delivering elderberry pie onto each empty plate. After she reached around me to pour some wine into my glass, the rosy liquid sloshed into it and swirled to a halt.
Good grief, what have I done? I wondered. My heart still pounded. I ran my fingers over the crucifix, concealed by the material of my shorts and one layer of the inside pocket. It barely formed a lumpy cross. Meanwhile, the stories floundered on from one to another, but I couldn’t listen anymore.
And I couldn’t bear looking into Grandma’s knowing eyes. I wondered if she could see in them the grave sin of which I had willing partaken. I worried that the impossibility of telepathy was insignificant with her. I supposed she always knew what kind of secrets we kept, but rarely did she actually shame me, and never in the presence of the whole family.
After a nerve-ridden train of moral-logic and self-deprecation, I concluded that I must go to the church in the morning and return the crucifix. The likelihood of finding the actual nun was minimal, but indeed the church was her family, a sister of God, so in that respect the piece did belong to the church just as much as it belonged to her.
The conversation unwound. Grandma and I cleared the table and began our ritualistic dishwashing routine: stacking on the right, Grandma washed, Grandma dunked in the clean left-side water, I pulled out of the water, I dried, I stacked in a reasonable configuration. But all the while, though my hands cleaned the dishes, my mind lingered on what I had taken. Grandma dismissed me early; she’d put them away herself.
The night dragged on. Though unconscious, all save about a half-hour, I knew what solemn business awaited me at the coming of dawn. So within a half-hour of its arrival, I peed and then escaped sudden death.
My nimbleness had faltered on the way back from the bathroom. Having memorized all of the squeaks on the stairs, I had placed my feet, meticulously in the various safe-zones. In this manner, I sneaked back up to my room. But suddenly I froze. It had dawned on me that I’d forgotten the eleventh stair. After dissuading the shame, I gathered my memory had failed me due to the nighttime hours and puffy sleep that weighed on my eyelids. I took a deep breath and guessed the best that I could. But of course I stepped exactly on the epicenter of a squeak. And the noise I made was instantly followed by another, right when I made it to the top. Popi had swirled out of his bedroom in a half-wakened haze, and I’d heard a click. His pistol pointed straight at me. My hands swung up above my head.
“Popi!” I whispered, “It’s me, Rosie.”
He didn’t flinch.
“It’s me!”
The pistol vibrated in his hand. Then he dropped it to his side. I slowly approached him, careful not to startle. He stood, stiff as a board, staring at the floor, evoking a kind of sleep-walking aura. I took his elbow, pivoted him around, and led him back into his room. After nudging him inside, I shut him in there.
Chapter 4
I made it to St. Mary’s by six. And to my total shame, I’d stepped on a squeak—again. I just had to leave it all up to fate.
This wasn’t the first time I had made a pilgrimage to the parish at this hour. I liked to pray before anyone else stirred. Grandma taught me how to do that. Though she didn’t do it anymore. Her knees got bad enough that she couldn’t handle the walk to church, even as flat unadventurous as it was.
I passed through the large stone entry way, entering the Notre Dame of our city, and glided down the center aisle. I heard a wet sucking sound billowing from the walls, only to realize that sound was coming from my own foot. The echo bounced around the four corners of the empty sanctuary disguising for four steps that I had a clearly old, but slightly moist with dew, pile of shit clamped onto my left saddle shoe. Seeing that I stood only about fifteen steps from the door, I slowly backed up, not taking my eyes off of the altar, into the foyer. I turned at the door and jumped into the bushes. By the use of the sharp edge of a rock in the flowerbed I proceeded to scrape the shit off my shoe.
Before I had a chance to notice him, Mr. Carmine Carmidio made his way up the stairs of the church and caught me—seemingly defacing the property of the most venerated church in town. How was I to run those frequent errands for Grandma? I thought I would never be able to face him at the counter of Hyde’s drugstore ever again.
Geez, oh man, I thought. Only God himself knows what Carmine thinks of me now. How could I possibly avoid the man though? Hyde’s. Man, oh, man.
But to my relief, he politely winkled a little smile, continued into the church, and apparently disregarded my satanic actions.
I put all that behind me so I could appropriately approach the altar. I entered the foyer of the church once more. But . . . holy water? I looked to my right. No holy water. Holy water? I already did this once, so I questioned whether it was taboo to partake and cleanse again. Holy water—period. I needed some distance between me and the dog shit.
I reentered the sanctuary and slipped down the center aisle. Carmine sat at the third row back on the right side. I didn’t want to encroach on his space or look like I was stalking him. So I bowed, crossed myself, and sat in the fourth row on the left side.
I thought, Carmine was one of those dull individuals. You could tell by his blank and sentimental face—sweeping his stoop and stocking his shelves and not thinking much at all about life. The thing is, those kinds of people always made me feel a little sad; in fact, they still do.
The sanctuary of that church had a holy scent: lilacs, and fresh oak, and old-people skin. It welled and billowed and swarmed me like it always did. Then, slowly, a whiff of my shoe seemingly puffed into the air and crept into my nostrils—a devastating blow. Shit, of all things, hindered me from drinking in that heavenly smell. I shut my eyes and attempted to smell through the crap. The holy scent remained, though I could barely sense it.
I eased down the kneeler with my unsoiled foot and proceeded to kneel. A pang of lightning shot up through my knee. A couple days prior I had acquired an injury due to my reckless attempt to win a fight.
Angelo had come home with a new pair of boxing gloves—bright red with a gleaming, untarnished gloss finish. They were beautiful. He wrapped the cuff of white leather tight around my wrists. I jabbed into the air. Those gloves glided.
“Light as a feather! These are real nice Ang.”
“Yea, I know. Coach gave ’m to me. Said they accidentally shipped an extra pair.”
“Wow.” I jabbed out a couple times and bounced around. “Now we can have a real fight!” I hit him in the arm. Angelo laughed. “Go,” I hollered, “get your other gloves.”
Angelo leapt up the stairs. He got really fast at the stairs, ever since his growth spurt. All the men in our family started out short and then had a growth spurt right before they turned seventeen. Over those past three month, Angelo had really shot right up. He was already taller than the average Luce, and now he was way taller. He rose up taller than even Nicky, who, last year, sprinted to five feet, ten inches. I’d say Angelo stood about six feet, maybe even six-one. Regardless, he unfortunately looked rather gangly, all stretched out like taffy.
I tried my best to enjoy the gloves while I had them. Angelo gave me all his old stuff, which means I was now the owner of his old gloves. I wasn’t at all unhappy about getting the old gloves. I gladly accepted everything that funneled its way down to me. By funnel I mean Angelo dropping off stuff on my bed. I never saw Ang do it, but Nicky never gave me anything, so I knew it wasn’t him. In fact, I kept a special box to store all of the stuff
