Dreamsleeves

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  To you reading these words right now …

  listen deeply and draw your dream

  up and out of your heart,

  and when you are ready to make it real,

  wear it on your sleeve and believe.

  With all best wishes always,

  COLEEN MURTAGH PARATORE

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PRAISE

  ALSO BY COLEEN MURTAGH PARATORE

  COPYRIGHT

  The dream is the truth.

  — ZORA NEALE HURSTON

  My name is Aislinn, old Irish for dream.

  Funny, for a girl whose name means “dream,” I never dreamt a dream I could remember in the morning. Surely, I must have them, everybody does — happy dreams, scary dreams, puzzling ones to try and solve.

  I only dream when I am awake, and then I write those dreams down so I won’t forget. I have lots of wide-awake dreams, enough to fill a book. Maybe I have so many of them that my brain needs to rest at night.

  Just as I’m not good at sleep-dreaming, I’m also bad at recalling things that happened long ago, back when it was just the three of us, Mom, Dad, and me, living in the basement of this, my nana’s house. Down in that dark place with the just-one window that didn’t open, all I could see were squirrels, grass, and the walking-by shoes of my relatives who lived upstairs. Brown loafers meant “Nana.” Black boots, “Papa.” Tan boots, “Uncle Mark.”

  There were also two other people whose shoes I should have seen, tenants of my nana’s who lived upstairs from her on the second floor; “the old Polish couple,” my parents called them, but they might as well have been “the old Polish ghosts” since I never once saw them, shoes or anything.

  Then one day when I was six and my mom was expecting a baby, my nana announced that the old Polish couple had moved and that we could have the top floor if we wanted it.

  We did.

  Perhaps I have forgotten so much from the past because now I am nearly thirteen and there are seven of us, Mom, Dad, and five kids all trying to fit in three little bedrooms while Dad saves enough money to buy our house in the country, the one with the stream and the apple trees.

  Nana still lives on the first floor, alone now. Papa and Uncle Mark are in heaven. The basement is empty.

  I keep suggesting to my father that the little ones and I, so cramped up here in this too-small apartment, could play tag or kickball or even ride bikes down in the basement, but my father says, no, “It’s not fit for rats.”

  Maybe another reason I’m bad at recalling is because there’s so much going on in my right-now life that my brain has no room to hold the old.

  This bothers me; I want to remember. There must have been lots of happy times. But no matter how I search through my own mind album, like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass, just four pictures slip out from the basement days.

  Picture one … It’s summer and my papa and I are having a picnic on a blanket on the lawn. I am two, maybe three. The sandwiches are bologna and cheese on white with mayonnaise, cut in triangles; it’s warm and sunny and we’re laughing, but then I feel something crawling up my leg, then a bite, then another, and I jump up scratching and crying, and Papa is shouting to Nana, “Come quick, sweet Jesus, the girl’s got ants in her pants!”

  Nana fixed the problem and there was ice cream or lollipops or both and Papa mimicked how I looked jumping about with the ants in my pants — and I joined in and then Nana, too, and we all danced the “Ants Dance,” laughing.

  Picture two … It’s Halloween and the doorbell rings. My mom scoops me up in one arm, the plastic pumpkin filled with candy in the other, and we hurry to answer it. Oh, no! Two bank robbers with stockings pulled over their faces are staring in at us.

  “Give us all your candy or else,” one of the robbers demands, pointing a finger pistol at my mother.

  Mom screams and drops the pumpkin, clutching me so tightly I think I will burst.

  The bank robbers pull off their stocking masks.

  “Trick or treat,” they shout, laughing.

  It’s my nana (my nana!?!) and her best friend “from the old country,” Mrs. Casey.

  “Now, that was a trick, Maggie, wasn’t it?” Nana says to my mom, winking at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, clutching her belly laughing. I laugh, too.

  My mother doesn’t find this funny at all, though, not one teeny bit.

  Picture three … It’s winter and I’m shivering as my mom lifts me out of the kitchen sink, where she has just given me a bath. There was no tub or shower in the basement. This is my youngest memory…. I think I was one. My mother wraps me in a towel and puts me on the sink ledge too close to where an iron is cooling. I scream bloody murder — the burn is so bad they rush me to the hospital.

  Ants. Bank robbers. A burned bum.

  But wait, here’s the fourth picture.

  Ah … smile. This is the best one. Me and my dad.

  I lift it up close and peer in, remembering how good it felt — that warm-bright-bubbly time — so magical the Cinderella fairy dust of it sprinkles out over all the years before and after.

  It is St. Patrick’s Day and my parents are having a party. There are tinselly streamers hanging from the ceiling and decorations on the walls — shiny green shamrocks, leprechauns, rainbows with pots of gold. Irish music is playing loudly and the table is overflowing with meats, and salads, and desserts. My dad is pouring drinks and telling jokes with his best friend, Tommy Doyle. My pretty mom is giggling with her best friend, Ginny, both wearing swirly dresses and red lipstick. Everyone is eating and drinking, talking and laughing, singing and dancing. The whole room is happy, oh so happy. And I am in the center of it all, a princess perched on her throne.

  In a green velvet dress, white tights, and black patent-leather shoes, I am sitting on top of the bar my daddy and Uncle Mark built. The wood is shellacked shiny smooth and there are four stools in front of it. I am propped between the beer steins named Schultz and Dooley. My daddy loves these funny guys. He flicks the little silver latches and makes their heads pop up and down like they’re talking.

  “Hello there, Aislinn, pass me the potato chips, will you?” Schultz says.

  I giggle and feed Schultz a chip. “Here you go.”

  On my throne, swaying back and forth, kicking my heels, I munch one sticky sweet cherry after another from the dish by the bottles and bucket of ice.

  A plastic drink-stirrer becomes my wand and I swoosh and point and tap it in the air, giving orders and granting wishes.

  “Adorable,” the guests say. “What a sweetheart you’ve got there, Roe!” My father is beaming proud.
He winks and smiles; he loves me so much. I’m the heart of his world, his little girl.

  “Come here, monkey.” Dad scoops me in his arms. He’s “tipsy” but I know he won’t drop me. He never does. We lead a “McNamara’s Band” parade, I play the tuba, then drums, then cymbals with pot lids, then we do a jig again, until I’m giddy-dizzy and Daddy sets me back safe on my throne.

  Right then someone clicks our picture, Daddy and me, happy together in this photo forever.

  That’s it. Four long-ago memories and zero sleep-dreams. But, luckily, I do have lots and lots of wide-awake dreams, and I’m saving three of the most important ones for this summer.

  Two have a fair chance of coming true, one might take a miracle — but I have nine whole weeks to work on them before eighth grade starts in September.

  I will find a way to stop Dad from drinking.

  Mom will make him buy our house before it’s too late.

  Mike Mancinello will like me.

  The first two dreams won’t be easy, but the third dream … well, Mike Mancinello did say, “Sit here,” surprise, on the bus home from school yesterday — it’s amazing how you can know a boy since kindergarten and then shazam-kabam, it’s like you just saw him for the very first time — and Mike did say, “Maybe I’ll see you this summer, A.”

  And I did say, “That would be nice.”

  I dream in my dream all the

  dreams of the other dreamers …

  — WALT WHITMAN

  My full name is Aislinn Margaret-Elizabeth O’Neill, but everyone calls me A.

  A. The first letter of the alphabet.

  “A B C D E F G,

  H I J K, ella-mennow-pee,

  Q R S,

  T U V,

  W, X, Y, and Z,

  Now I know my ABC’s

  Next time won’t you sing with me?”

  My “class” and I just finished that rhyme. We sing it every day with gusto when we begin the alphabet portion of summer school, right after the pledge of allegiance here in our classroom, which is really a shed.

  I am the teacher. That’s my biggest someday-dream.

  “Nice job, B and C,” I say, and my little brother Beck, and only sister, Callie, glow like sunbeams.

  “You, too, D,” I say, to my little brother Dooley, “you’re getting it.”

  My brother Beck, we call him B, is five. He wants to be a professional baseball player, a starter for the Yankees. That’s after he starts kindergarten in the fall.

  Callie, we call her C, is four. She’s a great dancer. She wants to be a ballerina some day. Callie got the dancing gene from our dad. He used to win jitterbug contests.

  Dooley, D, is almost three, and fascinated with cars. He got that gene from our father, too. My dad is crazy about cars.

  The youngest, Baby Eddie, E, he’s one, is sitting up watching summer school from his portable playpen, teething on a plastic donut from his Fisher-Price sorting stack.

  “B — blue,” I say to Eddie, tapping on the blue donut.

  “Boo,” he says, giggling, chomping on it, drooling.

  A, B, C, D, and E — it was my parents’ idea to name us in alphabetical order. It seems every family’s got a different way of naming kids. My cousins’ names all start with M — Mitchell, Mary, Maura, and Matt. My other cousins all rhyme with “een” — Kathleen, Eileen, Maureen, and Noreen. My other cousins are all named after saints — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (They should’ve been named after devils.)

  The alphabetical order was my parents’ idea but it was mine to nickname us letters. A, B, C, D, and E.

  Our summer school shed is up behind our back porch. The whole property is on a hill. First the house, then the shed, then up farther the old boarded-up outhouse, then up higher the swing set, and then the pricker-bushes and the woods behind. The woods don’t belong to Nana. I have my own secret place up there. It’s called the Peely-Stick Shop.

  My father built this shed. He’s really good at building. The shed smells like lawnmower gasoline and grass clippings and car wax and it’s cluttered with shovels and rakes, tires and tools, but I set up a nice enough classroom for us — me in the front with the green chalkboard easel I got for Christmas one year, and my students seated at the plastic chairs and table I bought cheap at the Hogans’ garage sale.

  Maizey Hogan is my best friend, ever since kindergarten.

  The school shed isn’t bright and cheerful like my real classroom will be someday. I wish I could hang up posters of the planets, a map of the world, pictures of presidents and other famous people, but there’s no room. The walls are covered with tire hubcaps, rows and rows of hubcaps. My father collects them. That’s his hobby.

  “Okay, class. It’s time for mathematics.”

  Eddie giggles and bites the red donut now. I give Beck and Callie the work sheets I made up special for them earlier, addition and subtraction problems, simple ones for Callie, harder for Beck since he’s going to kindergarten. “Print your name carefully on the top line,” I remind them. “Neatness counts.”

  I show Dooley how to hold his pencil. He’s practicing making 4’s this week.

  Eddie’s job is counting. Donuts.

  “One … two … three,” I say, stacking the blue, red, and yellow donuts.

  “Boo,” he says, picking up the blue donut.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Good job, E, blue.”

  Callie whispers something to Beck and he points to something on her paper.

  “Oh, right, B, thanks,” she says, smiling at him with a look of total hero-worship.

  I can’t imagine what Callie is going to do when Beck goes to school in September. She keeps saying, “I’m going, too!” It’s a shame she can’t; she’s ready.

  B and C are like twins, they’re so close. They do everything together, except ballet. Beck draws the line at tippy-toes and tutus. Callie’s got no problem with baseball though. She’s a super little slugger, blond wisps flying out beneath her cap.

  “Finish up your work sheets, B and C,” I say, “if you want time for recess. Daddy’s coming home early today. We’re driving Nana to the airport.”

  I look out the open door of our classroom at a squirrel scampering by. All summer long I’m going to have to babysit the little ones from the time when my mom leaves for work in the morning until she comes home at night. Not exactly how I want to spend my summer, but at least the teaching part will be fun. And Maizey will come over like she always does. We have a good time together, no matter what.

  I’m going to call Maize when I get back from the airport so we can make a plan for the weekend. Sometimes, when there’s a firm plan, it’s harder for my dad to say no.

  No is his favorite word. It’s simpler, one letter shorter than y-e-s, I guess.

  Last summer Maizey came over every day. We’d spray the hose on the little ones to keep them cool, play jacks and onesie-twosie with a rubber ball against the house, listen to records and try to memorize the lyrics, and look at the Sears catalog, cutting out styles we liked.

  This summer we’re going to work on cheerleading routines so maybe we can make the team this fall. That, and plan how we’ll celebrate our thirteenth birthdays. I’m October; Maizey is November. Teenagers, finally.

  My nana usually helps babysit during the summer because she has time off from her job at Russell Sage College uptown. Nana irons the president’s clothes and cleans the fancy student houses there. But this summer she’s going to California, the whole opposite side of America from where we live in New York, to help out her daughter, my aunt Bitsy.

  Aunt Bitsy is expecting her first baby and she’s more jittery than a jitterbug. Her husband, Uncle Bobby, is a pilot in the air force in Vietnam and can’t come home, so they sent money for a plane ticket so Nana can go help Aunt Bitsy “learn how to take care of a baby.”

  I don’t think Nana wants to go at all. She rolls her eyes when anyone mentions it. “What’s the big deal feeding a baby?” she says. “It’s easy as m
ilking a cow.”

  Nana was one of twelve children born on a dairy farm in Ireland. She learned to work hard young. Nana says Aunt Bitsy got so “book smart” in college that she turned “plain commonsense silly.”

  “All right,” I say, ringing the little china bell I keep on my teacher desk. “Class dismissed until tomorrow. You may go play until Daddy gets home.”

  Beck and Callie run off up the hill past the outhouse to the two swings, one sliding board, and crooked teeter-totter set, Dooley trying admirably to keep up. “Wait for me!” D gets an A+ for effort, he does.

  Eddie has just started toddling, but it’s faster by far to carry him, so I scoop him up in my arms and then head into the house. I give him a bottle and put him in his crib.

  When E falls asleep, I check that B, C, and D are doing okay, and then I walk down the back stairs to Nana’s and rap on her kitchen window.

  Nana comes to the door in a freshly pressed navyblue dress, wearing her pearl necklace and earrings, smelling like Emeraude perfume. Her suitcase is there on the floor, her fancy coat and hat on the hook. She’s holding a prayer card.

  “Come on in, angel,” she says. “Just saying a novena.” She looks at the clock. “Sit down. We’ve got time for tea.”

  There is always time for tea. Tea is my nana’s answer to everything — a blizzard, a heat wave, the chicken pox, all ailments of the mind and body and heart.

  Swift as a shadow, short as any dream …

  — SHAKESPEARE

  Nana and I sit at her small, round kitchen table, looking out the window at the lilac bushes, which have now lost all their sweet-smelling purple buds.