“Yes, Sister.” Milda kept her eyes lowered so as not to see the goat-man or Sister’s accusing eyes. While the nun waddled back to her desk, Milda sat, her hands folded, hardly breathing or daring to move until she felt a tap on her shoulder that so startled her, she almost jumped out of her seat. It was Irene Matas, slipping her a note. It read: “That was so cool Milda! I always wanted to tell the old bag to stop it.” Milda had never gotten a note in class before, but that day she got four more before lunch.
As she walked down the hall after school, she almost bumped into the goat-man around a corner.
“What are you doing to me?” she demanded through clenched teeth, so angry she wanted to scream, but was afraid someone might hear her. The goat-man just shrugged his shoulders and skipped away down the hall.
“Hey, wait a minute, I want to talk to you,” she yelled, running after him, just as Al Vitkus came around the other corner.
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you too.” He squirmed a bit. “Hey…ah…thanks for standing up for me today. Nobody’s ever done that before.” Al smiled his crooked smile. “And I sure as hell didn’t expect it to be you.”
Milda stammered, not knowing what to say. “I…uh, didn’t mean…”
“Well, I guess I owe you one. Come on, I’ll buy you a vanilla Coke down at Country Maids.”
Milda looked at him sideways, too stunned to answer. It was the first time Al Vitkus had ever said a word to her. They both stood there for what seemed a century. The very idea of going to Country Maids made her knees tremble, but before she could run home, Al whisked her away, blabbing a mile a minute about Corvettes and Thunderbirds.
Country Maids was filled with the kids the nuns yelled at. Some of the older kids were smoking, and a bunch of girls were trowelling on pancake makeup and ratting their hair. An eighth-grade girl was kissing a boy in one of the booths. Milda felt as if someone had taken her to another planet. Just as she was about to tell Al she was going home, Irene Matas and Connie O’Connor grabbed her off to one of the booths. Al brought her a vanilla Coke while Irene shared her fries.
“You know, Milda, I used to think you were stuck up, but you’re not half bad,” Irene said, biting into a fry.
“Yeah,” added Connie, “if you only relaxed a little and weren’t such a goody-goody.” Connie smiled. “And you know something, I never realized that you look a little like Annette Funicello. I bet if you cut your braids you’d look just like her—really pretty.”
Milda smiled and nervously ate a fry. “You think so?” She couldn’t believe her ears.
That night Milda stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, studying her face: tight pursed lips like her father’s, hair severely parted in the middle and pulled into two tight dark braids, but it was her eyes—angry little coals—that bothered her the most. She had been looking at this face every single day, yet it was as if she were seeing it for the very first time.
Then the nightmares returned, as she dreamt that she walked to school with a blouse but no skirt, just her underpants. Though she desperately searched for her skirt, she couldn’t find it anywhere. Sister Bonaventura was horrified and told her to come get her daily bread. The whole class laughed as the nun threw sharp pencils at her head.
She woke feeling something sharp sticking into her scalp, and when she put her hand to her head, it felt like a halo of burrs or a crown of thorns. When she went to the bathroom to look in the mirror, she saw that her whole head was covered with dozens of little ringworm curls, all stationed in place by crisscrossed bobby pins. In her drowsiness, she felt confused. Had she done this last night? When she pulled the bobby pins out and brushed her hair, it was shorter and full of curls. She must have cut it, too, but she couldn’t remember doing it. Brushing her dark wavy hair, she decided it looked pretty. On her way downstairs, when she spotted the goat-man’s tail wagging under the table, she smiled and went into the kitchen for breakfast. But when her father looked up from his newspaper and saw her hair, he screwed up his face like he had eaten some bad cheese.
“Who do you think you are, some kind of Brigitte Bardot? Next thing, you’ll be wearing lipstick and high heels? What will the neighbors say if they see you looking like that?”
“I think she looks pretty,” her grandmother said unexpectedly. “Very soft and flattering, Milda. Reminds me a little of our Lucy.”
“Lucy!” her father snorted. “Lucy is a disgrace. No daughter of mine is going to walk around looking like a streetwalker. Mother, give me the shears.”
Grabbing a hunk of Milda’s hair, he was ready to cut it off when her grandmother took his arm. “Son, give me those scissors,” she said sharply, staring right into his eyes. Her father’s lips pursed; his face strained with anger. His wife said nothing but went upstairs to nurse a migraine.
“And Lucy never looks like a streetwalker,” Grandmother hissed. “Why would you say something like that about your own sister? Why, she’s beautiful.” She took his scissors away, and Milda let out a sigh of relief.
Still steamed, her father straightened his tie, picked up his briefcase, and left for work.
Her grandmother came up to Milda, putting her arm around her. “You look great,” she said as they both stood at the door watching him walk down Talman Street.
As usual, he ran into Mr. Vitkus and Mr. Janulis, who were on their way to catch a bus to the stockyards. Her father stood there solemnly like an undertaker in his dark suit, pretending he had some important work to do, when suddenly Milda saw the goat-man trot by, waving and smiling. She watched him take her father’s tie off and unbutton his shirt until his factory overalls peeked out. Her father looked around confused, but the goat-man continued. Her father jerked around, flailing his arms, swinging his briefcase, trying to catch the joker, but there was no one anywhere near. The men stared at the Nabisco overalls peeking out underneath his shirt.
“What the devil’s going on here?” Mr. Janulis asked, looking at the overalls. “Are you all right?” He thought that Mr. Gudauskas might be having a seizure or a heart attack.
“Why, look, it’s a Nabisco uniform,” said Mr. Vitkus, looking puzzled.
“Well, you certainly don’t have to undress in the street,” said Mr. Janulis with a snicker.
Milda’s father turned red as a raspberry, sputtering and stammering, not knowing what to say. He tried to straighten himself. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Mr. Vitkus snorted a laugh and leaned over to Mr. Janulis, whispering loudly, “What an old hypocrite, pretending he’s got some fancy office job all this time when he’s just working down at the factory.” Mr. Janulis laughed into his fist. “In Lithuania, we used to say that you can dress a bear like a prince and make him dance in the square, but when the circus is over, he still walks on all fours.” Mr. Vitkus bellowed out a laugh.
Milda’s father didn’t say a word. He just buttoned his shirt, put his tie in his pocket, and went to work, leaving the other two men snickering in the street.
Standing at the door, her grandmother also laughed softly into her hand, trying to hide how much this scene tickled her. Milda was about to close the door when she saw the goat-man leaning against a tree, waving to her. She smiled and waved back, as though he was an old and trusted friend.
Lucy in the Sky
Milda Gudauskas, 1959
Milda’s grieving grandmother, Marijona, always said that if no one prayed for a soul, it became lost. To her, the very air was thick with souls. “Milda,” she’d say, as she fingered her rosary, “pray for each dead member of our family.” Together they’d name each one, counting them out on their fingers. Sometimes Milda would even dream of her ancestor spirits following her everywhere she went, commenting on every aspect of her life like a Greek chorus.
When her father died of a heart attack the previous summer, she prayed hard for him because he was such a stern and powerful presence in her life. But when h
er Aunt Lucy was killed while crossing Western Avenue, Milda didn’t pray for her, though she couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because Lucy was the modern aunt, the one everyone said was a bit crazy, the one who spoke English when everyone else spoke only Lithuanian, the one who liked to drink and swear and flirt with married men. They said she had a failed romance with Valentinas Gediminas, one of the curdled bachelors who sat at the Amber Tavern most evenings. They said she had a broken heart because he wouldn’t marry her. They said she was drunk the night the car hit her.
Maybe because Aunt Lucy wasn’t much of a believer, Milda thought she didn’t need prayers like the others, but she was wrong. Lucy needed it more than any of them. Her soul was lost, not in the way the church taught, but because she, more than any of them, had broken with the past—that long string of souls reaching back to the beginning. She always thought of them holding hands like children on the playground playing Red Rover. Lucy had broken the chain of hands—no telling what that meant.
It wasn’t, however, apparent right away. In fact, her family continued to lead their everyday lives, mourning their lost ones. They still went to church on Sundays and all the holy days of obligation. Milda still prayed for her dead family, naming all but Lucy on her fingers the way her mournful grandmother had taught her. And she continued to be the best student in her sixth-grade class, even though she now hung out with the cool kids.
Then came May Day.
On May first, Milda was chosen to crown the statue of the Virgin with flowers. Dressed like Mary in a long blue gown with a veil, she felt like a pastel nun as she led a procession of girls dropping rose petals and singing, “Oh Mary, we crown thee Queen of the May.” She was about to climb the ladder to put the flowers on the head of the statue when she had a strange thought. If Mary was the mother of God, why didn’t they call Joseph the father of God? Was it something about the Immaculate Conception or was it the Virgin Birth? She could never get that straight. But she knew that Mary never had sex. So, if Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ father, and God was his true father, then was Mary God’s wife? Then she should have her rightful place in the Trinity—Father, Mother, Son, and Holy Ghost. Only then it would be the divine square rather than the mysterious triangle. Or maybe Mary was God’s daughter-in-law. All this confusing genealogy of the divine was, for some reason, bouncing around in Milda’s head as she crowned Mary in the courtyard. If only she could ask Sister Petronella about it, or even the handsome Father Mike, but she didn’t dare. Milda remembered how the priest had called Irene Matas a blasphemer for questioning the raising of Lazarus. Irene had merely asked if Lazarus had been green or moldy, or if he had smelled bad after being raised from his grave. Milda thought it was an interesting question, but the priest didn’t think so.
The question was never answered, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Irene had dared to pose such a question. That was monumental. For Milda, it was a moment of pure clarity. The idea of questioning dogma became a new way of looking at the world.
After the May Day procession, she went home, as usual, to do her homework. She was on the second page of her history report on the Crusades when Irene came running in the door.
“Milda, come quick, you won’t believe this, but there’s a miracle happening right in front of the Gediminas house on Talman Street. The Virgin Mary’s appearing and she looks just like you did today in the May Day procession.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No lie, honest to God.” Irene crossed her heart. “Hurry up, before she disappears.”
As Milda ran down the street with Irene, her mind whirled with its new habit of questioning. Why was it always Mary who appeared at these miracles? How come they never saw Jesus or Joseph or any of the apostles at Lourdes or Fatima?
When she reached the Gediminas house on Talman Street, she glimpsed a patch of fog, and, oddly, something was glowing inside the fog. As she got closer, she could see that there was a woman in blue robes floating in the clouds. Her head was turned the other way, but she had her hands out in the traditional Holy Virgin pose. It looked like an authentic miracle all right. Milda moved in closer to get a better look. So many people had gathered there already. Her friends and their mothers and grandmothers were reverently blessing themselves. Only Magda seemed unaffected. She was walking among the worshipers, softly singing a Lithuanian lullaby. Milda squeezed through the crowd toward the apparition and was about to kneel when she saw the Virgin’s face and froze. It couldn’t be. With a shock she realized it was not the Virgin Mary appearing in front of the whole neighborhood, but her dead Aunt Lucy, the loony one who had died. It struck her like a thunderbolt.
“Well, well, Milda,” whispered the apparition. “About time you got here.”
“Aunt Lucy,” Milda stuttered, hardly able to talk. “What are you doing here?” She was both startled and confused.
“I’m waiting for Valentinas Gediminas to come out of that house to declare his undying love for me,” answered the spectral Lucy. “Right here in front of all of these God-fearing people, the way he used to declare it in the back seat of his old Plymouth.”
Milda looked around. No one seemed to have heard her. “Why are you impersonating Mary? Everyone thinks you’re the Virgin with those robes.”
Aunt Lucy choked back a laugh. “That’s a good one.”
“But you’re an impostor, Aunt Lucy,” Milda whined.
“So? I got the idea from watching you do your impersonation this afternoon.”
“But that was May Day,” she protested.
“Well, this is V-V Day—Victory for the Virgin.” Aunt Lucy chortled. “Valentinas Day. Where is that bum anyway?” Aunt Lucy looked around. “I loved that lout for most of my short years on earth.” She was getting worked up. “Valentinas Gediminas, the one I worshiped and adored, the one I lost my virginity to, the one who left me. I’m back to torment him for as long as he tormented me. Look at him peeking out from behind his mother’s lace curtains. Ha! He knows it’s me. He’s afraid to come out. He’s making it in his pants, he’s so frightened.” The aura of light around Lucy was getting brighter. She blazed like some Old Testament prophet. Her anger fueled her like propane in a lantern. The people gathered around “oohed” and “aahed” at the bright light. Rosaries were pulled out of pocketbooks.
“Milda, go tell that miserable excuse of a man to come out here.”
Reluctantly, Milda went inside the brick two-flat and found Valentinas Gediminas cowering in the corner of the fussy living room.
“Wh-what’s she doing here? Why doesn’t she stay dead like she’s supposed to?” Valentinas was chewing his mustache nervously. “What does she want?”
“She wants you to tell everyone you love her. You know, a declaration of love from you.”
“Really?” He was astounded. “That’s all she wants? To tell everyone I still love her?” His face softened. “To think that she took this love for me to her grave and beyond.” He shook his head, looking like a boy about to cry. “Such is the power of love.”
Milda wanted to say that it was anger and revenge that was powering this return from the grave, but she kept quiet. Valentinas pulled some paper out of a drawer and began to compose a love note. His handwriting was as thin and spidery as the hairs on his head. When he was finished, he thrust it into her hands and told her to deliver it to Lucy quickly.
As Milda watched Aunt Lucy read the letter several times, she wondered how much her aunt knew about God. Maybe she could answer all of those burning questions that plagued her so.
Lucy slapped the letter with the back of her hand. “Ha, he says it was his mother’s fault. She didn’t want him to marry me. What a coward! He couldn’t stand up to that battle-ax. Did he think this would be enough? Did he think that I bothered to come all the way from the other side for this puny little letter? I want a declaration of love that the whole neighborhood can see.”
“Like a sign?”
“Bigger,” she bellowed. “And tell him I’m not moving until I see it.”
“OK, Aunt Lucy, I’ll tell him, but before I go in, can you answer one question?”
“Maybe,” she pouted.
“What about the Virgin Birth? Did Mary really become pregnant without doing it? Why did God arrange it that way?”
“Do you really think God cares about the Virgin Birth?” Aunt Lucy laughed. “He doesn’t care about stuff like that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about God. Worry about your ancestors. You’ll never find a more resentful bunch than the dead.”
Milda was amazed to hear that her grandmother had been right about the power of ancestors.
The following week, news of the apparition was spreading. Milda’s whole family came to see Aunt Lucy. Her grandmother cried when she saw her daughter. She asked about Milda’s father. “Ah, Mama, he’s as cranky as he always was,” said Aunt Lucy. Milda’s mother was shocked at first and embarrassed, telling Lucy to vanish before anyone else in the neighborhood recognized her. “I always knew you were different, Lucy, but I never expected this,” she said, looking sideways at Lucy, then looking to see who else was around. Grandmother Marijona had many questions about all of her family and friends who had passed over. Milda realized that her grandmother knew more people who were dead than alive. She was the last of her generation still living in this neighborhood. Two school friends still lived in Lithuania, also isolated leftovers from a time now gone. They wrote occasional letters in shaky handwriting, which her grandmother read with a magnifying glass. From across the room, Milda saw her tears magnified as she read with the glass close to her face. The news from Lithuania was always sad. She saw the longing in her grandmother’s eyes to join the dead—a whole tribe waiting for her.
Though they lived in Chicago, the second largest city in America, Milda’s grandmother often said that their neighborhood of Lithuanians felt like a village. One-by-one, the people in the neighborhood began to recognize Lucy. Old friends and acquaintances dropped by to say hello. Some were shocked; others took it in stride, while a few called Father Mike to investigate, hoping that their Lucy would be declared a saint.
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