Fear

We watch the movie intently as the girl tells her younger sister to hide in the bedroom closet while she walks down the stairs toward the back door.  We hear the ominous music playing in the background and we yell at the girl on the television,  "Are you crazy?  Don't go outside!" We watch through the fingers we've placed over our face in a half-attempt to hide the images from our eyes, as the girl opens the creaking door and walks out into the night.  She knows she must do whatever is necessary because her sister is depending on her.  She is all that stands between this danger and her sister who is hiding in the closet.  So she walks forth, armed with adrenaline and determination . . .

Upstairs, in the bedroom closet, the younger sister sits by herself, huddled, crouching into the smallest frame she can possibly manage.  She listens intently, she hears the downstairs door creaking open . . .

Fear.  It can propel us to do extraordinary things or it can inhibit us from doing ordinary things.

What is the difference between these two scenarios?   For one sister, the danger is imminent, and without her interceding, the outcome will certainly be disastrous.   For the other sister, the danger is pending.  She hides from the danger, filled with terror, unable to defend herself.

In our lives, do we face our fears any differently?

It is easy to safely stay where we are and not venture out into the world.  But are we only being fools, letting life and opportunities pass us by?  And yet, aren't we equally foolish to strike out into the unknown unprepared?  In this, lies the middle ground.  Making a plan, arming yourself, preparing yourself to fight your obstacles and fears with the ultimate reward of claiming your freedom or prize.

How do you do this?  If your fear is valid and you are not in an imminent danger, then you can take the time to prepare yourself so that when you are confronted with having to make a choice, you can have the best chance of surviving.  Through education and understanding of what is needed to be successful.  Through networking with others who can help you along the way.  Through developing tools that help you confront your obstacles and fears.  By using your brain and understanding what is logical and possible and what is illogical and impossible.  By finding a path to your desired outcome.

If your fear is valid and you are in imminent danger.   Act.  Move.  Confront or Get out.

Once, when I was in an Intensive Care Unit (I.C.U.) and on pain medication that was making me hallucinate, I thought that I was in imminent danger.  I could see a red button on the wall and in my drug induced state, I believed that if I didn't get out of bed and press that button I would die.  There was a mechanical voice that I could hear over the loudspeaker.  When a machine attached to a patient sent out an alarm, the voice would say something about "reset."  But in my mind, the voice was saying, "The"resa" is dying.  Theresa is dying.  Theresa is dead."  In my fear, I thought of my children who were young and at home, waiting for their mother to come back to them.  So I reached up and pulled out tubes that were going down through my nose into my lungs.  I started to pull out the tubes that were going into my neck and my arms.  My machine went haywire and nurses came running through the door.  In that moment, I would have done anything to save my life because I knew that my children needed me and I was determined to get back home to them.  (As an aside note, drugs are powerful things and I now have an understanding of how people on hallucinogens can be driven to do desperate things.  Don't do drugs!!!)

On the other hand, now I face a pending fear, the fear of publishing my first book.  This is not an imminent fear and it might not seem important in comparison to the fear of dying.  But I have poured my heart and soul into this book as much as I poured my heart and soul into raising my children.  I know my children are prepared for the world and I am ready to let them try their wings.  After all, for better or worse, I'm done raising them.  What is done is done.  I can't go back and change anything that I did wrong along the way in order to give them a better chance now.

My book  is different.  I can go back and change it.  I can change it, and change it, and change it.  I can possibly say that it will never be ready to face the world because every single time that I re-read it, I change it again.  But at some point, I have to publish it or it will never have a chance to fly.  I want it to be read by as many people as possible.  I want it to reach young people who have grown up in dysfunctional families so that they will not continue the dysfunction  in their own families.  I want it to reach parents who have made mistakes (and all of us do) so that while there is time they can apologize to their children and strive to change to be better parents.  (Because if we, as parents, have no accountability for the difficulties in our children's lives, then we have no possibility of easing those difficulties.  While we can only control ourselves, we can still hope to influence others.)

I want so much for this tiny book.  I want to reach people who want to be entertained with a mystery, a love story,  a lesson in American History and with life lessons.

But first I need to prepare it and myself so that it will have its best chance of being successful in spite of my fears.  So if you take the time to read the chapters of  "The Tin Box" that I have published in this blog, I assure you I will welcome any advice on the content, the process of publishing, or inventive ways of marketing it so that I can reach more people.  Please arm me with the tools I need to be successful.  The life of my book may depend on it.

And if you have fears in your life that are preventing you from moving forward, I urge you to do the same. Prepare and find your path.

Chapter 4, "The Tin Box Secret" (Re-posted)

Chapter 4                                        The Tin Box Secret

          Heather and I walked down the block toward Petra’s house, Heather swinging her Instamatic camera from its string.  Mrs. Conner waved “hello” as she meticulously washed the window on her front door.   I could see her father-in-law sitting in his wheelchair by the bay window and staring out at us as we passed their house.  A while back, he had had throat cancer and had to have his voice box removed.  I don’t know how he communicated with his daughter-in-law, but I suppose she did enough talking for the both of them.

As we neared Petra’s house, I felt a ripple of trepidation tingle up my spine.  The high Gothic windows embedded in the Victorian façade seemed to be watching us as we approached.  For twenty-five years this house had been left to languish and it was in sore need of repair. The worn roof drooped low, exposing gaps where lost shingles had long ago blown away.   Dark moss crept up the steep angles of the roof line.  Ivy grew on the tall chimney, choking the bricks as it wound its way up; the ivy’s appendages beseeching release into the sky.  This certainly did look like a house where a ghost would feel at home.  For the first time, I thought perhaps I should have listened to my father and met Petra at the library.

          “I wonder which window belongs to Petra’s bedroom.” Heather mumbled.   She lifted her camera and started snapping pictures. 

          “I just hope it’s not in the turret,” I replied.

Even before I knew that Petra’s grandmother had been found dead in the granny attic, this house had given me the creeps.   Miss Tandy’s simple clapboard farmhouse sat next to the daunting Victorian structure.  The cozy screened-in porch filled with piles of magazines and old newspapers was a sharp contrast to its imposing neighbor.  Miss Tandy had a hanging porch swing that she and I would sit on during hot summer days. There was always a cool pitcher of iced tea on the wicker table next to the swing, waiting for any guest who might stop by for an afternoon chat. 

Heather snapped a picture of the turret.  “What’s wrong with the turret?” Heather asked me.

“I thought you knew.  Petra’s grandmother poisoned herself in the granny attic.”

“No way!  Do you know why she did it?” asked Heather.

“I don’t know, but Petra’s mother was just a girl when it happened.  I heard that she found her mother’s body when she came home from school.”

“How horrible!  Who told you what happened?”

“It’s just gossip from the neighbors.  My mother told me about it, but it happened before my family moved here.”

 “Wow.  What a shame, it’s such a cool house!  Just look at all the property around it.  I bet you could have a mean game of ‘kick-the-can’ and there are plenty of places for all the kids in the neighborhood to hide out.”

 

          “Yeah, I guess.” I tried to take my mind off of the tragic history of the house and, instead, concentrated on spending the day with my friends. 

          As we walked up to the house, Petra came bursting out of the screen door.  She ran across the front lawn and collapsed in front of us in a fit of giggles.  We tried to help her to her feet but she wound up pulling us down on the grass with her.  Lying on her back, Petra pointed up to the sky, “Look at that!  It looks like Pegasus!”  Heather and I lay down next to her and looked up.  Large white puffy clouds broke the blue expanse that greeted our eyes.  Petra was pointing to a cloud that resembled a horse with wings flying across the sky.

          “Wouldn’t you love to fly!” she exclaimed.

          “Sometimes I dream that I’m flying above trees and buildings and I’m not afraid at all.”  Heather sighed.

           I thought about my own dreams but didn’t know how to explain them.  Instead I just said, “But then you have to land. That doesn’t scare you?”

          “No.  Whatever goes up; must come down!” giggled Heather.  Petra stood up and then said, “And whatever goes down; must come up!”  She pulled our arms until we were standing again.  “Let’s go inside and I’ll show you around.”

           Behind the front door was a large entrance hall and, beyond that, a stairway reaching up into darkness.  But the entrance hall was full of color, as the sun found its way through the old stained glass in the large windows.  There were beautiful urns and vases in a multitude of colors decorating the hall.  Statues from ancient cities stood guard on either side of the imposing stairway and it looked more like a museum than a house.  Petra’s mom came walking into the hall from a back room that I guessed was the kitchen. Delicious smells from the oven followed her into the room. She had an apron on and was wiping her hands on it as she approached.  She put out her dried hand and said, “I’m Lydia, it’s so nice to meet you girls.”  Lydia’s touch was soft, warm, and confident as she enclosed my small hand in hers.

She had fine laugh lines around her mouth and her eyes, where the skin crinkled when she smiled.  Her large eyes were a deep dark brown and she had lush auburn curls that hung to her shoulders and framed her pretty face.  Her dimpled full-lipped smile exuded a comfortable confidence that drew me to her.

          I wasn’t used to people touching me, so I looked down at her hand holding mine with uncertainty.  After an awkward pause, I stammered, “I’m Julie and this is my friend, Heather.”

          Heather tilted her face up toward Lydia and let go of one of her brilliant smiles.  As Lydia released my hand, I felt bereft of the energy that had flowed from her hand into mine. Lydia took Heather’s hand in hers and said, “Pleased to meet you, Heather.  You girls make yourselves at home and when you are ready, come into the kitchen.  I already made some sandwiches, and I have some chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven.”   Lydia walked behind her daughter and put her arms around her.  She caressed Petra’s hair and gently kissed the top of her head before walking back to the kitchen. When she left, it was as if the air had been sucked out of the room with her.  I felt a pain deep in my chest and a burning behind my eyes.  I looked at Heather and recognized the same agony in the rigid lines of her face.  Neither of us knew what it was like to have a mother like Lydia.

          “The library’s upstairs; come with me,” directed Petra.

Reaching out to Heather, I grabbed her hand and together we walked up the stairs.  Petra explained as we reached the second floor that this was where her bedroom was but we continued to climb up to the third floor.

“Half of this entire floor is the library and that door leads out to a veranda overlooking the backyard.  The other half of this floor is my parents’ bedroom.  Above us, on the fourth floor, is the granny attic with the turret.  There’s a cool widow’s walk looking over the back of the house.  My mom says that you can see the bay from there.”

“What’s a widow’s walk?” Heather asked.

“The story is that long ago, an ancestor of mine who was a sea captain had this house built.  The wives of sea captains often had landings that they could walk on, high on the outside of the house, near the roof of their homes.  When their husbands were at sea, they could look out over the bay and watch for their husbands to return.   Being a sea captain was very dangerous in those days, and often the men and their ships were lost. So landings like these became known as widows’ walks.”

We walked into the library and saw walls lined with hundreds of books.  Relics from foreign lands were placed on display, scattered around the bookshelves and hung on the walls. There were African masks, jewel-encrusted ornaments, and lengths of exotic fabric made splashes of color throughout the room.  Soft-cushioned dark brown leather chairs were placed beside small reading tables with green-shaded desk lamps.  Petra had turned all of the lights on and a warm glow filled the large room.  I walked to one wall and gently ran my fingers over the bindings that read, Bronte, Browning, Crane, Chopin, Dickens, Flaubert, Hawthorne, and Hemingway.  A light film of dust covered my fingertips and the smell of old books filled my senses.  Walking across the room I saw books by Shakespeare, Shelley, Steinbeck, Tennyson, and Whitman.  What treasures were accumulated within these walls!

          “Have you read all of these books?”  I asked in awe.

          “This library has been here in this house for a long time, but my mom has always had plenty of books.  She says she can never feel at home unless there are loads of books surrounding her.  She’s been reading some of them to me since I was a little girl.  But of course, I haven’t read all of these books; although, I think she probably has!  My mom says that these books have the answers to all our questions. Like, once I asked her what it was like to live during the depression, the next thing I knew we were reading Grapes of Wrath; not my favorite book.  But just bring up a question to her and she’ll have you reading a book searching for the answer.”

“Which is your favorite?” I asked.

“Definitely, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and also, the series of ‘Little House’ books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I’ll never forget reading The Long, Long Winter with my mom.  We called it the Long, Long, Long, Long, Long Winter.” Petra started laughing and shaking her head.  “I didn’t think it was ever going to end!  But it really made you think about how it must have been back then to live without all the modern comforts we take for granted now.”

“That brings us to the topic of inventions,” I added.   She picked up a pile of books, "I found these books on inventions.  Here, let’s each take a couple and look through them.  I thought that maybe they might inspire our thought processes.”

          She handed me copies of The Fabulous Story of How American Dreamers, Wizards, and Inspired Tinkerers Converted a Wilderness into the Wonder of the World, by Mitchell A. Wilson and The Picture History of Inventions, from Plough to Polaris, by Umberto Eco.

Petra pointed to some notebooks and pencils on one of the tables.  “Let’s jot down some ideas and see what we come up with.”

After poring through a dozen books among us, and reading about the inventions of edible tie pins, an automatic hat-tipper, bed-wetting alarms, and an electrical bedbug exterminator, we started to get really silly.

I said, “How about a soap called ‘cheese’ that’s in the shape of cheese and lasts for exactly 365 days.  You only need to buy one bar a year!”

Heather chimed in, “And the smell drives all the girls crazy like in the Aqua-Velva commercials!”  She started going wild, attacking an imaginary guy who had just used our cheese soap.

Petra laughed and looked forlornly at her blank notebook, “Maybe we should be a little more practical.  How about inventing a machine that does your school projects for you?  All you have to do is just tell it what the topic is and it gives you all the information that you need and puts it all together.”

“Far out!  Then we wouldn’t have to waste time in the library and we could play outside.  It’s spring and I want to be out there!”  Heather walked over to the window.  “Hey what’s that?”

Petra and I joined her at the window overlooking the backyard.  There was an old wooden structure perched in a giant maple tree.   It was cradled in a web of huge branches.  Tiny green buds appeared along the maple’s outstretched limbs.

Petra explained, “It used to be my mom’s tree house when she was a little girl.  It’s been a long time since it was used so my dad wants to make sure it’s safe before I climb up into it.  He said he has to add extra supports and replace some weak boards.  Maybe, after he’s finished, we can decorate it together.”

“Count me in!” I screamed.

“This is so cool!”  Heather was so excited she tripped over a chair.

“Let’s go have our sandwiches, we need fuel to think.” Petra led us downstairs.

The kitchen had an old white enamel table with cold matching chairs placed around it.  Lydia set out a tray of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and glasses of milk as we sat down.  I looked around a room that seemed to be suspended in time.  The white cupboards and big farm sink were from a different era.

Lydia saw me looking at the kitchen and said, “We have a lot of renovation to do on the house, but I kind of like this old kitchen.  Although we have to update the appliances, I think I will keep this early 20th century look.”  She looked wistful for a moment as if happy childhood memories were passing through her mind.  I started to realize that Lydia had good memories of this house as well as the sad ones.  This is where she had been a child, where she had lived with her parents.  This was her home.

We sat at the kitchen table, enjoying our lunch.  Heather asked Lydia, “Would you take a picture of us?”  “Of course!” Lydia replied.  We smiled at the camera as the flash blinded our eyes.  Just then, a man and little boy walked in.  Through the dots in front of my face, I saw the shape of a man, his dark hair frosted with gray.  He wore glasses over his huge round blue eyes and he had a handsome strong jaw and a warm smile.

Petra jumped off her stool and ran over to the man for a hug.  Putting her arm through the crook of his, she introduced us, “Hey guys, this is my dad, John Racine, and this is my little brother, Jack.   Dad, these are my friends Julie and Heather.”

“Hello ladies!” her father spoke with a dreamy French accent.   He came over to me and took my hand and kissed the back of it.  He did the same to Heather and she giggled because it tickled.  Little Jack, who was a miniature replica of his father, proudly said, “Hi, I’m Jack.”

“How old are you Jack?”  Heather asked.

He took in a deep dramatic breath and shouted, “I’m five!”  He then ran over and hid behind Petra.  She picked him up, carried him over to the kitchen counter, and placed him down on a stool.   She announced, “Jack is the sweetest boy in the world!”  She protectively placed her arm around his waist to keep him from falling off the stool.  He turned in his seat, kissed her cheek and giggled.

“I didn’t know you had a little brother,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we try to hide him in the attic but he keeps breaking out.” Petra teased.

“No I don’t!”  Jack took her seriously.  “I don’t like the attic!”

Lydia stepped in now, “You know I don’t like you teasing your brother” she admonished Petra.   Lydia picked up Jack, gave him an Eskimo kiss and placed him down in front of his sandwich and a glass of milk.

Petra shrugged, smiled at Jack, and blew him a kiss. Jack who had been glowering at Petra stopped sulking, smiled, and blew a kiss back to her.

Lydia spoke to Heather and me, “I tell Petra and Jack all the time how lucky they are to have each other.  I know sisters and brothers like to tease but . . . it’s . . . so hurtful when teasing comes from someone you love.”  Lydia tilted her head and looked pleadingly at her daughter.

“Sorry mom.”  Petra looked up at Lydia.  Lydia came over to Petra and placed her hand on Petra’s shoulder and gently squeezed her, “I know, honey.”

That was the end of it.  I couldn’t ever imagine a scene like that at my house.  For my sisters and me, teasing was a competition that we took part in daily.  As hurtful as it was, you just got caught up in the cycle.

 Mr. Racine asked, “So what are you girls doing inside on this beautiful day?” 

“We’re working on a project for school.  We have to come up with a product or service to present to our English class.  We’ve been looking through the library at books on all sorts of inventions but we haven’t been able to come up with anything that would really work,” explained Petra.

“You said it could be a service, right?” asked her dad.

“Yeah.” We all shook our heads.

“Why don’t you develop a research service where you girls would use our family library as the source for your research?  You could offer it as a service to your classmates.”

 “Dad, what a great idea!”

“Yeah, the public library is pretty far from here and the school library is closed on weekends.  We could be the local weekend library research center.”  I liked this idea; spending time around books was no hardship for me.

          “Kids could pay us to look up the information they need for reports.  Then we hand them the information and they write their own reports.  We could even loan out books.”  Petra was getting excited.

          Lydia frowned, “I thought this was supposed to be a hypothetical business?  I don’t know about loaning out our books for money.  You’d have to keep track of the books and what would you do if someone didn’t return a book or if a book got damaged?”  

          “It is just hypothetical!  We just have to develop the whole concept.  But you’re right.  Even hypothetically we’ll just offer to do the research for them.  We could charge by the hour or by the project, what do you think?”  Petra asked.

          “I’m not sure about this, it sounds an awful lot like plagiarism.” Lydia commented. 

         

“Oh, mom!” Petra admonished.

 Heather cut off Petra’s protest, “I think we should develop a price list for research that takes an hour, half a day, one day, or the whole weekend.”  Lydia smiled knowingly then walked over to the sink to wash some dishes.  I decided that I would ask Mr. Cabot about whether this really constituted plagiarism.

          “Good idea, let’s do it!” Petra ran up to get her notebook, and after we wrote down all of our ideas, we took the tray of cookies out to the backyard to have a picnic.

          Lydia gave us a blanket and we laid it down on the grass.  The birds were singing and tulips and daffodils were blooming around the edges of the house.  The trees around us were also budding and forming the skeleton of a canopy above our heads. 

          “How should we decorate the tree house?” I asked.

          “My favorite color is purple,” said Petra.

          “So is mine!” said Heather.

          “Mine is pink!” I offered.

          “Okay,” said Petra, “Then two walls will be pink and two walls will be purple.”

          “Neat!” exclaimed Heather.  “How about sticking some glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling?”

          “Cool!   We could use some posters too.  I have a Peter Max poster,” I offered.

          “Does the tree house have electricity?” asked Heather.

          “I don’t think so.”  Petra answered.  “But we can bring up battery-operated camp lanterns.”

           I asked, “Do you think maybe your mom would let us use an extension cord or even string some Christmas lights from the attic window?  Then we could get electricity to the tree house.”

          “Great idea!” exclaimed Petra.

          We spent the rest of the afternoon planning how we would decorate it.  When it was time to go home Heather and I thanked Lydia and John for letting us use their library.  “Anytime you need to use the library, you’re welcome to come over.  And if either of you ever wants to borrow a book to read, that would be fine too.”  Lydia gave each of us a hug and said, “Come back soon for a visit.”

          Heather and I walked home past Mrs. Connor who was now weeding the garden in her front yard.  “Hi girls, did you have a nice time today?”  “Oh yeah, it was a great day!” Heather gushed.

“You spent all day in there, what’s the inside of the house like?”

          I nudged Heather to walk faster, “Sorry, we have to get home.  No time to talk right now.”  I whispered to Heather, “Don’t even start with her, all she wants is gossip.”

          Miss Tandy was rocking on her porch swing.  She called, “Hello girls!  Enjoying the nice day?”

I spoke loudly so that she could hear, “Hi, Miss Tandy! It’s nice out today, but I can’t wait for summer!”

“Me too, be sure to stop by for some iced tea!”

“Okay, see you soon,” I replied.

We got to my house first and I ran up my front steps, “See you in school on Monday,” I called.  Heather waved goodbye as she continued on her way home.

Inside, my mother was getting ready for dinner.  I watched her as she set the table and I thought about my family.  My parents provided us with a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food on our table, and a good education.  So much more than Heather had.  And yet, still I felt so numb?  What more did I want?  But now that I had glimpsed the kind of love that families could share, I felt cheated.  It was hard to acknowledge this because I felt guilty about not appreciating what I did have.  Many nights I sat at the table and pushed the vegetables around on my plate and was told that “children were starving in China!"

I washed my hands and went to sit at the kitchen table. My father sat down, took off his belt and laid it across his lap.

“Mary, your mother told me that we’re almost out of shampoo again.  Are you still washing your hair twice each time you take a shower?  If you insist on doing that, then I’m going to take the cost of the shampoo out of your allowance.” My dad was annoyed with Mary.  Mary tried to explain that she had read the directions on the shampoo bottle that said you were supposed to wash your hair twice each time.  But considering that her allowance was only 25 cents a week, it would take two months to pay for one bottle of shampoo.  So she gave in and said, “I’ll only wash my hair once from now on.” 

My mother tried to change the subject as she placed the chicken cutlets on the table, “So how was everything at Petra’s house?”  

“Petra’s parents are really nice and she has an adorable little brother named Jack.  We decided to use a service for our English project.   We can use Petra’s library to do research for the kids in class.  By the way, Lydia said I could borrow books from the library to read.”

“Really?”  My dad was impressed.  My love for reading had been inherited from him.  One time he said to me that the worst thing that could happen to him would be to lose his sight.  He couldn't imagine not being able to read anymore.

Mary said, “You’d better clean your room before you start borrowing books.  You’re bound to lose them in that mess.”  Annoyed, I glared at her.  Why did she have to bring that up?  I was having such a great day, but now she had to ruin it for me.  I looked at my father to see if he was going to add to Mary’s criticism.

Angie added sarcastically, “More books!  That’s just what you need!  Like you don’t spend enough time buried in the ones you have.”  I felt like it was a physical blow.  This is what we did to each other.  In order to save ourselves, we threw each other to the lions.  Angie shook her head in disapproval and then reached for the bread across the table, “Juliana, you’re a cross-eyed bookworm.”

Every night, I automatically kissed my mother and father on their cheeks before heading up to bed.  It was expected and it was necessary.  Inspired by Petra’s family, tonight I felt bolder than usual.  My parents were watching television in the recreation room.  My mother was sitting on the couch and my father in his recliner.

I walked over to my mother and put my arms around her in a hug.  She pushed me away with a nervous uncomfortable laugh and rubbed her arms as if to rub off my touch. Flustered, she said “Good night and don’t read too late, we are going to ten o’clock mass in the morning.”  She dismissed me and looked back at her show. 

After that, my courage abandoned me.  I dutifully walked over to my father and kissed his cheek.  As I walked up to my bedroom, I brushed quickly at my eyes so that Angie wouldn't see the tears.   I wondered how I could feel so lonely when I was surrounded by my family, but the fact was, I did.  I said to myself, at least you have them, Heather doesn't really have anyone.  But in spite of that knowledge, I felt the emptiness engulf me.

Chapter 2, "The Tin Box Secret" (Re-posted)

 Chapter 2                                                            The Tin Box Secret     

On Sunday morning, my sisters and I pulled on our best dresses, over slips made of stiff itchy lace and headed for church.  We sat in a pew toward the back and near the aisle so that we could get out quicker at the end of mass.  My mom took out two pieces of Dentyne gum from her pocketbook, popped one in her mouth and asked me if I’d like a piece.  The spicy cinnamon taste bit my tongue as I watched her chew with her freshly painted bright red lips.   The wrinkles in her skin were covered over by tan colored cake makeup that stopped at her chin; her throat below the line of makeup was pale and ghostly by contrast.  I thought that if I were a man, I wouldn't want to kiss a face full of makeup.  It almost seemed to be a layer of protection between my mother and anyone who might try to get close.  A mask, used to hide who she really was from everyone else, including her own children.

          She wore a real fox stole.  The whole head of the fox was on one end and the tail was on the other.  The beady glass eyes of the fox looked up blindly toward the ceiling of the church.  Angie was showing off her brand new white muff.  She made a show of it so that everyone sitting around us would see how pretty she looked.  Angie looked like a little angel.  Her small heart-shaped face featured wide open eyes and a sweet bow of a mouth when she smiled.  By contrast, Mary and I wore somber black veils that blended in to our nearly black hair.  I imagined that we looked like mysterious Spanish Contessas.  Usually, we fought over who would get to wear the white veil, but today it was on Angie’s head because it matched her new muff.

Overheated bodies, pressed up against each other, gave off the sickly sweet odor of sweat.  It mingled with the smell of incense burning at the altar, causing me to feel lightheaded and a bit sick to my stomach.  Just before mass started, the O’Reilly family filed in.  They had twelve kids and they took up an entire row.  To the astonishment of other parishioners, their mother let them bring books, small toys and candy to church to keep them occupied. 

My attention was drawn to the aisle as the palms were passed out and my sisters and I went to work making crosses out of them.  Of course, Mary’s came out the best.  Angie had some trouble getting hers to stay in its form, so Mary helped her tie it together. There was a small commotion at the very back of the church, I turned around to look in that direction.  Donny was standing along the wall with his family.  Church was very crowded today on account of its being Palm Sunday.  His great-grandfather, Silas Finster, stood angrily at the end of a pew; his eyebrows pressed down to make a frightening scowl.  A woman seated in the row opposite him, poked her husband and whispered to him.  With that her husband stood up and gave the old man his seat.  Even though the pew was already jammed, the woman moved to her left to leave as much room as possible between herself and the old man.

          I looked back at Donny and saw that his eyes were shaded and staring at the floor.  His father, who was standing behind him, put his hand on Donny’s shoulder.  His touch made Donny grimace.  It also made him look up briefly and, once again, he caught me watching him.  He gave a small smile in an attempt to hide the dark mood that I saw shadowed in his eyes.  The overheated church pressed in on me and my stomach started to churn. 

Masses that had always been spoken in Latin, had, for the past few years, been translated into English.  This was something that my father still disapproved of.  It was difficult for him to accept change.  The priest’s voice droned on, saying mass.  I drifted away into my dreams once again.  I saw a small black bird, trapped in a net.  Its wings beat furiously trying to free itself.  But with each attempt, the net closed more tightly around it.  Tears beaded up at the corners of my eyes.  My mother shook me awake and I felt the headache return again.

After mass, I followed my parents out of church.  Miss Tandy, an elderly woman who lived on our block, was talking to another of our neighbors, Mrs. Conner, a widow who lived across the street from her.  Mrs. Conner stopped my mother and said, “Did you hear that Lydia Menlo has moved back into her parents’ house?   She’s even brought her family to live there too!  The daughter looks to be about the age of your older girls.”  She pointed to Mary and me as she shook her head in disapproval.

My mother looked surprised and asked, “Where has she been all of these years?” 

Miss Tandy explained, “I heard she married a professor that she met in Europe.  Now he's working in New York City, so they decided to move into her old house.” 

In a small voice my mother whispered, “Well, it’s been a long time; maybe we’d all be better off forgetting about the past.”  She brushed off the neighborhood gossip.   

My father was about to cross the street and was losing his patience waiting for my mother, he motioned toward her to get moving.  She started walking toward the street, pushing Angie to walk in front of her.  My mother politely waved goodbye to the ladies and wished them both a Happy Easter.

At the corner, across from the church and next to the funeral parlor, there was a candy store where my father bought the Daily News every week after the 10:15 mass.  He was a man of habit who liked to keep to his routines.  We took turns coming with him into the store and today it was my turn.  On the counter was a box of chocolate ice cubes, sweet creamy chocolate blended with hazelnut, my favorite candy!  I might have been able to convince dad to buy me one, but I had given up chocolate for Lent.  One more week until Easter and then I would have all the chocolate I could eat!

          Directly after church, we drove to Brooklyn.  The road that connected my parents’ house to my grandparents’ was aptly named the Belt Parkway, as it connected the generations of our family and the dysfunction that had been passed down through the years.  The roadway was rough and the car bounced every time it hit a pothole.  Curious about them, I asked, “Daddy, why are there so many potholes on this road?”

Daddy loved to explain the workings of the world to us so he relished the question. “A lot of cars travel this road and the constant use wears down the surface.  Then during the winter, snowplows sometime break up the road and the salt that’s laid down eats at the surface and weakens the road even more.  It’s expensive and takes a lot of time to repave the whole road.  So, instead, the city just patches the potholes every year.  Since the filling is really only a temporary fix, the potholes tend to reopen again and again.  Until they decide to do it properly, and take the time to repave the whole road, they’ll just have to keep on refilling the holes.”

I thought about what an inconvenience it would be if they ever decided to shut down the whole road to repair it correctly.  It probably took a lot less downtime to just keep on refilling the potholes, but I also realized that if they just took the time to do it right, once, they’d be saving themselves, and us, a lot of grief.  I guessed potholes were just something people learned to live with, as long as they could still get to where they were going. 

          The bumper-to-bumper traffic was slow going.  Since I had the privilege of going with my dad to buy the newspaper, I had agreed to sit in the middle seat.  Now, I tried to keep my mind occupied so that I wouldn't think about the hot hump in the center of the car floor.  It burned through the bottom of my patent leather shoes and if I moved my feet to the side, it would scorch my ankles as they rested against it.  So I tried to hold my feet stiff on the top of the hump, lifting them occasionally to gain a short respite from the heat.  My head still ached and the smell of gas that always lingered in the car was making me feel sick.  One look at me and both of my sisters opened their windows wider.

          Last night, my sisters and I had gathered around the color television to watch the annual showing of “The Wizard of Oz.”  I don’t think I even realized that we were watching it in black and white until Dorothy opened the door and all the color of Munchkinland flooded in.  Color televisions had come a long way since the one that Martha’s family had owned.  Our new T.V. didn't have the rainbow of colors around the edges like hers did.  I knew that television technology must have improved in the past few years and that this was supposed to be an improvement, but I thought it was a shame that they had gotten rid of the rainbows.

“Did you hear that they are postponing opening day?” my dad asked.   “I guess maybe they’re afraid to have too many people gathered together right now.”  Over the past week there had been constant coverage of the riots happening all over America.  The riots were following the assassination of the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King, on April 4th.  With the Reverend’s life cut short, there were a lot of angry people out there.

My dad was not happy that the baseball season was being postponed because of the assassination.   He was a big Yankee fan and had waited all winter for baseball to start again.  Sunday afternoon meant Yankee games and Ballentine beer.  Once in a while, on a hot summer day, he would let me have a sip of his beer.   I didn't really like the taste, but the cold liquid felt good going down my throat.  Sometimes he would roll out the small black and white T.V. into the screened-in patio for us to watch.  The occasional breeze would cool the sweat that drizzled down the backs of our necks.  Summers on Long Island were hot and humid, but summer was still a while away; April was just getting started.

“It’s not like he was the President or anything.”  My father shook his head.  “What is this world coming to?”

          We exited the parkway at Bay 8th Street and headed down the local roads to my grandparents’ house.  I loved to look at the Italian pork stores, little groceries, and bakeries along the way.  When I saw them, I could imagine what it was like to be in Italy.  I realized that I didn't know that much about my family history and decided that maybe it was time that I asked some questions.  

We drove past the house with the big concrete flowerpots at the base of the front steps.  We had to circle the block a few times to find a parking spot.  There was a long driveway to the left of the house that led to the garage, but for some reason, no one ever parked in it.  In the hot summer months, we had our family dinners in the garage.  Fresh vegetables came from the garden next to the garage. The little garden had a small white picket fence surrounding it and a path of flat stones, winding through the summer vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, and squash.  In the center of the garden was a fig tree.  Years ago, my grandmother had brought a sprig of the tree from her parent's house in the old country and planted it here in New York.  Its mother tree was probably still standing in a garden somewhere in Sicily.

          The front door was rarely used.   Instead, we walked down the driveway to the side door and climbed the stairs.  I could smell the mingled aromas of fresh coffee brewing and the sauce cooking on the stove.  My grandmother’s voice, with her thick Sicilian accent, greeted us as we opened the door from the hallway stairs, “Com’a in, Com’a in. Put’a your coats on’a d’bed.”

We kissed our grandparents, aunts and uncles as we walked through the kitchen to the bedroom and then added our coats to a pile that smelled of mothballs.  Next, we headed for the front porch.  Some of our cousins were already there, watching Uncle Lou putting quarters in his mouth and then, miraculously, taking them out of his ear a second later.  Sometimes he folded his cigarette backward into his mouth with his tongue and then pulled the cigarette out of one of our ears, still lit!

My grandfather had shuffled from the kitchen and now sat in his rocking chair in the corner reading his Italian newspaper.  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver snuffbox.  He clicked it open and, with his thumb and pointer finger, grabbed a little snuff and placed it to his nose and breathed in.  Although he had been in this country since he was a young man, Grandpa spoke very little English.  Grandpa was what the adults called “senile.”  One time, a few years ago, my cousin Denise and I asked him if he knew who we were and if he knew how old we were.  We were shocked out of our shoes when he said our names and told us that we were eleven.  That’s when I started wondering if he was as senile as everyone thought he was.

          My cousin Denise was the only child of my Aunt Mary and Uncle Lou.  She was fourteen and they lived upstairs in an apartment at the top of my grandparents’ house.  Although they had had their share of trials and sorrows, they were the most loving parents that I knew.  They would do anything for Denise and no matter what trouble Denise got into, they always seemed to look the other way.  I wondered if my life would have been different if they had been my parents.  My Aunt Mary worked in a factory in New York City.  Sometimes she brought home costume jewelry or a nifty new utensil to use in the kitchen; but best of all, sometimes she brought home small toys.  Today Aunt Mary had brought Yo-yos for all of us and we each took one from a dog-eared box upon entering the porch.  We spent much of the afternoon playing with our Yo-yos and trying to accomplish tricks.  My cousin, Georgie, was really good at it and took every opportunity to show off.  Georgie was Uncle Giorgio and Aunt Teresa’s son.  He was thirteen and Denise and I tried to avoid him as much as possible.

          “Dinner’s a’ready,” my grandmother called.  Sunday dinner was held around their huge mahogany dining room table.  Sometimes there would be a kids’ table set up in the living room.  But today it was just my Aunt Mary’s family, my Uncle Giorgio’s family, my Uncle Tommy, my grandparents and us, so we could all fit together at the big table.

After the antipasto and the macaroni, meatballs, sausage, pigskin, and braciole, we were all filled to our eyeballs. The girls and women around the table stood up to clear the table while the men and boys sat back in their chairs and loosened their belts in preparation for the next course.  Everyone knew that you should never serve just one type of meat to an Italian family, someone might not like it and, after all, you didn’t want people to go home hungry.

After clearing the table, I sat back down and waited for my grandmother and aunts to bring in the meat.  I heard my father say, “The neighborhood is changing.  Mom and dad should move.”

Uncle Giorgio replied, “You’ll never get them to move again.”

“Sooner or later, they’re going to have to move,” my father replied.

Curious about the past, I asked, “Did you live in this house when you were children?”

Uncle Giorgio said, “No, Grandma and Grandpa didn’t move here until 1952.  By then Uncle Tom and I were the only ones left at home.  But even we were old enough to work and everyone chipped in to buy this house.”

Dad added, “When we were small we moved from one tenement to another, we never stayed anywhere for more than a couple of years.  Life was tough during the Depression.”  A look of despondence settled on his face.

          Aunt Mary walked in from the kitchen, “When we were just children,” she said, “your Uncle Joe and your father used to shine shoes for pennies.  Everyone did what they could to help put food on the table.”  She smiled at the memory, “And then there was your father’s voice.  He was always singing.  He would sing on the corner and people would put money in his cap just to listen to him sing!”

My father smiled.  “One time I was on an amateur hour on the radio and I won first prize.  It was $25!  It was supposed to be for singing lessons.”  He whistled.  “That was during the Depression."  He shook his head sadly, "That was a lot of money in those days.”

My grandmother brought in the pork and said, “They told’a him he should’a take da voice’a lessons, but we need’a da money.”  She placed the heavy tray on the table and wiped the kitchen towel over her face that was wet with sweat, and what looked like tears.

My father said, “So I gave mama the $25 dollars and that was the end of my singing career.  Instead I got a job digging ditches where they had begun construction on LaGuardia Airport.”

          My grandfather got up and started pacing back and forth, back and forth.  My grandmother yelled at him in Italian, “Siedo qui!”  Telling him to sit down.  He was agitated and he argued with her in Italian.  He grabbed his hat and his cane and started walking toward the kitchen.  This caused a slight disruption until my father and uncles could get my grandfather to sit back down again at the table.

My father interpreted for him, “He wants to take a walk!”

“Where’s he going to go?”  Uncle Giorgio asked.

          “I donn’a know?  He always want to’a take’a walk’a.  He’s’a got’a ants’a in his pants’a.”  My grandmother explained.   

The table settled back down to the business of eating and my father started telling a story.  “When we were little, six of us boys had to sleep in the same bed.  Tommy was a baby, so he slept in the top drawer of the dresser.  Grandpa made us sleep with our bare feet sticking out past the end of the blanket so that when he came home from work he could inspect them.  If they were dirty, he’d smack the soles of our feet with his cane!  What a way to wake up!”  Then he joked, “It’s amazing that your Uncle Giorgio can still walk!”  Everyone started laughing.

Aunt Mary walked back into the room carrying a plate of stuffed artichokes.  “It was really hard during the depression for papa to get any work,” she chimed in.  “Even if there was a job available, there were often signs on the shop doors that said, ‘Negros and Italians Need Not Apply.’”

“Why did they come to America?” asked Mary.

My aunt replied, “When papa lived in Italy he was like a professor of music, they used to call him ‘maestro,’ which means, ‘teacher.’  He married nana there; she was much younger than him.  Everyone told him that in America the streets were lined with gold.  In Italy, times were hard.  No one had money to pay a teacher.  His mother was a widow and lived with one of his older sisters who had never married.  He was responsible for their welfare and for that of his new wife.  So he decided to try to make a better life in America.  He gave his mother all the money he had and left his young wife with her as he joined the crew of a passenger ship working in the boiler room.  This way, he did not have to pay for his passage.  He was planning all the time to jump ship when it docked in New York harbor.”

 My sister Mary gasped, “You mean Grandpa came here illegally!”

Nana waved her hand in dismissal and said, “That’a was’a long’a time ago.”   Then to her daughter she said, “What you have’a to tell them’a that’a for?”  Her fingers flipped under her chin in a gesture that showed she was not happy with my aunt.

Ignoring her, Aunt Mary continued anyway, “Working in the bowels of the ship was long, hard, dirty work.  The boiler rooms were terribly hot, the living quarters were cramped, and the food was meager.  The trip to America was cruel and backbreaking for papa, but he came to America to find a better life.”  She looked sadly at the old man sitting at the head of the table; he seemed oblivious to our conversation as he gazed off unfocused on anything in the room.  She shook her head, “Once here, he did odd jobs.  He was most often a tailor or a shoemaker.  He sent for his wife and, as the years passed, he had her and seven children to support.  It was a struggle to keep the family going.”

“And he still’a had’a to send’a da money to his’a mama in Italy!” Grandma said a bit angrily.

Uncle Tommy asked, “Wasn’t there a story about boys throwing rocks at papa?”

My father sighed, “One day, papa was walking home from work and some boys blocked his way.  Teenagers, hoodlums,” he explained.  “One of them picked up a rock and threw it at him.  The other boys picked up rocks too, threw rocks and yelled at him, saying ‘Go home, Dago!’ No one wanted the Italians here.”

There was a long silence that followed.  Although I had heard some of these stories before, for the first time I thought about how difficult it must have been to grow up under these conditions.   I started to see my father in a new light.  I knew his father hadn't been the most loving man, but I hadn't realized how difficult things were back then.  Life had been hard for him.  As difficult as my own childhood seemed to me, it appeared that it was better than the one my father had known.

          Besides my Uncle Giorgio and my father, there were five other brothers, Joseph, Nick, John, Angelo and Tommy.  I had never met Uncle Nick.  There had been some fight between him and my grandparents long ago and no one ever spoke of him anymore.  I knew that he had two little girls who were my first cousins, but I had never met either of them.  And my Uncle Angelo had died when I was little.  I only had a few memories of him.

Uncle John and his wife, Lucia, had a daughter, Gina, and a son, Johnny, who was very “active.”  Johnny’s nose was always running and it was hard for him to sit still anywhere for long.  My cousin Georgie teased him and called him “retarded.”  Gina was a year younger than me and when we spent time together we really had a lot of fun.  But I didn’t get to see her very often.  I think her parents didn’t always come to family events because Johnny was so unpredictable and difficult to control and this annoyed grandma who didn't have a problem blaming them for Johnny's actions. 

Uncle Joe was the oldest of my father’s brothers, and he and his wife, Amelia, who was not Italian, had three children, Frankie, Sal, and Lucy.  Frankie was married now and had a baby of his own.  Sal was away in the Navy and Lucy worked in New York City as a secretary. My Uncle Tommy was still a bachelor and lived at home with my grandparents.

          We ate the main course and I marveled at how my grandmother could gnaw at the meat with most of her teeth gone.  When dessert was served, out came the coffee, pastries, pies, cakes, cookies, and anisette cookies and biscotti.  Nana liked dunking the anisette cookies in her black coffee.  Dad’s favorite was the seeded cookies.  Personally, I loved the cannoli!

After dessert, Denise and I took a walk around the block to work off all that food.  I remember when Denise, Gina, and I were about five years old, we used to make believe we were cooking dinner by putting leaves in a bowl and mixing them together with a spoon.  Uncle Angelo would play along with us and make believe that he enjoyed the dinner we had prepared for him.  He had been in France during World War II and had never married.  Like my father, he loved to sing.  But he would always have difficulty breathing and get into coughing fits that scared me.  One of his favorite songs was, “Alouette.” The song had sounded so beautiful when he sang it.  But after he died I found out that the song was about plucking the feathers off of a lark that was about to become someone’s supper.

        

          Denise sometimes spent a week in the summer at my house or I might spend a week upstairs in her apartment at my grandparents’ house.  We were really close when we were little, but as we became teenagers, we had grown apart.  She had trouble at school and her parents were recently forced to move her into a new school.

            I looked at my cousin and wondered how things had changed so much between us.  I missed the old days when conversations between us had come so naturally.  “So, how’s school going?” I asked. 

“There’s this one guy that almost makes spending time in school worthwhile.  He’s a bit older than the rest of us and he has a really groovy car.”  She took out a cigarette and started to light it.  I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk.

“Would you like one?” she asked.

“Um, no.” was all I managed to say.

She laughed at me and said, “You know, it really doesn’t stunt your growth.”

We walked on in silence and I watched her puff on the cigarette.  I wondered how she could have forgotten how Uncle Angelo had struggled for each breath before he died of tuberculosis. She and I had even made a pact at his funeral that we would never smoke.  Time even changed promises.

Denise asked me if there were any guys that I liked.  I thought of Donny and I could feel butterflies in my stomach but I just said, “No, no one special.”   Donny was a conundrum.  Conundrum was one of my vocabulary words.  It meant “a problem with no satisfactory solution.”  There was a dark side to him that both fascinated and frightened me.

After she finished puffing on the cigarette, she threw it on the sidewalk and stepped on it.  Then she took a small piece of paper out of her pocket and started to chew it.  She explained, “It gets rid of the smell of smoke in your mouth.”  I didn’t believe that a little piece of paper could do that, but when we got back to my grandparent’s house, no one seemed to smell the smoke.

          That night as we headed home on the Belt Parkway and I watched the streetlights glare off the window, I wondered about how times changed.  About how something could be so important to someone at one point in time and yet at another, it could seem childish and insignificant to that same person.  I thought about the conversation that my mother had had with the neighbors earlier at church.  Angie had fallen asleep so I whispered to Mary, “Do you know who Lydia Menlo is?”  “No, I have no idea but it sounds like a bit of a mystery doesn’t it?”

From the back seat I tapped my mother on the shoulder, “Mom, who’s Lydia Menlo?”

“Well, you know the big house next to Miss Tandy’s house?”

          “Yes.”  I pictured the old rundown Victorian with the overgrown front yard.

          My mother lowered her voice when she noticed that Angie was asleep, “Lydia grew up in that house.  But when she was about your age, her mother committed suicide.  They say she drank tea laced with poison.  It was Lydia who found her mother’s body when she came home from school.  We didn’t move into the neighborhood until years later.  By then, Lydia and her father had moved away and the house was closed up and left to rot.  But the story of her mother’s suicide is something people still whisper about.   I guess Miss Tandy and Mrs. Conner are surprised that Lydia decided to move back into a house with such bad memories, especially when it’s in need of so much repair.”

Miss Tandy was a kind old lady who was also known as the “magazine lady.”  She subscribed to every magazine you could imagine.  Every time I needed to cut out pictures or articles for school, my mother would send me down to Miss Tandy’s house for magazines.  She kept piles of them and newspapers on her porch and she told us that anytime we needed some, we could just come in and take them.

Lydia Menlo’s old Victorian house seemed to hold a lot of secrets.  My whole life, I had heard stories that there were ghosts walking about in that empty house.  Some people actually claimed to have seen lights turn on and off in the middle of the night. Which was crazy since everyone knew that the electric wasn't even on in the house.  My father’s car swerved to avoid a pothole and a shiver ran down my spine.

I thought about how life was like a road and how sometimes along the way, potholes opened up.  I guessed you had to learn either to fill those potholes or navigate around them.  If you didn't, you’d keep falling in and never get anywhere. 

Lydia Menlo and her family intrigued me.  I had a feeling there was more to the story then my mother was telling me.  I decided to find out more about them and the tragedy that had taken place in the old house.

Thirteen

Turning thirteen!  Such a big year in the lives of our children and one we look toward with both excitement and dread.  From all that I was told when my daughter was little, I was sure that when she turned thirteen she would turn into a monster.  I learned that the best way to confront a future problem is by confronting it before it happens.  One of my favorite sayings is, "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure."  So long before she turned thirteen, it was a subject that I brought up now and then in our nighttime conversations.

Every night I would read a chapter or two from a book we both wanted to read before she went to bed. Long after she could have read them by herself, we continued this tradition.  We enjoyed this time together so much that we sometimes stayed up way too late, just to read another chapter.  But along with the reading, came discussions about what was happening in life that related to the book.  As we were reading young adult novels, the topic of growing up was one that often came up.  So I prepared her and told her that when she turned thirteen, she might turn into this monster who no longer wanted to talk or spend time with her boring mother.  She promised me often that it would never happen, and I am relieved to say, that it actually never did.

With my son being younger, he was the one I would read to first at night.  Then I would say goodnight to him and go to my daughter's room where she and I would read and talk.  There was only a wall between the two bedrooms, so he would often stay up listening to us talk.  So by the time she turned thirteen, he already knew that I thought she was going to turn into a monster.

Well on her thirteenth birthday, she went to school first.  As my son, who was almost eight at the time, was leaving, he expressed his concern that his sister might turn into a monster that very day.  And that is when a plan started to formulate in my brain.  When my daughter came home from school that afternoon, I told her what her brother was worried about.  So she went to her bedroom, changed her clothes into more "teenage" looking clothes, put up her hair haphazardly, and put some bubble gum in her mouth.  When my son walked through the door she walked up to him, chewing her bubble gum loudly, and pushed him and said something like, "What do you-u-u want?"  He looked at her in surprise and concern.  She continued to act her part of being a nasty teenager who no longer cared about her mother or her brother.  He was horrified!  As she walked away he approached me, "Mommy, it really happened!" he announced in a terrified quiver.  So I said to him, "There's one thing that might help.  Why don't you go up to her and give her a kiss.  Maybe that will break the spell."  He found her and kissed her.  She responded by reaching down and hugging him.  With that he turned to me, wiped his brow, and said, "Whew, it worked!"

I caught the whole episode on my camcorder, but when we moved later that same year, the camcorder disappeared and that tape was in it.  But I don't need a tape to see it over and over again in my mind, it is forever burned into my memory.

Chapter 1, "The Tin Box Secret" (Re-posted)

Chapter 1                          The Tin Box Secret

 

                                1968

 The March winds blew and searched for a way to invade the room. I huddled under the covers as the windows shuttered beneath the continuous assault from outside. Within the house, I could hear muffled sounds as my mother prepared my father’s lunch in the kitchen.  The clank of his metal lunchbox resounded on the counter, blending with the music that drifted upstairs from the kitchen radio.  My father turned off the bathroom faucet and the steps creaked beneath him on his way down to the kitchen.  My parents hushed voices floated through the hallway and penetrated my bedroom door.  The warm tones of my father’s voice mixed with the lighter, higher pitch of my mother’s.  I have heard it said that my father had the voice of a “crooner;” and it is true that when he sang, his voice could be warm and comforting.  But when he was angry, that same voice could paralyze us with fear.

My parents were discussing the arrival of our new television set.  The excitement in our house had been building over the past few days since my father had gone to the local appliance store and purchased our family’s first color TV.  The first time I had ever seen one, was at Marcie’s house.  Marcie’s parents owned a profitable dairy business, so they were able to afford all of the latest gadgets. They even had a side-by-side refrigerator with a built-in ice-maker!  Although Marcie and her family had moved to California two years ago, her color TV would forever remain an object of wonder in my mind.  While the picture itself was full of color, it was the edges of the screen that captivated me.  There seemed to be a rainbow of colors compressed into a halo, framing the moving images within.  I was so fascinated by those colors that I had to quell my urge to touch the screen to see if I could feel the rainbow with my fingertips.  

 "Girls,” my mother’s voice called from the kitchen, “it’s time for breakfast.”

 I pulled myself out of bed and looked over at Angie’s side of the room.  It was as if an imaginary line had been drawn down the middle of the floor.  Her side was perfect, everything in its place.  My side looked like a small explosion had thrown clothes, paper, pencils, crayons, and stuffed animals in every direction.  I stepped away from the bed and pushed everything aside, making a path among the chaos.   I opened my dresser drawers and tried to find something to wear among the disheveled clothing while Angie jumped out of bed, grabbed her neatly folded clothes, and ran into the bathroom.  I was still trying to get my things together ten minutes later when Angie reappeared at the bedroom door and said, “Juliana, you’d better hurry or you’re gonna be late again.”  Angie’s smile revealed that her motive wasn’t completely sympathetic.  At the ripe old age of nine, she learned always to be the “good” child.  She skipped downstairs to the breakfast table and I rushed toward the bathroom, nearly colliding with my older sister, Mary, as she came down the stairs from her attic bedroom.

 “Queen Mary,” as I called her, had her own room because she was two years older than me.  Just two years, think about it!  If I had been born first, she would be sharing the room with Angie!  Mary was a junior in high school and one of the smartest people I knew.  I peeked out of the door and saw her pause for a moment in front of Joe’s empty room before continuing down to the kitchen.  I swallowed to keep the tears from seeping past my eyelids and walked into the bathroom.  Fifteen minutes later, I joined my sisters at the breakfast table.

  My father was just reaching for his coat and lunchbox as I sat down to breakfast.  He kissed each of us goodbye, his clean shaven face soft and smelling like Old Spice.  When he came home from work he would kiss each of us again, but his five o’clock shadow would then scrape against our cheeks like sandpaper against silk.   Now, as he walked down the stairs toward the garage he called back up to us, “See you later alligator!”  My sisters and I replied with a giggle, “In a while crocodile.”  This was our routine every morning. 

 The breakfast table had been set with three bowls, a gallon of milk, a small bowl of sugar, one box of Rice Krispies and one box of Cornflakes.  I poured the Rice Krispies into my bowl and sprinkled some sugar over it.  Next I poured the milk over the cereal and bent low to listen for the “snap, crackle, pop!” that the commercials promised.  On the radio a woman was singing, “Winston tastes good like a – bump, bump – cigarette should.”   My mother danced around the kitchen and tried her best to sing along.  She wasn’t very good at it, but I still liked to hear her sing.  I sat back in my chair and smiled, it was so nice to see her happy.  For a brief moment my family seemed almost . . . normal.  Above the radio on the wall was a sign that read, “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”  I don’t know why it was in our house, because if you had spilt the milk, you were bound to be crying.  My father didn't like messes.   By its side was another sign, “A man’s home is his castle,” a reminder to keep the peace.  My muscles automatically tensed and I scooped up a spoonful of cereal and gulped it down.

 The news announcer came on next and everyone stopped eating for a minute.  “Tuesday, March 19, 1968.  In the news today, Robert F. Kennedy, who announced this past weekend that he intends to join the race for President of the United States, made it clear that he has concerns about President Johnson’s decision to send 35,000 to 50,000 more troops to Vietnam . . .”

 We waited to hear the latest tally of dead in the war.  It always seemed to indicate huge losses for the North Vietnamese while the U.S. casualties remained minimal.   It made me think about old western movies.  Once I had been upset when the Indians in an old movie were slaughtered by the cowboys.  My father told me that the actors who played the Indians would just keep getting up, run behind the cameras, and when they came back in front of the cameras, they would fall again.  It was just a trick.  Things weren't always how they seemed.  I kind of felt like the Vietnam War was like that.  According to the news reports, the North Vietnamese seemed to be losing and the United States soldiers were winning.  But I didn't quite believe them.

 Even though Vietnam was so far away, it was real to me.  My brother, Joe, was in the army and he had been in Vietnam for over a year already.  That’s why it got so quiet at the kitchen table.  I wondered now why President Johnson wanted to send over more soldiers if it was true that we were winning the war.  I was glad when the news ended and The Fifth Dimension started singing their new hit.

 For a moment, I stared at my cereal.  The milk slowly dissolved the Rice Krispies until they became soft and bloated.  I touched my head as the pain returned once again.  “Another headache, honey?” my mother asked.  Thinking back to the night before, images from the dream came and went.  An overwhelming feeling of loss crept up into my throat and almost suffocated me.  The headaches had a habit of following those dreams.  Dreams that seemed more like warnings, or perhaps memories, than actual dreams.  My mother handed me some Aspergum and I popped the chewy medicine in my mouth as I cleared my cereal from the table, no longer feeling hungry.

 We put on our coats and hats.  My mother always insisted that we wear our hats, but I knew that as soon as Mary was out of sight, she would take hers off.   Mary thought she was too cool to wear a hat.  She turned right to walk north toward the high school bus stop and Angie and I turned left.  Once we were around the corner, Angie and I also separated, she walked east toward the elementary school and I continued south toward the junior high.  As I approached the school, I looked out over the bay and watched the seagulls.  The school sat on filled-in swampland.  The bay stretched out south and as far west and east as I could see.  I glanced nervously in all three directions and scanned the skies.  Then I surveyed the new park that was in the process of being constructed across the street from the school.  The park was still a long way from being finished.  Tractors had moved around piles of sand and dirt, and the once beautiful marshlands, now had a scarred look about them.   When I was younger, I had liked to walk along the shore of the bay, behind the sand dunes, hidden from the world.  Occasionally, when the tractors were silent, I still found peace there.  I had a place along the beach.  It was my secret place, where I would sit and just think about things.  I worried about how long it would be kept secret once the park was finished.  But then again, I worried about a lot of things.

 Harbor Junior High had a bomb shelter built into the basement.  Once a year, the teachers would take us down into the shelter, to see where we would hide if the Russians launched missiles against New York.  Of course, they didn't actually say that, but we all knew what they were thinking.  Sweet lemon drop candies were stored there in case we had to survive for some time without food.  However, we were given lemon drops whenever they brought us down.  I know this was supposed to make the shelter seem less scary, but this made me worry that there wouldn't be any candy left if we really needed it.  Another thing that worried me was that if the Russians dropped a bomb on Long Island, how safe would I be in a bomb shelter that was constructed on filled-in swampland with the bay just a few feet away?  Well, I guess I’d be safer than Angie at the elementary school.   There, if they had an air-raid drill, all they did was walk into the hall, face the wall, and put their hands over their heads and hope that the bomb didn't drop through the ceiling.  The fear I shared with every child of the Cold War was very real to me.  I had this image in my head of a control room behind a red iron curtain where a man stood poised over an electronic panel.  Beneath his fingers, lay a red button and at any moment he could push that button and missiles would be launched against the United States.  I took another long glance at the sky over the bay.  I was reassured to find that the sky was still empty of Russian missiles.

 My friend, Heather, was waiting for me by the bicycle rack.  She had a spirit that defied her lot in life.  Heather and I had one thing in common that had made us best friends since kindergarten.  As the smallest girls in our grade, we watched as the other girls grew taller.  Our petite stature fortified our friendship and protected us from feeling left behind.  Our height was, however, where the physical similarities ended.  Her hair was as blonde as mine was dark, her eyes were round and blue while mine were almond shaped and brown.  And today, her blue eyes were rimmed with red.

 The bell rang and we made our way through the crowd to our lockers. Grabbing her arm and pulling her close, I jumped right in, “What’s going on with you?”  Heather looked like she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she might start crying right there in the middle of the hallway.  She clenched her jaw shut and just shook her head, miserably.

 “You want to wait and talk at lunch?”

 She nodded her head yes and I squeezed her hand before we parted to head toward our separate homerooms.  As I walked away, I kept turning around to check on her.  I was almost afraid to find out what her latest crisis was.  Heather’s dad had left when she was little.  She and her mom had lived with her grandmother for a while; but when that got to be “too much” (those were the words that her grandmother had used) they spent the following years moving from one rented house in the neighborhood, to another.  Her grandmother had died last year and now all she had was her mom.  Her mom must have inherited a little money from Heather’s grandmother, but if she did, it hadn’t seemed to make any difference in Heather’s life.  Except that maybe her mother had more money to buy booze.

 My homeroom was at the end of the hall and it was for the kids with names at the end of the alphabet.  I hated being last because I was always put in the back where I was made to feel like a leftover.  This was especially a problem because of my height.  I would inevitably end up sitting at the back of a classroom with towering classmates sitting in front of me, totally blocking my view of the blackboard!  I promised myself that when I got married, I would marry someone whose name began with a letter at the beginning of the alphabet.  The teacher called my name for attendance, “Juliana Ventura?”  “Here.” I replied from somewhere in the depths of the classroom, beyond the sea of heads.  My teacher had to take a few steps to the right so that she could see my raised hand, then she checked off my name in her little book.

 I had a hard time concentrating in my morning classes because I kept thinking about Heather.  When it was time for lunch I raced down to the cafeteria to meet her.  She looked a little better than she had in the morning, but she still seemed pale.

 I gently coaxed her, “Do you feel like talking?”

 In a barely audible voice, Heather mumbled, “My mom didn't come home last night.”  This was not the first time that this had happened, so I didn’t understand why she continued to get so upset every time that it did.

“Okay, but she’s probably there now.  Maybe she just had to work late or something,” I reasoned.

Heather just stared at her lunch while I took a bite of my apple butter sandwich. “I’m sure she’ll be back by the time you get home,” I said with more conviction.  Heather’s eyes still didn’t leave her sandwich.

“Hey,” I tried to change the subject.  “Did I tell you we’re getting a colored television set today?”

“That’s cool,” she said rather flatly.

“Maybe you can come over this weekend and watch it with me?”

“Yeah, I guess.” 

My heart went out to her and I wanted so much to make everything better, but I just didn’t know how.  I thought about how horrible it would be to have an alcoholic parent.  At my house, the alcohol was in one of our living room end tables.  The bottles had been in there for at least ten years.  The only time they were taken out was on New Year’s Eve when my parents made whiskey sours, highballs, or screwdrivers.

“Wait for me after school and I’ll walk home with you,”

“Thanks, Julie.  You’re the best friend, ever!”

But I didn’t feel like I was the best friend ever.  I mean, really, what could I possibly do to help her?  After all, her life was a mess, and mine wasn’t much better.

As I went through the rest of the day, I tried to think happier thoughts. I kept wondering if the new television set had been delivered yet.  It was going to replace our old television that was built into a wood cabinet in the downstairs recreation room.  You had to open the doors to see the TV screen.  We also had a small black and white television set, with rabbit ear antennas, in our upstairs living room.  The downstairs TV didn’t need rabbit ears because it was hooked up to an antenna on our roof.  The small black and white would be brought up to our bedrooms when we were really sick.  Like the time all three of us girls got the chicken pox.  First Mary got sick and the doctor came to give the rest of us shots.  I remember running away from the doctor, but I finally got caught and he put me over his knee.  But the shot didn’t help.  I got the chicken pox anyway.

My last class was social studies and Donny DeLaney sat in the back of the room.  He rarely took off his black leather jacket.  Although he was the star of the wrestling team, he was a loner and didn’t seem to have any real friends.  The guys were afraid of him, but behind his back they made fun of him.   His great grandfather, Old Man Finster, was infamous in our town.  There were stories that he had murdered people with axes and kept their bodies buried in his yard.  The old man’s son, Sam, had had a reputation for being a tough angry young man and he had left his own legacy of terror before dying in a bar fight.  Sam’s daughter, Margaret, Donny's mother, found out she was pregnant while still in high school.  Margaret’s grandfather forced her to marry the baby’s father, Trevor DeLaney, and, as the story goes, in doing so, she had traded one prison for another.

Trevor had been the high school wrestling champion and his old wrestling trophies and photos still lined the showcases in the gym’s hallway.  It was obvious from the photos that he had been a handsome young man, but his eyes were as cold as stone.  It gave me the creeps just to look at those pictures.  These days, people just assumed that Donny was exactly like his father, so they steered clear of him.  But it seemed to me that he had never actually done anything to earn that reputation, except to be born into the Finster/DeLaney family.

Sometimes, Donny would look across the room at me and catch me staring at him.  His brooding eyes were a deep warm blue, so unlike his father’s, but still, they seemed haunted.  For an unguarded moment they would reveal a puzzled expression.  Then his eyelids would close like shades and when they opened the expression would be gone.  It was as if the real Donny was hiding behind this persona that everyone else had given him.  Those eyes held a million questions, and sometimes I felt as though he thought I had the answers.  This always made me feel uneasy, and today was no different.  When Social Studies class was over and the bell rang, I ran for my locker.

Heather was just coming out of the girls’ bathroom so I waited for her to get her jacket.  She was so quiet on the walk home that we may as well have been in a funeral procession.   When we finally reached her house, I was glad to see her mom’s car parked in the driveway.  Heather’s face lit up with relief but she hesitated at the front door.  “Julie, would you come in with me?”

I looked down at my watch, hesitantly, “Uh, sure.”  I held her hand as we walked through the front door.  She had only lived in this house for a couple of months and I had never been inside it before.  One of my father’s rules was that I had to come straight home from school.  I really wasn’t allowed to socialize during the school year and this was a hard rule for me to follow.  Sometimes, his rules made it difficult for me to have friends.  Heather seemed to be the only one who understood.  In the summer months, I had a bit more freedom, but the summer seemed a long way away as our breaths crystallized in the cold afternoon air. 

In addition to rules, my father had a lot of prejudices, so he didn’t like my being friends with anyone who was different.  Once, when I was eight, I asked if I could join the Pioneer Girls.  My father had exploded, “That’s run by Lutherans!”  The way he went on about Lutherans after that made it clear that he thought they were a mind-controlling cult bent on stealing me away from the Catholic Church.  I never asked again.

As I entered Heather’s house I reminded myself to make this quick.  The house was dark and musty and if it hadn't been for the light that poured in through the open front door, I might have fallen right into the gaping hole in her living room floor.   Heather let go of my hand and walked around it and up the stairs to her mom’s bedroom.  I wasn't sure if I should follow or not, so I just stood there staring at the hole.  I inched closer and peered into the darkness over the edge and down into the basement below.  I shivered, stepped back and closed the front door.  But the inside of the house wasn't much warmer than outside.  I wrapped my arms around my body to slow down the shaking.  I could still see my breath form in the air.  I carefully walked around the hole, sat down on her couch and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.  The room was gloomy and sparsely furnished.  Dust had gathered in every corner and the floor had long ago lost its varnish.  Scratches evidenced where furniture had been scraped along the surface.  I was wondering if any had fallen to the basement below through the hole, when I heard a sound and looked up.

Heather slowly came back down the stairs.  Her small body shaking so hard I was afraid she’d fall.  When she reached the bottom step her anger flashed, “She’s so drunk I can’t even wake her!  She’s just snoring away in her bed and her room reeks of gin!”  Heather’s anger and frustration were bordering on hysteria.  I looked at my watch, it was already after four.  I knew that I needed to get going but I couldn't just leave Heather like this.

I took charge and led her to the kitchen, “Let’s get something to eat.”   In Italian families, you learn that food is comfort.  We opened the cupboard but there wasn't a whole lot there.  We did, however, find a box of chocolate cake mix.  Next I checked the refrigerator; there were eggs and milk so I placed all of the items on the kitchen table.  “Let’s make chocolate cake!  It always makes me feel better!” I tried to ignore the little voice in my head that was saying, “Go home, Julie,” as we mixed the cake.  I tried to think of an excuse I could give my mom.  Maybe I could say that I had stayed at school for extra help.  As long as it didn’t take too long, I’d be okay.

When we put the mixer on high speed, cake mix flew everywhere in the kitchen.  By the time we had the cake in the oven, we were laughing so hard that our sides ached.  We turned on her kitchen radio and sang along.  We danced around the kitchen and checked the cake every few minutes, opening the door to the oven to see if the cake was done.  About an hour later we were finally sitting at her kitchen table each with a giant (although a bit flat) piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk.  To me, there was nothing like warm, just-out-of-the-oven, chocolate cake.  I always ate the bottom and saved the top for last, because the top was my favorite part.  It was hard not to stuff it all in my mouth at once because it just smelled and tasted so good.  But I had learned that if you take your time and eat it slowly, it’s so much more satisfying.

“So is Donny DeLaney still staring at you in class?”  Heather asked with a giggle.  I was glad to see that Heather was thinking about something other than her mom, but I wasn’t too sure I liked this subject either.

I took a deep breath, “Yeah.”

“So, are you going to do anything about it?”

“Like what?’

“I don’t know.  Do you want me to ask him if he likes you?”

“No!”

“Oh, okay, I won’t.  But one of you has just got to do something or I’m going to get involved.”

“Don’t you dare!”   I grabbed a piece of cake and threw it at her!

“Hey!” She grabbed a piece and threw it at me and it landed in my hair.

When we were finally finished with our food fight, we both felt a lot better.  That is until I noticed the time, it was almost six o’clock!

“Sorry Heather, but I've got to get going.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.”  Suddenly the concern in the room shifted from her to me.

At my house, we ate dinner every night at five o’clock sharp.  My father got home at a quarter to five and we all sat together to eat dinner as a family.  My father sat in his seat with his belt slung over his lap.  We never ate out or ordered in.  My mother cooked all of our meals and she cooked them the way my father liked them.  Not too much garlic, no rice, and no broccoli.  As I walked past the hole in Heather’s living room again, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. 

Like a condemned man walking to the electric chair I walked home as slowly as I could.  After all, I was already late.  Maybe if I delayed my arrival long enough I could come up with an excuse that he would accept.  About a block from my house, I saw him walking toward me.  He didn't say a word.  His face was set in stone when he grabbed my arm and just about dragged me home.  All my excuses died on my tongue before even getting a chance to escape through my clenched teeth.  The house was silent, although I could see that everyone was still in the kitchen.  The dinner sat cold on the table between them.  My mother and sisters sat there quietly, as I was pushed up the stairs.  In my room my dad took off his belt. I knew what was coming next.  His eyes were glazed with anger.  Usually, when he punished me, he’d hit me with the belt a few times.  But this time he just couldn't get the anger out of him.  So he just kept hitting.  When he finally stopped, I could hear crying. Then I realized, through my own tears, that he was crying too.  His voice cracked as he said, “Don’t you ever do that again!”  He turned away from me and went downstairs, back to his dinner.

Later that night, after my mother had spread Mercurochrome on the fresh cuts across my back, I lay on my stomach in bed on top of the cool sheets.  I listened as my family gathered downstairs in the recreation room around the new color TV.  And in the darkness of my room, I tried to imagine the colors that were surely outlining the screen.  I reached my hand out, and in my mind, I felt the rainbow against my fingertips.