Whistling in the Dark

breakfast. “We’re fine, Mrs. Callahan,” I said. “Hall and Nell are taking very good care of us. Mother’s gonna get better, isn’t she?”

Mrs. Callahan said, “Well, my pa’s been real sick up at the VA Hospital so I haven’t been by to check up on Helen as much as I woulda liked, but I’m sure she’ll…” Then she started to cry. And I just couldn’t take that and neither could Troo because she pulled on my hand and we got lost in the crowd.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The reason I lied to Mrs. Callahan was just in case she went up to the hospital to visit, I didn’t want her getting Mother all worked up. The truth was neither Hall nor Nell was taking very good care of us at all. Hall was drinking all the time up at Jerbak’s. So Mrs. Latour was probably right when she said he’d taken up with Rosie Ruggins, who was a cocktail waitress there. And Nell was so busy with Eddie that she didn’t want to cook for us, which was okay, because unfortunately I would really have to agree with Hall on that one thing and only that one thing-Nell’s cooking was crap. She was also talking about going to beauty school, so she was spending a lot of time giving Toni perms in the kitchen, which had begun to smell worse than the bathroom up at the service station. Half the girls on the block now looked like they’d stuck forks into light sockets, thanks to Nell.

Because Troo and me were pretty hungry, Troo came up with another one of her famous plans. She said, “We should just start showing up at people’s houses around suppertime.” So last night we ate at the O’Haras’, which wasn’t that great because I really didn’t like liver no matter how much bacon you put on it. But tonight, we were on our way over to Fast Susie Fazio’s house because they had the best food, and because even though they were Italians, the Fazios were okay Italians, not like the Molinaris. Troo told me that was because the Fazios were from someplace called Nice, Italy, not like the Molinaris, who were from another part of Italy that wasn’t so nice.

There were ten Fazios plus Nana, so mostly I don’t think anybody even noticed when Troo and me got plates out of the cupboard above the sink and pulled up chairs next to Fast Susie in the kitchen, which always smelled of that spice called garlic that Nana used on just about everything.

I was sitting across the table from Nana. I tried to smile at her even though I knew she wouldn’t smile back because I had tried before and she never did. That was because she was a Strega Nana… a witch. Under no circumstances would you want to cross Nana. Other Italians came from all around the city and would bring her stuff and she would say some Italian words and wave her arms around to ward off the evil spirits and she always dressed like she was on her way to a funeral. Fast Susie told me, even though I didn’t believe her, that Nana threw pee on somebody’s new car once as some sort of blessing, so they would never get in a crash. I tried not to think about that when I reached around one of Fast Susie’s older brothers for a piece of that nice skinny bread with butter.

“So how’s your mother doin’?” Johnny Fazio asked right after I’d stuffed the bread in my mouth. He reminded me of this movie star called Earl Flynn who was in this movie Troo and me had seen and liked at Old Time Movie Matinee Day. It was called Captain Blood and Earl was a pirate. Johnny had a thin mustache like Earl’s and his dark hair grew up on his head like a big wave and he was a singer in a band called the Do Wops, which all the older girls thought was very hep.

“Eh… you.” He poked me in the arm. “What’s your name… I asked you how your mother was doin’.”

“She’s fine,” Troo answered for me.

“Ain’t she dyin’ or somethin’?” Johnny asked.

His words hung in the air like skunk smell and made everybody stop eating. Then Nana Fazio’s chair made a scraping sound when she pushed quickly back from the table. Her bosoms were so long she had to hold them to her waist with a belt and she didn’t speak very good English, but Nana knew a wisecrack in any language. She had begun to undo her bosoms belt.

I pretended not to notice and reached for another delicious meatball in red sauce.

Then these words came shooting out of her little body-because really, Nana Fazio could almost be considered a midget-and she marched over to our side of the table and slapped Johnny across his shoulders with her belt. “You don’ talk like that. Thas the little girl’s mama, you don’t say nuthin’ about her mama dyin’, capisce?” Nana shouted at Johnny in this voice you could never imagine would come out of someone so small. “You goombah!”

It went library quiet ’cept for the drip drip of the kitchen sink and a faraway lawn mower. And then from outta nowhere, Troo looked up from her plate and started singing, “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera sera.”

All eyes went to Nana Fazio with the belt in her hand. They were all probably thinking like I was that Troo had just taken her life into her hands. Nana leaned down real close to Troo and I thought she was gonna put the hex on her or smack her like she had Johnny, but instead, she looked at Troo with her black olive eyes and said, “You, you kid, you lika Doris Day?”

Troo cleared her throat and said, “Actually, I think Doris Day is the best thing since sliced bread.”

Nana slowly, slowly smiled. Now I knew where Fast Susie’s pointed eyeteeth came from. “Me, too,” she said. “I lika Doris Day, too. You and your sorella can eata here whenever you wanna, as much as you wanna.” Nana reached across me and dug the big silver spoon into the white bowl and slapped three juicy meatballs onto my plate.

What a genius my sister was!

Troo wanted to sleep over in the Fazios’ attic that night and I couldn’t disagree with her. The last time we went home, the door was locked. Besides that, Troo and me both knew if Nell caught us she would force us to have one of those Toni perms that we both thought made you look like you just got off the boat.

Red light, green light was called off because it looked like it was gonna rain again, so we spent most of the night listening to Fast Susie tell us stories in the attic that had no light except for a dirty bare bulb way high up in the ceiling.

Fast Susie was sitting cross-legged on the stained gray mattress, facing me and Troo. “So then, after the grave robbers dig up those dead bodies, they take them over to Dr. Frankenstein’s castle in a little three-wheeled wooden cart.” She was using this voice she had that was husky. “And it begins to rain and the grave-robbin’ men are ugly and skinny and cough all the time and are drunk with dirty hair.”

Thunder rolled past the attic window and made it shake, and then a few seconds later there was pitchfork lightning that I could see perfectly, and it reminded me of our farm.

I looked over at Troo. She was rubbing the arm that had gotten broken in the crash and was hanging on to Fast Susie’s every word.

“And then Dr. Frankenstein puts the body on this black table in his lavatory and he gets a saw to cut the bodies aaall up!”

The lightning flashed again and lit up the whole attic, which was full of boxes and suitcases and the thing I was keeping my eye on. This body that had no arms or legs and was standing over in the corner next to the window. Fast Susie said that Nana used it to make clothes on.

“And then”-Fast Susie made her voice drippy with creepy-“and then, Dr. Frankenstein sewed all these dead body pieces together and made this monster…” She waved her arms around. “And Dr. Frankenstein put this monster down on this other table and hooked all these gadgets up to him and then lightning hit the castle and electricity came into the gadgets and went into the monster and Dr. Frankenstein yelled out, ‘It’s alive. It’s alive!’ ” Fast Susie jumped up and started walking around with her arms stiff in front of her and chased me and Troo, who screamed, and I did, too, until somebody yelled up from downstairs, “Shut the hell up, we’re tryin’ to sleep down here.”

After the Frankenstein story, Fast Susie showed us her bosoms and told us we would both get them too and, holy smoke, would the boys ever like us a lot! She said we could touch them if we wanted to. I didn’t. Later Troo told me they felt like a water balloon but warmer.

When the rain started pelting the window, I tried to fall asleep, but that attic heat felt like a too-heavy blanket laying all over me and all I could think about was that Frankenstein monster murdering the three of us while he grunted, “Me… me… me… like you.” Boy, that Fast Susie could make a story sound so real. I got the sweatiest I