The Witch of Little Italy

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Did my mother come?” Elly asked.

  “No, Elly, I’m sorry, babe,” said Anthony.

  She channeled her hurt and anger into the next phase of her life. “You bet your ass I can push,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Do you want to listen to some music?” asked the nurse.

  “Do you have any Procol Harem?” asked Anthony.

  “Ah, you’ve lucked out! I’m an old hippie,” said the doctor, a man with kind eyes and a close beard. “What song?”

  “‘Whiter Shade of Pale’?” asked Anthony.

  “Hey, that’s one of my favorites, too. How do you know that one? It was before your time.”

  Anthony shot a thumb at Elly “She taught it to me.”

  “I did?” said Elly, propped up and ready for the next contraction.

  “Yes, a long time ago. When we were little. It was our wedding song.”

  “She’s got good taste in music,” said the doctor, who positioned Elly’s legs so wide she thought she could touch the walls with her toes.

  “Will you help me, Anthony?” asked Elly.

  “All the time, every day, forever,” he said and then sat her up so he could sit behind her. As she pushed he leaned up with her and whispered the lyrics in her ear:

  That her face at first just ghostly,

  Turned a whiter shade of pale.

  The baby was born with a shock of red hair. She came into the world quietly, dancing on her mother’s dreams.

  Mimi put her head next to her granddaughter’s and asked, “What should we name her, Elly? Should we name her Babygirl like we named you all those years ago?”

  “No, Mimi, she’s still in here,” Elly placed her hand softly on her own chest. “She doesn’t need a redo. Itsy does. Let’s call her Elizabeth.”

  “Okay, but what will her nickname be?” asked Mimi. “It seems we’ve used them all up. Mama was so good at this. You are like her, my Elly. You come up with something.”

  “Bitsy?” suggested Elly.

  “Too much like Itsy,” said Mimi.

  “Lili?”

  “Sounds like a baby name,” said Mimi.

  “Oh and Babygirl wasn’t?” teased Elly.

  “How about Elizabeth the Second?” suggested Mimi.

  “Oh, it’s very regal. I like it. But a little long, no? And QEII is a ship.”

  Elly thought for a second and then her eyes lit up, “Mimi, you’re a genius! Let’s call her your majesty. Maj for short. How do you like it, Maj? Oh Majestic Magical Maj.”

  “I once knew a woman in Holland with that name,” said Mimi with a wicked grin.

  “Mimi? You’ve been to Holland?”

  “Oh yes! Itsy and Fee, too. We went to Amsterdam … you know … some herbal research.”

  Elly laughed quietly, “You are full of surprises, aren’t you, Mimi?” And then to Maj, “Hello little Maj, hello redo,” said Elly to her baby. She took Mimi’s hand and placed it on the swaddled bundle. “Tell me, Mimi, what do you see? Do you see anything I should know about?”

  “No,” said Mimi, who took baby Maj from Elly and cradled her. “I don’t see anything but happiness.”

  Elly sat back in the hospital bed and pouted a little. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway, would you?”

  Mimi took her hand and placed it on the swaddled bundle. “What do you see, my Elly?”

  A shot of memory not her own ran from Mimi’s hand into Elly’s mind. “I see you, Mimi. You going softly into Carmen’s room after she fell asleep. Carefully picking her up out of her crib so’s not to wake her and rocking her in the rocking chair. Holding her close to you, until her heartbeat and yours were one. Only you didn’t know, Mimi—one time you did wake her, but she pretended to stay asleep just to feel the love come out of you.”

  Mimi was wiping away tears with her index finger, shifting the weight of the new baby and holding her close while Elly remembered. “It’s why she wanted the chair,” said Mimi. And Elly, crying with her grandmother now, nodded in agreement.

  “We should call her, Mimi. We should tell her we love her no matter how she feels about us. Shouldn’t we?”

  Mimi’s face drew tight. Elly knew the look. It belonged to Carmen, too. Mimi was pulling back. She was afraid she’d revealed too much. She was closing the door. Elly wanted to say “Mimi! Don’t close the door!” but it was too late.

  “Here,” Mimi said, pushing an envelope at Elly. “She wrote you a letter.”

  “Who?” Carmen? Was it Carmen?

  “My sister, Itsy. I guess she had more to say to you. More things I don’t know.” Mimi’s tone was raw and gruff.

  Elly tried not to look disappointed that it wasn’t from Carmen.

  “How about I read it out loud, Mimi? And then we can both listen to what she had to say.”

  Mimi was already at the door to the hospital room. “No, if she meant it for me it would have Mimi scrawled across it with her chicken scratch. It clearly says Babygirl.”

  And then she was gone, and Elly was left alone with her new baby cradled in one arm, a letter from her dead Aunt in the palm of her hand, and her fiancé snoring on the blue, vinyl couch.

  “What do you say, Maj? Let’s read Itsy’s letter.”

  Maj looked at her mother and made an “O” with her rosebud lips.

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

  Elly opened the envelope.

  33

  Itsy

  In many ways it was a letter from Carmen, only Itsy delivered it using The Sight.

  Dear Babygirl, (I know you’re grown and have a grown-up nickname, but you’ll always be Babygirl to me)

  I’m dead now. As you read this letter, I’m dead. I don’t think it feels the way it sounds. At least I hope not. The words in Italian, morto or even inanimato, seem a better fit. They end in vowels. Vowels are open letters that allow for sound and air. Mama always said death would be like that. Open. The whole universe cracked right open and there on a silver platter for all of us. Part of me can’t wait.

  I need to talk to you about Carmen. I had a dream a few nights ago, and it was the kind of dream that wasn’t a dream at all. The Sight comes through strong while we dream. Make sure you can tell the difference. Those dreams that are related to the real world, the ones that help us figure out things we simply can’t grasp in our waking hours, those are the best kind.

  So I was dreaming about being dead, and I was flying. Flying around everywhere, and I knew I was dead. So I began looking for Mama. But who do I find? Carmen. Carmen in all of her multicolored dissatisfaction. Carmen with a gray plume of smoke rising out of her head. She’s bitter, yes. And selfish, too. But in my dream I could see it all, I know we made her that way.

  She had potential, and we ripped it from her because we were afraid.

  I travel alongside her. She’s on a plane back to Europe. I can watch her through the window as I fly right beside.

  Carmen is crying on the plane. She’s sick about leaving you behind. She has the mother knot that wants to be with her own child as she bears a child of her own. But Carmen runs from pain. She runs from love. She runs from the knot.

  It was such a betrayal, that day on our stoop when you didn’t know her. Carmen took it on herself to trust you. To pour all of Carmen, the good and bad, into you, Babygirl, no matter how small you were. And then, when I did what I did, I took Carmen away as much as I took you away from yourself. You’d think I’d have known better. Every spell has a ramification outside of what you intend. Many are bad. It’s the way the world works, Mama told us so. Remember that, okay?

  Flying next to her I can see Carmen as who she really is. She’s not so bad. I know she cries more for herself than for you, Elly. Or Mimi. Or even me, though she never really knew me well. I follow her off the plane. She wants to call New York. Wants to see if you’re okay … what sex the baby is. But she can’t.

  I hear her mantra. “I’m alone and okay. I’m alone and okay.”

  “No,
you’re not, Carmen.” I place an invisible hand over hers as she grabs her luggage from the conveyor belt. She stops and catches her breath. Looks around. She shrugs her shoulders. Shrugs off The Sight. Only then do I realize she’s always had it, too. Just never opened herself up to it.

  We walk into her flat in London. It’s a beautiful place. I think it’s a shame Mimi won’t see it. Mimi and Carmen both like fine, sparkling things. It’s a similarity they don’t even know they share.

  In an alternate reality I can see them, giggling over china in a catalogue. Shopping for clothes together at Bergdorf Goodman. There’s only one thing in Carmen’s flat that doesn’t seem to fit, and she has it center stage. Right in front of a bank of windows. My own dear Mama’s rocking chair.

  In my dream I try to think into her mind. Even though I know I’m seeing the future, I’m hoping my energy can stay with her. I send a silent hope. Please hear me, Carmen. Please hear me. For once in your life, forgive us. Forgive us, forgive yourself, and remember who you really are. Elly needs you.

  I fly back on air that feels like oceans and leaves and cotton, too. I’m in the hospital room with you. Anthony is asleep. But not the baby. Not Maj. You and Maj (it’s a wonderful nickname, you’re good at it, like Mama was) are reading my letter.

  Stop crying, Elly. Please. Happy and sad walk hand in hand.

  I touch Maj’s upper lip with my finger.

  Mama always said that babies chose where they were to go. That they all lived together in the guff and that when they were born the birthing angels placed their fingers on ghostling lips and said “Shhhhh, don’t tell.”

  “That’s what makes the dimple there,” she’d said.

  “But why would babies want to come somewhere to die?” We’d ask her.

  “Babies are wise souls in the guff, full of sight. They can see the whole picture of the lives they touch. Sometimes a baby needs to come all the way from the guff and into a woman’s womb even when they know they won’t be born. But no matter—the soul did its job and it goes into the guff to wait again.

  “Perhaps that’s what happened to all my people. We didn’t listen very well, and we remember echoes of the future from our time in the guff.”

  Mama was the wisest person ever to be born. In my opinion. But you run a close second, Babygirl, even if you don’t know it, yet.

  I used to place my finger against my brother Georgie’s mouth while he slept. Just like I’m doing right now with your baby.

  And one more thing my Elly, my Babygirl … I’m not gone from you. I’ve seen us in the garden. Mama’s garden. Perhaps you’ll find me there.

  Love,

  Lizzy

  Elly put her finger over the dimple in Maj’s perfect upper lip. And a flutter of joy began to ease the steady stream of tears that had been pouring, from the very start of Itsy’s letter, until the very end.

  34

  The Day the Amores Died

  The day they brought the baby home Elly noticed a gray hush had fallen over the building on 170th Street. Halfway up the stairs to their apartment, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it, babe. You go take your shower.”

  Elly watched how Anthony held little Maj, so comfortable, so adept. And she did want an actual shower. The shower at the hospital seemed a joke at best. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Anything for my girls,” he said more to the baby than to Elly.

  When she turned off the water Anthony called to her from the living room. “Elly, come see. You really need to see this.”

  She wrapped herself in soft white towels and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She remembered the night at college when she’d lost her virginity—violently—to Cooper. She’d tried to find a difference in her appearance, something that others would notice. She’d only felt sad, sick, and red-faced. Younger and more vulnerable, if anything.

  But not this time. Elly looked in the mirror and loved what she saw. Not a washed-out version of Carmen anymore. Elly was seeing herself for the first time. Strong, wild, and powerful. An Amore. A Green.

  She walked out into the living room. And there he was. Anthony, rocking little Maj in Margaret Green’s rocking chair.

  “Oh God! The chair. It’s so beautiful. Way more beautiful than I remembered it,” Elly said as she sat down next to it and watched the arched rockers creak across the floor.

  “You should’a seen the delivery guy try to get it up the stairs! It came with a note. Here.”

  He handed her a handwritten letter touching her softly as she took it from him. His eyes brimmed with support.

  Dear Elly,

  Don’t let go of her. Not for one second. Hold her tight. Rock her when her eyes are open. Tell her how much we all love her.

  Bien à toi,

  Mommy

  “She must be in France now. This chair’s been all around the world,” said Elly, carefully folding the note into an origami crane.

  “Are you okay? Do you miss her very much?” he asked

  “I’m okay. I’m home. I have you and Maj. The truth is, I’ll miss her forever, I have to get used to it. It’s more a case of me missing Itsy. And Liz.”

  “Ah yes, the incredible disappearing Liz,” said Anthony.

  “Do you really expect me to believe you never saw her but always thought she was real?” asked Elly.

  “What do I know? I’m just a guy. She was real to you, so she was real to me. And besides, I grew up in a family where strange things I didn’t understand happened on a regular basis, you know?”

  Elly sighed. “She was real to me. Too real. I don’t know what to do without her.”

  “Why don’t you go get Mimi and tell her to come see the chair. I bet it’ll make her happy to know it’s back home where it belongs,” said Anthony.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Elly, getting up and kissing them both on their cheeks. She threw on a nightgown and went to get Mimi.

  She knocked on Mimi’s apartment door. It took Mimi a long time to answer, but Elly knew she was in there.

  “Do you need me?” asked Mimi, who looked exhausted and older than usual.

  “Mimi, you have to come see. Carmen sent back the rocking chair!”

  “How nice for you. Is that all?” Mimi closed the door in her face. Elly stood alone in the hallway. Fee, always curious, hadn’t even emerged from her apartment. It was odd how the 170th Street building was so quiet with Itsy gone. There’d been no sound from her in years and yet the air was still with her absence.

  Elly closed her eyes and could see Mimi and Fee sitting motionless on their respective easy chairs each one alone in their respective apartments. Each cried silently. And though they moved slowly anyway, the building seemed to be stuck on pause.

  “This will not do.” Elly said into the air.

  * * *

  “You’ll figure it out, you’re so resourceful,” said Anthony, in bed after she told him how strange things were all of a sudden.

  “I thought I had it all figured out already. All the secrets are out in the open. It’s all supposed to be fixed, like great-grandma Margaret asked. But suddenly it seems more broken than ever.”

  “Well, are you sure you know everything?” asked Anthony.

  Elly sat up and turned on the bedside lamp. “It’s that day! The day they all died. I still don’t know how it all happened.”

  “Mimi would know,” said Anthony.

  “Yes, she would. And she has to tell me,” said Elly.

  “How are you going to get her to talk?”

  “I have leverage,” said Elly rubbing her hands together.

  “Oh yeah, what kind?”

  “I know what Itsy said to me the day she broke her silence.”

  “How’d you find that out? Was it hidden in one of the memories?”

  “Yes, and no. I did what you told me to do when I first came here last winter.”

  “And what kind of wisdom did I give you way back then?” asked Anthony with a smile.


  “You said, ‘Ask Itsy,’ so—I asked her. And finally, when she found her voice, she answered me.”

  * * *

  The next day, with baby Maj on a walk with Anthony for her very first tour of the Bronx, Elly sat with her grandmother and held her hand.

  “You can’t live like this, Mimi. You’ve overcome much worse. It’s not good for little Maj.”

  Mimi yanked her hand away. “What do you know of overcoming? What do you know about anything?” She sounded petulant, like a child.

  Elly’d had enough. She flew to the window and opened it, letting out the oppressive heat. She was in charge now. It felt so good. She crossed her arms in front of her, her posture demanding attention from Mimi. “Do you still want to know what she said to me?”

  “What?”

  “Aunt Itsy. Do you still want to know what she said to me all those years ago?”

  Elly watched Mimi’s face brighten a little. Watched her shoulders relax. Mimi and Elly were alike in so many ways. Like Itsy, too. Treasure hunters. Secret keepers. Magic makers. Elly sat back down and took her Mimi’s hand once again.

  “You wanted to know what she said. Now I know.” Elly took a deep breath. “But I’m not telling until you tell me what you saw. Now I know it all. I have all the pieces. But I need to know what you saw. What did you see, Mimi?”

  “Why do you want to know such things? Horrible things?”

  “Because we owe it to Itsy and to everyone else. We owe ourselves the whole truth. Mimi, I love you and I love this life you’ve given me. Don’t leave me now. I need you and Aunt Fee. I need this place to breathe again. Maybe if you tell me what you know, and I tell you what I know, the broken pieces can come together and start to heal. What do you say, Mimi? Give it a try, won’t you?”

  Elly saw her reflection in Mimi’s eyes. She was changed. Grown up … but grown up in an Amore way. A glimmer in her eye, a secret in her soul. There could be years of laughter ahead of all of them.

  “Well, I suppose I saw everything,” said Mimi giving in to the temptation. “And paid the price. When it was all over I was crying blood. Doctor Ryan said I almost cried my eyes out. Literally. They bandaged me for weeks. I was blind to everything but my sisters. They took care of me. The deaf and mute taking care of the blind. Prophetic, cliché, and crazy.”