The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “I don’t want to talk about that. It wasn’t me who did that to you. It was the drugs.”

  “I know, Mom. I know. I forgave you a long time ago … I just didn’t remember.”

  “Well now, isn’t this charming? I always figured you just forgot about everything because you hated me for hurting you. That’s why I never pressed the issue. So if it wasn’t that, then what was it? What made you forget it all? I always thought you just wiped out the good with the bad,” said Carmen.

  “It was that summer, Mom. I was so sad to leave them. I wanted so much to be with them.”

  “With those old, crusty, damaged people?”

  “My people, Mom. Our people.”

  “Whatever.” Carmen pushed Elly away and sniffed. “I guess we should get back to them then. I assume this means you’ll stay? Here? With them?”

  Elly realized that she hadn’t considered anything different. “Yes. I’m home.”

  She saw the hurt pass across her mother’s eyes.

  “You could stay, too, Mom. There’s a vacant apartment.”

  The two women looked at each other and then both laughed so hard they lost their breath and tears rolled down their cheeks. That would never happen. They laughed so hard Mimi found them.

  “Well,” she said, her voice echoing down and bouncing off the rows of caskets. “Now that the two of you have reacquainted yourselves, do you think you might join me at the cemetery so I can bury my sister?”

  Silence fell heavy between the three women. Carmen grabbed her bag and headed for the door. Elly followed.

  * * *

  Because God has chosen to call our sister from this life to Himself,

  we commit his body to the earth,

  for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.

  But the Lord Jesus will change our mortal bodies to be like His in glory,

  for He is risen, the firstborn of the dead.

  So let us commend our brother to the Lord,

  that the Lord may embrace him in peace and raise up his body on the last day.

  The priest stood at the open mouth of the hole in the ground. Elly, Mimi, Fee, and Carmen sat on chairs facing him. Anthony stood behind Elly, a protective hand on her shoulder.

  Fee cried loudly. Mimi stared. The casket was lowered into the earth, an orifice. It creaked like a ship in the wind on a wide ocean. Elly felt seasick. She couldn’t breathe. There didn’t seem to be any way out of the situation. There were no gray areas, no teas or tinctures to undo the deadness. She felt awash with panic, a panic she’d never felt. And that’s when she realized she wasn’t alone, that she was feeling the fears of everyone sitting around them in the crowd. It wasn’t just her own grief and terror of the unknown—it belonged to everyone there. Elly felt it all.

  The mourners washed up in waves of black and fed the mouth handfuls of earth and flowers.

  Before Elly knew it, the whole ceremony was over. Relief washed over her with the heaviness of their feelings gone, but she knew she’d feel it again when she went back to the building. She needed a break.

  “We have to get back to the house. People will come,” said Mimi, standing up and tugging on Fee.

  “I’m not coming, Ma,” said Carmen.

  “I’m so surprised,” shot back Mimi.

  “Please! Can’t we try? Just for today?” begged Elly.

  “Fine,” said Mimi and Carmen in unison.

  Mimi, Fee, and Anthony returned to the waiting limousine.

  “I need a sec, okay?” Elly said to Anthony as he walked away looking handsome yet stiff in his black suit.

  “Take all the time you need, babe.”

  “Babe, huh? Very imaginative,” said Carmen.

  “Oh please, Mom. Give it a rest, could you?”

  “He’s just such a meathead, you could do so much better than—”

  Elly put her hand up to her mother and shook her head as if to say “no more.”

  They sat in silence. The leaves on the trees were huge, like a great man’s palm. They spread out, a green canopy covering the gravesite and most of the folding chairs. But the sun shifted, and Elly found herself warming in its summer shine. It was peaceful. Elly didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with Itsy and with Carmen. To sit and listen to the faroff drone of lawn mowers and the silent whispers of the breeze in the branches of the tree. They had so many stories, those branches.

  “You really do belong here, don’t you?” said Carmen, examining the contented look on her daughter’s face.

  “I suppose,” said Elly, squinting at Carmen.

  “You have their magic?”

  “Yes, I guess I do. Or at least I’m trying to learn.”

  Carmen looked as if she wanted to say something, something real. Something like I wanted to learn too, or, Why didn’t they take care of me the way they take care of you? But she didn’t. She looked away. “I grieve for her so, you know. Ache for her,” she said.

  “For Itsy?” asked Elly.

  “No. For you. The you who you were supposed to be.”

  The statement hit Elly’s gut like a sucker punch. Here she was feeling almost sorry for Carmen, and now this. “You did not just say that.” The mower in the distance grew louder. The tree’s branches crunched together. The sky faded gray for Elly.

  “Yes. I did. We’re being all honest, right? Well, memory loss or not, my issues and mistakes aside, you didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. Far from it, actually.” Carmen lit a cigarette and took a long drag inside the pregnant pause.

  Elly stayed calm, “And what or who were you hoping for, Mom?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

  Carmen exhaled and the smoke flew across the sweet summer breeze. It chilled Elly, sending shivers down her spine. It was a kind of smoke eclipse—Elly knew a moment was coming she didn’t want to face, a moment she’d been running from for a very long time.

  Carmen tilted her head back and closed her eyes, trying for a suntan even in a graveyard. She let the cigarette drop and smolder in the grass.

  “Let’s see. I suppose I always thought you’d speak fluent French. That you’d play the piano and tell sarcastic jokes. I supposed you’d be funny looking until you were sixteen and then you’d find my clothes and surprise me by your exceptional beauty. That I’d take you to all the best clubs and restaurants for your debut. That you’d laugh and tell stories of when you were little. Of the crazy capers we had. Of our grand adventures. But you couldn’t do or be any of those things, because you were a tabula rasa when I picked you up from these people. They’d wiped you clean.” She looked back at Elly. “Do you understand? You were lost to me.”

  “Yes, I understand that part,” said Elly trying not to cry. “You’ve always made that very clear.” Stinging tears ran down Elly’s cheeks. Her head throbbed. She took in a deep breath, “What I don’t understand is why?”

  “Why what?” asked Carmen seemingly nonplused.

  “Why didn’t you fix it back then?” asked Elly, gaining courage and wiping her tears back with the heels of her palms. She grabbed Carmen’s hands, holding them, feeling their softness, “Why didn’t you march me right back to the Bronx and demand that they tell you what happened? Why didn’t you take me to one of those fancy places in Europe to get my head shrinked? What kept you from helping me? All you did was blame me. You never tried to help me remember.”

  Carmen twisted away from Elly, yanking her hands free.

  A sob hitched from the inside of Carmen who fell to her knees and spread her black dress out on the ground. She cried as she fanned it out around her. Fingering the hem of her skirt like a nervous child. Elly thought she looked like a Degas—like a black swan.

  The baby kicked. Elly put her hands on her stomach, and pushed in, answering her baby’s kick. “The baby, Mom, do you want to feel?”

  Carmen didn’t answer. She continued pulling at her skirt.

  She doesn’t want to feel my baby kick … thought Elly.

  Elly got up
and walked to the headstone. She moved her fingers over the names she knew. Names that comforted her. Margaret, Vincent, George.

  Carmen looked up and cleared her throat. “Well, I’m glad you have your memories all back again. But if you’d remembered sooner, you wouldn’t be like them. I know it.”

  An unexpected anger surged through Elly. “What kind of play are we in right now, Mom? Is it a drama? A comedy? A tragedy? Clue me in, okay?”

  “And still you say you love me?” asked Carmen.

  “Yes. I love you.” Tears burned against Elly’s eyes. She wanted to open her arms up to her mother but her hands felt stuck at her sides.

  “You can’t love me and say such things.”

  “I can and I do.”

  A warmth spread up through Elly’s fingers and into her arm and heart, “But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to tell you I don’t love you. That’s it, right? Of course I love you. And you love me. You can say all the lines you want, but I know you love me. And I know you love Mimi and Fee. You can’t run away from it, Mom. You don’t get a clean exit line here. You just don’t.”

  “What do you want from me, Eleanor?” shrieked Carmen with her hands stretched out to the sky. Elly was reminded of when her mother played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. She remembered the handsome actor at the bottom of the stairs on his knees screaming, “Stella!!!!!!!!!!!”

  “What do I want? What do I want?” her words came tumbling out unguarded. “I want … I want to dance on your feet again. I want to eat ripe peaches off the trees in Greece with you. I want to sit at a table and sip champagne while watching you sing—to me! I want you to sing to me, Mom. To me.” Elly pounded her finger into her own chest. “To Elly.” She whispered out the last words through sobs that wouldn’t stop.

  Carmen stood up. She shook her hair that bounced back into place. “Are you done?”

  The icy pause helped Elly turn a corner she’d meant to turn years ago. Liz’s words rang in her ears. “Listen to your heart…” Elly’s heart knew her mother loved her. And no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to get the mother she wanted just like Carmen wouldn’t get the daughter she craved. It was lose, lose. The only difference? Elly was ready to bend. Carmen wasn’t built for bending.

  “Yes. How about you? What do you want, Mom? Besides a different daughter?” The words came out without anger, without tears. They came out with a truth that Elly finally accepted.

  “What do I want? Hmmm. What. Do. I. Want?” asked Carmen, rocking back on her heels and speaking clearly through clenched teeth. “I want…” She got up, smoothed her skirt and then her hair, “To go to France. Yes. It’s time to pack up the London flat and move back to Paris. I see you’ve lost your hat, by the way. At least now I can say I have a daughter who doesn’t wear a knit hat in the summertime.”

  The wall was back up. The intense air between them deflated. Carmen deliberately took her energy out of the conversation and it left Elly flat. Elly knew the discussion was over and that somehow, in her own mind Carmen had written the scene with the ending she wanted anyway. It’s hard to go to war with someone so skilled at pretending. They can pretend anything away.

  Elly watched as Carmen turned and walked away from her. She got about ten feet and one of her heels stuck into the soft, green earth. She wobbled and then paused, regaining her balance. Elly thought Carmen might turn around. But she didn’t. She just swept up one of her arms, ever so gracefully, and turned her palm around to face Elly, and then made it wave good-bye. Elly looked away and leaned her heavy body against the Amore grave and cried for a thousand years.

  “I think we should go now,” said Anthony, surprising her.

  “Where’d you come from?” sniffled Elly.

  “George’s car. I sent Mimi and Fee home in the limo, but I think you need to leave now. This is no place for you.”

  “She left,” cried Elly.

  “That’s what she does.”

  “Let me pay my respects first, okay. Let me let her leave completely.”

  “Okay,” said Anthony, giving her a supportive arm to lean on as she turned to see the gravestone next to her.

  “So, here lies Margaret Green. The one that gave us all our fancy ESP, right?”

  “So they say,” said Anthony, his voice resonating with a supportive patience that made Elly want to cry again.

  “And Vincent,” continued Elly. “Who stole her heart.”

  “You women with Green blood can do that to a man,” said Anthony.

  “The more I learn, the more I wonder why she married him.”

  “From what they told me it was a real case of true love. Also, Margaret needed to escape her own life,” said Anthony. “But it seems a little like ‘frying pan into fire.’”

  “Right?” laughed Elly. Anthony was bringing Elly back to herself. The unfinished tears were drying up from the inside out of Elly Amore. No more tears for Carmen.

  Under Margaret and Vincent’s names were three plaques in memoriam for the three boys lost at war and buried in Arlington. ENZO, DANTE, AND FRANCO AMORE: WAR HEROES.

  “They had some kind of courage, those boys,” said Elly and Anthony together.

  “Are we done?” asked Anthony. Elly nodded and leaned on Anthony and he turned her toward the car. She tripped over a little rise in the earth at the base of the Amore plot. “What’s this?” she asked

  “More headstones … or footstones. That’s the way they sold these plots long ago. They’d sell them and then fit bodies on top of each other, on either side. Itsy’s name is on the other side, waiting for Mimi and Fee, too. I think there’s even room for you and Carmen here,” said Anthony.

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah, well—when someone tells you your whole family is going to die, you take precautions, I guess.”

  Elly leaned down and tore at the earth encroaching over the stones.

  “Oh, look! I’ve found Zelda Grace, and who’s Bonita?” asked Elly, confused.

  “What do you mean?” asked Anthony.

  “Who’s buried next to Zelda?”

  “Her mother.” said Anthony.

  “But I thought Zelda’s mother was Bunny.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Anthony.

  “Here, who is buried here? Another aunt I don’t know about?”

  “No. They nickname everyone. You know that. Everyone but the boys. Bonita was Bunny.”

  All of a sudden Elly turned pale. She shook herself free of Anthony and slowly walked around to the back of the gravestone.

  “What’s the matter, Elly?” asked Anthony, concerned.

  Elly shook her head, tying to push away the truth that was unfolding in her mind. It couldn’t be … She had to see it with her own eyes. She couldn’t simply trust her instinct. Trust then verify … trust then verify … she told herself as she rounded the stone and read its chiseled verification.

  George Amore: Always a Child at Heart

  And the newly carved name:

  Elizabeth Amore: Beloved Sister

  “Liz?”

  “Liz?” echoed Anthony.

  A pain went through Elly. A pain she’d never felt. She doubled over. All Elly wanted was to run. To run away and find Liz. But of course, she wouldn’t be there. The closer Elly’d been to putting all the pieces together, the more distant Liz had become. Liz … Itsy …

  “She’s in the ground? Oh no! She’s in the ground now?” Elly fell to her knees, another pain ramming through her abdomen.

  Anthony ran to her in two bold, magnificent strides. He scooped her up and held her close to him like a baby as he ran for Georgie’s car.

  * * *

  Elly Amore was in labor. As she writhed in the hospital bed, Mimi told Elly the story of the nicknames. She spoke in a soft voice that helped Elly through her contractions. “They called Bonita, Bunny and Fiona, Fee. Filomena, well that one belongs to me, and Itsy? Itsy’s name was Elizabeth.”

  Deep in the throes of childbirt
h Elly found herself doing cartwheels with Liz and Itsy on the beach of Far Rockaway. Slowly, as she began to push, Itsy and Liz cartwheeled into one person. Elly Amore’s lifelong best friend. Elizabeth Amore of the Bronx.

  * * *

  “She’s running a fever.”

  Elly heard someone say a million miles away.

  She was sleeping and couldn’t wake up, tired of fighting. There were murmurings from the real world, snippets of language that acted like horrible anchors yanking her back to the surface of the heavy topside. She wanted to laze about in her dream, it was lovely there. She was in a flowering meadow surrounded by high pines. Elly knew the ocean wasn’t far, she could feel the tide in her blood and her pulse was the waves—or was it the other way around? She was watching a little girl dance. A little girl with a mop of curly red hair.

  “Come dance with me, Mama! Come dance,” she laughed.

  Elly could smell her. Cotton and milk and sweet, wild, meadow sage.

  “But if I dance with you now, we won’t be able to dance later, love.”

  The child stopped turning and Elly drank in her features. Soft nose, lovely cheekbones, a dimpled chin—Elly’s own green eyes. “You are right, Mama,” said the child who began to spin in circles once again. The skirt of her white dress flying up into the air, “What are you waiting for? Go back already!”

  “—Elly! Wake up! Do it for me. It’s time!” Anthony was shouting at her. His dark eyes focused with concern. His hands pushed on the bed, bouncing Elly’s whole self back to the world of the living.

  “Time for what?” she asked.

  Anthony started laughing and crying at the same time. “You’re back!” And then over his shoulder, “Mimi! She’s back!”

  “What’s going on?” asked Elly.

  “You’ve been sick, Elly, don’t worry. It happens sometimes during labor. Infections. You’re okay now and you must concentrate because the doctors say it’s time for the baby to come out,” said Mimi, coming to her side.

  A sharp, undeniable pain shot through Elly’s pelvic bones. “Oh God!”

  “Do you think you can push?” asked a nurse.

  Elly thought of the child in the field. Her feverdream. The thing she wanted most in the world.