The Witch of Little Italy (15 page)

He lay her down on the bed, a mattress on the floor, but beautifully made with lots of fluffy pillows stuffed into clean crisp pillowcases decorated with tiny blue flowers. A white chenille bedspread cushioned her with its soft tufts of knotted fabric. It all smelled of lavender. They were the linens of the Amores. Scavenged no doubt from the trunks upstairs.
The trunks upstairs?
Elly’s mind started to twist and turn … but then Anthony was kissing her again and easing her back against the soft fabric. The window was open, the afternoon breeze blowing in.

“Anthony, stop. Wait. We can’t…”

“Why?” he murmured. “It’s you Elly, it’s always been you. You’re my girl. You promised me.”

All she’d ever known was Cooper’s punishing love. His quick movements, his hand over her mouth. She closed her eyes and turned her head away from Anthony, in submission.

“No. Not like that,” Anthony said, turning her face back toward him. He kissed her again, softly, nudging her mouth open. He placed small kisses down the side of her neck, by her ear. Elly felt her body open up to him. She didn’t exactly know this feeling, but it was all over her. She was lost inside of his breath.

Anthony had calloused hands, but he moved them slowly, sitting her up, supporting her, lifting off her flowered sundress. He caressed her swollen belly.

“This baby is my baby,” he said, and with those words won over any part of Elly that was still hesitant. She fell softly underneath him as they became one body. His head to his shoulders to his arms to her side. Her hips to her neck to his waist to the arch of her back.

“We were married you know, on the beach,” he said after, tracing her face. Their naked bodies entwined, he was supporting himself on his elbow so he could stare at his prize.

“What?”

“Yep. When we were ten, we got married. Near the end of that summer. I took you back to Far Rockaway on the ferry,” he laughed, remembering.

“Did we have rings?”

“No. But we had feathers.”

“Feathers?”

“Yeah, we exchanged them instead of rings. It was Georgie’s idea. We wrote vows and everything.” He nuzzled her neck, “God, Elly, you smell just like you did when we were kids. Like a mermaid.”

“What does a mermaid smell like?” she asked, closing her eyes and opening her mind to him.

“Like sunshine and the beach and roses and magic.”

Elly closed her eyes and felt the breeze, Anthony’s grown-up hands on her torso and his little boy hand on her shoulder.

“I promise by the sea and all that is good in the whole world to love you forever. No matter what and no backsies.” It was a gray day that threatened rain. The ocean was wild and the sea spray christened the two children, sealing their marriage.

“I remember,” said Elly. And in that moment she opened like a flower. Her body and heart fully opened to Anthony. Her mind opened to the strange ways of the Amores of the Bronx. Her senses opened to the building and to all her surroundings. Elly opened, for the first time, to her silent, aching hopes and dreams for the baby cradled in her womb.

They fell asleep that way. Cake and coffee forgotten and married in their minds. A soft coo and a giggle woke Elly up.

The windows were open and there were two pigeons on the sill. The building was old, and the sills, all the molding in the apartments, were oversized. The birds were grooming each other and cooing. Elly looked at Anthony, still asleep. Her body ached for him again
. Crazy,
she thought. All those years of feeling nothing, and now … everything was coming at her, the storm bringing up relics of her life onto the shores of 170th Street.

The smells of the city, good ones, were coming through the window over the birds carried on the air. Baking bread and cool rain on hot tar. The birds were looking straight at her. Elly got up and put her dress back on. She looked at the birds. Surely they’d fly away? Nope, they were still there. Elly put her hand over her mouth to stifle a delighted giggle. She tucked her hair behind her ears. It was just getting long enough for that now, and she walked slowly to the window with one hand outstretched. She got so close … her fingers reaching out. Would they let her touch them, and then …

*   *   *

Babygirl was in the park with Uncle George and Aunt Itsy, Liz and Anthony. The birds were everywhere. They played a game. George would sprinkle the bread crumbs, gathering the birds in a huge flock, and then Liz, Babygirl, and Anthony ran at the birds yelling “One, two, three, you and me!!!!!!!!” A sacred cry that Itsy and George taught them from their own childhood. The birds would fly up all around them and for just a second, in the heart of the flock, Babygirl thought she could take flight, too. Soar above the rooftops of this amazing city that was her new home. Fly to the beaches of Far Rockaway and back again in seconds. The three spun together like separate arms of a pinwheel and then, when the birds were gone, they fell to the ground dizzy and laughing.

*   *   *

Elly shook her hands in front of the birds and stifled another set of giggles as they flew away. She watched them, leaning on the sill, up, up, up they flew.
All the way back to the beaches,
thought Elly.
I should have woken Anthony to show him. He’ll never believe me. They were so close!
A feather floated down from the sky on the breeze and in through the window past Elly’s nose. It bounced around a bit before it started its descent. Elly ran to catch it, proof of her incredible moment with the birds. It fell behind a low bookcase. Elly nudged it aside.

“Gotcha,” she whispered as she grabbed the feather that was stuck in the hinge of a small door. “What the…”

Elly pulled the door open and—

This was the
real
memory. Not the route Mimi’d taken her into the attic to look for maternity clothes. An alternate route. But why was it so important? What was still lurking there, just around the corner?

Elly went through the small door, like Alice into the beautiful garden at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

16

Itsy

At the cottage, Mama held us close on stormy nights. All us girls piled on her iron bed, making the feather mattress dip. Her thick, black braid pulled to one side. George tucked himself like a baby under one arm, Bunny—even though she was the oldest of us—on the other. Fee and Mimi nudged each other trying to get closer … but not me, I found space at the bottom of the bed, by their feet, so I could listen to her voice, like the ocean itself, like the storm outside. Her voice told us the stories that lived inside of them. She spoke of passion, of the summer when she was sixteen and met Papa on the beaches of Far Rockaway. Of a summer romance that showed her stability and love could walk hand in hand. That love wasn’t really what she’d been taught by her own family. It wasn’t supposed to be a Tasmanian devil of insecurity and obsession. “Life gets heavy,” she told us, “like hot summer nights. At first you toss and turn, but slowly you learn that if you keep very, very still your body can capture a random breeze that latches onto you and cools you for a moment. Infinite and blissful, your body soars to greet it and holds onto it, but it leaves. And that’s love. That’s what love does.”

She taught us well. Too well. Because that’s how I knew I loved Henry. I recognized it right away and wasn’t ignorant enough to deny it. And it ruined both of us—that love. And it killed our baby.

*   *   *

On a hot day, sometime toward the end of the summer of 1944, I was sitting on the back concrete step of the cottage looking over the small square yard. So like the yard in the Bronx, only we called that “The Garden” and this, “The Yard.” The difference being that “The Yard” was enclosed by lengths of picket fence where “The Garden” had high stone walls and iron gates. The pickets were wide and you could see fractions, strips of other people’s lives. I liked it better that way. On 170th Street there was nothing but stone and mortar. Thick ivy. No peeking. I found it suffocating.

But really, they were the same patches of earth in so many ways. Mama planted the same things on both properties and all us kids learned how to garden just like her. The gardens were plotted identically. Planted by moonlight and using the stars to sort out what went north, south, east, and west. The plants themselves came from Fairview and the gardens of Mama’s people—nowhere else. Witch’s gardens. They came first to The Yard, and then, when Mama married they were split and brought to the Bronx.

The flowers, abundant and hearty: roses, lilac, wisteria, black-eyed Susans, azaleas, rhododendron, hydrangea, simple daisies, phlox, bluebell. And the herbs: echinacea, bee balm, yarrow, feverfew, chamomile, hellborn, foxglove, hemlock, valerian, lovage, lavender, thyme, lemon balm, sage. Oh, yes … and belladonna.

The vegetables took the most work each season because the seeds had to be removed and then dried and sealed. Tomatoes, peppers, peas, and beans. All grown generation after generation in Mama’s family. Who knows where the seeds originated? It was a mystery. All we knew was that the garden was almost as important to Mama as we were, so we took it to heart and made sure the “Green” herbal ancestry stayed alive and viable year after year.

Mama’s garden was magic; we all knew it and she taught us its secrets. We all knew that when Papa was mad he was sure to get her lavender scones. He’d settle down and then get silly. The next morning he’d be sick as a dog and need to sleep the whole day away.

And George with his rages, she made the tea that soothed him and brought down the beast. I made that tea for him every day until that last day. The day he pushed my hand away and said good-bye.

Sitting on the stoop looking out over The Yard, waiting for the sheets to dry on the line. That’s where I was when I saw him through the fence. Henry. It was broad daylight but I didn’t care. He looked like he’d come straight off the train to
me
. No one else. He was on furlough. Off till Christmas, he said.

I ran to him, the heavy, wet sheets smacking me in the face. He threw down his heavy army bag and lifted me up into the sky so that I blocked out the sun.

“You still my girl, Itsy?”

I couldn’t talk. The tears were choking me. I nodded like a lunatic and cried. He brought me down slow so that our faces met and he kissed me through salty tears. In his kiss I was home. I found my real home. All throughout that fall of 1944 we were reunited, George, Henry, and me. I barely saw the rest of my family at all. I don’t think I went into the Bronx once. Sometimes I wondered if Mama missed me, because I didn’t hear from her. But I also knew Mama favored Bunny and George. We all knew it. Bunny because she looked like a Green. Not one bit of Italian at all. She had Mama’s stormy eyes. “She sees the world the same way,” Mama’d say. And George … well. He came from God. Sometimes I felt like Mama blamed me for being born first. For tricking her into thinking she was done … for ignoring the other pains. Sometimes I really thought I wasn’t meant to be born at all.

I just know that’s the reason why it was so easy for her to push me away when she found out about Henry. So easy for them all to push me away. All of them but George. My sweet, sweet brother.

Anyway, I was glad to be away from her that overlapping time of 1944. None of the real-life magic that occurred would have been possible under Mama’s nose. But now, now that I’m thinking about it, she must have known all about it. It was probably part of the future read to her by Willow Bliss. Ah … things make so much sense when we look at them from far away, hindsight
is
a wonderful thing. So she knew. She knew all along. And she gave me that gift. Because no matter how it turned out, it was a gift. If I had to look at a life where I’d never known Henry. Never been touched by him. Never to run on the beaches with freedom and sea air blowing all around, holding hands in between George and Henry? I wouldn’t want to live that life. I choose the pain. I
chose
the pain.

Henry had to ship out right after Christmas, so Christmas Eve we spent together, just the two of us in our little world. George was with Mama, of course.

I strung up paper lanterns I’d bought at Woolworths, and I made us a fine dinner. Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, red wine. I used up all my rations for that one meal.

Sitting at the table, our favorite song came on the radio. “Dance with me?” he asked.

“Forever,” I said. Henry was a wonderful dancer. He literally swept me off my feet. We danced while Bing crooned:

I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places

That this heart of mine embraces all day through.…

I stared at him while he twirled me around and hummed along. I could never get enough of his face. The deep brown eyes, lighter than mine. The color of his skin, soft and supple, an invitation to touch like velvet on a bolt. The defined chin, his eyebrows, always arched and playful, guessing I was up to some sort of trick. But it was his mouth. From that first kiss against the Oak tree. From the way his mouth formed my name. Not my nickname. Not Itsy. The way it stretched and caressed out my
real
name. The name I was born with, the name my love called out that Christmas Eve as we conceived the child that would be born too soon.

“Let me see your palm,” I asked as we lay naked side by side.

He smiled and held out his hand. The cool, smooth underside of his palm, the color of my skin after a long summer. “What are you looking for, baby? My love line belongs to you.”

I was too busy staring at the truth I’d known my whole life. I pulled his hand and put it against my cheek. “Don’t go back, Henry. Let’s run away. Let’s hide. One, two, three, you and me, right?”

He stroked my cheek. “You lookin’ for a lifeline you can’t find? You think I’m gonna die over there?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m not. I’m not going to die over there, Itsy. I’m a good soldier.”

And I smiled at him. I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do. He
was
a good soldier … but he wouldn’t die in battle. He’d die in his barracks. Friendly fire from a redneck racist. But my Henry was no coward. He wasn’t going to run away from his duty to his country because of what I saw or didn’t see in his palm. So I had to let him go. I had to make love to him and then let him walk away. He’d die overseas in a world of hate and genocide, far away from me and George. Far away from our beaches on Far Rockaway. In a place where I’d never be on one side and George on the other as we ran and yelled “One, two, three, you and me.”