“You miss her, don’t you, Vida?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Yes,” she said, her chin quivering, “very much.” And for the first time since Mama died, Vida could feel a shudder of release as tears trickled down her cheeks. And then a flood of tears opened, followed by painful sobs, her face buried in her uncle’s embrace. He murmured comforting words and held her until she had cried herself out and finally could only whimper. Once he had wiped her tears, she saw a white butterfly hovering nearby. It followed them part of the way past the other graves as they walked back through the park. Vida kept turning to watch as its delicate wings quivered and fluttered. She wanted to tell her uncle about how Mama said butterflies were the souls of ancestors visiting, but she didn’t want to break the spell. The butterfly followed them and then flew away to the dahlias. Vida raised her hand for a little wave good-bye.
When they reached home, her uncle sat her down on the crimson sofa while he went through the record collection in the cabinet. He finally brought out a record with a jacket tattered from use. Carefully taking it out of its sleeve, he placed it on the record player, and Vida smiled as the first scratchy notes of the “Blue Tango” filled the living room.
Where Death Lived
Irene Matas, 1952
Each morning, my mother sat behind me weaving blue satin ribbons into my braids as she hummed the song about three brothers going to war. I could feel her breath on my neck and smell the yeasty warmth of her body and her Evening in Paris cologne as she twisted and plaited my hair. And yet it felt as though a part of her was far away. Perhaps she was thinking about the war again. Because I was a post-war baby, I could never get her attention as well as the war had, and sometimes I longed for her and missed her even when she was sitting right next to me.
That Tuesday in June, after she tied fat bows at the end of my blond braids, she handed me my sack lunch and dutifully kissed me. I walked to Vida’s house, as always, knocking on her door, but no one answered. At first, it felt odd walking to school alone, but soon Magda, who didn’t go to school, joined me at the corner. She walked with me, singing snatches of cartoon songs, but said goodbye once I entered the schoolyard.
I sat in the warm, stuffy classroom, but I couldn’t concentrate, wondering if Vida was sick. My Catholic uniform felt too tight, making me itchy and restless. I was tired of fingering the same places on the well-worn wooden desks, of kicking the same black iron legs, of smelling the wax and chalk dust in our room. I was even tired of the view out of the second-story windows of our brick grammar school. The view changed with the seasons and weather—clouds drifted in and out, skies turned from blue to gray, trees lost their leaves and filled out again, but the telephone wires and spidery water towers were always the same. Bored and restless, I longed to run outside in the wind, to twirl in circles until I was dizzy, and roll down a hill until my clothes were grass-streaked.
The nun droned on in the front of the room. When she walked between the rows of desks, I could smell her soap and hear the crisp swish of her black habit and the clatter of her rosary beads as they hit our desks. I looked at her and wasn’t exactly sure if she was human. Once, when Connie O’Connor asked the nun if she had hair under the stiff white thing on her forehead, we were shocked to see Sister Kunigunda’s rigid face break into ferocious laughter. It took her a couple of minutes to contain herself, and then the nun bent over and whispered conspiratorially that she had purple feathers instead of hair. We all nodded solemnly, our suspicions confirmed.
Outside, the birds jumped excitedly from branch to branch in the elm tree. I was lazily printing my name, Irene, at the top of the blue-lined paper when Sister Kunigunda opened a note delivered from the office and announced that something terrible had happened. We all stopped and looked up.
“Let us pray for Vida Bartulis’ mother, who died yesterday,” she said, starting a prayer.
I looked over at the empty place where Vida usually sat and felt so shocked and sad. I knew that people died. My uncles had died during the war, and there was Jesus, who was always dying on the cross in every room, but I still couldn’t understand how one of our mothers could die. While I knew that Vida’s mother had been sick, but we all got sick. It frightened me to think that parents could die, because they seemed so powerful, so important. How could they die? These fearful thoughts gnawed at me, but lightly overlaying this fear was the excitement that something huge had happened, something never before experienced, something very mysterious.
Sister Kunigunda announced that the whole class would walk to the Gudaitis Funeral Home after lunch for Vida’s mother’s wake. I had no idea what a wake was. I only hoped it had nothing to do with waking the dead, as in the story the nun once read about Lazarus.
As the lunch monitor passed out the chocolate and white milk to each row, we took our sandwiches out of our paper sacks. My mother had made me a sausage sandwich on black bread, which daily embarrassed me because it was big and clumsy. When I took a bite, the tomato dripped down my arm. I peeked over to see what Connie O’Connor was eating. I was so envious to see her bologna sandwich on white bread—so neat, no odor, very American-looking. Though I had often begged my mother, she refused to buy what she called cotton bread, claiming Lithuanian black bread made you healthy and strong.
After lunch, Sister Kunigunda lined us up in two rows—one for the girls and one for the boys.
“Irene Matas, you can go to the front of the line,” she said, giving me a little push. I didn’t know why she put me there—maybe because I was Vida’s friend. But all of this scared me and made me nervous. Sister cautioned us to be very good, for we were going to visit the dead. She said that Vida’s family was in mourning and that if anyone laughed or giggled or fooled around, they would have to deal with her and the yardstick when we returned. Death was serious. All of these warnings and threats immediately made us all want to giggle nervously and fidget.
Sister Kunigunda and her two anxious rows of uniformed first graders obediently walked down Sixty-Ninth Street to Western Avenue, until we finally reached the Gudaitis Funeral Home. Magda followed us all the way there, waving to her brother, Al Vitkus, and me. I looked at Al and saw that he was too embarrassed to wave back, ignoring her until she finally turned around to go home. I was starting to realize that there was something not quite right about Magda. The fact that she didn’t go to school like the rest of us was strange enough, but there was something childish about her that confused me.
Like soldiers in formation, we marched up to the front of a blond brick building with its fancy shirred nylon curtains and blue-canopied door. This was the Funeral Home where Death lived. Though I had often passed this place on my way to the drugstore and wondered what went on in there, today I wanted no part of it. None of us wanted to go inside. We could see it in each others’ faces.
When Sister Kunigunda opened the heavy wooden door, the building swallowed us in its cool, perfumed darkness. There seemed to be no air, only the choking smell of roses. It was so dark that I bumped into Connie.
“Cut it out, Irene,” she hissed.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered nervously. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, and then I saw a room that looked like a tiny church filled with flowers. At the front, people dressed in black were crying into their hankies. Somewhere creepy organ music was playing, and I thought that maybe I had stepped into a horror movie. I stared at the strange box in the middle of all the flowers, seeing an unfamiliar and powdery woman, painted like a big doll. For a moment, I thought that it couldn’t be Vida’s mom, that maybe they had put a statue there instead, like the statues of saints in the church.
The nun instructed each of us to go to the open casket one at a time and kneel down to say a prayer for the soul of Vida’s mother—one Hail Mary would be sufficient. Then we were to pay our respects to Vida and her father, to tell them we were very sorry for their loss. Then we were to sit quietly unt
il everyone in class was finished. Filled with tension and uncertainty, we sat down and waited as Sister Kunigunda went to talk to Vida’s father, who was very upset. When Vida turned around to look at us, I nervously waved to her, but she seemed to look through me.
Soon Sister Kunigunda came back and pushed a reluctant Al Vitkus up to the front. She told me I was next. My stomach dropped as I watched Al kneel down in front of the casket lined with pleated satin. If that was Vida’s mother, then they had done something very strange to her to make her look like that, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near her. I wanted to run outside and cry. Instead, I followed Al, kneeling by the casket and blessing myself. My knees still bothered me whenever I knelt, those old cinders still stabbing me from when I had skinned them in the alleys. I gave up my pain for Vida’s mother’s soul, but I couldn’t pray. Instead, I stared at her lying on a white satin pillow. So this was death. It was hard to believe this was the same woman who would dress Vida and me like Gypsies and dance the tango with us, laughing so hard she’d have to hold her sides. Once, we ate too many cream puffs and felt sick afterward. I had always envied Vida because her mom was more like a kid, always joking and laughing, so unlike my mother. Now it seemed strange to see her so still, the rosary wrapped around her papery hands as if she were praying. I started having strange thoughts: what if she suddenly opened her eyes or said something or sat up? Then I saw that her lips were open just a bit, and there was something weird in there, like cotton. I could hardly breathe.
Sister Kunigunda tapped me on the shoulder, and I shot up like a rocket, stumbling over to Vida, who looked as if nothing in the world was ever going to make her happy again. My heart ached to see her so alone and motherless. It made her different from the rest of us who still had two parents. We would always say she was the girl whose mother had died.
“I’m so sorry about your mother, Vida.” My eyes smarted as they filled with tears. Her face twitched with pain. I wanted to cry and to hug her, but I was too stunned. “I’ll see you, OK?” I whispered, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.
She stiffened but didn’t look at me. I could see she wanted to die too.
I said the same dumb things to Mr. Bartulis and waited in one of the pews as the rest of the thirty-two kids in my class went up one-by-one to experience the same frightening yet fascinating ritual. We were missing math and the spelling test. Sickened by the cloying smell of roses and the crushing grief, I felt faint until Al Vitkus knocked me in the ribs with his elbow.
“Wake up, Irene.” I almost crumpled, and a nervous giggle trembled through the pew. The nun frowned at Al, raising one finger in warning and giving him “the look.”
Finally, when everyone finished, we walked through the darkened funeral home out into the busy street, squinting in the bright glare of the sun. Great green maple trees swayed in the breeze and flowers flaunted their blooms. The whole world looked filled with color and life. Bright cars still moved, and people still walked as if nothing had happened. As we walked back to school in two straight rows, the smell of roses stuck with me, forever reminding me of death.
When we returned, Sister Kunigunda took Al into the cloakroom with her yardstick. We winced, hearing the nun whacking his behind. Then, as if nothing had happened, Sister emerged with her long, tense face, not saying another word about Al or Vida and her dead mother. Instead, she got out the Bible storybook and started reading about someone named Abraham. I couldn’t listen. I just stared out the window and wondered if those birds would keep singing and those trees keep right on growing if I died.
That evening, when I padded into the kitchen in my slippers and sat at our Formica table, I asked my mother to describe something from her house in Kaunas. It was a game we often played when I was younger. “Have I ever told you about my grandmother’s opal ring from St. Petersburg?” she asked, smiling. “She used to keep it in a tiny blue enamel box on the dresser.”
“What did it look like?” I wanted to know. “It was oval and sparkled in many colors. She gave it to me when I married your father, but I had to give it to a farmer in exchange for food during the war.” She looked at her hands, but soon I could see her eyes glaze over with that familiar sad look as she busied herself with making dinner. The clock ticked loudly above the Singer sewing machine as I sat at the kitchen table absent-mindedly rubbing the flowered oilcloth cover. My mother was humming the familiar windmill song as she peeled potatoes. Suddenly, she stopped to stare out the window, a potato in one hand and the peeler in the other, as if she still saw that opal ring. I wondered why it held my mother’s attention better than I did.
I went into the living room to watch the Jackie Gleason Show on TV. My father sat in his favorite chair while Antanas Balys, our shy, reclusive boarder, sat on the couch. As we three watched the show, I heard my father’s newspaper fall. A minute before, he had been reading it, but now his eyes were closed, and his chin rested on his chest. A cold jolt ran through my stomach. I knew he was dead, like Vida’s mother. As I quietly rose to take a better look at him, he snorted and opened his eyes, scaring me, so I almost jumped. When he saw me peering at him, he smiled, mumbling something about being tired. Across the room, Antanas Balys laughed his shy, little-boy laugh into his thick fist as if I had played a good trick on my father. I bit my lip and shrugged, never quite knowing what to make of this boarder of ours.
“What is it, Irena?” asked my father.
Pulling myself together, I asked the first thing that popped into my head. “Papa, you know Magda Vitkus?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“Why doesn’t she go to school like the rest of us?”
“She’s a little slow, you know.” He frowned and touched his head, picking up his newspaper again.
“Oh,” I said, but I didn’t know what he meant. It confused me.
In my bed that night, I couldn’t sleep for a long time. There were too many things in life that baffled me completely. What was wrong with Magda? Was Sister Kunigunda human like the rest of us? Why did Vida’s mother die? And was my mother or father going to die too?
One thing I knew for sure—Death lived right down the block and his breath smelled of roses. I would never walk by the funeral home again without feeling a shiver down my back.
Later that night, before I finally dropped off to sleep, I thought about my mother braiding my hair. I said a prayer that she wouldn’t die, but as I said it, the strange thought came to me that some hidden part of her had already died during the war.
Lachryma Christi
Irene Matas, 1953
At the age of seven, I became a wretched sinner. When the year started, I was an innocent, still unaware of the sins of the world. It was the year I had yearned to be a nun like Sister Margaret, who looked like Grace Kelly in a veil. Every morning at Mass, I watched her gentle face framed by her wimple, doe eyes yearning for heaven as we sang the Latin hymns—Tantum Ergo and Salve Regina. Someday I was sure the Pope would declare her a saint like Saint Theresa, the Little Flower. I prayed to Saint Theresa, staring at her statue with burning intensity, waiting for a miracle to happen the way they did in the Lives of the Saints that Sister read to us daily. In that book, miracles were as common as the milkman leaving a bottle at our doorstep, as miraculous as the ragman in his wagon down the alley, paying us money for rags. Miracles were God’s way of saying “I’m still here.” They happened to saints all the time, so my friend Vida and I thought they might happen to good girls who prayed a lot, sang hymns in Latin, and recited the Catechism. The statue of Saint Theresa might move, or bleed, cry real tears, or even walk off its perch in the nave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church to talk to us. Sister would be so proud of us then.
Lately, Sister Margaret was preparing us for our First Holy Communion. She gave us holy cards whenever we were good, and at Mass we traded them until our Daily Missals bristled with them. Once, Sister gave me a card with St. Lucy w
ith her eyes on a tray. No one wanted the martyr cards. Vida got Saint Agatha holding her lopped-off breasts on a tray. They didn’t look real—more like scoops of strawberry ice cream with a cherry on top. Too embarrassed to keep it, Vida threw it away in the alley trash can. The holy cards we coveted were Saint Anthony, who found lost things, or Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, whom you called on whenever there was trouble.
A month before our First Communion, as Easter approached, Sister Margaret gracefully walked into class, her habit swishing behind her, smelling of baby powder. She announced that those of us who already had our Communion outfits would be able to participate in the Easter Sunrise procession. That day, I begged my mother to get my dress right away. We went to three stores on Ashland Avenue where dresses seemed to have yards of tulle, pearls, and silk flowers—lily of the valley was the most popular, followed by stephanotis. I found the perfect dress—satin with a row of small seed pearls down the front. My veil had matching pearls along the headpiece. I wore it with white gloves, white nylons, my first garter belt, and a scratchy crinoline slip. I looked beatific.
During recess the next day, all the girls excitedly compared their Communion dresses, describing them in detail. They were made of silk, brocade, or fine lace; the skirts pleated, or puffy with petticoats underneath; the veils accented with lace, glass diamonds, or silk flowers. We were all the little brides of Jesus. As expected, pretty Milda Gudauskas said she had the most beautiful dress with embroidered roses on silk, with a crystal raindrop on each rose. Her veil and even her shoes had the same crystals. My friend Vida and I were mad with envy. But poor Vida seemed to have the ugliest Communion dress—plain white, no pearls or lace, and no embroidered flowers—nothing but a plain, round collar and long sleeves. It sounded more like a nurse’s uniform than a Communion dress. Vida didn’t want to talk about it. I was sure her that mother, who died the previous year, would have hated that dress.
Lost Birds Page 5