The next morning, my mother’s head was hurting, and she threw up. My father had to lead her by the arm back to the bedroom, where she lay with the door and curtains closed. She used to get a few migraines each year, but now she complained about them daily.
“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Aunt Floria suggested.
“No.” My mother pressed one palm against her belly, her eyes afraid. “No,” she said. “It’s that smell of camphor that gets me sick.”
“I’ll air our clothes in the bathroom.”
“Then the bathroom will have that smell.”
“I’ll hang them on the fire escape then.”
But my mother took to her bed, yielding her kitchen to Aunt Floria. Light or sound or food made her migraines worse, and I was glad for her when she could sleep. Glad, too, that she didn’t see how I enjoyed baking with Aunt Floria for Christmas: pignolata and taralli and mostaccioli. Three evenings in a row, my father put on his hat and took me along to Hung Min’s, where we found some of the men from his backgammon club. While they played, I’d get to order my favorites for all of us: moo goo gai pan and fried rice and egg rolls and chow mein. Usually, my father only played backgammon on Mondays, but now he seemed anxious to be away from the apartment. The other men were far older than he, and they’d let me pour their tea and put lots of sugar into the little cups.
Around my mother he was careful. Quiet. Once, when I came into their room, he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “You want me to help you get rid of that migraine?” he asked her.
She hesitated. Then noticed me. “Anthony,” she said.
My father kissed her throat. “We could send the boy into the kitchen while we…you know…?”
“I couldn’t. Not with your sister so close.”
Some afternoons, the twins practiced the banana song on the accordion desperately, and with great tenacity, certain that those long-drawn squeaks would bring their papa back.
“Papa will hear us,” they told me.
“And then he’ll find us.”
Since the shoulder straps were too long, they helped each other hold the accordion up and sang, “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say: I ta-ke the bananas and I run-a away…,” while air squeezed in and out of the bellows, causing dreadful sounds.
“Papa will find us.”
In the meantime, though, the twins kept finding me.
Since Kevin’s sister had the croup, I was not allowed in his apartment, and Mrs. Hudak had just bought a television and didn’t let me talk while it was on. James had helped her move her furniture so she could see the television from any part of her living room. She used to sit across from me at her table, or she’d watch our street from her window, observing more interesting things than on television while also making our neighborhood safer; but now I could only see her back and that television. Both Mrs. Hudak and I loved lady mud-wrestlers because they fought dirty, but I didn’t tell my mother because she didn’t allow anything violent on our television.
I didn’t visit Mrs. Hudak when James was around, and he’d been there a lot since he’d graduated from high school. For a while he’d worked at Sutter’s, selling French confections, then at Mario’s on Arthur Avenue. So far James hadn’t found a new job. He didn’t like me—not since I’d asked him why he got tomato-red when he saw my mother.
The last day of school before Christmas vacation, I ran home to Creston Avenue and locked myself in our bathroom before my cousins could get home. Ralph was hunched beneath the sink pipes, and I lifted him up. With my free hand, I cast shadows of snarling dogs against the wall opposite the lamp, dogs that snap at my cousins’ legs, bite off their heads, but when I remembered how dogs attacked rabbits, I stopped because I felt sorry for Ralph. Then I felt sorry for myself, because all I had were shadow animals. I wanted real animals. With fur and with eyes. Live animals. “You’re not filthy,” I told Ralph and kissed the sleek fur on his face.
“Hurry up and flush, Anthony.” Aunt Floria was knocking on the door.
Nobody told her to hurry up when she took her long showers, singing in Italian as if—so my mother said—someone were stabbing her ever so slowly.
I darted past Aunt Floria and out of our apartment. On the front stoop in our courtyard, Kevin sat playing with his cars. “Here,” he said and handed me his yellow friction car. For himself, he kept the red one, and we lifted our cars, chafed their wheels against the concrete steps, again, faster, and again, till their racing sound became a loud buzz and we let them speed away from us.
Mrs. Hudak banged against her window. “You’re making too much noise. Go back to where you belong.”
We scooped up our cars and ran across the street.
“Supposed to check both directions,” she called after us.
“Let’s spy on her,” Kevin said.
The stairway in his building was freezing, and the tar bubbles in the roof had hardened and cracked.
“My Uncle Malcolm can fix that.”
Kevin dropped to his belly and elbows. “Duck and cover.”
“Duck and cover.” I was Burt the Turtle, crawling behind Kevin along the flat roof, past metal frames with washlines, past vents. His corduroys were tight on his ass though his mom bought him husky sizes at Fordham Boys Shop. We crawled toward the television antennas at the edge, where kids were not allowed, and took positions for our spying game.
“Uuuughhh…uuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…” we howled. “We’re going to get you, Mrs. Hudak.”
But Mrs. Hudak was hiding from us.
“Uuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…uuuughhh…”
Kevin had Nik-L-Nips, and we bit off the waxy tops and drank the syrup while we scanned the sky and our street, especially Smelly Alley, where anyone could be hiding. Smelly Alley was down the block from us, a vacant lot with dog poop and broken glass and sumacs and rusty cans and—most of all—poison ivy. “Three leaves with a sheen, worse than mortal sin,” my mother had taught me. “Never touch those clusters of three shiny leaves.” “Sheen” and “sin” didn’t quite rhyme but were close enough. Except poison ivy was worse than mortal sin, because mortal sin you could confess to the priest and get absolution; but once you got poison ivy, you had it for life, and you got it every seven years. But one Sunday last summer, after mass, Kevin—on a double-dare—rubbed a handful of those shiny leaves against his neck, and nothing happened to him. All he said was, “I’m immune.” It was a shock to me, a revelation. Here someone had dared touch this curse of the human race, but nothing had happened to him, which meant that if you were immune to something, you couldn’t get it. I felt giddy. Free. Because it had to be the same with mortal sin. And if you were immune to mortal sin, you never had to worry about hell. Not even purgatory. But when I touched the poison ivy, splotches of tiny bumps soon formed on my hands and where I’d rubbed sweat off my face. The bumps itched, turned red, and formed hot blisters that oozed foul liquid. Twice a day, my mother would stir half a box of cornstarch into the tub and I’d lie in the lukewarm water, feeling my skin get cooler while I envied Kevin, who had everything: immunity to mortal sin and to poison ivy.
“Mrs. Hudak is mean,” Kevin said.
“Maybe she’s a Russian spy.”
“Uuuughhh…uuuughhh…”
“Let’s play mass.”
“I want to spy on communists. Uuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…” Kevin’s face was red, even though it was cold outside. Especially his big cheeks. My mother called him “lollipop face” because he looked like one of those red lollipops with a red face pressed into them.
“Let’s just practice communion.”
“We need crackers for communion.”
“I don’t have any.” I pointed across the street and into our kitchen. “We can spy on my aunt.”
Aunt Floria and the twins were eating minestrone at my table as if they belonged there. One floor below, we saw the top of Mr. Casparini’s bald head, the top of his cigar, the top of his belly while he was sorting his stamp collection. On the third floor
, Mrs. Rattner—Pineapple Sheila—was singing while rinsing her bowls and baking pans, and her son Nathan was studying so he could be a dentist. Last week, when Kevin and I had played spies, we’d shot rubber bands at Nathan’s window and ducked before he could see us; but he’d still waved at us and stood up, stretching himself as if we’d reminded him to take a break. The next day, Nathan Rattner had left a squishy envelope in our mailbox. On the outside, he’d written “Enjoy, Anthony,” and inside he’d stuffed rubber bands of different sizes and colors.
“There she is.” Kevin ducked. “Uuuughhh…uuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…”
I howled along. “We’re going to get you, Mrs. Hudak…uuuughhh…uuuughhh….”
But Mrs. Hudak didn’t look up. She walked away from us, pulling her shopping cart.
“She’s going to John’s Bargain Store,” I announced.
Kevin nodded excitedly. “To meet other communists.”
Two days before Christmas, Riptide Grandma took me to Arthur Avenue—me alone, not the twins—my father’s idea to give me time away from them. At the Italian market, Riptide picked a wrinkled black olive from one of the wooden tubs and laughed when I didn’t want to taste it. “One day you’ll say yes, Antonio,” she said and chewed the olive, slowly, rolling her eyes sideways, just as she always did when she concentrated on tasting. Then she nodded and bought half a pound of those olives, broccoli rabe, tomatoes, and a tall can of olive oil.
At the dirty-feet shop—that’s how it smelled—I pinched my nostrils while Riptide bought fresh mozzarella and chose one of the round provolones that swung from the beams above us.
Next we went to the poultry market, where chickens and turkeys watched me from inside their cages. Riptide told the poultry man she needed a turkey big enough for her family. “Everyone’s coming over Christmas Day.”
He took a turkey from its cage and hung it from the scale by its feet.
“No. I want a bigger one.”
But when the poultry man brought a larger turkey, Riptide said it wouldn’t fit in her oven.
As he opened the fifth cage, he whispered to me, “Last time I showed your grandmother seven.”
The fifth turkey was dangling upside down from the scale, twisting its head as it watched the people in the market. Its face was right next to mine, and all at once it noticed me. Its eyes were curious and shy, and I thought it was a nice turkey.
“Look at that turkey looking at that little boy,” someone said.
The poultry man laughed. “That turkey is looking at you, Antonio.”
“Gobobobob…”
“Nice turkey,” I told the turkey. “Nice—”
“Antonio has decided. Questo.” My grandmother nodded.
“No,” I said. “Not this turkey.”
But my grandmother decided this was the turkey I wanted, and when the poultry man took it from the scale and carried it behind the counter, I heard it go “Gobobobob.” The counter was too high for me to see what was happening to my turkey, but I knew because I could hear something turning—it sounded like a wheel—and my turkey screamed so hard I got hiccups and I was sure they were plucking its feathers and when it quit screaming quit making any sound altogether I knew they’d plucked my turkey bare and chopped off its head.
“This is much harder for her than for you, Leonora,” my father said.
“My soul bleeds for her.”
“It’s humiliating for her, needing our help like this.”
“Oh, but she is so very fortunate to have your understanding. It’s certainly more than I get from you.” My mother sat up against the maple headboard. “More than Anthony gets from you. Let me tell you, having those girls in his room is miserable for him.”
“Let me tell you then that staying in bed is not fighting fair.”
“Oh…but I am not fighting, Victor.” Her chapped lips stretched into a weak smile.
“I wish you were.”
She didn’t answer.
He touched her shoulder. “Are you quite settled?”
“I may never feel settled again.”
He glanced at the stack of magazines on the dresser, Life and Look and Good Housekeeping.“Do you want something to read?”
When she didn’t answer, I said, “Life. She likes it better than Look because it has more pictures.”
“I don’t want a magazine. Is that all right?”
“Hey,” my father said, “I have work to do.”
And he was gone, leaving his night socks on the floor where he’d tossed them. My mother made him wear those to bed because he rubbed the bottoms of his feet with sticky ointment.
I sat on the floor next to my mother’s side of the bed and started a drawing of the zoo for her. I colored the gate red for her, with yellow and brown, so it was like copper. On top of the gate, I drew the lion, king of beasts. Then bears on top of one arch and deer on the other. The post on one side had a monkey sitting on it, the other a leopard. Tortoises supported the weight of my gate and all its animals, including the owls and cranes. Around the gate, I colored a halo of smoke. A path led through the gate, and at the end of the path I drew the African Plains where ostriches and lions moved freely.
My mother’s eyes were closed, and all I could see between the white pillows and the white blanket was her white face, thinner than it used to be, and it occurred to me that she and I—so alike in the narrow shapes of our bodies—were hiding out from the people with sturdy bodies: Aunt Floria, the twins, even my father, who was wearing a tuxedo in the wedding picture above the dresser, squinting with absolute delight at my mother, who stood to his right in a long wedding gown, one arm joined through his. “Victor’s sweepstakes smile,” my grandfather called it.
Grouped around that photo were other family pictures, five of them showing me as a baby: held by my mother the day she brought me home from the hospital; by my father as he lifted me toward the ceiling fan; and then one picture with each grandparent except for my mother’s father, who’d died when she was ten. As I watched her sleep, I felt sorry for her growing up without her father, and that made me wonder why the television never showed the glass-wax father. Maybe he was just in another television room—not dead like my mother’s father—or maybe he was Elsewhere. All at once I felt certain that, if only I could decorate our windows with glass-wax bells and snowflakes, I would get my family back the way it used to be—one mother, one father, one boy.
While I was filling in the background of my zoo picture with a jungle just like the ferns on my parents’ wallpaper, a loud crash came from my room. Then another. When I got there, Bianca was climbing on my bed, arms through the straps of her cape.
“Don’t jump. You’ll wake my mother.”
She jumped. Tackled me. As I kicked and struggled to get out from under her, Belinda threw herself across my legs, and Bianca squatted on my stomach.
“Let me go.”
“If you move, you lose the tickle game.”
“I don’t want to play your stupid game.”
They yanked down my dungarees, my underpants.
“Let me go,” I cried, feeling hot and queasy. To be found by the Pharaoh’s daughter was too good for the twins. No, I wanted Great-Aunt Camilla to lose them in the desert, where twin snakes coil around them and choke them, where twin buzzards eat what’s left.
“Let me go! Let—”
“Quiet in there, Anthony, girls.” Aunt Floria’s voice.
“I’m telling.”
“Tattletale.”
“Meanie.”
The jingle “Don’t be a meanie, bring me Barricini” floated through my mind. My mother loved Barricini’s chocolates, and sometimes she would get all dressed up and take me for a walk along the tree-lined Concourse, where the wealthy Jewish families lived. We’d stop at Barricini’s, nowhere else, to buy chocolate-covered almonds. Inside my head, I could hear the Barricini jingle, “Don’t be a meanie, bring me Barricini,” and the jingle was pounding through me and I was the one yelling it, “Don’t b
e a meanie bring me Barricini,” yelling it faster, now, faster while the twins skittered from me.
“Don’t-be-a-meanie-bring-me-Barricini!”
The twins hopped on my bed, watching me darkly through their father’s leaf-colored eyes while I tugged up my underpants and dungarees, and when they edged forward I shrieked, “Don’t-be-a-meanie-bring-me-Barricini, dontbeameaniebringme—”
“Girls. Anthony—” Aunt Floria again. “What is it now?”
“Barricini,” I whispered fiercely while I backed away from my cousins.
In the hallway, Aunt Floria was opening the front door for two nuns. Nuns know. Nuns know everything. They’re here because of the tickle game. I had the urge to confess though I was afraid I’d only get punishment, not absolution.
“Sisters, come in. Merry Christmas. Come in.” Aunt Floria looked as if she were about to receive communion. “I’ll get you some eggnog. Fresh yesterday. My brother made it at Festa Liguria. Or if you’d like some of my fig fruitcake—”
“No, thank you.”
“We only have a minute.”
“Anthony, darling, you get your mother out of bed. Tell her it’s the Sisters of Mercy, collecting for the pagan children, and they’re in a rush.”
What if these are the nuns who took Mrs. Hudak away in their truck? Then they’ll take the twins away. Aunt Floria, too. Take them Elsewhere. But not bring them back.
I jiggled my mother’s arm. One side of her face was creased, and her hair was flat. Usually, before she went to sleep, she pinned her hair into curls and wrapped toilet paper around them. Slowly—as if she had to learn how to walk—she approached our living room.
“The twins started the tickle game,” I told the nuns, “I didn’t—”
A sudden sneeze interrupted me.
“Jesus Christ, Belinda.” My mother wiped the back of her wrist against her chenille robe. “Bless you, I mean. I’m sorry, Sisters.”
Aunt Floria was shoving two nickels and one dime into the slot of the cardboard collection box that had pictures of naked brown children squatting in a patch of grass, their faces sad. One had his head bent while the others picked through his hair for lice or worse. On back of the box was a mother in clothing with a child in clothing, both smiling at a cross. Clothing meant salvation, and what those naked pagan children needed for salvation was the clothing the nuns in Africa would buy for them the instant my aunt finished shoving her coins through the slot. Somehow, I expected those coins to make more of a sound, louder than a church bell.