The Witch of Little Italy (25 page)

“I don’t know what the hell is going on.” Cooper was in a sweaty panic, tugging at her hair. “Why are you walking around half clothed? All proud of your fat stomach, you pathetic pig!” His foot came up and Elly tried to reach forward to cover her belly, knowing that would be right where he’d kick her. It was just the move Anthony was waiting for. He grabbed Cooper’s foot midair, toppling him over.

Cooper scrambled to his feet. The two men exchanged swings. Elly searched for Mimi and Fee in the crowd, but they weren’t there. Someone yelled that the police were coming and Anthony took a quick look around before he hammered Cooper with one enraged punch that clipped the side of his head and tipped him off balance, giving him the time to grab Elly. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and the crowd parted for him as he ran with her, trying to get her to safety. And it closed against Cooper who battled to no avail. By the time he broke free, Elly and Anthony were already down the block and in the hallway of 170th Street.

“We can’t stay here. Do you have Georgie’s keys?” asked Elly.

“Sure. Always. But where are we going, Elly?” asked Anthony.

“Far Rockaway. Itsy’s cottage. I have to find the trunk. There’s something hidden in the trunk.”

“But this building has like, a thousand trunks in the attic. Why not start here.” Anthony was looking over his shoulders. It was clear to Elly that he wanted to lock her up, keep her safe. But her quest was more important.

“Anthony, me and Mimi looked through almost all of them when we were digging for these
fine
maternity clothes,” Elly said as she pulled at her dress. “And we found nothing. Then, when I was decorating the apartment, I tore through what was left. There are no secrets there. Not anymore.”

“So why Far Rockaway?”

“It’s the only other place I can think of. Where else would Itsy hide a secret?”

“It’s Itsy’s secret?” asked Anthony as they got in the car and began to drive away.

“Yes. It’s always been hers. But I’m about to figure it all out.”

You hear me, old woman? I’m going to figure it all out …

*   *   *

Itsy stood alone in the center of the attic, listening through the air vents waiting for Elly and Anthony to leave the building so she could put her plan in place. Those damn air vents.
They
were the cause of all the issues, really. If no one had heard her talk that day, maybe no one would have piqued Elly’s curiosity. Too late, too late. And now Cooper would come and she’d have to do something unspeakable. If she was lucky. Itsy let out a papery rasp, a swallowed chuckle, at the thought. Imagine. She was hoping for something horrible to happen. Because the irony of life is too simple, sometimes. In order for Itsy to save Elly, she’d have to destroy Cooper Bakersmith. Tearing apart a human life was no small task, and it would put her soul in jeopardy. Or at least that’s what Mama would say.
But if I don’t,
thought Itsy,
then I’ll never be able to prove that these things, these awful things we see can be changed! And don’t forget, I have to save her. I swore a solemn vow.

She’d need her voice. She tested it. Tried to cough but no sound came out.
No, not yet
 … she thought.
Not yet, but soon.

29

Itsy

There isn’t a magical “Take Me Home” spell. No ruby slippers. Once you’re grown, you can’t go home again.

In my cottage by the sea, the one so filled up with Mama and my sisters and George when I was young, I rocked myself to sleep and cried. Even before all hell broke loose over, upon, and inside my family on that day in May 1945, I was a broken girl. Abandoned by the rest of them, left to fend for myself, and with Henry only able to be with me in secret … the lonesome was so hard to bear sometimes.

I started getting homesick the second Mama took out my braids and piled my hair on top of my head. I was breathless to grow up, to be like my older sisters. Breathless at thirteen, to be with Henry. I was sick of being Georgie’s caretaker and the last in line for Mama’s attention. But when she sat me down in front of her dressing mirror stroking my braids with her chin resting on the top of my head so we were looking square at one another and asked, “Are you ready?” … I wasn’t. A queasy feeling opened up in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to cry out, “No! No, Mama, I’m not ready!” But there was no going back. Henry’s lips had touched mine already. The spell of adulthood was cast.

I think she understood, because as she undid my braids and pinned up my hair she said, in the way Mama said things, no holds barred, “You can’t go home again, Itsy. I’d like to say you can but you can’t. I’d like to tell you that you can stay little forever, but I’d be lying and I don’t lie. The truth is, time marches on and you have two choices: You move forward, come what may, and you experience all the sour and sweet things that fly at you from around the corners,
or
you sit still. Don’t sit still.”

George never grew up, not in his mind. He was forced to sit still. And it was hard for him. Watching me and Henry fall in love. Watching us laugh over jokes he didn’t understand. He felt left out. I remember him, his strong adult body trying to squish up in my lap, crying about it all on the porch of my cottage.

“But it’s not
fair,
” he whined. “You and Henry all alone, keeping me outta things. I wish, I wish…”

“What, my Georgie, what do you wish?” I asked, trying to soothe him.

“I wish things were the way they used to be. You know? One, two, three, you and me? And I wish you didn’t live here. I wish you’d come back home and we could save this place for the summers. I hate coming all the way out here to see you guys. Why’dja have to move anyways? I just want you to come home. Come home, Itsy? Please come home?”

And then, just like a real grown-up, I had to say the words that grown-up people say but never believe. “I am home, George. This is my home, now.”

He sat up and made fists. His face surged with red anger. He pounded on the columns of the porch. “Well, I don’t like it!” he yelled. “I don’t like it one little bitty, bit!” He ran away from me then, down the street and toward the beaches yelling, “I’m telling Mama you won’t come home! I’m telling her you play kissing with Henry here at the cottage!”

Mama knows, George,
I thought. Mama knows.
She put me here. Mama knows everything.

It took a long time for me to figure out my own home. The internal one, the one that’s made of memories and pain. But you still can’t go there, and stay. The best you can do is dip a toe in now and then. Cry your eyes out.

For me, home was in Mama’s words, her stories. In the herbs she used for cooking and weaving magic … and in the tangible things she made for us.

I put my baby inside the trunk with my mother’s linens and lavender. I always hoped, that even though I couldn’t find my way back home, that somehow my tiny baby could.

30

Elly

“It has to be here somewhere. Isn’t there an attic?” They’d searched the small cottage and found no trace of a steamer trunk.

Anthony looked up. “Wait, look, it’s right here.” He stood on tiptoe and pushed a piece of ceiling out and over. He grabbed the edges of the exposed hole and hoisted himself up. “Here’s the ladder, babe, be careful.”

Once she was up they let their eyes adjust to the light. It was a very small space that held only one object.

“Here it is, Anthony! I knew it would be here.” Elly threw open the trunk. The scent of old linen and lavender came out like wind.

“More sheets?” asked Anthony.

Elly picked up the first layer of sheets and took in a deep breath. Lavender layered with an earthy, human smell. Elly had refocused her eyes so the tears that rose wouldn’t blur her vision. She had to get a very good look. She had to make sure what she was seeing was actually there. Not a memory, not a flash of premonition. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again.

There it was. The secret. The tiny, skeletal remains of a prematurely born infant. Bones clad in a beautiful lace christening gown. The tears fell freely from Elly’s eyes, her throat closed against them and Elly panicked for a moment, thinking she, too, would lose her words now that she found the treasure.
No, you won’t,
she thought …
I’ve found something, not lost something …

“Oh God! It’s too much. It’s just too much. What is this? Why would someone do this?” She cradled her belly in her arms, wishing she could take the child out now and smell its head and cuddle its warm, alive body.

“Dear Sweet Jesus,” said Anthony, who did the sign of the cross and kissed his crucifix. “Are you remembering, Elly? Is it working?”

Elly reached into the trunk and placed her hands behind layers of fabric to ensure that she wouldn’t harm the remains. She carefully lifted up the child’s bones nestled against Amore lace. “No. I’m not remembering anything. I’m sensing things, but I can’t remember.” She covered the front of the child with a soft, white blanket.

“Maybe we have to bring it to Itsy, ask her what it’s all about?” suggested Anthony.

“Yes. It’s hers,” said Elly sniffing and regaining her composure. “It’s why she lost her voice. Loss is magical. You can’t lose something without something to show for it. It’s a balance. I have to get this baby back to Itsy, then she’ll get her voice back and tell me what she said to me that day.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Anthony said, helping her down from the cramped attic space.

Shortly after, on the drive back to the Bronx, Elly suddenly felt heady with nausea. “Stop the car, Anthony, I’m going to be sick.”

Anthony pulled over by the boardwalk and ran around to the passenger side of the car. Elly threw up by the curb. “Something’s happening, Anthony!”

“Is it the baby? Dear God, Elly, is there something wrong with our baby?”

“No … I need…” Elly heard the water, the waves surging onto the shore. “I want to go swimming before we go back.”

“But Elly, honey, it’s nighttime!”

“Anthony! Please, just listen to me!”

He walked her down the beach and watched as she disappeared into the night waves off Far Rockaway. She went in wearing her flip-flops, kicking them into the sea as she felt her feet become buoyant. She swam until the truth came. And then she floated on her back, her short dress floating up past her belly button so the baby could look up at the stars, too. Her long hair free and swirling all around. Mermaid hair. The sky was wider, somehow, than it’d ever been before.

Her hands moved to her stomach. She took a deep breath and bravely commanded The Sight.

“Show me.”

A bright light danced behind her eyes. She was gliding through the inside of herself, tumbling into a vision of a sunny kitchen and a bowl of baby cereal on the table. “Mommy’s coming!” she yelled with a little impatience. And then the light went out.

Elly smiled and opened her eyes. “Mommy’s coming,” she said. “And you know what? I was supposed to die. Ten seconds ago. You, too, my baby. And now? Now I have an unforeseen life. What shall we do with it, little one?”

She turned around to see Anthony pacing on the shore, in the moonlight. Behind him she saw the ghost lights of Playland and heard echoes of laughter, long gone.

Elly swam back to her future.

31

Itsy

“I knew you were going to come back for her. Saw it years and years ago. Sour souls can’t give up. They aren’t strong enough to say good-bye. We were strong enough to keep you away but here you are again. Evil doesn’t learn. It’s thick-headed. Even so, I kept praying it wouldn’t come to this.”

Cooper turned around to face Itsy. She’d been hiding right out in the open. The doors to the building were unlocked and he’d barged right in, as she’d know he would. The only inside door that was unlocked was 1A, the same place he’d been the day they poisoned him. Itsy’s scratchy voice came from behind and made him jump.

Itsy was even more surprised by her resurrected voice. She ran her hands up and down her neck. “She must have opened the trunk.” She laughed, her throat raspy but strong. “Sit down, boy, sit down and hear my story.”

Itsy had planned this moment for six months. And so far, it was all working out the way she’d hoped. Well, not the way she’d
hoped.
She’d spent a long time hoping it wouldn’t have to end like this. That the Fates would figure out another way. Or even Elly herself. That she’d just
leave
. But just like Itsy always told Mimi, don’t underestimate The Sight. It was true. All of it unfolding like it had in her mind the second she’d held baby Elly in her arms.

Cooper was staring at her. Disbelief in his eyes. She knew the cause. He could feel it, too. Most ordinary people can tell when their fate is being affected. And his whole future was about to be cut short. Itsy watched Cooper taking in the whole scene, adjusting his own plan. She saw his eyes settle on the candles burning in the center of the room.

“That’s a Henbane Candle Ring. A bit of black magic. We don’t practice it as a rule, but sometimes certain situations call for action. Mama was fluent in those arts, but hid them from us most of the time. We are only supposed to use them in the most serious of times. And this counts, doesn’t it, Mama?” Itsy looked toward the ceiling and then back at Cooper. “By the time you…”

She watched as Cooper sniffed the air.

“Oh my,” she said, “you’ve already inhaled their perfume. Now you’ll feel your limbs get heavy and numb. I’m sorry about all this. But family is family, Cooper. And family always comes first.”

“You can’t think you’re going to get away with this,” said Cooper sounding hollow and unsure.

“With what?” asked Itsy, a hint of uncharacteristic sarcasm in her voice
. Power is a funny thing,
she thought.

“With whatever it is you are planning to do,” said Cooper, shifting from one foot to the other.

“I can try. Soon your voice won’t be there either so speak your piece before I speak mine. Your feet are already tingling, aren’t they?”