by Laura Ruby
But the one boy she really wanted to talk to was too shy to talk to her. Or maybe he didn’t want to. He hovered behind the others, his hat crushed in his hands, smiling, or looking down at his shoes, but never saying a word.
“It’s nothing bad,” Frankie said to Father. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about talking to . . . a person I haven’t talked to. Not yet.”
“’Tis the way it should stay.”
She should have expected him to say this, should have expected him to know. The Guardians worked so hard to keep boys and girls separate—even brothers and sisters. But now that she was working in the kitchens, she was allowed to go more places and do more things, talk to more people. And why shouldn’t she? She had just had a birthday, the first birthday without her father. Vito sent a letter and a card he said was from everyone. As if she wanted a card from everyone. Anyway, she was a woman now.
Almost.
She said, “It’s just talking.”
“You have bigger, more important things to do and to think about. Your schoolwork. Your job in the kitchen, which helps the whole orphanage. And there are other things going on in the world. We are at war.”
“I know,” she said, though sometimes the war was easy to forget. She knew about the rationing and the recycling—they had to save the cans in the kitchen—but since the orphanage gave them their food, and since what it gave them had always been terrible, they didn’t pay that much attention. Even the radio broadcasts seemed like they were talking about something that was happening too far away to be real.
Other times, though, the war wasn’t so easy to forget.
Father said, “If this boy is healthy, then he’ll be joining the service soon.”
Frankie felt queasy and wished she hadn’t run to the kitchen for an egg before confession. “Not that soon.”
“Time always passes faster than we’d like it to.”
Frankie thought it didn’t pass fast enough. “Shouldn’t I talk to him while I still can?”
“You know the answer to that.”
Frankie knew Father’s answer. And she knew her own. They didn’t match. They rarely did.
“Ten Hail Marys,” Father said. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”
At Father’s words, Frankie bowed her head and murmured, “His mercy endures forever,” but I laughed. Father Paul thought he understood mercy, thought he understood forever, but what could he possibly know about either?
I poked at his Bible, willing wanting wishing the pages to flap, the book to lift and swoop around the confessional like a darting bird. Though the pages barely fluttered, Father Paul trapped the book against his chest.
Silly pajama man, I hissed, like the ghoul I was. Am. Was.
This is mercy, this is forever.
Mermaids of Chicago
I MUST HAVE BEEN ANGRIER with Father Paul than I thought, because time stuttered, slipped, and I found myself sitting against an oak in the middle of the woods. The song of a white-throated sparrow that should have made its way south long ago bored into my ears: “Oh, sweet Canada Canada Canada.”
Shut up about Canada, if you please, I said.
The sparrow was having none of my nonsense, or maybe it just wanted to hear the sound of its own voice. “Canada Canada Canada,” it warbled. “CANADA.”
I stood. The tree was a huge oak, bare branches raised ecstatic and saintlike to the winter sky. You learn a lot about saints when you lurk around orphanages, when you listen in on the dreams of nuns and schoolgirls. My favorite story is the one about St. Lucy, who gouged out her own eyes to discourage a too-persistent suitor who had complimented them. I’d seen a statue of her once at the lower altar of a nearby church, Our Lady of Grace. Both eye sockets were hollowed out and bleeding down her cheeks. She held a plate with her two eyes on it as if she was about to serve them as hors d’oeuvres. Something I should have tried myself.
I slipped through the woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of a wolf or a bear, but even the deer avoided me. Or maybe they were all sick of hearing about Canada too. I didn’t want to go back to the orphanage just yet, so I headed for the lake. Mounds of snow still buried the sand, ice-capped water lapped thickly at the shore of Montrose Beach. I sat looking out at the great expanse of Lake Michigan. Usually it wasn’t difficult to ignore the other spirits drifting around, performing their private rituals, their endless deaths. But one young black man strolling across the sand seemed fixated not on himself, but on me. Despite his neatly groomed mustache, the fine pinstriped suit he wore, and the carved cane that he twirled like Charlie Chaplin, my mother would have yanked me across the street to avoid him simply because of his dark skin.
My mother had been scared of so many things. Not much to be scared of now.
But plenty to be annoyed by. The young man passed me once, walking. He doubled back and passed me again, this time floating on a raft of mist rolling off the lake. He turned around a third time and stopped right in front of me in a spray of snow.
He pointed his cane at me. You’re the whitest girl I’ve ever seen, he said.
I didn’t answer. Once, his mother might have yanked him across the street to avoid me. Once, I might have been more dangerous to him.
You’re whiter than the snowbank you’re sitting in.
I leaned to the left, trying to look around his legs.
He peered closer. You’re so white, you’re almost blue.
I said, I can’t see the water.
He drew back as if surprised by his own observation, said, Definitely blue. He took in my indigo silk dress, the length of it, the fringe of beading around my knees, my bare feet, my face. He snapped his fingers. I bet it was that flu. The one that killed all those people. Back in ’18?
You have a knife sticking out of your neck, I told him.
Don’t change the subject.
I’m not.
So it was the flu? I heard it turned some folks so dark they couldn’t tell the white folks from the black ones. But it must have killed you quick, you in your fancy dress.
It had. No guns or knives required, because the sickness took me before anyone got other ideas. For a moment, my chest tightened, and even though I didn’t need to, didn’t have the lungs or the heart, I gasped for breath.
After I’d gathered myself, I said, If you know so much about it, why are you asking me?
Just making conversation.
Sometimes I preferred the ones like that bloody, gaping girl back at the orphanage, ones who kept leaping out of windows or jumping in front of trains in endless loops, no time to talk.
The name’s Horace, he said. Horace Bordeaux. Like a fine wine, only better. You got a name, Blue Girl?
Yes.
Well, what is it?
Don’t you have unfinished business you need to attend to, Mr. Horace? Haunting your brother or finding your killer or something?
He laughed. I don’t have a brother, he said.
Would you please move out of the way?
Why? Can’t you see through me?
He was quite solid for a dead man, but I could have seen through him if I worked at it. I didn’t want to work at it. I leaned to the right.
Nothing to see, he said, but he stepped aside. His gaze followed mine. What are you looking for?
I lifted my chin. There, I said.
In the gray water chunky with ice, dark heads bobbed and dipped.
So? he said.
Mermaids, I said.
He laughed again. Those are sailors who died in a storm or something like that.
Mermaids, I repeated. Mermaids with long flowing hair and iridescent tails, peeking out of the water to laugh at the blue girl sitting in a snowbank.
He frowned. Are you crazy?
If you say so.
His features shifted ever so slightly, relaxing, smoothing out. Ah. You’re playing.
I said nothing.
He twirled his cane one way, then the other. Sometimes I go to this little restaurant. Chi
nese place. You ever have Chinese food?
When would I have had that? I said, but I didn’t take my eyes off the mermaids bobbing in the slush.
Yeah, you probably wouldn’t have had the chance, gone as long as you’ve been. Anyway, I go to this little restaurant downtown. Been there awhile. Maybe it was the first one in Chicago, I don’t know. I sit at a table with three people. I make the fourth, you understand? I don’t eat alone. I never eat alone. I eat with friends. I speak their language. You can too, if you try hard enough, if you want to. It’s just a different kind of music. You pick out the melody. You play along.
I cut my eyes to him, this elegant man in his fine, fine clothes and the knife sticking out of his neck, but still said nothing.
He went on: When the waiter comes over, I ask for the chef’s special. None of that chop suey crap for me. That’s for people who don’t know any better. I want real Chinese food, spicy and hot. Food that lights you up from the inside. When the other folks at the table get their food, I get mine. I eat with chopsticks. I know exactly how to use them. Don’t have to stab the food.
He paused, eyes closed. I eat my fill. Almost tastes good as I remember.
I said, What else do you remember?
What?
Do you remember popcorn?
He blinked, idly touching the handle of the knife. Sure do.
What about coffee cake?
I would do anything for one cup of coffee. With a little chicory.
No, not coffee. Coffee cake. With a heavy crumb that sticks to your lips like a kiss.
It was his turn not to answer. He looked out at the mermaids, scratching at the place where the blade had punctured his skin. I was going to ask him how he knew what had killed me, how he read me so easily. And I was going to ask him what had done him in, who had, who was so strong and so brutal. But such a look of sadness and surprise passed over his face that I didn’t. Maybe he was remembering other things, things he didn’t want to. Maybe he was thinking it would be better to be caught in an endless loop, no memories but one.
None but one. Small and precious. A jewel you can hold in the palm of your hand, a—
Pearl, I said.
Pearls? he said, voice suddenly rough and ragged. You looking for treasure now?
What would I do with treasure? I asked.
First mermaids, then treasure, he said, scratching harder at that knife, digging at it. You are crazy.
If I am, you are too, I said. We all are.
He didn’t want to hear that. He turned and stalked away, his cane whipping at the air, his shoes rough on the snow, pushing at it so forcefully he left footprints all the way down the beach.
You can call me Blue Girl if you want, I said, the words swallowed up by the shrieks of the gulls, the crash of the water.
Vito’s latest letter hadn’t said much about Aunt Marion. Just that she was going to come and see Frankie and Toni—but he’d written this so many times before that Frankie was sick of reading it. Still, every time he said it, they would trudge to the waiting room the next visiting Sunday and sit there like fools. Finally one of the nuns would notice that they had no visitors and send them back to their cottages.
So Frankie spent a lot of time thinking some very bad thoughts about Aunt Marion. So bad that sometimes she said a few Hail Marys on her own, just in case.
Which was what she was doing as she sat there next to Toni, whispering the Hail Mary under her breath.
“Are you praying?” Toni said.
“No,” she said.
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m praying for you to move to England.”
“Why would I want to move to England? Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
Frankie didn’t answer, just finished up her Hail Mary and moved into an Our Father, mostly because she had started thinking sinful thoughts about Toni again, and figured Toni should have her own set of prayers.
“Do you really want her to come so much?” said Toni.
“No,” Frankie said.
“Yes, you do.”
“Funny you keep asking me what I’m doing if you know so much better.”
Toni sighed and plucked at the hem of her dress. She was less jumpy today. Frankie didn’t have to clamp her hand down on Toni’s knee to keep her from bouncing them off the bench. She looked older than she had when their father left. Frankie did too. Maybe that’s what happened when your father went away. You grew up. Not because you wanted to. Because what else were you going to do?
Toni said, “That’s just it, I don’t know better. When was the last time you seen Aunt Marion?”
“The same time you did. Thanksgiving a few years ago.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Sure you do. We went to the apartment on Irving Avenue. Daddy stuffed the turkey with spaghetti. Aunt Marion was there. She didn’t say much, but she was there.”
“You’re not supposed to stuff a turkey with spaghetti,” said Toni.
“Says you.”
“When I have Thanksgiving at my house, I’m going to stuff my turkey with real stuffing.”
“Good to know,” Frankie said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t care.”
Toni had the nerve to look hurt. “You don’t want to come to my house for Thanksgiving?”
Frankie sighed. “Why are we even talking about this? You don’t have a house. You don’t have a turkey. And it’s not Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t remind me,” Toni said, gripping her belly as if it ached her. “When are you going to get me a job in the kitchen?”
“I’m not.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re trouble enough as it is.”
“I ain’t done nothing.”
“Today,” Frankie said.
“You should be a nun, Frankie. You sound just like one.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“And you’re just as pretty as they are.”
Frankie raised her fist. Just then, someone coughed. They looked up and there she was. Short and stout as a teapot, like the song said. Thick dark hair on top of a moon face. Holding a giant pocketbook. Scowling.
Frankie lowered her fist. “Aunt Marion?”
“I hope you weren’t about to sock your sister,” Aunt Marion said. She had an Italian accent like their father’s, only not as strong. And she didn’t skip words like he did.
Frankie’s face went hot, because grown women didn’t sock their sisters. “I was just fooling.”
“Hmmm,” said Aunt Marion. “Well, come on, then.”
“Where?”
“You don’t want fresh air?”
They always wanted fresh air, but no one ever asked them what they wanted. Toni and Frankie glanced at each other and followed Aunt Marion as she walked through the visiting day crowd. One of the nuns said, “Visiting hours are over at four sharp.” Aunt Marion nodded only once and kept walking, her heels clicking sharply on the polished floor. Frankie was happy to see that she was as tall as her aunt was, even with Aunt Marion’s heels, and that Toni was shorter than both.
Aunt Marion reached the door that led outside, pushed it open, and marched through. She was marching so fast that they had to skip some to keep up. They didn’t even have time to put on their coats.
Over her shoulder, Aunt Marion said, “Your father says hello.”
It seemed to Frankie that the only people saying hello to each other were Vito and Aunt Marion. Who really knew what her father said? But thinking about him gave Frankie a pain in her head, so she stopped thinking.
The sky was blue as a robin’s egg. There was a ferocious bite in the air, but it was all right by Frankie. It felt good to walk in the chill. It made her feel clean.
“I’m cold,” Toni whined.
“We should walk faster, then,” said Aunt Marion. “It will warm you up.”
Toni didn’t like it, but she didn’t complain again. Maybe she was still hoping that Au
nt Marion had some treats banging around in that big pocketbook. Or maybe she thought Aunt Marion was going to walk them right off the grounds to a fancy restaurant where they served turkeys stuffed just the right way. But Aunt Marion kept walking. It was only when they got to the courtyard angel that she stopped.
“Bella,” said Aunt Marion, and Frankie felt another pain. But Aunt Marion was looking up at the stone angel, not Frankie. And that stone angel was beautiful, anyone would think so.
“Who is she?” Aunt Marion asked.
“We just call her the angel,” Toni said. “The nuns say she looks out for us.”
Aunt Marion held her pocketbook high and found a bench near the statue. “Let’s sit.”
“Aren’t we going somewhere to eat?” Toni said.
Aunt Marion frowned. “Didn’t you have supper already? It’s half past two.”
“We had supper, all right. If you can call gray meat and rainbow potatoes supper,” Toni grumbled.
“What are rainbow potatoes?”
“Potatoes so bruised that they’re about a million colors. Like a rainbow,” Frankie said.
“Hmmm,” said Aunt Marion. She nodded, still staring at the courtyard angel like she expected the angel to start singing or playing the harp. She set her giant pocketbook on the ground, then thought better of it, and put it back on her lap. It really did look like a suitcase. Like she’d been traveling. Then Frankie remembered that she had traveled at least once.
“When did you get here?” Frankie said.
Aunt Marion looked surprised. “Right before two. I took the streetcar.”
“No, I mean, when did you first come to America?”
“Oh,” Aunt Marion said. “That. In 1920. Two years after my brother—your father—did. A long time ago.”
“Were you scared?”
“You mean was I scared to ride on a boat for three weeks with a bunch of stinking men? Was I scared to go to a country where no one spoke my language?”
“Yeah. Were you?”
Her lips twitched. “Not at all.”