The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “What, my Georgie, what do you wish?” I asked, trying to soothe him.

  “I wish things were the way they used to be. You know? One, two, three, you and me? And I wish you didn’t live here. I wish you’d come back home and we could save this place for the summers. I hate coming all the way out here to see you guys. Why’dja have to move anyways? I just want you to come home. Come home, Itsy? Please come home?”

  And then, just like a real grown-up, I had to say the words that grown-up people say but never believe. “I am home, George. This is my home, now.”

  He sat up and made fists. His face surged with red anger. He pounded on the columns of the porch. “Well, I don’t like it!” he yelled. “I don’t like it one little bitty, bit!” He ran away from me then, down the street and toward the beaches yelling, “I’m telling Mama you won’t come home! I’m telling her you play kissing with Henry here at the cottage!”

  Mama knows, George, I thought. Mama knows. She put me here. Mama knows everything.

  It took a long time for me to figure out my own home. The internal one, the one that’s made of memories and pain. But you still can’t go there, and stay. The best you can do is dip a toe in now and then. Cry your eyes out.

  For me, home was in Mama’s words, her stories. In the herbs she used for cooking and weaving magic … and in the tangible things she made for us.

  I put my baby inside the trunk with my mother’s linens and lavender. I always hoped, that even though I couldn’t find my way back home, that somehow my tiny baby could.

  30

  Elly

  “It has to be here somewhere. Isn’t there an attic?” They’d searched the small cottage and found no trace of a steamer trunk.

  Anthony looked up. “Wait, look, it’s right here.” He stood on tiptoe and pushed a piece of ceiling out and over. He grabbed the edges of the exposed hole and hoisted himself up. “Here’s the ladder, babe, be careful.”

  Once she was up they let their eyes adjust to the light. It was a very small space that held only one object.

  “Here it is, Anthony! I knew it would be here.” Elly threw open the trunk. The scent of old linen and lavender came out like wind.

  “More sheets?” asked Anthony.

  Elly picked up the first layer of sheets and took in a deep breath. Lavender layered with an earthy, human smell. Elly had refocused her eyes so the tears that rose wouldn’t blur her vision. She had to get a very good look. She had to make sure what she was seeing was actually there. Not a memory, not a flash of premonition. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again.

  There it was. The secret. The tiny, skeletal remains of a prematurely born infant. Bones clad in a beautiful lace christening gown. The tears fell freely from Elly’s eyes, her throat closed against them and Elly panicked for a moment, thinking she, too, would lose her words now that she found the treasure. No, you won’t, she thought … I’ve found something, not lost something …

  “Oh God! It’s too much. It’s just too much. What is this? Why would someone do this?” She cradled her belly in her arms, wishing she could take the child out now and smell its head and cuddle its warm, alive body.

  “Dear Sweet Jesus,” said Anthony, who did the sign of the cross and kissed his crucifix. “Are you remembering, Elly? Is it working?”

  Elly reached into the trunk and placed her hands behind layers of fabric to ensure that she wouldn’t harm the remains. She carefully lifted up the child’s bones nestled against Amore lace. “No. I’m not remembering anything. I’m sensing things, but I can’t remember.” She covered the front of the child with a soft, white blanket.

  “Maybe we have to bring it to Itsy, ask her what it’s all about?” suggested Anthony.

  “Yes. It’s hers,” said Elly sniffing and regaining her composure. “It’s why she lost her voice. Loss is magical. You can’t lose something without something to show for it. It’s a balance. I have to get this baby back to Itsy, then she’ll get her voice back and tell me what she said to me that day.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Anthony said, helping her down from the cramped attic space.

  Shortly after, on the drive back to the Bronx, Elly suddenly felt heady with nausea. “Stop the car, Anthony, I’m going to be sick.”

  Anthony pulled over by the boardwalk and ran around to the passenger side of the car. Elly threw up by the curb. “Something’s happening, Anthony!”

  “Is it the baby? Dear God, Elly, is there something wrong with our baby?”

  “No … I need…” Elly heard the water, the waves surging onto the shore. “I want to go swimming before we go back.”

  “But Elly, honey, it’s nighttime!”

  “Anthony! Please, just listen to me!”

  He walked her down the beach and watched as she disappeared into the night waves off Far Rockaway. She went in wearing her flip-flops, kicking them into the sea as she felt her feet become buoyant. She swam until the truth came. And then she floated on her back, her short dress floating up past her belly button so the baby could look up at the stars, too. Her long hair free and swirling all around. Mermaid hair. The sky was wider, somehow, than it’d ever been before.

  Her hands moved to her stomach. She took a deep breath and bravely commanded The Sight.

  “Show me.”

  A bright light danced behind her eyes. She was gliding through the inside of herself, tumbling into a vision of a sunny kitchen and a bowl of baby cereal on the table. “Mommy’s coming!” she yelled with a little impatience. And then the light went out.

  Elly smiled and opened her eyes. “Mommy’s coming,” she said. “And you know what? I was supposed to die. Ten seconds ago. You, too, my baby. And now? Now I have an unforeseen life. What shall we do with it, little one?”

  She turned around to see Anthony pacing on the shore, in the moonlight. Behind him she saw the ghost lights of Playland and heard echoes of laughter, long gone.

  Elly swam back to her future.

  31

  Itsy

  “I knew you were going to come back for her. Saw it years and years ago. Sour souls can’t give up. They aren’t strong enough to say good-bye. We were strong enough to keep you away but here you are again. Evil doesn’t learn. It’s thick-headed. Even so, I kept praying it wouldn’t come to this.”

  Cooper turned around to face Itsy. She’d been hiding right out in the open. The doors to the building were unlocked and he’d barged right in, as she’d know he would. The only inside door that was unlocked was 1A, the same place he’d been the day they poisoned him. Itsy’s scratchy voice came from behind and made him jump.

  Itsy was even more surprised by her resurrected voice. She ran her hands up and down her neck. “She must have opened the trunk.” She laughed, her throat raspy but strong. “Sit down, boy, sit down and hear my story.”

  Itsy had planned this moment for six months. And so far, it was all working out the way she’d hoped. Well, not the way she’d hoped. She’d spent a long time hoping it wouldn’t have to end like this. That the Fates would figure out another way. Or even Elly herself. That she’d just leave. But just like Itsy always told Mimi, don’t underestimate The Sight. It was true. All of it unfolding like it had in her mind the second she’d held baby Elly in her arms.

  Cooper was staring at her. Disbelief in his eyes. She knew the cause. He could feel it, too. Most ordinary people can tell when their fate is being affected. And his whole future was about to be cut short. Itsy watched Cooper taking in the whole scene, adjusting his own plan. She saw his eyes settle on the candles burning in the center of the room.

  “That’s a Henbane Candle Ring. A bit of black magic. We don’t practice it as a rule, but sometimes certain situations call for action. Mama was fluent in those arts, but hid them from us most of the time. We are only supposed to use them in the most serious of times. And this counts, doesn’t it, Mama?” Itsy looked toward the ceiling and then back at Cooper. “By the time you…”

  She watched
as Cooper sniffed the air.

  “Oh my,” she said, “you’ve already inhaled their perfume. Now you’ll feel your limbs get heavy and numb. I’m sorry about all this. But family is family, Cooper. And family always comes first.”

  “You can’t think you’re going to get away with this,” said Cooper sounding hollow and unsure.

  “With what?” asked Itsy, a hint of uncharacteristic sarcasm in her voice. Power is a funny thing, she thought.

  “With whatever it is you are planning to do,” said Cooper, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “I can try. Soon your voice won’t be there either so speak your piece before I speak mine. Your feet are already tingling, aren’t they?”

  “You’re crazy,” Cooper said as he tried to lunge for her. But he couldn’t and fell in a great heap onto the Oriental carpet and tried to wriggle his body into a corner, squirming like a worm. He didn’t get far.

  “Yes, yes … we’ll get to that crazy part, but not yet. Now is the time for you to listen. This is my confession, not yours.” Itsy picked up a teacup. Her hands shook with adrenaline and age, and the cup clattered against the saucer for a moment. Itsy smiled. It reminded her of Mimi, and she knew she wouldn’t set living eyes on her sister again. How she loved her sisters. Everything in her life had always been built around her siblings. All the choices. All the pain. All the joy.

  “Are you ready for my story, Cooper? Because I’m ready to tell it, and you’re not the perfect person to tell, but you’re all I’ve got right now. And besides, somehow I think you might understand better than most would. And I’d like that. Someone to finally understand.”

  “What makes you think I’d understand your crazy confession?” asked Cooper, still struggling to move his legs, not understanding his invisible binding. There was sweat on his brow and panic in his voice.

  “Because only someone with a dark soul will be able to fully recognize what I have to say. Not that it matters, really, as neither of us are leaving here intact.”

  Cooper tried to talk, but the toxins were already in his lungs.

  Itsy took a sip from her cup and began to spin her tale.

  * * *

  “On Victory over Europe Day, May 8th, 1945, I was teaching seventh grade at Bayside Public School. It was almost time for my afternoon break, and I was starving. I can remember hearing my stomach growl, and the children giggling as they completed their quiet study. The classroom phone rang. I remember knowing. Staring at the phone on the wall until everything around it was dark gray and fuzzy. I walked to it with my hand stretched out. The children were murmuring. I supposed I did look odd. My sensible heels clicked on the floor. That smartass kid—I still remember his name—Bobby Horrowitz. He said ‘Are you gonna answer that or not, Ms. Amore? It might be my Ma callin’ me home!’ And the kids laughed. The kids were laughing while Mimi gave me the news. I left the phone dangling, I think, and walked out of the room.

  “I must have taken the train. I can’t remember. It would have been smarter to take a taxi. But the A to the 145th Street station and then to the D train was a shorter ride. About an hour and a half all in all. An hour and a half I can’t remember. I remember flashes, I guess … and then—poof—I was standing in front of my family’s building. 1313 East 170th Street. Home. I opened the iron gate, walked up the cement steps, and faced Mama’s fortune-teller’s prophecy.

  “In the events that followed the coroner leaving with half of my family, I went into the garden to try and breathe. It was too much. So much I couldn’t feel anything at all. It scared me—that numb. It reminded me of a story I read in National Geographic where a man almost froze to death but lived to tell about the experience. He described it as a peaceful feeling. How he was suddenly warm and sleepy. Comfortable, even, as everything inside of him was shutting down. Even though he knew he was about to die. The lie of death. The invisible tragic comedy of it all.

  “The baby inside me wiggled. It was the first movement I’d felt. My heart soared. I put my hands on my stomach and proceeded to make a very bad mistake.

  “‘Shhhh, little one,’ I crooned. ‘It’s over now. You’re safe. You’ll be born with Mimi’s baby who’s supposed to live.’

  “‘Who are you talking to, Itsy?’

  “It was George. His face was swollen and purple with grief. Why did I leave him alone? He was so frightened. Why hadn’t I gone to him right away? I knew his hiding places. It was really all my own fault, what happened next. My fault in so many ways.

  “He took me by the shoulders. The roses, Mama’s roses blurred together in great swatches of pink as he shook me back and forth.

  “‘Is there a baby inside of you?’

  “‘George, stop shaking me.’ My voice sounded like the A train.

  “My brother slapped me across the face. I looked at him, my tall handsome twin. What a man he could have made if he’d been whole. He pointed a shaking finger at me, even as the rest of his body arched away repulsed.

  “‘You’re … you’re not married. You can’t have a baby unless you are married. Sinner! Sinner … Sinner!’

  “He came at me then, my brother, and began to beat me. I don’t remember much after the first blow: It was aimed at my head and tossed me into the garden wall. I tried to protect my stomach, but George couldn’t stop himself. He kicked and hit. Everything was pouring out of him and raining down on me. And all I really remember is trying to figure out how to save him from hurting me, because I knew he’d never forgive himself. I’ve heard that nowadays people who have children born like George put them in institutions. A shame. Really. Because George was not a violent person. He simply couldn’t process all the pain. And I knew, no matter what came next, I’d never remind him of how he hurt me. I’d never speak of it again.

  “Nancy, a young girl my age who lived next door, found me and helped me inside. The halls seemed endless. She put me in Mama’s bed and delivered the baby. Dead. I woke to see her standing by the window holding a tiny bundle in bloodstained blankets. There was a sickening moment of hope where I thought it might still be alive. Where I forgot to remember that they were all dead.

  “Nancy turned to look at me. The blanket dropped and I saw the top of a blue-tinged head, bruised and still tempting. Fuzzy hair.

  “‘What do you want to do with her, Itsy?’

  “With her? Her. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I had to show her, instead. I had to show Nancy what we would do with my daughter.

  “Later, when Nancy needed a place to live, I wrote Mimi a note. Give Nancy Bunny’s apartment. Mimi looked at me, inside of me, and didn’t ask any questions. Nancy had the apartment and I moved back home, too.”

  Itsy stopped to take a breath.

  “Nancy is Anthony’s grandma. They’ve lived here for a long time, the Rivettas. That boy is part of us. But not you. You’re an empty one, aren’t you, Cooper?”

  Cooper tried to answer her and couldn’t.

  Itsy kneeled next to him on the floor and placed her cup on the coffee table. She moved his hair back from his sweaty brow. “That’s right. You can’t talk. I am so sorry about that. I know how difficult that can be.”

  Cooper tensed as much as he could under her touch. She could sense his fear.

  “Don’t be afraid. You’ll be a better person when this is all over. And there are plenty of people who live their lives an empty shell. And it isn’t pretty. Like George. Not George when he was little, George when he was joyless. I don’t think anyone should live like that. But George was different in that he was special, you know … innocent. There’s not one bit of innocent in you, is there, Cooper?

  “And I know you think I’m crazy. Perhaps I am. The truth is everyone is crazy, haven’t you realized that yet?”

  * * *

  “You see I was just trying to fix what was so, so broken. Trying to prove we could change what we see. It was the day when Carmen came back to get Babygirl. George ran down to find me. He came for me yelling all the
way. The whole block could hear him.

  “‘Itsy!’ he was yelling. ‘They’re trying to take her!’

  “When he found me in the garden (Babygirl must have just opened the trunk in the attic), I’m sure I looked a sight sitting there with my hands on my neck trying to hold back all the coarse words that wanted to spill out.

  “He skidded to a stop. ‘Are you okay, my Itsy?’ George always reverted to his smaller self when he was nervous. He let the fake grown-up slip away. I nodded. I began to ask, ‘Where is she?’ but closed my throat against them. I didn’t trust the deluge that might come. I scribbled:

  “Where is she?

  “‘In the attic.’

  “Of course she was.

  “That’s where the trunk was. Where she found it the first time.

  “I moved it, you know. When she moved back here last Christmas. I moved it over to Far Rockaway so she wouldn’t be here when you came. She’s out there right now with her real true love uncovering my secrets while I’m taking care of hers.

  “Anyway, when I got up there that day long ago and I found her so small, so frightened. She asked me for help and help her I did. I fixed everything. She asked me if I would help her to forget. A child’s silly, selfish request. If I hadn’t seen the future, if I didn’t already know that I needed to protect her from this building, from all of us, from you, I’d have soothed the girl a different way. But don’t you see? She figured out a solution to my problem without even knowing it, that little witch. If I granted her wish, and she forgot all about us, then why would she ever come back? I thought I was fixing things for the better, but I only made it worse. You know what they say about pride goeth before the fall and all that nonsense. Anyway … I wove my magic right there in the attic, fingers crossed it would work. Boy, did it ever.

  “We came out of Georgie’s apartment holding hands. Carmen was already there, the door to the front of the building wide open to the sunny, late summer day. The girl cocked her head to one side as she watched Carmen fall to her knees and hold her arms out with grasping hands. ‘Eleanor! Come to Mommy! Mommy’s home, baby!’