More questions she didn’t want to answer. She always felt queer saying it was just her and her “aunt.” Antonia pushed the tinted glasses up her nose, staring at his hands, all freckles and knobby knuckles. “Do all coppers yak as much as you do, Mick the Mick?”
It seemed no matter what she said, it just rolled off his shoulders like rain off a rubberized raincoat. “The gift of Irish blarney,” he said. “We’ve all got it. You should see us around the supper table. Everyone talking at once, Ma yelling, ‘One at a time, one at a time!’”
They stopped at the corner of Dupont and Market, joining a cluster of adults—women with shopping baskets over their arms, men with their newspapers, canes, and cases, and a few other kids. Antonia thought they might be Mick’s schoolmates the way the boys nodded at him and the girls looked slantwise at him and giggled in that silly way girls did when they wanted a boy to notice them.
A traffic copper standing in the middle of the street was waving his white-gloved hands this way and that like he was conducting a band. He blew his whistle and gestured for the group to cross. As Mick and Antonia approached, the policeman saluted, saying, “Well, now Master Michael Lynch, does your ma know you’re taking the long way home from classes today?”
Mick touched his cap in response. “Afternoon, Officer Daniel Lynch. Just making sure the little lady doesn’t get further bothered by the local hoodlums.”
“Ah. Good boy.” The officer winked, whether at Mick, her, or both, Antonia wasn’t sure.
Once they’d crossed the street, Antonia said, “I’m thirteen.” The words just slipped out. She wasn’t sure why she’d said anything at all, except that “little lady” made it sound like she was one of those first grade girls who wailed and sobbed when their pigtails were pulled.
She didn’t really know how old she was. Her maman had said she was twelve in Leadville. Mrs. S said Antonia seemed small for her age, so maybe she was younger, “Although your extreme precociousness would argue against that,” Mrs. S had said. After listening to Antonia recite, watching her do her numbers, and wrinkling her nose at her penmanship, the school principal had suggested Antonia had some “catching up to do” and plunked her in grade five, much to Antonia’s frustration.
She tipped her head up to see his expression from beneath her bonnet brim.
“Thirteen?” His red eyebrows shot up. “You are a pipsqueak, aren’tcha?” But there was nothing mean in his face or in his tone. Or suspicious. He seemed more amused than anything.
“That copper back there. Officer Daniel Lynch,” she tried to imitate his brogue. “Is that your brother?”
“Surely ’tis. And you can believe that I’ll be getting nothing but the third degree from my family tonight. You think I ask a lot of questions.” He shook his head. “Well, now, Miss Antonia Gizzi, how far do we go up Dupont?”
With a start she realized they had walked nearly five blocks and stood even with Pine Street. “I turn here.” She glanced down Pine toward the waterfront.
“I might as well walk with you one more block and turn right on Kearney. I’m not going to cross Danny’s corner again. He’ll make me stand with him in the middle of the street until I tell him everything.”
“Everything” was left undefined, but Antonia felt her face burn under the bonnet’s wide brim.
“I’m fine from here,” she said. She really didn’t want him to know where she lived. Up above the music store, with no one but Mrs. S for family. It seemed sad, somehow. “Thanks, Copper Mick,” she added.
“Well, sure.” He grinned. “Maybe I’ll see you at school, yeah? At noontime.”
“Maybe.” If Persnickety doesn’t have me writing a million lines on the board and missing the lunch hour again. Antonia could almost smell the sharp scent of chalk and hear the squeak of it on the board.
After they said good-bye and parted ways, Antonia continued to the store, thinking about family. Thinking about Maman, dead and buried in Leadville. How up to the very end, Maman had believed there was a “knight in shining armor” who’d ride to their rescue. Who’d pull them out of the shack in Leadville’s Stillborn Alley where they had lived after being thrown out of the hotel, and they’d all live happily ever after.
But he’d never shown up.
Remembering her mother made Antonia sad again. She tried not to think about her all the time, but sometimes she couldn’t help it.
Rain began, warning spits darkening the wooden sidewalk. Looking up, Antonia recognized the unmistakable form of Mrs. S with her black umbrella ahead of her on the other side of the street, walking toward the store about half a block away.
Antonia began walking faster, looking for an opening on the street to dart across and catch up.
Antonia!
Antonia jerked to a stop as the urgent whisper surrounded her. The familiar voice, the voice of her maman, echoed in her head.
It had been so long since she’d heard her maman’s voice talking in her mind like that.
That’s what it was, right?
Just all in her mind?
It couldn’t really be her maman.
She was dead.
And the dead couldn’t talk.
Could they?
An uncontrollable shiver ran up Antonia’s back and breathed ice on her neck. Rain pattered on her bonnet, making small pick-pick-pick sounds.
She looked around, trying to see if someone else had called her name. Maybe one of the jokers from her class had followed her this far and was trying to get her goat.
Her gaze snagged on a man across the street from her, some ways behind Mrs. S, walking and also carrying an umbrella. He wore a checked jacket, gray derby hat. She caught the flash of a
