Broken (4 page)

Seven years later

She was sitting in the pew near the votive candles—the little girl with the long blond hair. With her head hardly reaching the top of the pew, she sat motionless, schoolbooks beside her. She was ten years old, too young to sit alone in an empty church. She should have been outside playing with other children.

Anna Mae moved forward, putting one foot on the kneeler. She frowned and put her hands up to her face. There it was again: that same strange, confused feeling. She became aware of the rise and fall of her chest, the labored rhythm of her own breathing. In the dim lights she saw the tall wooden cross, the pulpit, the red carpet, and the candles.

She took her foot off the kneeler, turned around, and looked behind her. Empty. She ran her fingers across her schoolbooks then picked one up. The last thing she remembered was sitting at her desk, watching her third grade teacher writing a long division problem on the blackboard. Then suddenly the air had exploded with a deafening siren. Her teacher dropped the chalk and turned to the class. “Oh God! There’s been an accident at the mill!”

Anna Mae vaguely remembered her classmates running to the windows, trying to see the half a mile to the mill. During the chaos, Anna Mae was bumped and pushed until she fell between the desks. She remembered feeling dizzy, her hands tingling. That’s all she remembered.

Anna Mae put the book down and slid forward to kneel. She placed the palms of her small hands together. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Please help me to understand why I don’t remember. It makes me scared, God. Please! Help me!”

She heard footsteps at the back of the church. Moments later a figure genuflected at the end of the pew. Her heart skipped as her uncle sidestepped his way over to where she was kneeling.

“You little bitch!” He grabbed the back of her coat. “What the hell’ re you doin’ here? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Anna Mae scooped up her books as her Uncle Walter dragged her out of the pew. Her steps faltered as he pushed her toward the door. With her feet barely touching the ground, he dragged her down the church steps then shoved her into the car.

Sarah was waiting at the front door with her coat on. She snapped at Anna Mae. “I was ready to go next door and ask Olga to watch Davie. You know I hate to ask her for favors. Where were you?”

“Never mind where she was,” said Walter, pushing Anna Mae inside.

“How many times have I told you,” Sarah scolded. “You come straight home from school!”

“Come on, Woman!” Walter yelled from the curb.

Anna Mae didn’t know where her aunt and uncle were going but she was relieved. At least for now she would not be punished. As she hung up her coat, three-year-old David charged through the hallway, holding a toy airplane over his head and roaring, jet-like, to the curves and dips of the plane. When he saw Anna Mae, he squealed with delight. She knelt down to hug him. He dropped the plane and threw himself into her arms. How she loved this little boy with his curly brown hair and eyelashes as thick as brooms.

Anna Mae had been seven when David was born. Sarah had had a long labor and a painful delivery. When it was over Sarah seemed depressed. She didn’t even want to hold her new baby boy. To make matters worse, because of her age, it took her a good six months to recover. All the baby’s care-giving duties fell to Anna Mae. Sarah told her young niece over and over again, “I wasn’t much older than you when my sister—your mother—was born. My mother, your grandmother Maggie, made me take care of her. If I can do it, you can do it.”

Anna Mae hated when her aunt mentioned her mother. Because that’s all she ever did—just mention her. If Anna Mae asked questions, she was immediately told to shut up. The subject of her mother was taboo.

In the months that followed David’s birth, Anna Mae fed, diapered, and bathed the infant. She did it cheerfully. Anna Mae didn’t think of little Davie as a cousin. He was her brother.

Now, three-year-old David nuzzled into her shoulder. “Daddy’s mad. My Annie not home. All gone!”

“I wasn’t gone,” she assured him. “I came home, didn’t I?”

Stanley, who was almost fifteen, yelled from the dining room, “You’re lucky you didn’t get a beaten!’”

Ignoring Stanley, she kissed David on the cheek. He picked up his airplane and with a loud sonic boom and a shrill errrrrrr, flew it—roaring and sputtering into the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room and back to the front hall.

“Stop running or you’ll break your neck,” Anna Mae shouted on her way up to the second floor.

In the bedroom she shared with little David, she placed her books on her nightstand and walked to the window. The Lipinski house, like so many others, was built on a hillside overlooking the Monongahela River. From her window she could see across town to the steel mill. The yellow-red glow of the open-hearth furnaces stretched for three miles along the river bank. Eighty-foot smokestacks spewed enough ash to blot out the sun. Pipelines flushed their poisonous waste into the river, turning it an ugly brown.

Anna Mae thought that it was because her uncle worked in that terrible mill that he had to drink a lot of whiskey. Once he had spent all the grocery money on what Aunt Sarah called booze. Her aunt had run out of the house yelling that she was never coming back. She went next door to Olga’s. Later she came home because Uncle Walter wanted his supper.

Last summer her Uncle Walter and some other men walked around with big white signs and didn’t go to work. Her uncle said that the bosses at the mill were unfair. But he didn’t say it like that. He used a lot of bad words.

When Uncle Walter’s friends stopped marching around with the signs, she heard Aunt Sarah reading the newspaper to Olga. The strike had lasted for 116 days. Olga got mad when Sarah told her that Uncle Walter had been drunk for over half of them. Anna Mae vowed that when she grew up she would not let David work in that mill. Stanley could. She didn’t much care about Stanley.

Squinting, she looked to the west where the setting sun sprinkled golden flecks across the murky river. Anna Mae liked to think there were angels in the clouds casting sparkles over the water.

Frowning, she turned away from the window. Today it had happened again. She started out in one place, ended up in another, and didn’t know how she got there. When she was little she thought it happened to everyone. Once Aunt Sarah accused her of lying about not remembering. She said Anna Mae made it all up so she could get out of trouble. Sometimes she wasn’t even in trouble and her Aunt Sarah would still accuse her.

Sometimes Aunt Sarah forgot to buy something at Vinko’s. Stanley was always forgetting about his homework. But that wasn’t the same. Eventually she realized other people usually knew where they had been and what they had been doing. She knew now that her kind of ‘not remembering’ was a very bad thing. That must be why her real mother didn’t want her.

She asked God about it. However, everyone knows that God does not always answer questions. She promised God she would study hard and make good grades if He would help her remember. Although she received an A or B on every test, nothing changed. Maybe that wasn’t good enough for God. Or maybe He was just too busy.

“Anna Mae!” Stanley’s shrill voice made her jump. “Hey, dog face,” he called up the steps. “The rug rat is hungry. Get down here and feed him.”

She wanted to yell back at Stanley, but she was afraid of him. He was bigger and stronger and sometimes he hit her. She’d be a little fuzzy afterward. Most of the time she would remember what happened.

She yelled back. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

She changed out of her school clothes and pulled her long, blond hair into a ponytail. On her way down the steps she laughed as David, complete with sound effects, taxied his plane into its hanger under the living room couch.

“Come on, Davie,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I’ll fix you some supper.”

“Peanut budder. Pweaseeee! Peanut budder an’ jellwee!”

“I ain’t eatin’ thupper,” Stanley mocked from the dining room.

He was sitting with his feet propped on the dining room table, eating potato chips and drinking Coke. In fourteen years, Stanley’s hair had changed from light blond to buff and finally to brown. The sickly shine of too much Brylcreem failed to control his cowlick.

“That goofy George’s father got hurt at the mill,” he said. “You know George Siminoski. He’s a freshman.”

Anna Mae hardly knew George. He was one grade ahead of Stanley and the smartest kid in school. He was also fat, wore the thickest glasses in the whole world and had a big nose. The other students tormented him constantly and George would yell back at them in the same language her uncle used when he was mad.

Sometimes the other kids would tease her, saying George had a crush on her. The very thought made her shudder.

“What happened to George’s father?” she asked.

“Almost got burned to death,” Stanley said through a mouthful of potato chips.

“When?” she asked on her way to the kitchen.

“Today. I was with George when he found out.”

“What happened?” she asked from the kitchen, convinced that Stanley was exaggerating.

“His father got splashed with hot steel,” he explained as her head popped back through the doorway. “It was something about the ladle. It was crooked or something.’”

Anna Mae stepped back into the dining room where Stanley was guzzling his Coke. He put the bottle on the dining room table saying, “Two other guys jumped away just in time. They could have been burnt to a crisp!” He stuffed his mouth with chips and mumbled, “Guess who saved George’s father?”

Anna Mae stared at Stanley. How could he eat while he was telling her stuff like this?

He swallowed. “Guess!”

She shook her head.

“My dad saved Dobie’s life. The man was on fire and my dad ran straight into the flames and threw his jacket over him. And Dad doesn’t even like him! Can you believe that? Huh?”

Anna Mae could not imagine Walter helping anyone, let alone risking his own safety.

Stanley threw his head back to shake the last of the chips into his mouth. He wiped his face on his sleeve. “Anyway, Dad went back to the hospital to see if Dobie was still alive. That’s why they were looking for you.” He shrugged. “I guess they don’t trust me to watch Davie.” 

“You’re not supposed to call Mr. Siminoski ‘Dobie,” she said. “Aunt Sarah says not to call older people by their first names. And you’re not supposed to put your feet on the table either.”

“Dobie! Schmobi! What’s the difference?” He blew up the empty chip bag. “He is probably dead anyway.” He whacked the inflated bag. “Pow! Just like that. Gone!”

“You’re a creep!” she said and went back to the kitchen. She pulled a chair to the cupboard above the counter and stepped up to reach the peanut butter. Suddenly Stan was in the kitchen, shaking the chair so violently that she had to hold onto the shelf to keep from falling.

“Who you callin’ a creep?” Stanley shouted.

“Quit it!” she yelled.

“Say you’re sorry!”

“I’m SORRY!”

He let go of the chair and went back to the dining room.

Anna Mae climbed down and began fixing David’s sandwich. The older Stanley got, the meaner he became. He was becoming just like his father, who never seemed to care about anyone else’s feelings. Why did her uncle rush off to the hospital anyway? Why would he care about Mr. Siminoski?

She put the sandwich on a plate, set it in front of David then sat down across from him. She hoped that by the time Aunt Sarah and Uncle Walter came home they would have forgotten about being mad at her.

Walter and Sarah arrived at St. Luke’s Burn Unit twenty minutes after Dobie’s coworkers had gone. Across the hall from swinging doors that said Hospital Personnel Only, Irene Siminoski sat on a corner chair in the waiting room, her auburn hair pulled carelessly back from her wrinkled, tear-streaked face. Her fifteen-year-old son, George, sat next to her, wiping his thick glasses on the tail of his white shirt. Respectfully quiet, Sarah sat next to him. Walter stayed in the hall, pacing around with his hands in his pockets.

“Who’s that?” George asked, squinting into the hall.

“That’s my husband,” said Sarah.

“What’s he doing here?” George asked.

“He—ah—he’s your father’s friend.”

George put on his glasses. “No, he isn’t.”

The double doors to the treatment room swung open, sending the acrid smell of antiseptic into the hallway. A doctor in a yellow gown, splattered with orange betadine, snapped off his gloves and walked over to Walter. “I’m Doctor Heiss,” he said, pulling down his facemask. “Are you here for Mr. Siminoski?”

“I am,” said Walter. “But I’m only a friend. His wife is in the waiting room.”

George rushed out of the waiting room and pushed between the doctor and Walter, saying, “I’m his son. You talk to me.”

Doctor Heiss brushed aside the teenager who followed him into the waiting room. Mrs. Siminoski jumped to her feet. “How is he? How’s my husband?”

Dr. Heiss thoughtfully placed his soiled surgical gloves into a swing top wastebasket. George, a head taller than his mother, stood behind her. Walter and Sarah were a respectful distance away.

The doctor was talking so low that Walter couldn’t hear so he moved closer. “. . . and the burns on his arms and face are extensive. However, the chances of your husband making it through this, barring complications. . . ”

“What complications?” Walter interrupted.

George shot Walter a hostile glance.

“The most likely complication in third degree burns is infection. That’s why sterility is vital. As a matter-of-fact, I can only permit one person to see him now. And you need to be prepared. At this stage, well, it looks bad—very bad.”

Irene stepped forward. “I’ll go.”

When the doctor and his mother were gone, George turned to Walter. “Go home, Lipinski. We don’t need you here.”

Sarah placed her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “If there’s anything we can do . . .”

“Go home!” said George. “That’s what you can do!”

*     *     *

Twenty minutes later, Walter dropped his wife off in front of their house. He turned the car around and coasted back down the hill.

Except for the yellow glow of the furnaces, the sky was black and the chilly October air was heavy with the choking stench of sulfur. Company railroad cars rumbled and clanked northward along the embankment above Tavern Row. Except for the train and the usual din of the mill, the street was quiet. On the corner across from the mill’s main gate, the red neon Iron City Beer sign above Mickey’s Pub glowed eerily in the night.

Walter opened the pub door to the familiar blend of smoke, sweat, and stale beer. At the thirty-foot bar, elbow to elbow mill workers sat in front of their drinks with their heads down. Along the wall, more laborers sat at small tables, some still wearing their mill-hunk jackets and hard-hats. A young man with pink cheeks and blond hair quickly slid off his barstool so Walter could sit down.

The cigar-chewing bartender, in a thin T-shirt, put a double shot of Jim Beam on the bar in front of Walter. Then, with the skill of experience, he filled three mugs with perfectly foamed beer, sliding one to Walter and the others to the men on either side.

Walter reached into his jacket for his lighter. Before he retrieved the lighter a hand reached from behind with a ready flame. Walter lit the cigarette, parked it in an ashtray, and tossed the jigger of whiskey down his throat. He then placed a five-dollar bill on the bar and picked up his beer. The young blond man, who had given Walter his seat, asked politely, “How is Mr. Siminoski?”

“Alive,” said Walter.

To the left of Walter a hard-hat foundry worker, his entire face covered with black dust, looked at Walter through eyes circled in white. “Ain’t that the way your old man got killed?” he asked. “By a tipped ladle?”

“Nope,” Walter replied. “The bastard drank himself to death.”

The hard-hat shrugged and turned back to his beer. At a nearby table, Mike, a lanky Irishman, stood up raising his beer mug. With foam spilling over his callused hand, he looked around the room. One by one the mill workers rose to their feet and lifted their glasses. “To our hero, Walter Lipinski.” A gray haired pensioner removed his baseball cap and bowed his head, adding “And may God help poor Dobie.” The workers murmured a solemn Amen and seated themselves.

Walter tossed down another double. He pushed the five-dollar bill toward the bartender. The bartender pushed it back.

From the far end of the bar someone called out, “Lipinski! Hey! Lipinski! You just come out from tha hospital?”

Walter leaned forward to look down the bar to the brawny Italian, who, in order to keep a mass of jet-black curls off his forehead, wore his blue striped railroad cap backwards. Droplets of foam edged his full mustache and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. Walter took a long drink of cold beer and burped.

“What’ a you go back to hospital for?” the Italian called out as railroad men at that end of the bar gathered around him.

“Who wants to know?” Walter asked, although he already knew. What he didn’t know was what Salvador Tamero and his railroad friends were doing in Mickey’s Pub. Tamero, an engineer on a company train, very rarely went to any bar. Mostly he was known for being a family man. He was also Dobie Siminoski’s neighbor.

“You blind?” yelled the Italian. “You know damn-a-well who wants to know! Why’d ya go back to St. Luke’s? What you hope to find there? A dead compadre?”

Walter leaned back on his barstool and studied his own blurred image in the murky mirror, behind the row of whiskey bottles. He tightened his fist on the mug handle. “That’s none of your business.”

Salvador Tamero’s dark eyes radiated anger. “It is my business.”

Tamero’s railroad sidekicks were getting nervous. Some had backed away. Some avoided looking at either Salvador or Walter. A short, husky railroad man put his hand on Tamero’s shoulder saying, “That’s enough, Sal. The bastard ain’t worth it. When the doctor told us to go, Lipinski left with everyone else. I saw him!”

“So? My wife went back to the hospital to give Dobie’s wife her heart pills. She saw Lipinski and his wife going through Emergency.” Louder and directed straight at Walter, he added, “And they ain’t never been friends with Irene and Dobie!”

A wave of fear gripped Walter in the gut. Did Tamero know something? No. He couldn’t. Nobody was around when that ladle slipped. He drummed his meaty fingers on the bar.

“Calm down, Lipinski,” said the pensioner.

“Che voi anascondere?” shouted Salvador.

“What’d he say?” Walter asked leaning to his right.

“Nothing. Nothing important,” said the pensioner.

“Come on,” Walter nudged the older man. “What’d he say?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Tell me!”

The old man’s face paled as he reluctantly gave in. “He asked what you’re hiding.”

Walter slammed his mug on the bar, so hard that the beer splashed onto his jacket. He slid off his barstool. At the other end, Salvador Tamero also slid from his stool, his enormous size a fair match for Walter Lipinski.

“Knock it off,” warned the bartender.

Tamero sat back down. Walter, still standing, yelled, “Kurze gowna!”

Tamero ignored it.

“Wanna know what it means, Dago?”

Tamero remained silent.

“Chicken’a shit! Chicken’a shit!” Walter shouted, mimicking Tamero’s broken English.

The huge Italian stood up and quickly began elbowing his way through the crowd.

“Hey, you guys!” the bartender yelled, “Take it outside!”

The foundry worker with the black face and white eyes jumped in front of Walter in an attempt to shield him from the oncoming Italian. However, when the engineer emerged from the mass of sweaty laborers, Walter’s would-be protector vanished.

Tamero’s thick arms bulged against his uniform sleeves. “You need you head kicked in,” he growled, reaching for Walter. Two railroad workers stepped forward, each grabbing a muscular arm, saying, “It’s not worth it, Sal.”

As the railroad men held Tamero, Walter swung, his fist making solid contact, snapping Tamero’s head back and sending his cap flying. His black curls now in his face, he staggered sideways. Tamero’s two sidekicks lunged forward as Walter grabbed a chair, knocking a table over in the process. Walter threw the chair, sending glasses of beer and whiskey crashing to the floor. One railroad man managed to jump away. The other was caught in the side and he doubled over, gagging.

“Fuckin’ coward!” yelled the man who had dodged the chair. He then catapulted across the room and grabbed Walter by the throat. With tremendous force, Walter brought up his knee. The man fell and rolled around on the floor in agony. Tamero leaped over his friend and punched Walter square in the face. Walter reeled backward, his nose spurting blood. Three mill workers jumped Tamero, sending both themselves and Tamero smashing through a table. His hand gushing blood from having landed on a broken beer mug, Tamero lunged at the nearest leg and pulled down another hard-hat.

As Tamero struggled to his feet, a monster railroad track-man lifted the young blond kid and propelled him up and over the bar, shattering the row of whiskey bottles and clearing the mirror to reflect the free-for-all.

After six minutes of chaos, the brawl was beginning to wind down. Suddenly, the bartender, his white T-shirt splattered with Southern Comfort, climbed on top of the bar and yelled, “Cops!”

Everything stopped. The sirens grew louder—closer. Tables were up-righted, chairs shoved into place, jackets and hats retrieved from wherever they had landed. When the overhead light went on, a resounding groan filled the room. Men, shielding their eyes from the harsh glare, hollered, “Shut those damn lights off!”

The bartender, down from the bar and holding a mop, ignored them. The police arrived, decided that nobody was seriously hurt, had free drinks and left. Salvador Tamero, his cut hand wrapped in a bar rag, followed them out. Walter resumed his place at the bar where he picked up his half full mug that had miraculously survived the melee. He finished the beer in a long series of gulps.