The Witch of Little Italy (31 page)

Mimi sat back and relaxed. “Okay, your turn, Elly. What did my sister say to you all those years ago?”

“Well … I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave you and Anthony, the life I had here. I watched the taxi pull up and I gripped the iron bars. Then I ran. Uncle George told me where to go. I ran to my hiding place and found my secret treasure. An old, old smell came out. Lavender like all your things, but stronger and mixed with an odd earthy scent, too.…

Babygirl

…
and then she lifted a heavy folded cotton sheet and found the bones of a tiny baby dressed in a beautiful christening gown too big for her. On the back of the sheet a perfectly pressed brown stain of decay that showed of the features of what would have surely been a pretty little thing.

Fascinated, Babygirl held up the shroud and looked closely at it until her alive little Babygirl nose touched the baby nose imprinted on the fabric. Babygirl saw a flash of light behind her eyes and saw her sad birth and secret burial. Itsy’s very own
baby!

*   *   *

“Itsy found me there.

“‘What have you found, little one?’ she asked me.

“‘Itsy? You’re talking!’ I hugged her. ‘I found your baby. Did you lose her?’

“‘No, I didn’t lose her. Not really. I just needed someone else to know about her. I suppose I only needed someone to find my voice. Thank you for finding her. Thank you for sharing my secret. Now, why don’t you tell me what is making you so upset, love.’

“‘I don’t want to go.’

“‘What should we do about this? How can I help you?’

“‘I wish … I wish I didn’t remember. If I have to go with her I don’t want to remember any of this.’

“‘But why?’

“‘Because it would hurt too much not to be here. And I’m scared of her. I’m so scared of her now that I know what it’s like to be with you. I
have
to forget. Quickly! Do you have magic that can make me forget?’

“‘I can try.’

“‘Oh! Wait, but if I forget, then I won’t remember your secret … and if I don’t remember your secret, you won’t be able to talk!’

“‘Oh darling, you don’t worry about that. It’s better this way. So much happened, why should I add an extra layer of sadness onto those I love? Maybe, just maybe it will be a good thing all around. Now come here and let me see what I can do. But first, in case it works, in case you really forget, I want you to know that I love you very much. And that I love your Uncle George, too. The both of you, more than anything, okay?’

“‘Okay.’ I said, and Itsy wove her magic spell.”

*   *   *

“She had a baby? And we never knew?” Mimi was crying.

“She didn’t want you to know. She had to protect George.”

“Yes, yes. I see it all now. And so that was the big secret? After all these years? She said she loved you? And then made you forget?” asked Mimi.

“Yes, Mimi, she said she loved me.”

“Love should never be a secret and it should never, ever be forgotten.”

“It won’t be anymore.”

35

Liz

Elly couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, thinking about The Day the Amores Died. She checked on Maj, lamenting that she was such a good baby. It’d be better if she was up. At least then Elly would have something to do. She sat in the nursery and rocked back and forth in the ancient chair.

“Elly,” called a soft voice, hushed but wanting to be heard. Elly stopped rocking.

“Elly!” the voice called again, insistent.

She went to the window. There stood Liz. Beautiful as ever in the moonlight and wearing a flowered dress. The same dress she always wore when she visited Elly as the “young woman Liz.” “I never even noticed…” said Elly as she opened the window wider and stepped out onto the fire escape.

“Look, we’re like Romeo and Juliet!” said Liz. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!”

“Is it really you?” asked Elly.

“Yes. At least I think so.”

“But you’re dead,” said Elly.

“Oh, death. Such a nuisance really. Just another thing to do. Always so much work, you know. Come on down here and sit in the garden with me. The garden’s always its most lovely under the moon.”

Elly climbed down the fire escape ladder and sat on the bench in the walled garden next to Liz.

“I was always there to protect you. I made a promise to you the day you were born. It was fun, being a kid again. At least I tried—I didn’t like playing sardines much,” said Liz.

“So did I imagine you, or were you there?” asked Elly.

“You saw me, right?” teased Liz.

“Yes.”

“Then what do you think?” She gave Elly a playful shove.

Elly looked at the ghost. Her face in the shadows shimmered from old to young and back again.

Liz leaned forward, whispering a flower of memory into Elly’s mind.

“I was a baby,” said Elly, “and you came to see me in the hospital. You put yourself inside of me. You told me you’d never leave me, and you didn’t.”

Liz smiled. “You got it, kiddo! Sometimes you gotta hand it to that Green blood. It helps us accomplish some damn fine things.”

“So, you saw it all?”

“I saw you all grown up and beautiful. Your belly full with child. And I saw you dead in the attic. I decided then and there to change it. No matter what Mama and Mimi and Fee said. I wanted to at least
try
to change it, and I did.”

Elly sat with her palms open, like Mimi and Fee the night of Itsy’s death. Elly understood the real grief now. The enormity of the loss. “Will you stay with me? Stay and protect me still?” she asked trying to be stoic, to hold back the tears. To be an Amore.

“I can’t stay, Elly. I’m dead. I only came to say good-bye. I thought you needed to know that
you
can take care of yourself now. I wanted to tell you that it wasn’t your fault, not any of it.”

Elly let the tears come realizing that this was
really
it. That Liz, Lizzy, Itsy, they were all going away. It was too much. It made Elly remember why she wanted to forget it all in the first place. “Hush now,” said Elizabeth Amore, “It’s time for me to go. I can’t leave you like this.”

“Are you afraid? Is it dark?” sniffled Elly.

“Oh no. It’s wonderful. Nothing I could ever explain with words. Go back to your family, Elly. Hold your baby. Curl up next to your man. Live the life I couldn’t. You owe me that.”

“Oh,” said Elly feeling lighter. “I owe you, do I?”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Please,” teased Elly. “You were imaginary for Christ’s sake. Some sort of magical Green energy projection or something.”

“I wasn’t imaginary when I hauled that huge steamer trunk from here all the way to Far Rockaway. I wasn’t imaginary then. I saw it, Elly. I saw him come to the building and find you and Anthony in the attic going through my trunk. I saw him kill both of you. I decided to do what Mama hadn’t done, what Mimi couldn’t do. I decided to try and change what I saw. And see? It worked! Voilà, a whole new fate.” Elizabeth reached out, tried to touch Elly’s face but there was a crackle instead. “Anyway, I need you to know that the things you see can be changed. Don’t let yourself get tied down to one particular road, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise,” said Elly.

“Oh, and forgive Carmen. I’ve seen her. She’s flawed, but she loves you.”

“Already done,” smiled Elly. “Liz?”

“Hmm?”

“Why was it such a secret? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I had to protect George, of course. If anyone found out he’d hurt me they’d have put him away or something. I swore a solemn vow to Mama that I’d protect him. Forever. And I did. Sort of. Well, I tried. At least I tried.”

“You were a good sister, Liz—Aunt Itsy—what should I call you anyway?”

“Call me gone, honey.”

A light came from the ivy-covered wall. Dim and then bright.

“I have to go now,” said Liz.

A woman—a woman who looked like Elly—walked through the wall and onto the grass. Her steps graceful and tentative. Vines and tendrils grew from where she placed her feet as she walked, delicately, out into the garden. She held her arms out to Liz. Elly could feel the magnetic force. Liz became more of a whisper of an outline and then, she was gone. The woman looked at Elly.

“Take care of them.”
Margaret Green turned around and walked back into the pocket of light, taking it with her and leaving only the blue of the moonlight in the garden. It was then that Elly saw the vines that grew at her feet were still there, only now those vines were producing the widest, whitest moonflowers, one after the other, that Elly had ever seen.

She was suddenly alone. More alone than she’d ever been. It occurred to Elly for the very first time that pieces of her aunt had lived inside of her forever.
Who am I without you?
she asked the night.

Mimi and Fee found Elly sitting in the night garden with her hands open, palms up in her lap.

“She’s seen Mama,” said Mimi.

“She’s seen Mama,” said Fee.

Mimi took one of Elly’s hands, and Fee took the other. Together they were three.

“I’m one of you,” said Elly.

“One of us,” said Mimi.

“Forever and ever,” said Fee.

“Amen,” said Elly.

Fall

“Stand still!” yelled Fee at Elly’s feet as she pinned up the hem of a heavy satin wedding gown.

“Do it. She’ll poke you. Just for fun, probably,” whispered Mimi, her mouth full of pins as she laced some freshwater pearls into the bodice.

“I’m tired of this. The dress is fine the way it is!” complained Elly.

“No, no. This wedding will be perfect. I know,” said Mimi.

Elly didn’t want to waste little Maj’s naptime with all this fussing. They were in Mimi’s apartment with the doors open and the baby monitor on. Elly listened to every sound coming from the baby’s nursery.

“Ah! Come
on,
old women! I have so much to do. I
need
her naptime to paint!”

“You are getting married next week. There are things we need to prepare,” said Mimi.

Elly smiled to herself.
We were married a long time ago. Long ago on the beaches of Far Rockaway …

A static sound came over the monitor. And then a whisper:
Ohlookathersopretty.

“Did you hear that?” asked Mimi.

“
What?
” yelled Fee.

But Elly was already on her way, stepping off a low stool as she walked, and then gathering her skirts she ran to her baby. Fee fell over as she tried to keep sewing the hem to no avail. Elly was gone—needles and thread bouncing behind her. She ran out of Mimi’s apartment and up the staircase gathering armloads of satin skirting with Carmen’s words dangling in front of her, adding steps.
“They’ll eat your baby…”

She pushed open the door to Uncle Georgie’s apartment, hers now 2B … with Anthony. 2A was vacant and up for rent.

She walked through the sunny living room and into the nursery. The windows were open, letting in a cold October breeze
. Did I leave the windows open? Foolish …
she went to close them, heard the whispers, again, and turned around to face the crib.

“Oh. My. God,” she said under her breath not wanting to disturb the electrified air.

The two children dressed in old-fashioned clothes and holding hands turned to face her. The little girl, hair in ringlets with a bow askew, the boy in short pants and wearing a cap, both seemed to squirm nervously in front of her.

“She’s so pretty, Elly,” said the little girl, and Elly knew her voice. “She’s got your nose, and red hair? Imagine!”

Elly stood very still. “Thank you, Itsy. We love her very much. Please … don’t take her.”

“Don’t worry, Elly.” The little girl giggled. “I’m not here for your baby. I’m here to collect Georgie.” She cupped her hands over the boy’s ear and whispered something to him. He smiled.

“What did you say, Itsy?” asked Elly.

The girl was instantly in front of her, looking up and motioning Elly to lean down with her finger. Elly knelt on the floor in front of her old friend.

The little ghost put her hand on Elly’s cheek. “I told him it was time to go.”

“Oh, Itsy. I’ll miss you. Won’t you stay? You and George?”

Elly held out her arms to young George who took off his cap and ran into them with abandon. A shock of wild electricity went through Elly as she felt all his sorrow and lonesome days. “I want to go home, Elly,” he said. “I’m tired of being here, of crying all the time. When you came back, I started to laugh … but you don’t have no more time for me, Elly.”

Itsy took Georgie’s hand. “Like I said, Georgie, time to go. Mama’s waiting. Henry, too.”

“Henry?” asked George.

“Yes, silly!”

“Well, let’s get going then!”

The two children disappeared in a shimmer and reappeared perched on the wide windowsill, the window open once again.

“No, wait,” said Elly reaching out for them.

“One, two, three …
you and me
!!!!!!!” they shouted, swinging their arms as they jumped out of the window and into thin air.

Elly sat on the floor listening to the quiet and crying softly. They were gone. It’d been Itsy and George all along. Now the walls rang silent. “Loss is a funny kind of thing,” she said to the house. “You need to feel it in order to appreciate what you had, right? You can’t live without it, can you?” The silence answered its affirmation. It seemed to arch forward and tell her
“What would have been, is simply—what was, only different. It’s up to you.”

“It’s up to me,” said Elly.

*   *   *

After a while little Maj woke up hungry and began to cry. A real cry. Elly went to her, gathered her up and sat in the rocking chair. She pushed down the scratchy, beaded satin of her unfinished wedding gown to breastfeed her baby.

“Let me tell you a story,” began Elly as the rocking chair creaked back and forth. “Once upon a time there was a family. A very special family. They came here to America to find a better life, and what they found was hard work and mystical, magical things. The ancients called to them from over the ocean, and those voices carried in their minds and made them a little … well … strange. But they loved and were loved. And they all love you, even from beyond.