“No television…bishop…”
“That show was the ultimate Catholic kitsch.” Leonora. Of course.
“It may not be kitsch to someone else.”
Leonora. At it again, she and Franklin, about religion
Leonora. At it, she and one of the nuns at Anthony’s first communion. “With all that Catholic prudishness, there’s the myth of Immaculate Conception, justifying a woman giving birth to a child that is not her husband’s.”
“It’s not a myth. It’s a miracle. Because of Jesus.”
Leonora’s neck grows longer, straighter.
“Jesus always helps when I feel nervous,” the nun says. “All I need to do is pray: ‘Oh Jesus, Jesus help me.’”
“I believe in an openness to other beliefs…to other possibilities.”
“But Jesus teaches us that his is the one true religion.”
“All religions give us symbols, things that help us to imagine something beyond ourselves.”
The nun gets all flustered. “But Jesus—”
“It’s too literal. Catholics want it all spelled out, right down to the buttons on the robes of the angels. And then they claim their images are better than the images of others. That’s how the Catholic church controls us. Even sin is controlled by the church.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because sexual thoughts and feelings are labeled impure. Children are made to feel unclean for enjoying the nature of their bodies and touching—”
“Tell me, Sister—” Floria’s father interrupts Leonora and steps forward to block her view of the nun. “I have always wondered about the meaning of holy water.”
The nun blinks.
“How did it originate, Sister?” he asks, listening attentively as she explains about baptism and Jesus and other sacraments and some more Jesus….
Floria hasn’t seen him like this before, her gentle father, who doesn’t like to interrupt others, but here he is, taking the conversation away from Leonora, keeping Leonora away from the nun. And it comes to Floria how, with his mildness, he holds the power in the family.
Afterwards, Leonora tells him, “Thanks for saving my ass.”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“You know you were.”
He laughs.
“I guess this was not the occasion to discuss religious tolerance.”
“If you fight for too many things,” he says to her, softly, “you won’t have anything.”
“…never too…young to…believe.” But too young to fuck. As if God really cared. Of that Floria is sure. “Fuck…”
“Did you hear that—”
“Is she saying what I think she—”
“Fuck fuck…fuck…” The older Floria gets, the more she enjoys that sound and how it shocks
not for her the gaunt, sexless Jesus who waits on his cross for the postulants, but the brown-limbed Jesus in her parents’ bedroom painting, the Jesus with his deep-deep eyes that reveal human passion
“Maybe she said luck or duck or—”
“…fuck.”
“Floria clearly said fuck.”
“Do you have to encourage her, Leonora?”
“What do you have in mind? Send her to reform school.”
“It’s not funny.”
“…fuck fuck…”
Leonora laughs.
“Supposed to drop to the low twenties tonight.”
“Mohair.”
Floria tricks them by not letting on she can hear them.
Like tricking the dentist. “I can’t feel the laughing gas. Is it on yet?” If she lets on how much she loves it, he’ll turn it down. Laughing gas gives her the most delicious orgasms that swell through her body—slow and sweet and steady
“How much longer do you think she—”
“Could you…turn…that up a…bit?”
Floria asks the dentist, reminding herself to keep her hips from bucking up with bliss
“What is she doing now?”
“It’s the pain.”
“Mama, you want us to turn you on your side?”
“It’s not…working…”
“The gas is up as high as it goes,” the dentist tells her
“What’s not working, sweetheart?”
“Tell us what we can do, Mama.”
Laughing gas is the reason Floria understands addicts. Addicts much worse than cigarette smokers with holes in their throats. All at once she’s sure her dentist knows
that all dentists know and plan orgasms for their patients at dental conventions, and what she thinks of as her trick is actually the dentists’ trick to lure patients back to their drills
She has to laugh
and without any gas, imagine
but her tongue only pushes against her gums.
“Aunt Floria is choking. Look—”
A wide hand beneath the back of her neck. Julian’s.
She nestles her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
My secret.
“She’s quieting down.”
Secrets. Leopardman. Ants in a castle of clay. Secrets Leonora’s psychic can’t see.
“I know this psychic on Burnside Avenue.”
“I don’t like psychics. They make you afraid.”
“This one’s different. I’ve been to her twice. Mustache Sheila goes to her, and the psychic has warned her about a loose tire on her husband’s cab. And it was true.”
“So what has this psychic predicted for you?”
“That I’ll have another man in my life.”
“They all say that. You’re too gullible.”
“Gullible…Now, there’s a word to consider. Naïve. Innocent. Trusting. Unsuspecting.”
Still, Floria goes to Burnside Avenue, stands in front of the psychic with her collar open.
But the moment the psychic touches Floria’s throat, she snatches her hand away. “I won’t charge you anything.”
“What did you see?”
“I can’t tell your future. Or your past.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t charge you.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“I didn’t see anything. That’s why I won’t charge you.”
“I don’t care about you charging me. Just look again. Please
“Look…harder…please—”
“Look where, Mama?”
“Aunt Floria?” Anthony. Hovering
Floria is furious at the psychic for not warning her. Because she sees me carrying Bianca’s death, as much part of me as the womb Bianca lived in. Carrying both life and death in my body. But what if the psychic warned me? Would I watch my daughters every second? Keep all doors and windows closed? Tie them to me day and night? Yes. I would. Easier to be furious at the psychic than at Anthony who’s hovering, trying to help. Always there, right there. By the window the day Bianca fell
and now by the couch. “Aunt Floria?”
“Hovering…”
Someone is crying, a woman Floria remembers seeing somewhere
in a store, maybe. Or in a movie. And it is for the crying woman that Floria pulls the breath of snow from the window and into her voice
so she can say clearly what she knows they all expect of her: “I do…not want to…die.”
Death. Raging against death, howling her terror against Malcolm’s chest, wanting their love to last, believing she can’t go on if he dies. One evening, the first month of their marriage, he’s eating chicken cacciatore across from her at the table, and she’s suddenly terrified he’ll choke and die. Or go to sleep that night and die. If not now, then tomorrow. Or next week. Or that he’ll collapse on a roof and die. Or have an accident on the way to work. And die. Die. But then it comes to where distance from Malcolm is the most desirable part of their marriage, and she vows to herself she’ll never again let herself get that afraid of losing someone. Because if that wish of always being with Malcolm came through, it would be hell. And yet, with Julian,
daring to hope that forever is what they’ll both want and have
“Just one more spoonful, Mama?”
“Soup…time…”
“Sshhh—she’s saying something.”
Floria’s mother calls everyone to the table according to what she has cooked—“Pancake time…” “Linguine time…”—and her voice carries the memory and scents of the last time she cooked that food: fish or pancakes or linguine or chicken. After the Sunday meal, while the men sit on the sofa for their little naps and the children play outside with marbles or jumpropes, that voice floats from the kitchen window: “Cheesecake
“Cheesecake…time…”
Her mother’s hands, stroking her hair
no…the girl from Hospice. It embarrasses Floria, this stranger touching her matted hair. Washing it. Rinsing hair in a basin never gets it clean
Floria lies in the tub, swishes her head back and forth underwater till her hair sways with a momentum of its own. Gorgeous hair
“Joelle…?”
The lean boy steps behind her, spreads his fingers, holds the base of her skull as if in a cradle. Joelle. A girl’s name on a boy. Swiftly, gently, he fans his fingers upward through the weight of her hair till, it ripples toward her shoulders. “You have gorgeous hair
“Gorgeous…hair…”
“Please, hold still. I’m almost done.”
Two days before her wedding to Julian, and she enters the expensive salon on Madison—on impulse and ready to flee—to ask an opinion on what style would be best for the shape of her face. His face in the mirror behind hers. Joelle. Square jaw and the eyes of an artist. His shoulders uneven, a bit too high. Again, he fans his fingers upward. And sighs. “You have gorgeous hair.” Already, just by touching her hair, light and full and again, he’s making her hair gorgeous, and of course she stays, lets him cut it. Too expensive to ever come back here. With tip the price of a really good dress. But for her wedding she can justify. And forever fantasize being back here with Joelle, fingers upward through her hair, telling her, “You’ll be surprised how little shampoo you’ll need now that your hair is shorter. At first it’ll feel weird, like not enough on your head, but you’ll get used to it.” Joelle gives her a good-bye gift, a chamois cloth for her face, reminds her, “Rinse, rinse, rinse. I hope you’ll come back.”
The woman is still crying.
“I…hope you’ll come…back,” Floria tells her to make her feel better.
“But Mama, I’ve been here all day.” Bianca.
“Rinse, rinse, rinse—”
Bianca running ahead at the zoo, dance-running, arms stirring the air, shouting how she loves the big animals. “The gorillas and the hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses…and elephants especially.”
And Belinda, following her, leaping. “I like birds better. With the big animals, you know right away where they are. But with the little ones, you have to look forever until you see something moving. And then you think, There’s an animal. But maybe not
“Wait…wait for me…girls—”
“No one’s leaving, Aunt Floria.”
“We’re all here, Mama.”
“At least the big animals you don’t lose,” Bianca shouts. “You always know where they are.”
Smaller, getting smaller, her girls. Easy to lose. Crawling through the bus. Onions and legs and pink cotton. Hot. So hot and dusty. Baskets. Getting smaller—“Wait…”
“Birds are the lucky animals.”
“Not if they are in cages.”
“Sparrows and swallows. Regular kinds of birds. Birds outside.”
“Wait…”
“I’ll wait for you.” Julian. Pulling the afghan to her shoulders, colors of church floors, three shades of gray, two of terra-cotta.
But Floria wipes the afghan away
miles of gauze
“…too heavy…”
and follows her girls, who’re dance-running toward the mist, bobbing like marionettes
“Everyone is here, Mama.”
“That’s…good, Bianca….”
“But I’m Belinda.”
“Sshhh. Let her.”
closer, getting closer to her girls, but not seeing them, just hearing them chant the eletelephony poem from school, rapidly as if all one sentence:
“Once there was an elephant who tried to use the telephant no no I mean an elephone who tried to use the telephone anyway he got his trunk entangled in the telephunk the more he tried to get it free the louder buzzed the telephee I fear I better drop this song of elephop and telephong
“…and telephong…”
“Aunt Floria says she wants to use the phone.”
“Would you like me to call someone for you, sweetheart?”
“Why don’t you just let her hold the phone?”
“Here it is.”
“Now she doesn’t want it.”
Warm hands on Floria’s ankles. Thin hands with long fingernails.
Leonora’s. “Let me rub your feet.”
Floria feels shy. “I want Julian…to…it’s something…special…between us…”
“Of course.” A quick kiss on her forehead. Leonora. Lips that cool Floria’s burning skin.
Then his hands. Julian knows instinctively where she wants him to touch. How
after the dancing. Rubbing her ankles, her heels, the fleshy balls behind her toes. Just so. His tongue between her toes. Behind her toes. His hair
gray now, gray and wiry. Tall, he is, Julian, tall and moving with greater ease than his son, Mick
there’ll be women who’ll want to take up with Julian
“Go ahead…Don’t…wait too long….”
“Remember how long I waited for you already?”
Looking good on the dance floor, she and Julian, limber and young for their age, so everybody says, dancing in city competitions—the cha-cha-cha, the waltz, the tango—winning trophies. The tango, dancing the tango with Leonora. Julian is the only man who’s as good a dancer as Leonora. At Floria’s first wedding, he dances with Leonora. At her second wedding, Floria watches them closely, amazed how jealous she is despite and because of her love for both of them: her love for Julian immediate; her love for Leonora slow-growing, widening ever since the Sambuca night
“…Sambuca…”
“Do you have any Sambuca around, Julian?”
“Leopard…man…”
Laughing. Leonora. “So that’s where you are hiding out? Enjoy…”
“But Mama is not allowed to have alcohol with her medications.”
“Does it really make a difference now?”
“Don’t say it like that, Aunt Leonora.”
“I just want Floria to have what she wants.”
“Thank…you…” Floria knows she and Leonora would do anything for each other. Out of love for their children
one lost to death; one lost to suspicion
Rubbing her feet, Julian
readying her feet for dancing. Now. Light. So light when she dances in the mist that’s half transparent, lace and gauze, white on white, leaving him behind. Cancer has snagged her into utmost age, a generation ahead of Julian, and now he’ll never reach her. She feels sorry for him. A voice talking close by, so close Floria feels the humming of that voice inside her temples…about spoons and cracked glass and having to hurry. Humming
her own voice, humming about spoons, though she doesn’t know what it means except that it’s important and is pushing to come out.
“What is it, Mama? What are you saying?”
“…spoons…wait for…me…Bianca?”
“I’m here.”
But Floria can see that it’s Belinda.
“I’m listening, Mama.”
“Now you want…to listen….”
Belinda doesn’t listen the day Floria borrows Victor’s car to drive her to her dorm. College only a few miles from home, and yet Floria keeps talking…talking—though she knows she must stop—as if these forty minutes in the car are all she’ll ever have to pa
ss every bit of her wisdom to her daughter who won’t look at her. How hurt she feels in the lobby when Belinda says, “None of the other mothers are here.”
“…plenty…of other mothers…”
“Mama?”
“Plenty of other mothers, for sure…” Julian, one hand lightly on her sore belly, eyes so afraid. “There now. There, sweetheart.”
Whispering to the visitors: “Best to agree with whatever she says. To keep her from getting agitated.”
“Agitated…”
There are things Floria can tell that’ll agitate all of them…secrets that lie inside her and sometimes flicker as if on the screen of the RKO, startling her with the sudden that’s-me-that’s-me-that’s-me. Secrets. The signora who teaches her one February dawn where women gather their pleasure. Curlicues of black iron along the steps to her parents’ front door. Her mother’s clay pots, geraniums, pink, set into black curlicues beneath the windows. A pink garden, her mother likes. Pink as the cave in Floria’s soul when she uproots Emily. An emptiness waiting for the signora
“You can’t see…the…pink in winter.”
“Are you cold, sweetheart?” That afghan again
Belinda has trouble breathing in fabric stores. It’s the sizing that clogs her sinuses. Emily looking at the sketchbook: lines and colors from stores, from magazines, even from the street. Styles and swatches and techniques. A certain fold. Designs Floria has sewn and designs she’ll never sew. Emily…Moved away? Dead already like nuns in the opera house?
“And whose…death…”
“Mama? Don’t go yet, Mama.”
“…am I…dying?”
“But you’re getting better, Aunt Floria.”
Nuns waiting for the guillotine. A harder death than the one I’m dying. The slam of the blade, while leftover nuns stand in line, singing hymns: “…the telephant no no I mean an elephone who tried to use the telephone anyway he got his trunk entangled in…,” their voices tapering till only one is left. Silence, then. In the ladies’ room a buzz of voices tapering as stalls empty and others step inside. Doors slamming like the slam of the guillotine. Floria almost says aloud how they’re all like nuns waiting. But she feels shy. On the subway, her father says, “You should have told them.” Different ways of dying. A guillotine. An open window. Dance-running up the hills above the turquoise bay, skipping