The Witch of Little Italy (29 page)

“What’s the matter, Elly?” asked Anthony, concerned.

Elly shook her head, tying to push away the truth that was unfolding in her mind.
It couldn’t be
 … She had to see it with her own eyes. She couldn’t simply trust her instinct.
Trust then verify … trust then verify …
she told herself as she rounded the stone and read its chiseled verification.

George Amore: Always a Child at Heart

And the newly carved name:

Elizabeth Amore: Beloved Sister

“Liz?”

“Liz?” echoed Anthony.

A pain went through Elly. A pain she’d never felt. She doubled over. All Elly wanted was to run. To run away and find Liz. But of course, she wouldn’t be there. The closer Elly’d been to putting all the pieces together, the more distant Liz had become. Liz … Itsy …

“She’s in the ground? Oh no! She’s in the ground now?” Elly fell to her knees, another pain ramming through her abdomen.

Anthony ran to her in two bold, magnificent strides. He scooped her up and held her close to him like a baby as he ran for Georgie’s car.

*   *   *

Elly Amore was in labor. As she writhed in the hospital bed, Mimi told Elly the story of the nicknames. She spoke in a soft voice that helped Elly through her contractions. “They called Bonita, Bunny and Fiona, Fee. Filomena, well that one belongs to me, and Itsy? Itsy’s name was Elizabeth.”

Deep in the throes of childbirth Elly found herself doing cartwheels with Liz and Itsy on the beach of Far Rockaway. Slowly, as she began to push, Itsy and Liz cartwheeled into one person. Elly Amore’s lifelong best friend. Elizabeth Amore of the Bronx.

*   *   *

“She’s running a fever.”

Elly heard someone say a million miles away.

She was sleeping and couldn’t wake up, tired of fighting. There were murmurings from the real world, snippets of language that acted like horrible anchors yanking her back to the surface of the heavy topside. She wanted to laze about in her dream, it was lovely there. She was in a flowering meadow surrounded by high pines. Elly knew the ocean wasn’t far, she could feel the tide in her blood and her pulse was the waves—or was it the other way around? She was watching a little girl dance. A little girl with a mop of curly red hair.

“Come dance with me, Mama! Come dance,” she laughed.

Elly could smell her. Cotton and milk and sweet, wild, meadow sage.

“But if I dance with you now, we won’t be able to dance later, love.”

The child stopped turning and Elly drank in her features. Soft nose, lovely cheekbones, a dimpled chin—Elly’s own green eyes. “You are right, Mama,” said the child who began to spin in circles once again. The skirt of her white dress flying up into the air, “What are you waiting for? Go back already!”

“—Elly! Wake up! Do it for me. It’s time!” Anthony was shouting at her. His dark eyes focused with concern. His hands pushed on the bed, bouncing Elly’s whole self back to the world of the living.

“Time for what?” she asked.

Anthony started laughing and crying at the same time. “You’re back!” And then over his shoulder, “Mimi! She’s back!”

“What’s going on?” asked Elly.

“You’ve been sick, Elly, don’t worry. It happens sometimes during labor. Infections. You’re okay now and you must concentrate because the doctors say it’s time for the baby to come out,” said Mimi, coming to her side.

A sharp, undeniable pain shot through Elly’s pelvic bones. “Oh God!”

“Do you think you can push?” asked a nurse.

Elly thought of the child in the field. Her feverdream. The thing she wanted most in the world.

“Did my mother come?” Elly asked.

“No, Elly, I’m sorry, babe,” said Anthony.

She channeled her hurt and anger into the next phase of her life. “You bet your ass I can push,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Do you want to listen to some music?” asked the nurse.

“Do you have any Procol Harem?” asked Anthony.

“Ah, you’ve lucked out! I’m an old hippie,” said the doctor, a man with kind eyes and a close beard. “What song?”

“‘Whiter Shade of Pale’?” asked Anthony.

“Hey, that’s one of my favorites, too. How do you know that one? It was before your time.”

Anthony shot a thumb at Elly “She taught it to me.”

“I did?” said Elly, propped up and ready for the next contraction.

“Yes, a long time ago. When we were little. It was our wedding song.”

“She’s got good taste in music,” said the doctor, who positioned Elly’s legs so wide she thought she could touch the walls with her toes.

“Will you help me, Anthony?” asked Elly.

“All the time, every day, forever,” he said and then sat her up so he could sit behind her. As she pushed he leaned up with her and whispered the lyrics in her ear:

That her face at first just ghostly,

Turned a whiter shade of pale.

The baby was born with a shock of red hair. She came into the world quietly, dancing on her mother’s dreams.

Mimi put her head next to her granddaughter’s and asked, “What should we name her, Elly? Should we name her Babygirl like we named you all those years ago?”

“No, Mimi, she’s still in here,” Elly placed her hand softly on her own chest. “She doesn’t need a redo. Itsy does. Let’s call her Elizabeth.”

“Okay, but what will her nickname be?” asked Mimi. “It seems we’ve used them all up. Mama was so good at this. You are like her, my Elly. You come up with something.”

“Bitsy?” suggested Elly.

“Too much like Itsy,” said Mimi.

“Lili?”

“Sounds like a baby name,” said Mimi.

“Oh and Babygirl wasn’t?” teased Elly.

“How about Elizabeth the Second?” suggested Mimi.

“Oh, it’s very regal. I like it. But a little long, no? And QEII is a ship.”

Elly thought for a second and then her eyes lit up, “Mimi, you’re a genius! Let’s call her your majesty. Maj for short. How do you like it, Maj? Oh Majestic Magical Maj.”

“I once knew a woman in Holland with that name,” said Mimi with a wicked grin.

“Mimi? You’ve been to Holland?”

“Oh yes! Itsy and Fee, too. We went to Amsterdam … you know … some herbal research.”

Elly laughed quietly, “You are full of surprises, aren’t you, Mimi?” And then to Maj, “Hello little Maj, hello redo,” said Elly to her baby. She took Mimi’s hand and placed it on the swaddled bundle. “Tell me, Mimi, what do you see? Do you see anything I should know about?”

“No,” said Mimi, who took baby Maj from Elly and cradled her. “I don’t see anything but happiness.”

Elly sat back in the hospital bed and pouted a little. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway, would you?”

Mimi took her hand and placed it on the swaddled bundle. “What do
you
see, my Elly?”

A shot of memory not her own ran from Mimi’s hand into Elly’s mind. “I see you, Mimi. You going softly into Carmen’s room after she fell asleep. Carefully picking her up out of her crib so’s not to wake her and rocking her in the rocking chair. Holding her close to you, until her heartbeat and yours were one. Only you didn’t know, Mimi—one time you
did
wake her, but she pretended to stay asleep just to feel the love come out of you.”

Mimi was wiping away tears with her index finger, shifting the weight of the new baby and holding her close while Elly remembered. “It’s why she wanted the chair,” said Mimi. And Elly, crying with her grandmother now, nodded in agreement.

“We should call her, Mimi. We should tell her we love her no matter how she feels about us. Shouldn’t we?”

Mimi’s face drew tight. Elly knew the look. It belonged to Carmen, too. Mimi was pulling back. She was afraid she’d revealed too much. She was closing the door. Elly wanted to say
“Mimi! Don’t close the door!”
but it was too late.

“Here,” Mimi said, pushing an envelope at Elly. “She wrote you a letter.”

“Who?”
Carmen? Was it Carmen?

“My sister, Itsy. I guess she had more to say to you. More things I don’t know.” Mimi’s tone was raw and gruff.

Elly tried not to look disappointed that it wasn’t from Carmen.

“How about I read it out loud, Mimi? And then we can both listen to what she had to say.”

Mimi was already at the door to the hospital room. “No, if she meant it for me it would have
Mimi
scrawled across it with her chicken scratch. It clearly says
Babygirl
.”

And then she was gone, and Elly was left alone with her new baby cradled in one arm, a letter from her dead Aunt in the palm of her hand, and her fiancé snoring on the blue, vinyl couch.

“What do you say, Maj? Let’s read Itsy’s letter.”

Maj looked at her mother and made an “O” with her rosebud lips.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

Elly opened the envelope.

33

Itsy

In many ways it
was
a letter from Carmen, only Itsy delivered it using The Sight.

Dear Babygirl, (I know you’re grown and have a grown-up nickname, but you’ll always be Babygirl to me)

I’m dead now. As you read this letter, I’m dead. I don’t think it feels the way it sounds. At least I hope not. The words in Italian,
morto
or even
inanimato,
seem a better fit. They end in vowels. Vowels are open letters that allow for sound and air. Mama always said death would be like that. Open. The whole universe cracked right open and there on a silver platter for all of us. Part of me can’t wait.

I need to talk to you about Carmen. I had a dream a few nights ago, and it was the kind of dream that wasn’t a dream at all. The Sight comes through strong while we dream. Make sure you can tell the difference. Those dreams that are related to the real world, the ones that help us figure out things we simply can’t grasp in our waking hours, those are the best kind.

So I was dreaming about being dead, and I was flying. Flying around everywhere, and I
knew
I was dead. So I began looking for Mama. But who do I find? Carmen. Carmen in all of her multicolored dissatisfaction. Carmen with a gray plume of smoke rising out of her head. She’s bitter, yes. And selfish, too. But in my dream I could see it all, I know we made her that way.

She had potential, and we ripped it from her because we were afraid.

I travel alongside her. She’s on a plane back to Europe. I can watch her through the window as I fly right beside.

Carmen is crying on the plane. She’s sick about leaving you behind. She has the mother knot that wants to be with her own child as she bears a child of her own. But Carmen runs from pain. She runs from love. She runs from the knot.

It was such a betrayal, that day on our stoop when you didn’t know her. Carmen took it on herself to trust you. To pour all of Carmen, the good and bad, into you, Babygirl, no matter how small you were. And then, when I did what I did, I took Carmen away as much as I took you away from yourself. You’d think I’d have known better. Every spell has a ramification outside of what you intend. Many are bad. It’s the way the world works, Mama told us so. Remember that, okay?

Flying next to her I can see Carmen as who she really is. She’s not so bad. I know she cries more for herself than for you, Elly. Or Mimi. Or even me, though she never really knew me well. I follow her off the plane. She wants to call New York. Wants to see if you’re okay … what sex the baby is. But she can’t.

I hear her mantra. “I’m alone and okay. I’m alone and okay.”

“No, you’re not, Carmen.” I place an invisible hand over hers as she grabs her luggage from the conveyor belt. She stops and catches her breath. Looks around. She shrugs her shoulders. Shrugs off The Sight. Only then do I realize she’s always had it, too. Just never opened herself up to it.

We walk into her flat in London. It’s a beautiful place. I think it’s a shame Mimi won’t see it. Mimi and Carmen both like fine, sparkling things. It’s a similarity they don’t even know they share.

In an alternate reality I can see them, giggling over china in a catalogue. Shopping for clothes together at Bergdorf Goodman. There’s only one thing in Carmen’s flat that doesn’t seem to fit, and she has it center stage. Right in front of a bank of windows. My own dear Mama’s rocking chair.

In my dream I try to think into her mind. Even though I know I’m seeing the future, I’m hoping my energy can stay with her. I send a silent hope.
Please hear me, Carmen. Please hear me. For once in your life, forgive us. Forgive us, forgive yourself, and remember who you really are. Elly needs you.

I fly back on air that feels like oceans and leaves and cotton, too. I’m in the hospital room with you. Anthony is asleep. But not the baby. Not Maj. You and Maj (it’s a wonderful nickname, you’re good at it, like Mama was) are reading my letter.

Stop crying, Elly. Please. Happy and sad walk hand in hand.

I touch Maj’s upper lip with my finger.

Mama always said that babies chose where they were to go. That they all lived together in the guff and that when they were born the birthing angels placed their fingers on ghostling lips and said “Shhhhh, don’t tell.”

“That’s what makes the dimple there,” she’d said.

“But why would babies want to come somewhere to die?” We’d ask her.

“Babies are wise souls in the guff, full of sight. They can see the whole picture of the lives they touch. Sometimes a baby needs to come all the way from the guff and into a woman’s womb even when they know they won’t be born. But no matter—the soul did its job and it goes into the guff to wait again.

“Perhaps that’s what happened to all my people. We didn’t listen very well, and we remember echoes of the future from our time in the guff.”

Mama was the wisest person ever to be born. In my opinion. But you run a close second, Babygirl, even if you don’t know it, yet.