and Victoria almost canceled their going out that day to stay home instead, and cry by the side of the soon to be departed. It was Saturday, though, and there was going to be a derby at the pier.
“And then lunch with the girls from the water-plunge!”
“And King Neptune is going to be crowned at sunset!”
“And then there is a ball at the auditorium!”
The same ball to which the judges of the Miss Venice Pageant, Summer of 1912, they had been told, had been invited.
Consequently, the two of them elected not to stay, even if it would break their hearts to miss their poor mother’s passing.
And who could blame them? September was a great time to be in Venice. Not the Venice in Italy, where the stench coming from the canals makes it impossible to live during the hottest weeks of the summer, but the Venice of America, where the sea breeze keeps the air pure and the weather mild for the entire year; the Coney Island of the Pacific, full not of crumbling palazzos and dusty churches, but of elegant hotels, expensive souvenir shops, and casinos, built not of marble and stone, but of brick, wood, and plaster; the Venice with a twelve-hundred-foot long amusement pier, complete with an auditorium, a Ferris wheel, a ship-restaurant, and a dance hall; the Venice with a swimming lagoon and two roller-coasters; the Venice that attracted tourists by the tens of thousands every weekend; the Venice of scantily dressed women holding umbrellas promoting real estate by the beach; the Venice where oceanfront mansions, multiple-story apartment buildings, and rows and rows of miniature, tent-like houses along the man-made canals were being built every day, each one more exquisitely crafted than the other.
Their own house was one of these little cottages facing the Linnie Canal. It wasn’t much, but it had a nice front, an entry hall big enough for a coat rack and an empty bookshelf; a living room with a sofa and a small dining table; a kitchen with a six-burner stove that ran on coal so they never had to worry about burning their bangs in the fireplace, and a washbasin. There were only two bedrooms: one downstairs, for the mother and her mostly-absent husband, and one upstairs, with its own private entrance, for the two eldest daughters. The youngest slept in a toolshed in the backyard.
“Don’t let me die alone,” the mother begged again.
“We won’t,” Victoria responded.
“Our little sister will stay behind to take care of you,” said Rosa.
They said their goodbyes and Rosa and Victoria went back to their bedroom, dragging along the young girl to do their grooming.
“I wish she’d stop,” lamented Victoria, closing the window so they wouldn’t hear their mother’s wailing.
“We know she’s dying, all right,” said Rosa, standing on a low stool while her little sister mended the hemline of her dress. “We don’t need to be reminded every second.”
“We’re not insensitive beasts.”
“If she makes me cry again,” Rosa bent down, so she could see herself at the vanity table, “I’ll have puffy eyes and I will look horrible at the derby. And I don’t want to give O’Leary that pleasure—you were supposed to be taking care of her,” she rapped the young girl’s head with a knuckle. “It is your fault she’ll die.”
The young girl hunched her head down and continued sewing. She felt a lump form inside her throat, but did her best not to cry. When she cried, the beating was harder.
Rosa and Victoria left the house shortly afterwards, transformed into two red-lipped baboons, not by the miracle of magic, but by the tragedy of makeup too liberally applied. The young girl returned to her mother’s side and remained there for the rest of the day, wordless, but not less loving, combing the moribund woman’s hair with her hand and wetting the woman’s pillow with her tears.
The two mean sisters returned from the ball a little before midnight. What an adventure! The best day of their lives! They had drunk and danced and teased and left so many unfortunate young men brokenhearted. O’Leary had seen the holes in the soles of their boots and made some unpleasant comments. Her lackey, that imbecilic Triggs, had called them greasers. They were jealous. In their hearts the two sisters knew they had been a success. They were the two most beautiful girls in Venice. Any time soon, each would catch a good husband. And what a pair of wonderful husbands they’d be!
“Rich!”
“Handsome!”
“A prince from a foreign land and his cousin!”
They were all titters and giggles as they climbed the stairs one step at a time, holding themselves from the railing, commenting on the promises of eternal love they had pulled from a married man, when their younger sister summoned them again into their mother’s bedroom.
“Please,” the mother begged with a raspy voice, “go call a priest. I want to die in contrition.”
A priest? For a witch? More tears, laments, and runny noses! And the promise that, even if it would be the last thing they did in their lives, they would get a priest to their mother.
But the two of them had drunk copiously. They fell twice, once trying to get out of the house and then when they stepped into the rowboat—through the canals, Victoria had insisted, it would be much faster.
Rosa ended up falling into the water.
“My dress!”
No time to lose! Her mother wanted to die in contrition. The young girl helped her sisters back into the house, then jumped onto the boat and rowed herself towards the Grand Canal, guided by the lights and the music coming from the Race Thru the Clouds roller coaster; under several bridges, by the Bath House and through the big lagoon, all the way to the Venus Canal in the limit with Ocean Park—it would have been faster to run, she realized, puffing, but she didn’t stop rowing. She reached Second Avenue, then ran to the house of the only Catholic clergyman she knew, on Fourth Street. The fireworks coming from the pier illuminated her way. She rapped on the door insistently, until the priest’s maid answered. Between sobs, the young girl explained to the woman her desperate situation. She waited a good fifteen minutes for the maid to come back, accompanied by the priest, still getting dressed and reprimanding the woman for letting the child wait in the cold. The man checked the contents of his valise, put a couple of consecrated hosts inside, and followed the girl back to the boat.
2
In which the mother begins her confession
The mother’s semblance changed from a gray tonality to a less-tragic yellow as she saw the priest enter her bedroom.
“Father,” she cried, “I must give confession.”
The man replied with an affirmative gesture. The young girl had done all the rowing, but it had been a great exertion to get in and out of the boat. He was panting and his face had turned red. He asked the young girl for a glass of water. “Or a cup of tea,” he stopped the young girl before she left the room. “And perhaps some cookies, if you have any.”
He sat down and rummaged inside his traveling bag for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his forehead.
“I am a witch,” the woman said.
The
