  “Where is he, anyway?” She wiggled and squirmed and looked over her shoulder. “He said last night he was coming. So how come he’s not here?”

  That was a good question. The church began to fill, mostly with women bearing votive candles that they’d carried through the neighboring streets. Gleason was nowhere to be seen among the worshippers, devout Italians dressed all in black for this solemn service on the holiest day of the year. Had he forgotten? I heard the organist strike a mournful opening chord and doleful music filled the church.

  Behind us, the old church’s main door, which was unlocked only for special occasions, opened with an ominous, rusty-sounding moan. All heads turned, anticipating the first marcher in the Passion Play procession, traditionally the parish pastor dressed as Pontius Pilate.

  I felt an irrational rush of fear. What if, late as usual, Gleason came bounding through that door, his careless arrival delaying, disrupting, the majesty of the ceremony? My eyes swept the packed church, scanned the hundreds of devout, expectant parishioners, some of whom had stood praying outside the church since before dawn.

  The great door creaked again.

  Turning, I saw Father Rocco in the Pontius Pilate costume that Arletta had completed at six-thirty that morning. I saw a legion of Roman centurions, or what passed for a legion and what passed for centurions in the Toronto, Canada, of MCMLXV Anno Domini. I saw twelve Apostles, the one in seedy black obviously meant to be the traitorous Judas Iscariot. I saw a really pretty Mary Magdalene and several other good-looking weeping women. Bringing up the rear was my mother, whose feigned agony nearly broke my heart. Finally I saw Stefano DeMario of Bishop Bianco High School, a senior student who had won the 1965 “Why I Want to Be Jesus” essay competition.

  Without intending to, I silently offered a prayer that God would somehow allow me to protect the innocent people of the world, people like these who humbly offered devotion in their naive way without ever giving thought to the evils that lay so near the doors of their church.

  I lifted my head and saw out of the corner of my eye that Gleason had arrived, was in fact sitting beside Arletta. I glanced at her face. She seemed subdued. I glanced at him. At first I could see nothing unusual in his appearance. I quickly realized that he must have come to the front door of the church, seen the procession and walked around to the side entrance, then slipped into our pew.

  Who among us had not done the same if we found ourselves late for church? It could not be this that had troubled my sister.
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br />   My attention was drawn away as my mother passed our pew. Deeply immersed in her starring role in the pageant, she couldn’t be expected to see us, but she did. Her glance shifted from the sorrowful Stefano and settled on us. The pride in her eyes was unmistakable. To have been chosen to be Mary and to have three strong children in church to watch!

  But who was this fourth young person? Her glance fell on Gleason. I saw the sorrow return to her lovely features. Naturally I assumed she was returning to her role-playing.

  I looked back at Gleason. I saw his gaze had met my mother’s. And I saw, too, something strange about his eyes. They looked dark, smudged. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, but his face in contrast seemed unnaturally bright, as if altered by the light of the church. The more glances I surreptitiously sent his way, the stronger became the feeling that he was in some way strangely changed from the previous night. He wore one of his usual fine silk suits, but the shirt beneath the jacket wasn’t white. Could it be purple? Pink?

  And then I saw that he was wearing one of the rings he’d stolen from the morgue. He was wearing it on the third finger of his left hand—the wedding-ring finger! No wonder Arletta was sad.

  Before the altar, the centurions were jostling to get into proper alignment on the steps that led up to the communion rail. Pontius Pilate, the narrator of the piece, began to read from the text taken from the Gospel, and all the actors, including my mother, nervously kept their eyes glued to the pastor, waiting for their cues.

  I became engrossed in the pageant but was aware that as it proceeded, Arletta seemed to move closer and closer to me, which meant she was moving farther and farther from Gleason.

  Michele, who of course would have refused to come to church at all had he not been warned that his absence would “ruin everything” for my mother, hoarsely whispered to me, “What’s gotten into Arletta?”