Читать книгу Good Blood - K. C. Pastore - Страница 8

I made it to St. Mary’s by six. And to my total shame, I’d stepped on a squeak—again. I just had to leave it all up to fate.

This wasn’t the first time I had made a pilgrimage to the parish at this hour. I liked to pray before anyone else stirred. Grandma taught me how to do that. Though she didn’t do it anymore. Her knees got bad enough that she couldn’t handle the walk to church, even as flat unadventurous as it was.

I passed through the large stone entry way, entering the Notre Dame of our city, and glided down the center aisle. I heard a wet sucking sound billowing from the walls, only to realize that sound was coming from my own foot. The echo bounced around the four corners of the empty sanctuary disguising for four steps that I had a clearly old, but slightly moist with dew, pile of shit clamped onto my left saddle shoe. Seeing that I stood only about fifteen steps from the door, I slowly backed up, not taking my eyes off of the altar, into the foyer. I turned at the door and jumped into the bushes. By the use of the sharp edge of a rock in the flowerbed I proceeded to scrape the shit off my shoe.

Before I had a chance to notice him, Mr. Carmine Carmidio made his way up the stairs of the church and caught me—seemingly defacing the property of the most venerated church in town. How was I to run those frequent errands for Grandma? I thought I would never be able to face him at the counter of Hyde’s drugstore ever again.

Geez, oh man, I thought. Only God himself knows what Carmine thinks of me now. How could I possibly avoid the man though? Hyde’s. Man, oh, man.

But to my relief, he politely winkled a little smile, continued into the church, and apparently disregarded my satanic actions.

I put all that behind me so I could appropriately approach the altar. I entered the foyer of the church once more. But . . . holy water? I looked to my right. No holy water. Holy water? I already did this once, so I questioned whether it was taboo to partake and cleanse again. Holy water—period. I needed some distance between me and the dog shit.

I reentered the sanctuary and slipped down the center aisle. Carmine sat at the third row back on the right side. I didn’t want to encroach on his space or look like I was stalking him. So I bowed, crossed myself, and sat in the fourth row on the left side.

I thought, Carmine was one of those dull individuals. You could tell by his blank and sentimental face—sweeping his stoop and stocking his shelves and not thinking much at all about life. The thing is, those kinds of people always made me feel a little sad; in fact, they still do.

The sanctuary of that church had a holy scent: lilacs, and fresh oak, and old-people skin. It welled and billowed and swarmed me like it always did. Then, slowly, a whiff of my shoe seemingly puffed into the air and crept into my nostrils—a devastating blow. Shit, of all things, hindered me from drinking in that heavenly smell. I shut my eyes and attempted to smell through the crap. The holy scent remained, though I could barely sense it.

I eased down the kneeler with my unsoiled foot and proceeded to kneel. A pang of lightning shot up through my knee. A couple days prior I had acquired an injury due to my reckless attempt to win a fight.

Angelo had come home with a new pair of boxing gloves—bright red with a gleaming, untarnished gloss finish. They were beautiful. He wrapped the cuff of white leather tight around my wrists. I jabbed into the air. Those gloves glided.

“Light as a feather! These are real nice Ang.”

“Yea, I know. Coach gave ’m to me. Said they accidentally shipped an extra pair.”

“Wow.” I jabbed out a couple times and bounced around. “Now we can have a real fight!” I hit him in the arm. Angelo laughed. “Go,” I hollered, “get your other gloves.”

Angelo leapt up the stairs. He got really fast at the stairs, ever since his growth spurt. All the men in our family started out short and then had a growth spurt right before they turned seventeen. Over those past three month, Angelo had really shot right up. He was already taller than the average Luce, and now he was way taller. He rose up taller than even Nicky, who, last year, sprinted to five feet, ten inches. I’d say Angelo stood about six feet, maybe even six-one. Regardless, he unfortunately looked rather gangly, all stretched out like taffy.

I tried my best to enjoy the gloves while I had them. Angelo gave me all his old stuff, which means I was now the owner of his old gloves. I wasn’t at all unhappy about getting the old gloves. I gladly accepted everything that funneled its way down to me. By funnel I mean Angelo dropping off stuff on my bed. I never saw Ang do it, but Nicky never gave me anything, so I knew it wasn’t him. In fact, I kept a special box to store all of the stuff Angelo gave me—baseball cards, caps, notebooks, an old-pocket knife, a fishing lure, an Air Force flight jacket that was rerouted from Popi, and a mint-green super ball.

Now that I had my own gloves we could have a real fight.

Weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, Angelo instructed me in boxing. He started teaching me when he started, a year and a half earlier. But since I was smaller and a girl, he used to give me the gloves. I felt lucky and angry by the whole process, and that was even before I recognized he couldn’t actually hit me like he is supposed to, because without gloves, he’d probably break his hand and my face simultaneously. But after I got his hand-me-down, we both had our respective sets of gloves, allowing us to have a proper fight.

Angelo leapt back down the stairs and entered the living room exhibiting his new footwork. He flailed his arms out to the sides and crossed them over each other in front of him, all while keeping up the Charleston-like feet. I stoically watched him approach—that’s what I did when I didn’t know what else to do. On about the third flail, his right arm swung back so far that he smacked the lamp on the end table. The lamp fringe fluttered to the side as it fell in slow motion. Angelo spun around and caught the lamp before it concluded the leap to its death.

I laughed so hard I had to brace myself on the wall. Grandma peeked her head around the corner from the kitchen before returning to whatever she was doing in there.

Angelo pulled himself together. He began his approach. I struck first. Left, left, right. Cover the jaw, keep the knees bent and the feet active. Stay aware, stay very aware. Deflect. Strike. Keep the feet active. Look in his eyes. Left, left, right. Feet active. Uppercut. Deflect. Take a hit. Respond. Look in his eyes. Stay aware. Stay aware. It would be a lie to say that I didn’t notice he was taking it easy on me. Angelo wouldn’t have dared to actually clock me a good one, and it’s not because he was merely avoiding the guilt he’d feel for hurting his kid sister. He was just kind, that’s all.

And that is when the injury happened. I’d dropped, free-falling, avoiding Ang’s left hook, and whacked my knee on the corner of the coffee table. The front door slammed shut. I’d ducked, again, under one of Ang’s cross-jabs and nailed him right in the gut.

Nicky clonked down the hall and looked into the living room. “Oh, come on. Stop teaching her to fight,” he insisted. “She’s gonna get herself in trouble one of these days. And, you know how that’ll look.”

“You jealous? You jealous, Nicky!?” Angelo taunted. “You jealous your kid-sister fights better than you?” He kept bouncing back and forth, alternating feet and brilliantly smiling.

Nicky swaggered past the still-frightened lamp.

“Come on, Nick. Hit me! Hit me, Nicky! Hit me!” Angelo taunted.

Nicky walked up to Ang, and with confident ease punched him right in the face. Nicky slammed him so hard that Ang actually spun in a circle before he smashed up against the mantle. Like ten of Grandma’s knick-knacks shattered on the floor.

Grandma shuffled in from the kitchen. “Angi ,what-a happen?”

She knew exactly what happened. Her head snapped over to Nicky.

Like all the Italians did, Nicky extended his hands and hunched his shoulders forward. “What?”

Grandma rested her fists on her hips, what was left of them anyway. She had evolved into a rather symmetrical cylinder.

“He asked me to hit’m,” Nicky continued. “So I did. What’s wrong with’at?”

Grandma turned to Angelo, extending her hands and hunching her shoulders forward. “You-a break-a the house. You-a be ashame-ed Angi!” She vigorously patted him on the side of the face—not quite a smack, but not exactly lovingly. “Clean up-a!” She shuffled back to the kitchen, her hand flapping above her head all the way.

Ang got back up from the floor. After I retrieved some frozen peas for his face, I lurked near the hallway door for a while, just watching. The room emitted bland badness like a gray cloud on a Sunday. Nicky brushed into me as he left, but Ang raked up all the ceramic pieces. I turned and meandered into the kitchen,

Grandma had her back to me. She was rifling with something. Her arms tensed up and released, tensed and released.

“What you doin’ over there?” I asked.

Grandma turned slowly toward the sink. As she swiveled, I saw the secret item. Lo and behold, it was a spray can of whipped cream. She’d been trying to put whipped cream on the pies? This was a big deal. Because Grandma made basically everything herself and wrinkled her lip at any kind of modern innovation. Grandma shook and squeezed that metal can in every possible way, but nothing happened.

“You’ve got to put your finger over the spout-thing.” I gestured. “And lean it to the left or right.”

She stuck out her bottom teeth and stared at me.

I made the hand motion at least fifteen times. Then, high-browed and wide-eyed, she put her finger up next to the spout-thing, and poof! White fluff, literally everywhere. It went all over her face, my face, the cupboards, the cantaloupe, the clean dishes, and the dish towels. The bottle spun on the floor. It filled up every crevice and chip in the grout. Grandma had pushed the spout-thing with such vigor that she’d ripped that sucker right off.

Cream-covered-face and all, Grandma dissolved into laughter. Her hand grasped my shoulder kind of swinging me about with her own laughter. I started to laugh too. I swiped a bit of cream off of my shoulder and ate it, which led Grandma to do the same.

Everything got dead silent while I waited for her to process the sensation.

Suddenly, Grandma—hand on my shoulder—looked straight into my eyes, her face grave. The pregnant pause had gripped my nerves. Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Isa-good!” We busted out into even greater laughter.

I loved Grandma—the world’s greatest optimist. She pretty much always made a good time out of anything, even when she had to rewash the dishes, change her clothes, mop the floor, rinse the cantaloupe, wipe down the cupboards and replace the dish towels. I though it must have been nice to never get angry. I mean, I knew if Popi or Dad were in that kitchen what kind of fire-blazing situation they would create.

My mind snapped back to the present—the kneeler and my throbbing knee. I found it a real pain in the you-know-what to think I went through that whole fight with Angelo only to acquire a bruised patella. Nicky, on the other hand, just waltzed in and took the prize.

Guess life’s like that, I muttered to myself.

Luckily the kneelers were comfortably padded in St. Mary’s Church, unlike the cracked old wood ones at Madonna’s. I opened my eyes and looked ahead to the silent altar. The church was perfectly still, save two crows having an argument outside. I scanned over the pews. Carmine no longer sat up ahead of me. I concluded that he must have left when I got lost in the covering of whipped cream.

Footsteps echoed. I glanced over my left shoulder as two men entered a pew several rows back. Their olive skin and thick raven black hair gave them away—Sicilians. Both wore black suits with white button-down dress shirts. Italian guys who came straight from the Mother Land always left the top two buttons undone, making way for a plumage of rich and horrifying, black chest hair. American-born Italians kept their chests covered. But, what could I say? I too was Sicilian, and Popi was one of those chest-hair exhibitionists.

I looked back again. The Sicilians sat oddly close, that is, close to each other. They weren’t kneeling or anything and they really looked out of place, not praying and all. Besides solemn prayer, I couldn’t work out any other reason a soul would enter a sanctuary at that god-forsaken hour.

I kneeled. They sat behind me. I shivered at the thought of them staring straight into my back. The clunk of my swallow and that weight sinking down, down in the pit of my stomach told me they knew I had the cross and chain and finally I was about to meet my own foreboding retribution. Soon enough, I found myself wrapping up my prayers so I could get the hell out of there.

Grandma insisted that I light two candles in front of Mary every day, one from me and one from her, since she couldn’t make it down there herself. Luckily, my route to Mary and back down the side aisle totally avoided the men. I had deduced a great likelihood of their “being up to no good,” which radiated from their imposing, irreverent postures—inappropriate for inside a church. So, keeping my distance seemed wise. I stood, crossed myself, and proceeded toward the altar. As I stood, the cool, metallic crucifix touched my chest. I had it draped around my neck and tucked into my shirt. Surely only one thing was true; those guys could not see me with that chain. My mind raced to find a way to get it off.

I stepped forward. A pair of familiar shoes caught my periphery. Carmine Carmidio hadn’t left after all. Beneath the horizon of the pew to my right, there he lay, flat on the pew, face down, stiff as a board. I would have thought he’d died, but I hadn’t heard him fall. I tried not to think about it.

I tried to continue my slow pace to Mary and proceeded to light the candles—without looking like anything was off. I stretched up to the top, back row, as most people never lit the candles there. As I did so, I held my shirt close to my stomach to avoid being lit on fire. But even though I tried to avoid the flame, one of them licked my right elbow. It took a second to notice it, because elbows are not exactly the most sensitive part of the body. But then . . . I saw. Flames! I threw down the match and flipped my arm over. A very light pink patch already formed at the tip. My attempt at inconspicuousness was drastically failing. I could feel their eyes. The wick’s smoke swirled into the air, and with a surge of enthusiastic dread, I turned down the side-aisle, breaking into a sprint. I didn’t care what those dagos thought. I’d already called attention to myself multiple times. There just wasn’t much to hide anymore.

Just after I passed the confessional, the door opened behind me. I tripped over my own foot and slammed onto the whirling gray, marble floor. I immediately shot up and beetled to the door.

“Are you all right?” a man’s voice asked.

I spun around. It was Father Piccolo.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I proceeded my scuttling out the door.

“Did you fall?”

“Yeah.” I entered the vestibule and leapt out the doors.

My knees didn’t start aching or my elbow burning until I had peddled halfway home. All that adrenaline wore off. And I could feel something again.