“Oh, okay. Yeah, you’re right.” I knew she cared nothing for shoes. But she always treated whatever I said with an exaggerated seriousness that was never mocking.
We mindlessly jay-walked in silence. Cars never drove through there on Sundays, because it’d be stupid. Parishioners strolled freely from one side to the other all morning. The pattering feet seemed to make the cracked, well-run, downtown streets mumble.
“Can you still ride the line tomorrow afternoon?”
The line. That’s what we called our routine bike route around the west side. We made it at least once a week during the school year—Saturdays. But in the summer we biked it every day after lunch. It was just the thing we did, something to get us out of our houses. And riding the line didn’t require much thinking or planning, which was nice.
“Well, yes, of course!” I answered. “I’ll give you a ring, when I finish up. You’ll be home right?”
She nodded. “Sounds good. I’ve got a dance class in the morning, but after that I’ll just be at the house.”
“No gardening with Auntie then?”
“Good grief! No.” Auntie was obsessed with “mending the yard” and “tending the garden,” which wasn’t all that bad, but her incessant chatter and barrage of questions could tick-off even the noble-hearted Char—which I loved to point out.
We laughed. Charlotte hugged me. We parted ways to our respective surnames.
Angelo, my good brother, stood at the doors of the church, vigorously flapping to flag me down. He had been training quite a lot for the Bholvard Invitational Tri-County Boxing tournament, only three weeks away. His rigid movement resembled that of Frankenstein’s monster. To beat people up, you have to get beat up.
Once we made eye contact, he pivoted and hobbled into the sanctuary. After prancing up the stairs, two at a time, I touched the holy water and crossed myself—with integrity. After about six months without a priest, we finally had Father Piccolo, which assuaged my fear of this whole church thing being a big hoax. But we didn’t have any nuns, yet. The Mary statue up in the right corner of the sanctuary was the lone, stone, holy mother I could look to in that church. Mrs. Morganson told us that after Vatican II, many nuns left the vocation. I didn’t hear why, exactly, only that Vatican II meant something for them. She seemed convinced that that is why we don’t see many nuns anymore. But, of course, this came from Mrs. Morg’s mouth—words I always took with a spoonful of salt.
The altar boys and Father Piccolo got into formation in the vestibule. I scurried on my toes down the aisle, lest I be caught in the middle of the action. They ushered in the cross and the holy book.
Grandma reached out and yanked my arm, plunging me involuntarily into the pew. The organ blasted out. Throughout the whole stone structure, the grand pipe choir resonated. The high pitches hurt my ears. Grandma told me it was because I had real good hearing, but it still wasn’t okay to plug my ears. I learned to endure the shrill peaks of the songs by shutting my eyes and feeling my body rumble with the low, thundering booms.
As much as I actually did try to pay attention, the Ambridge convent floated around my mind for the entirety of Mass. I thought I’d really love to go to that school. The pamphlet said that the girls lived there nine months out of the year while they studied and trained with the sisters. I wondered why Dad hadn’t sent me there after Mom went away. I kind of wished he had. I mean, not that Grandma wasn’t good company and all, or that Mahoning was a bad school, for the most part. I just thought that would have been better for me, and maybe for Angelo and Nicky too.
I can’t count how many times random people said how much I looked like Mom and acted like Mom and rode a bike like Mom and talked about the trees like Mom. She’s the one that made me a pure pathetic. Even at that age, I knew I engendered a big pain in the you-know-what for Angelo and Nicky—a constant reminder of her, a remainder of someone who once loved them. I was only five when she went away, but Nicky and Angelo were old enough to remember her more. The way I understood it—they got to have a good memory of her, but I only had myself. And I think she would have been a good memory for them, except my presence wouldn’t allow it. I mean, I wandered around slightly reviving her all the time, but never succeeding. She couldn’t be a person in the past or the present.
I knew there was some reason Dad kept me around, though. Figured he just couldn’t lose two people at once. Or maybe it was because I rolled cigarettes the best.
Dad shifted the station-wagon into park, and we filed out the back left door. The right door got damaged in a wreck. It still worked, but it didn’t work well enough for us to consider it a commodity.
Nobody talked. We all just walked up the path, up the stairs and into the house. I pranced past Grandma up the inside stairs to change my clothes. I never did like dressing up that much—preferred a solid pair of shorts, a tank-top, and saddle shoes, unless I was going into the woods. Then I’d ditch the saddles for some old pair of clunkers that squeezed my toes too tight, a pain I readily endured. I’d do just about anything to keep Grandma from giving me the silent treatment.
I snatched Grandma’s Swinger from her bed table and hopped down the stairs. Grandma finally let me have a handle on the cherished camera of hers—literally the only thing I ever heard her ask for. She got it a year back, so she could “record our memories.” She really wanted this new-fangled contraption—so she could ruthlessly photograph all of us. But after her health went down hill, she couldn’t get out much, which bent her to allow me to take out the thing as long as I promised to come back with records of the places she would never get to go to anymore.
Grandma already had the water boiling for spaghetti. Sunday dinner was at 3:00 p.m., so I had several hours to just fiddle around. I swirled past Grandma as fast as I could, lest she force me into helping her. I opened the back door and, lo and behold, there was Mugga, his back to me, sitting on the step.
He rotated his head and grinned, contorting his mouth to keep a cigarette from falling out. “Hey Rosie!”
While trying to decide if I was going to go back in or just get on my bike and out of there as fast as I could, I just stared at him.
“Where’re your brothers?” He looked back to the ground.
“Inside. I dunno what they’re doin’” I skimmed past him and straddled my bike.
He snuffed out a couple of breathy laughs. “Maybe you outta go’n check on’em. Tell’m I’m back here waitin’.”
“You can knock on the door, ya know,”
“Rather not,” he stated, bluntly. There was a pause. He reached back and knocked two knocks on the door. His eyes glared at me.
I cycled away, around the shrubs and onto Cascade. And then something odd interrupted my journey. Just as after I rounded the corner, a whisper came from behind me, “Rosie.” I spun around. No one. So I proceeded ahead.
“Rosie!” The whisper came again.
This time I saw a little shrub shivering. A white plump hand shot out. “Help me outa’ere.”
I shifted my eyes from side to side. No one else was around except Mr. Primivera rocking on his porch a few houses down. My bike clanked down onto the cement. I grabbed hold of the hand and yanked.
“Ah!” I grabbed ahold of his forearm with both hands, and using my entire one-hundred and five pounds of flesh and bones, I broke a short rather portly human out through the branches.
“Hog! What the heck you doin’ in the Lombardo’s shrubs?” I demanded.
“Listen here, Rosie,” he whispered. He pulled me down, close to his face. “Been followin’ Mugga. He’d been goin’ house to house all mornin’ and then started up again after mass.”
“So, what’s it to you?”
“Don’t know, yet. He’s been talkin’ to all his friends, but none’a dem been comin’ out with’m.”