door, I slowly backed up, not taking my eyes off of the altar, into the foyer. I turned at the door and jumped into the bushes. By the use of the sharp edge of a rock in the flowerbed I proceeded to scrape the shit off my shoe.
Before I had a chance to notice him, Mr. Carmine Carmidio made his way up the stairs of the church and caught me—seemingly defacing the property of the most venerated church in town. How was I to run those frequent errands for Grandma? I thought I would never be able to face him at the counter of Hyde’s drugstore ever again.
Geez, oh man, I thought. Only God himself knows what Carmine thinks of me now. How could I possibly avoid the man though? Hyde’s. Man, oh, man.
But to my relief, he politely winkled a little smile, continued into the church, and apparently disregarded my satanic actions.
I put all that behind me so I could appropriately approach the altar. I entered the foyer of the church once more. But . . . holy water? I looked to my right. No holy water. Holy water? I already did this once, so I questioned whether it was taboo to partake and cleanse again. Holy water—period. I needed some distance between me and the dog shit.
I reentered the sanctuary and slipped down the center aisle. Carmine sat at the third row back on the right side. I didn’t want to encroach on his space or look like I was stalking him. So I bowed, crossed myself, and sat in the fourth row on the left side.
I thought, Carmine was one of those dull individuals. You could tell by his blank and sentimental face—sweeping his stoop and stocking his shelves and not thinking much at all about life. The thing is, those kinds of people always made me feel a little sad; in fact, they still do.
The sanctuary of that church had a holy scent: lilacs, and fresh oak, and old-people skin. It welled and billowed and swarmed me like it always did. Then, slowly, a whiff of my shoe seemingly puffed into the air and crept into my nostrils—a devastating blow. Shit, of all things, hindered me from drinking in that heavenly smell. I shut my eyes and attempted to smell through the crap. The holy scent remained, though I could barely sense it.
I eased down the kneeler with my unsoiled foot and proceeded to kneel. A pang of lightning shot up through my knee. A couple days prior I had acquired an injury due to my reckless attempt to win a fight.
Angelo had come home with a new pair of boxing gloves—bright red with a gleaming, untarnished gloss finish. They were beautiful. He wrapped the cuff of white leather tight around my wrists. I jabbed into the air. Those gloves glided.
“Light as a feather! These are real nice Ang.”
“Yea, I know. Coach gave ’m to me. Said they accidentally shipped an extra pair.”
“Wow.” I jabbed out a couple times and bounced around. “Now we can have a real fight!” I hit him in the arm. Angelo laughed. “Go,” I hollered, “get your other gloves.”
Angelo leapt up the stairs. He got really fast at the stairs, ever since his growth spurt. All the men in our family started out short and then had a growth spurt right before they turned seventeen. Over those past three month, Angelo had really shot right up. He was already taller than the average Luce, and now he was way taller. He rose up taller than even Nicky, who, last year, sprinted to five feet, ten inches. I’d say Angelo stood about six feet, maybe even six-one. Regardless, he unfortunately looked rather gangly, all stretched out like taffy.
I tried my best to enjoy the gloves while I had them. Angelo gave me all his old stuff, which means I was now the owner of his old gloves. I wasn’t at all unhappy about getting the old gloves. I gladly accepted everything that funneled its way down to me. By funnel I mean Angelo dropping off stuff on my bed. I never saw Ang do it, but Nicky never gave me anything, so I knew it wasn’t him. In fact, I kept a special box to store all of the stuff Angelo gave me—baseball cards, caps, notebooks, an old-pocket knife, a fishing lure, an Air Force flight jacket that was rerouted from Popi, and a mint-green super ball.
Now that I had my own gloves we could have a real fight.
Weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, Angelo instructed me in boxing. He started teaching me when he started, a year and a half earlier. But since I was smaller and a girl, he used to give me the gloves. I felt lucky and angry by the whole process, and that was even before I recognized he couldn’t actually hit me like he is supposed to, because without gloves, he’d probably break his hand and my face simultaneously. But after I got his hand-me-down, we both had our respective sets of gloves, allowing us to have a proper fight.
Angelo leapt back down the stairs and entered the living room exhibiting his new footwork. He flailed his arms out to the sides and crossed them over each other in front of him, all while keeping up the Charleston-like feet. I stoically watched him approach—that’s what I did when I didn’t know what else to do. On about the third flail, his right arm swung back so far that he smacked the lamp on the end table. The lamp fringe fluttered to the side as it fell in slow motion. Angelo spun around and caught the lamp before it concluded the leap to its death.
I laughed so hard I had to brace myself on the wall. Grandma peeked her head around the corner from the kitchen before returning to whatever she was doing in there.
Angelo pulled himself together. He began his approach. I struck first. Left, left, right. Cover the jaw, keep the knees bent and the feet active. Stay aware, stay very aware. Deflect. Strike. Keep the feet active. Look in his eyes. Left, left, right. Feet active. Uppercut. Deflect. Take a hit. Respond. Look in his eyes. Stay aware. Stay aware. It would be a lie to say that I didn’t notice he was taking it easy on me. Angelo wouldn’t have dared to actually clock me a good one, and it’s not because he was merely avoiding the guilt he’d feel for hurting his kid sister. He was just kind, that’s all.
And that is when the injury happened. I’d dropped, free-falling, avoiding Ang’s left hook, and whacked my knee on the corner of the coffee table. The front door slammed shut. I’d ducked, again, under one of Ang’s cross-jabs and nailed him right in the gut.
Nicky clonked down the hall and looked into the living room. “Oh, come on. Stop teaching her to fight,” he insisted. “She’s gonna get herself in trouble one of these days. And, you know how that’ll look.”
“You jealous? You jealous, Nicky!?” Angelo taunted. “You jealous your kid-sister fights better than you?” He kept bouncing back and forth, alternating feet and brilliantly smiling.
Nicky swaggered past the still-frightened lamp.
“Come on, Nick. Hit me! Hit me, Nicky! Hit me!” Angelo taunted.
Nicky walked up to Ang, and with confident ease punched him right in the face. Nicky slammed him so hard that Ang actually spun in a circle before he smashed up against the mantle. Like ten of Grandma’s knick-knacks shattered on the floor.
Grandma shuffled in from the kitchen. “Angi ,what-a happen?”
She knew exactly what happened. Her head snapped over to Nicky.
Like all the Italians did, Nicky extended his hands and hunched his shoulders forward. “What?”
Grandma rested her fists on her hips, what was left of them anyway. She had evolved into a rather symmetrical cylinder.
“He asked me to hit’m,” Nicky continued. “So I did. What’s wrong with’at?”
Grandma turned to Angelo, extending her hands and hunching her shoulders forward. “You-a break-a the house. You-a be ashame-ed Angi!” She vigorously patted him on the side of the face—not quite a smack, but not exactly lovingly. “Clean up-a!” She shuffled back to the kitchen, her hand flapping above her head all the way.
Ang got back up from the floor. After I retrieved some frozen peas for his face, I lurked near the hallway door for a while, just watching. The room emitted bland badness like a gray cloud on a Sunday. Nicky brushed into me as he left, but Ang raked up all the ceramic pieces. I turned and meandered into the kitchen,
Grandma had her back to me. She was rifling with something. Her arms tensed up and released, tensed and released.
“What