The Witch of Little Italy (3 page)

“I’m leaving, Mom,” she declared as she walked through the door trying to slam it, but Carmen was right behind her.

Eleanor ran to catch the elevator, Carmen chasing after her.

She leapt into the open elevator and sighed with relief as the doors began to close. Carmen threw her arm in between the elevator doors, wedging them open.

“What do you want from me?” yelled Eleanor.

“They’ll eat your baby,” Carmen said through clenched teeth. “They will. I don’t know why I’m alive. Think about it, Eleanor. I’m the only one. The only living child. There were
eight
of them. Four girls and four boys. You’d think there’d be a gaggle of kids, right? That I’d have cousins galore? Well I don’t. What does that tell you?”

Eleanor grabbed at Carmen’s hand trying to push it out of the way so the doors would close and she could be free. A thought—clear-as-crystal—surfaced in Eleanor’s mind as she wrestled with her mother’s hand.

“You never belonged there, did you? No matter how you tried, they ignored you, didn’t they?” she asked.

Carmen’s hand dropped but this time Eleanor kept her own arm in the door. “But me? They love me! And that kills you somehow, doesn’t it?”

“Look,” Carmen said pointing a shaking finger at Eleanor. “I don’t care what you think you know. There’s some sort of curse on that building. On that family, Eleanor.”

Eleanor pulled her hand back and waved good-bye at her mother. The doors started to close. “Suit yourself then,” Carmen said turning around, “They’re nuts.”

She watched her mother through the narrowing view and saw Carmen sweep back into her suite on stocking feet until the shiny metal closed in front of her face making her mother disappear completely.

*   *   *

Eleanor Amore took the Metro North train from Union Station. It was deserted. The conductor tipped his hat and said “Merry Christmas, honey.” The
honey
made her want to cry. Everything made her want to cry lately.
Damn hormones.

She got off in Stamford and could have taken a cab, but didn’t. She transferred onto the 125th Street train and got off on Fordham Road. Eleanor’s legs knew where to go. Her mind did, too. A few months back, Eleanor had flipped through her mother’s address book looking for any trace of family that might be there. She looked up
Amore
. Nothing. She looked up
mom,
and then
aunts.
Nothing. Then she went to the “B” section. And there it was, the address, 1313 170th Street, Bronx. Only it wasn’t listed under “B” for Bronx, it was listed under “B” for “Batshit, Crazy.”

*   *   *

Eleanor stood very still outside her family’s building on 170th Street. The night was mild for December but the snow fell anyway, glittery dancing dust. It rested in delicate layers, coating Eleanor’s hat and oversized sweater. She kicked the snow and faced her past.

She pulled her hat down close over her ears as she gazed at her grandmother’s home. Its smallness made it stand apart. Only two stories sandwiched between larger, more modern apartment buildings. And it had a peaked roof, where the others were flat. The iron grates on the lower-level windows curled and curved into everlasting vines. Two chimneys rose tall and old-fashioned on either side of the roof and stood out black against the purple, snowy sky like sentinels. Eleanor thought she could remember holding onto those metal bars, the coppery smell of sweaty little girl hands when she let go—but then—then it was gone. The building looked surprisingly lovely coated in the fine, sparkling December snow, with warm lights pouring out. Eleanor
almost
wanted to go in.

Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” came floating out of a window, propped open just a crack. The building in front of her bustled. Eleanor’s artist eyes saw a moving still life; a work of performance art. The majority of activity streamed out in sound bites of laughter and clinking glasses from the window on Eleanor’s right. The colored lights from the Christmas tree pooled out through the window and bled onto the white ground in a jewel-toned watercolor wash. The apartment to her left was colder. The light, austere. The inside of the front room was devoid of curtains making the shabby room clearly visible.

Peeping Tom Eleanor always had a love of walking around at night. Especially in New Haven. She’d walk around and peer into the houses. Watch the families gathered together making dinner. Watching television. Being normal, whatever that meant.

Eleanor tipped her head up to get a view of the windows on the second floor. One dark, like a black eye. The other dim, but she could see a figure. It moved, the shadow, and Eleanor knew where it was going. Snow fell in her eyes.

She gave the snow an annoyed kick and crossed her arms as she sat on the front stoop of the building. “Crap! I’m not ready for this!” she yelled at the snow.

The large front doors opened and people poured out like bugs. A priest and some old ladies, all laughing and saying goodnight. Someone brushed against her and said, “Excuse me.” Eleanor didn’t move. She sat still on the stoop.

Her grandmother, Mimi, stood in the doorway, handing out Tupperware containers of food and saying broad good-byes to her guests. Only when they were gone did she turn her attention to her granddaughter. “Babygirl, you’ve been out here a long time. It’s getting cold now. Come in, won’t you? I’m so excited to catch up.”

Eleanor craned her neck to look at her grandmother. Mimi looked exactly as she remembered. Short and round. Black hair set against an old face. Old but kind. Eleanor felt torn between the solidness of the stoop and the liquid happy that wanted her to fly into Mimi’s warm arms.
Why am I so determined to love it here?
she wondered for the six hundredth time that night.

Babygirl.
The name made her heart sing. That’s what they’d called her. Eleanor shook her head “no” hard enough to send a layer of snow flying. It was all too much. Carmen was afraid of this place, and Eleanor was increasingly convinced that she was going insane, so she didn’t know what to think, or who to trust. A part of her, the sane part, weighed the options. It was either the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel, or the Rabbit Hole from Alice in Wonderland. Either way, it was dangerous.

“Okay,” said Mimi. “But the door is unlocked. I’ll be cleaning up. You come in when you’re ready.”

One of the front windows screamed open. Aunt Fee poked her head out and yelled to her, “Get inside! You’ll freeze your skinny legs off!” Eleanor sat still.
Fee can’t hear well
 … She remembered.

Stubborn and staring at the snow she marveled over how each individual crystal was different from the next. She remembered reading somewhere that Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. Eleanor wished there were a hundred ways to say her name. She thought, maybe, if her name was howled from all the corners of the world, in a million different voices, that she might explode into a cloud of snow. Light and separate, her parts floating down onto the world in a series of beautiful crystalline moments.

“You know somethin’? The Eskimos have a hundred words for snow,” said Anthony sitting next to her.

His voice rumbled like low thunder, echoing her thoughts. She wondered momentarily if she’d thought out loud …
How?
It didn’t matter. Everything was muted and far away. Eleanor, hiding under her hat, didn’t want to come back from inside her dream of being snow. And she certainly couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him she was sure she’d disappear.
Don’t look at me. Don’t figure it all out. Keep me in your memory like I was when we were kids. I’m damaged now. Broken. Please.
Eleanor hadn’t considered this part when she was making the rash decision to come back to this place. She didn’t think about how it would affect the other people.

Maybe her grandmother didn’t want a pregnant granddaughter?

Maybe her aunts didn’t need something else to take care of at their age?

Maybe Anthony was hoping she’d be a successful, beautiful, grown-up woman, instead of a hopeless, homeless, cloud of snow.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “Or at least it’s good to see this person who I think is you.” He leaned over and picked up the brim of her hat, forcing her to look right at him.

She held her breath. She’d planned this moment a hundred times in her head since she was thirteen. The big reunion. But in her mind they’d be on a beach, or he’d see her browsing in a bookstore. She never imagined it would be like this. Sitting in a heap on a cement stoop.

Eleanor turned her head and looked at him.

Shocked, she closed her eyes for a moment so she wouldn’t make an even bigger fool of herself. She had to take all of it in. Years passed by under her eyelids. Until the moment she looked at him she was completely, ridiculously, expecting to see a thirteen-year-old boy. And the person who’d just slid in next to her like a cat was no boy. She opened her eyes again to drink him in. His beauty. It made Eleanor want to die. Her artist eye knew this was perfection. The balance of features, hard jawline, full lips, Roman nose. His hair was longer, it fell in his eyes. And he was taller, too. She wanted to paint him.

“Hey, there you are!” he said. “I thought I’d lost you for a second.”

“Hey back,” she said and pulled on her hat.

He cleared his throat; there was an awkward silence. “Welcome home,” he said, finally.

“Do you still live here?” asked Eleanor.
Small talk, that’s good. Keep it all small talk
 … she thought.

“Yep. Upstairs. Next to where Uncle George used to live.”

Eleanor felt a knot of sudden sorrow in her stomach, though she didn’t understand why. “Used to?” she asked.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Carmen never told you? He died two years ago,” said Anthony, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Eleanor shrank away from his touch. “I don’t know why it bothers me. He was just a smelly old man.”

Anthony looked away from her. “Not always,” said Anthony. “Still no memory of our amazing summer?”

Eleanor shook her head. “You remember that?”

“Do I remember that you don’t remember?” laughed Anthony. “That sounds kind of like ‘Who’s on First—’ you know, that Abbott and Costello act?”

Eleanor put her face in her hands. “Ugh! I don’t know how to do this! I don’t know how to even have this conversation. Aren’t you married or something?” she asked.

“Well—no. I guess not at the moment. Do you want me to be?” he asked.

Eleanor stood up, her feet slipped out from under her, and she saved herself from falling by hanging onto the iron railing.
Monkey bars. Lookit me Uncle George! I’m doing it!
She was swinging, her arms burning, summer sweat stinging her eyes. Eleanor’s head ached with these echoes from the past. They felt like nuts and bolts clanging around. What would happen when they all found their way together? Who would she be? Eleanor took a large stride backward toward the curb. “I … I’ve made a huge mistake. I … I have to go.”

“Where are you going?” asked Anthony, standing up and brushing the snow off the back of his jeans.

“I have no idea.”

“Do what you need to do, but when you decide to come back—and you will—I’ll be here.” He went back into the building and shut the door,

Eleanor turned around and walked to the curb to try and hail a cab. A crumpled ball of paper flew over her head and landed in the snow at her feet. It began to unfurl. Eleanor picked it up.

That’s right. Move along. Nothing here to see.

Love, Aunt Itsy.

“Itsy,” Eleanor said the strange name aloud. It rolled off her tongue and mingled with the snowflakes. Her heart knew the name even if her mind only contained a small recollection. She turned back to see the woman who tossed the paper, but as she turned the door shut tight against her.

Something stirred deep inside Eleanor. Something that urged her to take the bait. To run toward the secrets, into the unknown.
If there was ever a time to be brave
, she thought … And then Carmen’s voice from earlier in the evening:
“A little self-confidence would go a long way
…”

Eleanor Amore straightened her posture and only tugged on her hat once as she stomped up the stairs and threw open the closed doors of 1313 170th Street.

Once inside she leaned against the double doors and adjusted her eyes.

A semicircle of oldness stood directly in front of her. Eleanor turned pale. The lamp on the hallway table gave a warm glow, and the doorways to both downstairs apartments were open, flooding the hall with dueling Christmas lights. The light flickered off the ruby poinsettia pin on Aunt Fee’s housecoat, and the high shimmer of the ladies’ hairspray.

“Are you okay?” asked Mimi.

They tightened their circle, coming toward her. Sandwiching her back against the door. Eleanor began to hyperventilate.

Itsy held a pot full of what looked like tomato sauce, but smelled like fish. Eleanor was immediately sick to her stomach.

“Move, ladies! I think she’s going to blow!” yelled Fee.

Mimi rushed Eleanor into apartment 1A and closed the door. Fee shuffled across the hall into the apartment she shared with Itsy. But not Itsy. She stayed in the hall, thinking about a day long ago as well as a day yet to come.

*   *   *

“Are you going to be sick, love?” asked Mimi when she closed the door.

“No,” said Eleanor, taking in air through her nose. “The smell’s gone. What was that?”

“Crab Sauce. The Feast of the Seven Fishes, don’t you know?”

“Oh, yes. That’s right,” said Eleanor, remembering the amazing meal from that last visit. Squid salad drenched in olive oil, stuffed lobster tails, and the crab sauce … her mouth watered and a warmth spread through her at the thought of the delicious food, but then the queasiness hit again.

“Will you be all right in your mother’s old room? Or would you rather sleep with me? I wouldn’t mind sharing my bed,” Mimi said as she led Eleanor down a narrow hallway running the length of the apartment. The dim Christmas lights mimicked candle glow and cast long granddaughter and grandmother shadows against the walls.