by Rita Ciresi
“Maybe she lives in sin with a man,” Lina said. “Maybe he isn't Italian. Maybe he isn't Catholic. Maybe he's a foreigner. Maybe he's a Negro!”
We looked at each other, excitement in our eyes. Anything was possible when it came to Auntie Pat. The more Mama and Nonna didn't talk about her, the more our imaginations ran wild. Auntie Pat had been a lonely, misunderstood child (perhaps a victim of a baby switch in the hospital). As a girl, she had outshone our homely, ill-tempered Mama in every way; as a teenager, she ran wild; as a young woman, she sought her fortune in the city. She rose from the ranks, first working as a cocktail waitress, then a go-go dancer, before she graduated to a high-class call girl ensconced in a penthouse in midtown Manhattan. She was the epitome of slutdom, a bona fide brazen hussy whore who slipped rolled-up bucks into the slit of her cleavage. We loved her.
Lina liked to put on shows for me, and once she decided to present an imitation of Auntie Pat. After Mama had sent us upstairs to go to sleep, Lina ordered me to put on my pajamas, get into bed, and close my eyes. As I sat there with my eyes squinched shut, I heard her racing about the room, slamming drawers, rustling in the closet, and then shutting off the overhead light. “Okay,” she finally whispered. “Open.”
She stood at the other end of the room, her silhouette bathed in light from her bedside lamp, which she had muted by balancing a notebook on the shade. She was stripped down to her panties, a silver Christmas-tree garland wrapped around her shoulders like a boa. She thrust her right hip forward and then her left, manipulating the garland to expose first one slightly swelling nipple, then the other. She slit her eyes, licked her lips, and lowering her voice into a sultry, throaty drawl, she began to sing a popular song that Mama switched off every time it came on the car radio: “Big Spender.”
I tried to whistle, but I hadn't mastered the art yet. I snapped my fingers, cooed at her, and by the time she reached the line I don't pop my cork for every man I see, I had cupped my hands to my mouth, forming a trumpet that continued to play the tune for her. Then Lina danced, a provocative bump and grind that made what little fat she had on her thighs and belly quiver. As I played my trumpet louder and louder, Lina grew bolder. She pinched her nipples between her thumb and forefinger and tweaked them at me. She straddled the garland and pulled it up slowly between her legs, purring with pleasure. She flung the garland to the floor, turned full circle, leaned over at the waist, and thrust out her behind. Slipping her thumbs into her panties, she began to inch them down over the mound of her buttocks. I giggled wildly.
Then the doorknob turned. My laughter went dead as Mama stood grim-lipped in the door. “What's going on here?” she demanded.
Lina pulled up her underwear. “I'm getting dressed,” she said.
Mama stared at Lina. “Put on your pajamas,” she finally said. “Cover up your filthy body right now. Right now.”
I looked down at my bedspread. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lina walk over to our chest of drawers. Her back toward Mama, she got dressed.
Mama marched over to the lamp and snatched Lina's notebook off the shade. “Good way to start a fire,” she muttered. Then, spying the Christmas-tree garland on the floor, she strode over and picked it up, crumpling it in her hand. “What is this?” she asked. When Lina didn't answer, she turned to me. “Speak up, or you'll get it too.”
A year earlier I would have begun to blubber and blurt it all out, but now, intensely aware of Lina's threatening stare, I chose not to say anything.
Mama shook the garland at me and then at Lina. “Don't you ever let me find you up here”—she floundered for words—”waggling your can around like some sort of cheap I-don't-know-what. Don't you ever, ever again!”
Our real punishment was doled out at the breakfast table the next morning. “When you have to undress,” Mama said coldly, not looking at either one of us, “you'll do it one at a time, in the bathroom or in the closet, or with the door open. From now on, no closing the bedroom door.”
My heart sank. Now there would be nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, from Mama's tyranny. It was too dark to play outside after supper. The cellar was cold and damp. In the kitchen, in the parlor, in the dining room, Mama always found me. I couldn't even be safe in the bathroom. There wasn't a lock on the door, and in her relentless quest to have a clean house, Mama often called out “Knock, knock!” then let herself in to arrange towels on the shelf or scrub the sink. “Don't strain,” she told me, as I sat on the toilet. If I was in the bathtub, she said, “Remember to wash down there.”
Where could I escape? Lina, at least, had Nonna's house. I had only the public library. Twice a week I trudged back and forth to the library with an armload of books. Venturing into the adult section one day, between the high stacks that I thought contained every book ever written, I discovered a big, webbed chair in front of a tall window. It fit my body just right. I thought of it as mine. There, curled up with my feet tucked under me, I lost myself in marvelous tales of boats lost at sea, women roughing it in the Wild West, and children abandoned in the wilderness.
The library had many more biographies like the kind Auntie Pat sent Lina. I read them all—Harriet Tubman, Florence Nightingale, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller. I both loved the women and hated them. They were so bold and courageous, but they seemed to prove that in order to do something important, you had to look revolting. I couldn't bear to believe that, but the line drawings that graced the front covers of the books told the whole story. These women were too tall, too hefty, too self-righteous in their squared-off collars and heavy skirts. They had prominent noses and double chins. A disproportionate number wore glasses. They were ugly.
I vowed I would never let myself get like that. As the light began to fade through the library window and I packed up my books to walk home, I thought about who I wanted to emulate. But I could think of no one. Unlike Lina, I had no namesake to follow, no path to claim. I didn't have the guts or the looks to be like a TV actress or a model in magazines. Although I liked the librarians who smiled at me on my visits, they looked faded, dowdy, and dusty as books that hadn't been checked out in a long time.
The thought of becoming like Mama made me shiver. My teachers all were nuns, and I prayed to the very God I was rejecting that I would not get the calling. Choose somebody else, I whispered every night after I said my Act of Contrition. Please, please. The only teachers who weren't nuns were the gym instructors—large, imposing women who wore whistles on cords around their necks, sensible-looking shorts, and crisp white cotton anklets. I didn't like them because they gave me Bs. Even Lina, who excelled at gym, hated them. “Dykes,” she said. Seeing the confusion on my face, she explained, “You know, lezzers. Women who look like men.”
“Oh,” I said.
“They stick together. They like each other, just like women like men.” To create some suspense, Lina lowered her voice. “They do unnatural things,” she said. “With vegetables. Cucumbers and zucchini. There's a girl in my class who's a lez. I heard she used a frozen hot dog and it thawed inside her. They had to take her to the emergency room to get it out.”
I laughed. It seemed too fantastic to believe—and yet, coming from an authoritative source such as Lina, it had to be true. My giggles gave way to an uncomfortable feeling, then pure fright. The thought of anyone sticking anything up me seemed the grossest violation. I was sure it would split me in two and change me forever.
After that, I worried about myself. I was sure there was something wrong with me because I didn't like boys. The boys at school were always winking and nudging each other, deliberately burping out loud and cupping their hands beneath their armpits to simulate fart noises. My boy cousins I resented because they were accorded privileges Lina and I were not. They were allowed to play outside until it was time for supper, while Lina and I were called inside to set the table and help serve food. After supper, they ran back outside while we had to clear the table and wash the dishes. During summer, they stayed in the yard long after we had been called in, eati
ng ice cream, playing hide-and-seek, and lounging on the hoods of their fathers’ cars.
I was sure there was something wrong with me because I sometimes slipped the National Geographic off the rack in the library and sneaked the magazine back to my chair, where I traced with my finger the thick bellies and heavy gumdrop breasts of the naked aborigine women. And there was something wrong with me because I liked to look at Lina's body. Hadn't I hooted and clapped when she had danced in front of me? And wasn't one of the reasons I hated having the privilege of closing the bedroom door taken away was that now Lina sometimes undressed in the bathroom? Now I could no longer sneak as many glances at her out of the corner of my eye, no longer catch as many glimpses of her nubby little breasts or the tuft of hair that seemed to be growing in a perfect triangle where her body met her legs. Yes, I was a dyke because I could not stop myself from looking and because there were times when, after we had turned out the light, I could not stop myself from pressing my hands against my flat chest or cupping them over that strangely wet and warm place on my body, wondering when things were going to start happening to me.
But things always happened to Lina first. It wasn't fair, but it was the way. As Lina grew, Nonna began to call her la signorina, the little lady. Mama constantly fought with Lina over insignificant things, then tried to get me to side with her against Lina. But Lina won my loyalty. I couldn't help but admire her. She walked around as if she floated far above everyone. She sang a lot, spent hours folding the clothes in her drawers, and brushed her hair one hundred strokes every night. She confiscated an empty Dixon Park Soda crate off our father's delivery truck and parked it by her bed. Covering it with a flowered bath towel, she christened it her “vanity.” On it she placed her hairbrush, a comb, and a tiny pocket mirror she had pulled from the grab bag at the St. Joseph's bazaar. Every night she knelt in front of her vanity as if it were a shrine, arranging and rearranging the same three items.
Mama commented on the makeshift vanity the moment she spotted it. “What's that?” she asked.
“It's… where I want to keep things,” Lina said.
“What's wrong with your chest of drawers?”
“I have to share it with Angel.”
“You're too good to share?” asked Mama.
“I didn't say that,” Lina said. “I said… I wanted someplace of my own.”
Mama looked threateningly at Lina. She stepped into our room, went over to the vanity, and one by one picked up the three items that sat upon it, inspecting them carefully. Holding the pocket mirror by the tips of her fingers, she set it back down on the crate. “Pretty girls and ugly girls,” she warned, “all get the same when they're old women.”
That spring a fourth item appeared on Lina's vanity. Nonna began to complain about pains in her stomach. She was tired; she didn't feel right. “Stones,” Mama said, in the same sour tone she used to order cod-liver oil or bunion pads from the druggist. Furtively, just as I gained all my other knowledge of the human body, I looked it up in the Funk & Wagnalls at the library. The picture showed an ominous cluster of pebbles nestled within the curve of a catsupy-red kidney. Mama forbade Lina to bother Nonna until her stones passed. But they would not budge, and Nonna went into the hospital to have them removed.
Before she went, she gave Lina a yellow tin of Jean Naté from her collection of talcum powders. She said it would help Lina remember her. Lina set the coveted tin beside the pocket mirror. The day of Nonna's surgery she must have twisted back the cap a hundred times to take a whiff. When Lina went out of the room, I was tempted to sprinkle some of the fine white talcum on my hand, but I knew Lina would smell it on me and get angry.
The following day—a Saturday—Mama grudgingly promised to take Lina to the hospital. Not being visiting age, I would have to stay behind. Full of envy, I sprawled out on my stomach on the bed, watching Lina get ready. After sorting through her clothes in the closet for what seemed like forever, Lina finally chose a white cotton blouse and a red plaid kilt that closed with an oversize gold safety pin. She set them on a chair. “I'm pretending I'm getting ready for a date,” she said.
“Who's the man?” I asked.
“He's handsome, rich, and famous.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the theater. To see the opening of a fab-ulous show. Afterward, we're going out for cocktails.” Lina took off the top of her pajamas, then her bottom. She stood there in her undershirt and underpants, dreamy-eyed. “Then after that, we're going back to his penthouse.” She reached down and picked up her powder. Sprinkling some in the palm of her hand, she rubbed a little under one armpit, then the other. She took off her undershirt and rubbed some on her breasts. Then she stretched out the waist of her underpants and sprinkled some powder down the front and rubbed a handful on the inside of her thighs.
She looked like a clown who had whitened all her secret parts instead of her face. After Lina had put on her clothes, Mama stopped in the door, wrinkling up her nose. Spotting the yellow tin on Lina's vanity, she held out her hand. Lina reluctantly surrendered the powder to her.
“I guess I don't need to ask who gave you this fancy stuff,” Mama said. She held it to her nose and sniffed. I was sure she would confiscate the powder, but she handed it back to Lina with a short comment. “Soap and water will take care of your smells,” she said. “Remember what I told you the other day.”
After she left the room, Lina furiously wiped the top of the container and replaced it on her vanity. “What did she tell you?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“But she said she told you something the other day.”
“She didn't tell me anything,” Lina said. “Besides, you're too young to know.”
“Know what?” I kicked the fringe on my bedspread. “It's not fair,” I said. “You get to visit Nonna and have powder and do everything first.”
“I'm older,” Lina said.
“So I act better. Mama says so.”
Lina lowered her voice to a whisper. “What do I care about Mama?”
“And I'm smarter than you too.”
“So I'm prettier. That counts more.”
“It does not.”
Lina smiled to herself as she moved the safety pin that fastened her kilt an inch higher. “It does too. Just you wait and see.”
Her smugness killed me. I was sure she was right. Pretty girls did seem to get all the attention. People always took notice of
Lina before they looked at me. The rule seemed to be that if you took two girls, or two sisters, one would be beautiful and daring and lusted after—like Auntie Pat and Lina—and the other would be shriveled as a dried-out sponge, her inability to be beautiful translated into an obsession with being right and being clean. I was sure this was my fate, and I hated Lina for usurping the better role from me.
Lina returned from the hospital with an even more haughty look on her face. “Nonna was connected to a whole bunch of tubes and wires, just like the monster in Frankenstein,” she said. “And she had a long set of stitches that looked like a big black caterpillar crawling across her stomach.”
I burned with jealousy. I had never seen a real scar. I couldn't wait to catch a glimpse of it. But Nonna stayed in the hospital one week and then another. Mama refused to take Lina back. She spent a lot of time on the phone, whispering with relatives about complications.
Complications needed no explanation. Many of our great-aunts and great-uncles already had suffered them—the hushed turn for the worse that sent Mama to church with a fistful of quarters. Each coin dropped into the tin collection box purchased the bright flame of a vigil candle. Vigils were the only item on which Mama would spend money freely. She kept a roll of quarters in a chipped coffee cup in the kitchen cabinet just for this purpose.
Lina and I surreptitiously watched the supply of quarters dwindle, only to be replaced by a fresh roll. Every day when we walked back from school we circled around another block so we could pass by Nonna's house, hoping as we rounde
d the corner that we would find the shades up and the lights on. Nothing doing. Lina's shoulders slumped as we crossed the yard and went back home to Mama.
One day, when we practically had given up hope, I spied a light in one of Nonna's side windows. We raced forward, Lina outstripping me and reaching the back porch first. She pressed her face to the glass and didn't take it away. When I got to the porch, breathless, I jostled her to the side and looked in too.
It was an awful sight. The overhead light in the kitchen was on, and the mark of Mama was everywhere: in the stringy gray mop and stiff broom that leaned against the wall, the metal basin and rags that lay on the counter, and the bottle of bleach and tin bucket that sat squarely on the floor.
Lina took her face away from the glass. “She's dead,” she said.
Her flat voice sent a shiver down me. “Mama's probably been cleaning because Nonna's coming home,” I said.
“They'll come back here after the funeral,” Lina said. “For the party.”
Although barred from funerals, we had been to many of those parties. The kitchen table was loaded with rolls and butter and pastries and cookies. The immediate family sat on folding chairs in the dining room, shaking people's hands and weeping softly as they accepted people's condolences. The air smelled like rotten flowers and fruit and coffee. The men were dressed in black suits and ties and the women in black dresses with delicate 14-karat gold crucifixes—worn only for Easter, Christmas, and funeral masses—dangling around their necks.
I looked up at Lina, wanting her to tell me what to do. I would not start crying until she did. She did not.
She put her hand on the door. “I'm going in,” she said.
“What for?”
“I just want to go in.”
“We better go home and ask Mama—”
“I hate Mama!” Lina said. She turned the knob and the door creaked, like in a horror movie, before it gave way. The smell of star water hit us immediately. The bright white counters, stove, and refrigerator created a glare, like snow.