The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Really?” Could it all be so easy? Elly wondered.

  “Really.”

  “Mimi?

  “Mmmhmm?”

  “If you have The Sight and it’s so strong why don’t you know what Itsy said to me that day?”

  “She blocked me, the witch,” said Mimi.

  “I thought you didn’t use that word?”

  “Call a spade a spade, Mama used to say.”

  Elly sat quietly watching Mimi crochet while trying to let the whole bizarre situation sink in.

  “Mimi, do you have an extra hook?”

  Mimi dug into the basket and found a shiny pink hook and a ball of soft, white yarn. “Here,” she said. “Make that baby a blanket or something already.”

  Elly took the hook and the yarn. Her hands knew what to do. Chain 100, single crochet, single crochet, single crochet.… Oh look, Uncle George! Come see, Aunt Itsy! I’m doing it!

  * * *

  Later that night, when Mimi was asleep, Elly stole out of bed to grab some cookies and a glass of milk. The cookies were the best she’d ever had. Little round butterballs with almonds and powdered sugar. Surprisingly spicy chocolate cookies dipped in a shiny chocolate glaze. And best of all, the melt-away Genettis. An Italian sugar cookie of sorts. Simple and elegant.

  With a handful of cookies Elly opened the refrigerator to get the milk. The light shone on a pile of dirty mopines in a corner on the counter. The one on top was the one she’d used to wipe her hands after cutting the beets. There was a distinguishable red palm print. Red like blood. A memory started to surface, but she pushed it down. Maybe some of these memories won’t be so good, she thought.

  5

  Itsy

  Papa loved Mama. It was clear to all of us, even though they fought from time to time. And, even though, on closer inspection, they seemed to have nothing in common. Mama had a wildness in her, a scattered beauty. Papa thought in lines and numbers. He didn’t pay much attention to her magic. Bunny always said it was a shame. That Papa didn’t appreciate her. But Mama would hush her and use the complaint as moments to school us. Mama never missed an opportunity to gather us around her and tell us what she thought. She said every moment was a “teaching moment” and no questions should ever go unanswered. And she let us know, very early on, that though love spells existed, they should never be used. You don’t manipulate such powerful things. You simply must understand their secrets.

  She taught us the secret of love under the shade of the fiery red maple on a glorious October afternoon. The kind where the sun is still warm but the sky spreads out impossibly blue and hinting at winter. We were closing up the Far Rockaway cottage and eating lunch in the yard. Mama was pointing out how brilliant the red of the tree glowed against the blue, blue sky. She was always doing things like that. Forcing us to stop and look.

  In 1938 when we went to see the Technicolor genius that was Gone with the Wind, I learned a whole new appreciation for the world Mama created for us. My sisters and brothers and myself, we weren’t so impressed. But everyone in the theater was oohing and ahhhing over the bright colors on the screen. I remember thinking Goodness, so many people living in gray worlds.

  Anyway, we were finished eating and Mama was making us look at that Sugar Maple. We lay down underneath it with her and looked up through the leaves at the sky. She was in the middle and we spread out around her like stars, each of us trying to be the ones closest to her face so we could smell her breath, roses and milk, while she talked.

  Bunny sat up. “See, Mama, Papa doesn’t notice these things. He’s always rushing. Look, he’s not even here. So busy back in the city at work.”

  Mama sat up, too, and leaned her back against the trunk of the tree. Her hair was loose and her eyes bright with the day. I remember her apron. Beautifully cut work cotton. Perfectly white against her brown skirt. She patted her lap and George climbed on top of her. The rest of us gathered. Well, not the older boys. Those three—always connected at the hip. They were playing cards on the screened-in back porch.

  “Papa doesn’t need to notice,” she said, “It’s enough that I do. And I teach it to you, and you will teach it to yours, right?”

  We nodded. Forever wanting to please her.

  “Here is the secret to love,” she said. “Always make sure that the man loves you just a breath more than you love him.”

  “Mama!” cried George.

  Mama laughed, “Not you, my duck!” and she rocked him.

  “Mama, that’s not fair,” said Mimi, who was always watching over Papa even when he wasn’t there.

  “Oh Mimi, I love your Papa more than any woman ever loved any man. And still, he loves me a breath more. It’s the only healthy way. If a woman loves too much—if her love is heavier—she won’t see anything but him. She’ll be blind to the world. Women are made like that. We have to teach ourselves not to become obsessed. True love lies in peace, not torture.”

  And with those words she looked directly into my eyes. They burned a hole through my heart.

  6

  Elly

  “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!” Anthony was standing over Elly dangling a set of keys on a rabbit foot key chain.

  “Gimme a second. Jesus! How did you get in here?” Elly groaned and pulled a pillow over her head. All she wanted to do was stay in bed. She was warm and sleepy like a cat.

  “Mimi. I think she wants me to marry you. You know. Legitimize you.” He sat on the bed and bounced up and down as if testing the springs for durability.

  Elly sat up and hit him with the pillow. “You did not just say that! Oh my God!”

  Anthony pulled the pillow away from her but held her hands. He looked at her fingers. “Elly, you have paint under your fingernails.”

  Elly pulled back her hands self-consciously. “I know, it’s the oils. I have to use paint thinner to get them really clean.”

  “That’s right. Mimi told me you were an artist. Do you have any paintings in your room? I’d love to see them.”

  Her paintings. Cooper. Yale. “I do. And I’d like to get them. Like … yesterday,” she said in a panic.

  Anthony laughed. “That’s why I’m here. We’re gonna get Georgie’s car out of storage and take a drive up to New Haven to get your stuff. Okay?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said. And then he left her to get dressed.

  “God, I’m a mess,” she said to her reflection in the dresser mirror. Her hair was a thick tangle, her face rounder than normal. And the hormones were making her complexion think it was sixteen again. “Yuck,” she said to her reflection, sticking her tongue out before she began to look for her clothes. She noticed a folded pile at the foot of the bed, a flowered dress, thick stockings, and a gray cardigan, waiting for her.

  She put on the clothes and looked at herself again. Much better. They fit perfectly. “Of course they do. She’s a witch don’t you know,” she said into the mirror. She was trying to run a brush through her hair when the invisible crying child started wailing again. This time, it wasn’t stationary. The sound seemed to move through the walls. She pulled her hat onto her head instead, gave up on her appearance, and went out into the hall to investigate.

  “Zelda?” This is crazy, she thought. Crazy wonderful. Like a surprise party you knew was coming only you didn’t know the time—making each threshold a carrier of horrifying delight.

  She followed the crying out into the kitchen and then into the back hall, where it got louder. “If you’re not Zelda, who are you?”

  The sound drew Elly all the way out into the snowy yard, but the crying muted right away so she turned to go back inside when she heard her name.

  “Eleanor? Is that you?”

  There was a young woman just about Elly’s own age standing at the back gate wearing a peacoat and waving mitten-clad hands back and forth furiously. Elly walked into the yard, the sounds of her footfalls crunching as she made her way to the girl.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Of co
urse you do! Come here quick and let me see you. I’m hiding from Mother!” Her eyes shined with mischievous delight.

  As Elly walked toward the girl she tried to place her. Thin, short, dark hair. I have absolutely no idea who this is.

  “Oh my gosh! You look just the same! I knew it was you. I just knew it.”

  The two young women stood facing each other and Elly was taken aback as she was pulled into a tight embrace. “I’ve missed you!”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Elly into the girl’s ear. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m Elizabeth. But you always called me Liz and I liked it. It’s okay if you don’t remember me. It was a loooooooong time ago. All that matters is you are here and so am I. We’ll be great friends again. But I have to go. Mother is calling and I swear I’m not doing one more chore. Not one!”

  Elly watched as the strange girl ran away down the back alleys between the buildings.

  “Who are you talking to?” Anthony asked from behind her.

  Elly jumped. “You scared me! Don’t do that!”

  “How about you start dressing appropriately for winter? Look at you, out here again with no coat and no shoes.”

  “I heard someone crying, and then I came out here and met a long-lost best friend I can’t even remember.”

  “That’s good. Making friends. See? At home already.” Anthony put his arm around her shoulder and pivoted her back toward the house. “Let’s go, the day isn’t getting any longer.”

  * * *

  “So, you really don’t remember anything?” asked Anthony as he drove Uncle Georgie’s 1965 Chevy Cavalier, the same red as Carmen’s favorite nail polish color, “Honeymoon Red.”

  “Nope. My first memory is standing on the stoop with Carmen, only I didn’t recognize her. She still hates me for it. I was only ten. But she hates me anyway. There’s a little more but it’s silly.”

  “No. Come on, fess up.” He nudged her as they crept along I-95 northbound to New Haven, caught in traffic of mythical proportions.

  “I remember doing crochet … and cartwheels,” said Elly softly. “Just the beach and the sea air, damp sand and cartwheels.” She looked at him and shrugged self-conscious shoulders.

  “Well, while we’re stuck in the car, push harder, close your eyes. Anything else?”

  Elly closed her eyes and let her mind reach back. She tumbled hand over hand, her feet kicking up and out like a starfish, and through the fog it came to her, a boy, a sense of love, and a girl standing behind him holding up rabbit ears and laughing.

  “I remember you,” she said with a surprised laugh. “And … that girl … Liz, I think. And that’s all.”

  “Well, hell, if you remember me, then that’s enough,” said Anthony as traffic began to move.

  Driving through New Haven made Elly increasingly queasy. Anthony must have sensed it because he kept asking, “You okay?”

  Am I okay? she asked herself. What does that even mean? No one ever asked her that question. She didn’t even ask herself that question. As she looked out the window at the familiar buildings surrounding the campus, Elly took a chance and asked herself the same question—Are you okay? She answered as Eleanor: “No. You are definitely not okay.” As Elly: “I think so. I think you’re on the mend.” And as Babygirl: “Of course you are okay! You are always okay! And you’re home now, with Anthony and Mimi and Fee and Itsy. Get on with this chore and get back to the Bronx!”

  “You okay?” asked Anthony. Again.

  “I don’t know,” said Elly, “I have a lot of … um … mixed feelings.”

  “Totally understandable,” he said.

  “At least you think so,” she said as they drove around Downtown New Haven. “I’m starting to think I have multiple personality disorder.”

  Even though most classes were not in session the campus was still lively, and parking was an issue. In the end she made him double-park because she thought if they circled the streets of downtown New Haven one more time she’d just give up and go back to the Bronx. Already Elly felt this life fading. The castlelike buildings with towers piercing the sky. The stuffy professors riding bicycles to and from campus, even through the now slushy streets. She watched couples walking hand in hand, wearing matching Burberry scarves and clutching Starbucks coffee. It all seemed so shallow. How had she survived it for so long?

  The art. Her art. It was the painting. Her only real escape. And that’s why we’re here, she reminded herself. To get my paintings before Cooper can destroy them. And he would, too. He’d waited so long to be given a valid reason to obliterate the last shred of herself that belonged to just her. She wouldn’t let him do it.

  “We have to move fast,” she said.

  “Why?” asked Anthony.

  “I think Cooper is taking an intersession course … he might be around.”

  “What’s an intersession course?”

  “A class you can take over winter break. He’s down a few credits for graduation.” Her words were coming out fast, panicked small talk driven by the fear rising inside her the closer they got to the one-way street where the gate to her dorm quad was located.

  “He scares you?”

  He sees me.

  “Let’s just go. Okay? Park here…”

  She thought she’d get an argument about double-parking, about breaking rules. Cooper would have lectured her as he drove in circles through the maze of downtown New Haven getting more and more annoyed until the traffic actually became Eleanor’s responsibility. As if she’d conjured it up just to screw up his life. But she was with a different man now, and he thought double-parking with the hazard lights blinking was a fine idea. “Works for me,” Anthony said, throwing the car into park. And then he rushed around to get to her side before she could open the door herself.

  “This way, m’lady, your palace awaits you.”

  “Prison’s more like it,” said Elly, looking up at the imposing buildings. Elly often thought the rest of New Haven, the neighborhoods flanking the city center, could crumble away and still—the majestic, medieval Yale would rise, untethered to Olympus, back to the cold gods of academia that created it in the first place.

  Anthony stuffed his hands in his jean pockets and huddled down in his black leather jacket. “It’s cold here! Where to?” His breath came out in puffs of warm mist in the frigid air. His black hair fell in his eyes. Elly fought the urge to push it aside like Barbra Streisand pushed Robert Redford’s in The Way We Were.

  Seeing Anthony up close and center in the world she’d existed in for so long without him was dizzying. She cleared her throat and motioned forward with her arms. “Through these gates and then to the right. It’s not far.”

  Anthony started walking, but Elly stood still. One hand on the hood of Uncle George’s car. She didn’t want to leave the safety of it. It was cold here. So cold she thought the world would crack and she’d be left behind. All alone. Again.

  Anthony turned around and held out his hand. “You comin’?”

  Elly walked toward him and hesitantly took his hand. “Don’t let me go. Okay?”

  “Never.” He walked her to the gates and Elly swiped a student card to unlock them. As the gates clanged closed behind them, she held his hand a little tighter.

  “You did good, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Coming here. This isn’t a small thing. Yale is a big deal. You gotta be some kind of smart to come here,” he said.

  “Yale is Carmen’s idea. Only the best for her,” said Elly.

  “You didn’t want to come to school here?”

  “No.… Well, I don’t know.” Now amid the snow-covered trees and high buildings, time seemed to stop. The car and the busy streets a million years away. “This way.”

  Elly’s dorm room at Yale was beautiful. Seniors got their pick and if the outside of Elly’s building looked like a palace, her room could have belonged in a museum. Exposed stone walls, leaded windows, wide planked wood floors, and even a f
ireplace. Anthony marveled at his surroundings.

  “It doesn’t work, the fireplace. And it’s really cold in here in the winter.” She opened up a large closet door and pulled out some bins and boxes. “Let’s start with the art supplies, canvases, and the books. The rest I can live without.”

  “You always this prepared?” asked Anthony.

  “We never really stay put, Mom and me.”

  “You must think it’s crazy, me livin’ in that building my whole life.” Anthony was already loading books into boxes.

  “No. I think it’s amazing,” she said, the idea of staying put in one place for so long, of wanting to, made hot tears burn behind her eyes.

  Anthony sat on the floor next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Now, what’s all this? Are you afraid still? It’s gonna be okay. Trust me.”

  Elly rested her head against him, his solidity.

  “And what, the fuck, may I ask is going on in here?”

  Elly turned around to see Cooper leaning into the room by the doorframe. He looked amused and confounded at the same time. She hated that her stomach clenched in fear at the sight of him. Blond, with a long, lean swimmer’s body and a jaw that spoke of untold wealth and haughty ways. Cooper embodied a world Elly was leaving. A place she’d never felt she belonged.

  Elly and Anthony stood up exchanging glances. Anthony’s said: What should I do? Elly’s responded nervously: I have no idea.

  Cooper’s presence made her blood run thin and cold. She felt immediately fragile. Unpretty. She watched as Anthony held out his hand and took a strong step forward.

  “I’m Anthony, nice to know you.”

  Cooper squinted a bit, as if trying to get a handle on the situation, and then shook his hand. “Cooper Bakersmith.”

  “What are you doing here over break, Cooper?” asked Elly, keeping her voice strong and calm.