Winter's Trick

I tried my best to write a short story without the intertextuality of literary allusions but somehow I once again yawed my course toward "The Odyssey." That one epic poem seems to have influenced me more than any other. The three bars in "Winter's Trick" are reinterpretations of certain episodes found in Homer's poem.


Winter’s Trick

It was most likely the expired eggs that sent the Van Hausers to bed for a week. Carol had mixed six of them into her zucchini bread batter on December 14th and she and Ron ate half the loaf that night after dinner. The kids wouldn’t touch the bread because zucchini was “disgusting” they had all agreed. They stuck to the candy canes off the tree and the sugar cookies brought over by Pat, the neighbor lady with the five barking terriers with reindeer antlers atop their furry heads.
On that upsetting evening, Ron and Carol had spread lots of butter on the zucchini bread and Ron had even toasted his slices, so when the Christmas vomiting began, Carol threw out the rest of the loaf and the two of them crawled painfully into bed. Carol lamented her decision to use the old eggs because she knew that they had been sitting in the back of the refrigerator since before Halloween, but what she didn’t know was that Ron had a co-worker at the plant who repeatedly failed to wash his hands after using the restroom and liked to enter the employee kitchen to make turkey and provolone sandwiches with the contamination of a modern Y-pestis. It was Ron who had cut, buttered, and served the zucchini bread that night.
At first, the kids protested when told they would have to spend a few days with their grandparents while Ron and Carol recuperated. They loved Papa and Nonni but the television was never turned on at their house (they read books) and besides it was Christmas and the kids wanted to be near the presents under their tree just in case that brother received one more than the others or that sister got one twice the size of the rest. The Van Hauser kids kept score at Christmas, and two of them would make damn fine lawyers one day.
Bridget was the second oldest of the Van Hauser kids and she wanted her own bedroom for Christmas because her sister Sophie, the youngest of the brood, often woke her up playing Ray Conniff Christmas songs like “Count Your Blessings” while singing to her dolls (Truth be told, Bridget really wanted a Little Miss Manhattan Make-up Set for $27.99 but was told by her parents, “Young lady, girls in the 3rd grade do not wear that stuff!”). Sophie wanted everything. The eldest, Barry, just wanted video games, and Duncan asked Santa for a magician’s kit with disappearing ink. When the kids arrived at their grandparents’ house, they worried that those presents back home would never arrive. Zucchini bread had ruined Christmas.
Papa and Nonni did their best to make the kids feel comfortable during the week their parents were sick in bed. Nonni got out all of her best holiday decorations and made Papa assemble a 24-piece Nativity set that hadn’t been touched for over ten years. When Papa couldn’t find Baby Jesus, Nonni remembered just why the set had been boxed up for years but improvised quickly by putting a green army man in the wooden cradle in front of the Holy Family. When Papa saw the scene, he laughed and said that it was an appropriate tableau for the two thousand year-old reign of Christianity, but Nonni hit him in the arm to shut him up before the kids overheard (Papa had been a scientist at the university before retirement).
During her infirmity, Carol telephoned three to four times each day, usually enquiring about the kids’ whereabouts or sometimes just to give an update on Ron’s escalating temperature. When Nonni heard that it had reached 103˚, she dressed the kids up in their warmest winter sweaters even when sitting around the house, and for precaution’s sake, threw out any vegetables slightly resembling a zucchini. On these rainy and windy December days, as the kids immured themselves in front of the television set which Nonni said might do them some good after all, their grandmother busied herself in the kitchen preparing various pasta dishes and baking more batches of almond cookies. Papa said he had never seen Nonni cook, clean, and hum so cheerfully in all her life. The Van Hauser kids were catered to quite nicely under the solicitous hospitality of their welcoming grandmother.
Of course, Nonni had given Papa lots to do as well. She instructed him to crawl into the attic to take down all the Christmas decorations: antique glass bulbs for the tree, ceramic snowmen candles for the tables, silver and gold bells for the doors, artificial wreaths for the mantle, twenty years worth of saved Christmas cards (plus three Happy Hanukkah ones) to line the dining room threshold – so much, in fact, that when Papa’s golf buddy, Cap’n Jerry, entered the house, he exclaimed, “Holy Kringle! What’d Santa do – explode?” That made Sophie worry just a bit.
The children were allowed to explore the entirety of their grandparents’ house but were restricted from entering Papa’s library without his permission. Papa had hundreds of well-worn books on five dark brown shelving units and a stuffed tortoise resting on the floor next to a very uninviting chair. Since there was no television set in the library and the tortoise smelled funny, the Van Hauser children preferred to avoid the room altogether. But on December 17th, the rainy day when the kids were gathered around the television in the back family room to watch Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas one more time, Papa considered ushering them into his library to introduce them to Swift, Verne, and Dumas.
As he sat in the corner reading the newspaper, waiting for the silly program to end, Papa peered over the Op-Ed section to wonder how a stuffed otter and an impoverished jug-band could entertain these lazy grandchildren in such a way. Nonni had gone to the store to buy some things, so Papa had shepherded them on the floor near the Christmas tree not knowing what else to do with them, and it was he who had relinquished the remote control to Barry.
Half way through the program, Papa was pleased to see the children’s feet tapping to a somewhat tolerable song, “When the River Meets the Sea,” but when the Christmas show finally ended, he told Barry to turn off the television and he gathered them all on the sofa near his chair.
“Now, isn’t that nice,” Papa said. “Quiet. That’s what a good Christmas is. Right, Sophie?”
“I guess.”
“So tell me, children. Are you having a good time here?”
“Yes,” Barry answered.
“And what about you, Duncan? How are you holding up?”
“Fine.”
“Well, good. Now, um, has any of you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?”
“No, Papa,” Barry said. “They make us read other things in school.”
“I see.”
Sophie sneezed and wiped her hand on the sofa.
“Well, I was thinking that it might be a good idea for us to all read a book while we’re here. Right, Duncan? What do you think?”
“I can’t read, Papa.”
“Oh, you can’t read. What about you, Bridget? Can you read?”
“Of course I can read! I’m nine.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Duncan, too, can read,” Bridget corrected.
Papa scratched his head and stared blankly at the children.
“Papa?” Sophie asked.
“Yes, Sophie?”
“Why don’t you tell us a story.”
“A story? Well, I don’t know if I know any.”
“Yeah, Papa!” Duncan jumped in.
“Tell us a Christmas story!” Sophie exclaimed.
“A Christmas story? Well, there’s got to be one hanging about in this tired, old cranium. Hmm … Let’s see. A Christmas story. You know, I think I do have one but first, Barry, go and turn on the Christmas tree lights and, Bridget, dim those lamps over there, and, see, see how nice that is.”
“And, Papa, it’s raining outside!”
“Yes, Sophie. Isn’t that nice with the rain and the Christmas lights and no television noise. In fact, it was a quiet December afternoon just like today, just like all of us sitting here in this warm house in winter --”
“Just tell it!” Duncan blurted out.
“In a warm house in winter,” Papa continued, “when Little Mary, who was eleven years old, sat in her bedroom and looked out the window at the falling rain …”

The rain had been falling for three days over E. 187th St. and brown puddles of water and dirt filled the cracked asphalt. The scene would have reminded a romantic reader of the opening pages of A Tale of Two Cities when the French peasants rush out onto the downsloping street to scoop up in their hungry hands the muddy wine which had spilled forth from fallen barrels onto the cobblestone road. But Mary was only ten years old in 1960 and the only wine she had ever known was a sip here and there at New Year’s Eve feast when her parents felt especially generous and hopeful for the coming year. The Bellaforchettas, see, were a poor family with only one black and white television and a cat cursed with three legs.
The Bellaforchettas lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the South Bronx. In the humid summer, there was no escape from the suffocating heat and in the winter, the apartment walls were as cold to the touch as the frozen grapes in the freezer which Mrs. Bellaforchetta swore tasted like just like ice cream. Mary, being the only girl in the family, was fortunate enough to have her own tiny bedroom, but the one window which overlooked E. 187th St. also sat above Fantozzi’s fish market, so each morning, Mary would awaken to the salable stench of flounders, fillets, and flukes.
Her two older brothers, Johnny and Carmine, shared the other bedroom and fought every other day. The walls of their room were marked with soiled hand prints and punched in from fists and thrown objects like shoes and baseballs (but never books). Johnny had just entered the 10th grade and thought he was very important, not that that really mattered since schooling did not define his mien. The cracked asphalt under Mary’s window did. He treated his younger brother of two years like the torn up street’s deterioration on vulnerable Royals – detrimental. This would eventually wear down the resistance of patient Carmine but in 1960, Carmine still strove to placate his brother’s impetuous irrationality and save the family from the insobriety of this infuriating Heracles. Johnny Bellaforchetta usually always got his way and usually always got away with it, whatever “it” happened to be.
From the chair near her bedroom window, Mary listened to the light rain bullet off of the metal garbage cans down below so when a thud from a dodged catcher’s mitt hit the opposite side of her wall, she heard nothing. Mary loved the rain, especially at Christmas time when she sat all bundled up in her room looking out the window, singing Christmas carols to herself. Since the Bellaforchettas were too poor to afford their own record player, Mary had to rely on the tunes she heard once in a while on the radio or in Mass. The blue-gray light of this December’s late afternoon entered Mary’s room and softened her disappointment that the sparse Christmas tree decorating the family’s living room this year contained no strung lights, just tinsel.
In this disjointed holiday mood, Mary looked out at the muddy puddles in the cracked asphalt of the street and hoped that Santa’s reindeer would not twist their hooves come Christmas Eve.
“Be careful, Santa,” Mary said.
“Santa – shit! There ain’t no Santa!”
Johnny had busted through Mary’s bedroom door and bullied his way in and over to her bed and plopped himself right down.
“So you ready, Mare? Ready to make some dough?”
Mary withdrew in her accustomed recessive manner to the washed-out lace coverings of her window and ran the delicate material through her thin fingers. Carmine followed Johnny into the room and stood near her dresser.
“Johnny, leave her alone.”
“Why? You have a better plan?”
“This doesn’t make sense. It won’t work.”
“The hell it won’t!” Johnny turned to Mary with a big grin on his olive face. A feint trace of hair above his upper lip quivered like a slithering snake, especially when he spoke with obvious uncertainty. “Mare, you are gonna have some Christmas this year!”
Mary, for some reason, felt like crying at this disruption in her late afternoon solitude but found no time to do so, for within three minutes, she had been de-cloistered and was now standing in front of the unlit Christmas tree as Johnny pulled up the red skirt from under the tree and held it up in the air. Christmas was coming undone. Mary was horrified at this holiday unhinging as Johnny wrapped the skirt around her shoulders. Johnny stepped back to take a look.
“Yep. That’s how it’s gonna be. Now, Mary, go put on some red dress and put your hair in two pig tails. We’re going out.”
At 7:48 p.m., the three Bellaforchettas were heading out the door of their second-story apartment and onto the wet, gray pavement of E. 187th St. Carmine was the first to descend the dilapidated steps and he watched in horror as Johnny ushered out an eleven-year old girl in pig tails wearing black boots, a faded red dress, and a red cotton Christmas skirt pinned around her shoulders. She clutched a brown wicker basket in her right hand.
“Look out, wolves! Little Red Riding Hood has got the moves!”
Carmine stared in apprehension at the sight of his sister and in disgust at his brother, who stood akimbo inspecting his ridiculous creation.
“Johnny, I’m cold,” complained Mary.
“Don’t worry, Mare. We won’t be outside for long.”
Watching his sister shiver in the blowing wind, Carmine ran quickly inside and re-emerged with a brown wool coat to wrap around Mary.
“Fine,” said Johnny, “but it comes off when we’re there. Let’s go.”
In December 1960, the sight of Little Red Riding Hood being dragged down the wet streets of the South Bronx at Christmas time would have perplexed any bocciagalup’ or passerby but because this one wore a brown coat with a missing top button, she resembled a truly troubled creature displaced from a fairy tale land quite unrelated to a borough’s graffiti-sprayed cement, metal trash cans, and store fronts displaying foot-long pepperoni and salted bakkalà. Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm would have been very displeased.
For most of the way, the three walked in silence. Johnny rubbed his hands nervously and Carmine frowned.
The Bellaforchettas passed their last over-spilling trash can on E. 187th St. and rounded the corner to Arthur Ave. where Mary’s eyes beheld powdered pannetone and svogliatelle pastries in a shop called Mama Tortelli’s. Mary paused to take in the pretty colored bulbs illuminating the display windows in yellows, blues, and reds but was hurried along by Johnny’s insistence.
“Forget about it, Mare,” he said.
Johnny’s command over his brother and sister extended both outside and inside apartment 2B and on some mornings when Carmine prepared to use the family’s bathroom before anyone else, Johnny would throw a shoe at him as he walked down the hall and say, “Forget about it, Carmine!” The one time Carmine actually defied his brother with “a fa Nabila to you, too, Johnny!” Johnny jumped at his throat and threw him against the wall. Since their parents, Sal and Teresa, were often absent from the home due to long hours at the tailor shop up on 196th St., Carmine learned to resolve his issues with his older brother by submitting to Johnny’s stronger will. On December 17th, Johnny’s sway led his brother and sister through the night rain and under the winter moon down a street polluted with uprooted pavement, rats that scurried over them, and the opportunists who preyed on any vulnerability above the cracks.
“Quieres candy?” asked a Hispanic behind a shoe shine kit.
“Oh, Johnny, I want some candy,” Mary begged.
“No, Mare, you don’t want any of that kind of candy.”
The shoe shiner’s kit contained more than just black polish and Johnny knew the streets a little too well. He recognized the Hispanic as Luis but avoided any contact because the mission was underway.
As the two brothers escorted their costumed sister up Arthur Ave., the beastly silhouette of Luis the shoe shiner disappeared into the darkness and what emerged next a few paces later was that of Zio Pappalecco, an ancient Sicilian who sold religious trinkets outside of Mt. Carmel Church. Every weekend, regardless of weather, Old Zio leaned on his sturdy cane in front of the church to lure in the repentant with his Vatican snow globes and Holy Father postcards. Sometimes he would hold up a blue ashtray illustrated with a distorted Colosseum and a suckling she-wolf in its arena and look at you with those sad, beseeching almond-eyes. Mary didn’t smoke in 1960, but just as sure as she was that there would be a bowl of pastina for breakfast, one of those ashtrays would one day be hers.
“Johnny --”
“Forget it!”
Under the light of a wreathed lamppost, Carmine noticed that Mary’s threadbare brown coat barely covered her shaking knees and it wasn’t hard to guess that she wouldn’t be getting a new one for Christmas.
“Hey, Johnny, listen,” he stopped and said. “If this works out, maybe we could get Mary a new coat.”
The idea delighted Mary, but Johnny, ignoring the suggestion, grabbed her tightly by the arm and hastened their step. Within thirty seconds, they had stopped in front of a large green door and Johnny positioned Mary directly under a flashing neon beer bottle.
“Alright, Mare, you know what to do.”
“I don’t wanna, Johnny,” she said.
“You listen here! There’s no other way and you can’t back out now!”
Ah, come on, Johnny!” rang in Carmine.
“Stoo gatz, Carmine! What do you want to be forever – a mammon’?”
“This has nothing to do with me!”
“Mama’s boy!”
“Damn you, Johnny!”
Neither the rigidity of Johnny nor the protestations of Mary would determine the actual initiation of this Christmas plan, for at that very moment, a downpour of cold rain fell on the heads of the three Bellaforchettas, deciding the next step for them. Johnny acted quickly, pulling off Mary’s coat and shoving her to the door.
“Go!” he ordered.
And in she went.
Polly O’Feemie’s Tavern on Arthur Ave. was a dimly lit cavernous hole in the wall with little cheer and even less camaraderie. Patrons rarely fraternized, opting instead to drink alone at their own isolated tables or mumble sotto voce to themselves. Despite the foot-high silver tree placed at the corner of the bar, Christmas passed happily over Polly O’ Feemie’s and left these spiritless individuals to imbibe their own preoccupations. So when Little Mary Bellaforchetta entered the darkened bar on December 17th, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood donning a felt Christmas tree skirt around her shoulders, not a soul blinked nor stirred.
“Trick-or-treat, mister.”
Mary stood at the table of a man in a mechanic’s shirt. He looked up and Mary held out her basket.
“What’d you say?”
“Trick-or-treat.”
“Beat it, kid.”
The man turned his back to Mary, leaving her conspicuously alone and unsure but Mary persisted by approaching another man at a table with three empty beer bottles.
“Trick-or-treat, mister.”
“Scram.”
The man picked up a beer and drank from it. Mary watched him slowly place the bottle back on the table before burping up a slow, deliberate release.
Mary was frightened and stood in the middle of the room and the paralysis of the unknown crept over her stiff body. How could Johnny have thought that this plan would work? These men were so miserable in their loneliness that no amount of trick-or-treating at Christmas would melt their frozen hearts.
Seeing his customers becoming annoyed, the bartender, a short, stocky man resembling an Albanian from Chicago, glared at Mary, but before he could react and throw her out of the bar, a “psst, kid” from the corner of the room attracted Mary’s attention. She turned to see a cloud of thick cigar smoke dissipate in the air and behind it materialized an old man with a white beard. He signaled her to approach.
Mary walked up to the old man’s table.
“No luck, hey, kid?” he asked.
“No.”
“Whadda you expect from a bunch of chooches? No one here -- ya know what I mean?”
The old man blew more smoke in the air, and for a few seconds he disappeared into the darkness. Mary stared. When the old man re-emerged, he was laughing.
“Go ahead, kid, try me.”
Mary took a deep breath.
“Trick-or-treat.”
“Trick-or-treat! Now that’s a good one but you’re a little late, sweetheart. But I like your’s guts. You got guts, kid.”
The old man smacked his hand down onto the table and pushed it over to Mary. When he lifted up his palm, Mary beheld a dozen or so dollar bills.
“How much is there, kid?” he asked.
Mary counted four one-dollar bills and one five.
“Nine dollars.”
“That’s right. You’s an honest girl. Take two of the dollar bills, sweetheart.”
Mary slowly reached in for the dollars and sneaking a look at the man’s face, she noticed that a milky gray film covered the old man’s eyes.
“Did you get ‘em?”
Mary nodded in the affirmative.
“Sweetheart, I may be blind but I can see when a little girl needs a bit’a charity at the holidays. Now you better beat it before they kick you outta here.”
Mary turned to go but remembered her manners.
“Thank you,” she said.
The man laughed and disappeared once again behind a cloud of smoke.
Mary stepped out of Polly O’ Feemie’s Tavern and into a puddle. The rain had ceased its shower but the street was wet, and looking into the water, Mary saw the reflection of the flashing overhead neon beer bottle. Johnny grabbed her hand.
“How much?”
Johnny’s grip released her fingers and he took the two dollars.
“Two bucks?! That’s it?”
“Johnny, let her go. See, I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“Shut up, Carmine!”
Johnny shoved the money into his pocket and paced up and down Arthur Ave. Carmine wrapped Mary in her coat and brushed off scattered tiny beads of rain. Johnny returned.
“Look,” he said. “Don’t let it get you down, Mare. We’ll have better luck next time.”
“Johnny, can we go home now?” Mary asked.
“Home? What are ya’ -- kaputz? Mary, look. You got no cash. I got no cash. Carmine’s got no cash. You want Mama to cry at Christmas? You want her to have nothin’?”
“But, Johnny, they’re not so nice in there,” pleaded Mary.
“That’s cuz we went into the wrong one. Polly’s ain’t no good. Ever’body knows that. Buncha’ drunks. Stick with this, Mare. Just one more. You’re gonna make some good money tonight. I promise.”
Mary dreaded the idea of walking into one more bar asking for money but as Johnny had earlier explained, there was no other way to have enough money to buy their parents any presents. She was resolved to listen to her older brother but Carmine’s objections confused her acceptance of the plan.
“Even Carmine thinks it’s a bad idea.”
“And how much cash does Carmine have in his pockets?”
Johnny did have a point, Mary thought. Their parents were never around; they worked most days at the tailor shop and in order to give Johnny and Carmine their own bedroom, they slept on the sofa in the living room. They deserved a nice Christmas gift this year, and Johnny was right in saying that none of them had any money to buy anything.
“Come on, you guys,” Johnny urged. “Just one more.”
Carmine turned to Mary.
“One more, Mary?”
“Alright,” the disheartened girl responded.
So the three Bellaforchettas worked their way up the street with Carmine walking close to Mary and Johnny a few paces ahead.
“What exactly did you say to them, Mary?” Carmine asked.
“Trick-or-treat.”
“How’d you say it.”
“I don’t know. I just said it.”
Carmine and Mary followed Johnny past a grocer’s known for selling the best olives in the neighborhood. During the day, he displayed them in a large barrel outside of the store but on this night, all Mary could savor in her mind were the jars of confetti almonds in his indoor display case. But before she could calculate the price of a handful of pastel candy with the money she might be able to pocket, they had arrived at their next destination.
“Okay, Mare,” Johnny said, “This one’s the one.”
Carmine helped Mary out of her coat and straightened out the skirt around her shoulders.
“Push ‘em, Mary, push ‘em!” goaded Johnny.
Sometimes Mary just hated Johnny. He bossed her around and made her do things she didn’t like to do. But what could she do about it? It was best just to obey Johnny now rather than face his hostility for weeks to come, so handing her coat to Carmine, Mary looked up at a wooden sign reading Auntie Noose’s, with a bow and arrow crisscrossing between Auntie and Noose’s.
Thinking of her little success inside Polly O’ Feemie’s and how cold it was outside, Mary actually hoped that the experience in this next bar would prove the same. If she could exit without having received any money, maybe Johnny would abandon the scheme altogether and within fifteen minutes or so, she’d be back in her room alone with her dolls and the Christmas postcards she had found in a box on 186th St. Mary had a slight feeling that Christmas could be saved.
And in she went.
Auntie Noose’s Bar on Arthur Ave. celebrated the holidays with lots of strung Christmas lights on the ceiling and a stuffed Santa next to the coat rack by the front door. From the moment Mary entered, loud conversation all around rang in her ears but could not drown out the clinking glasses and ceramic bowls of pretzels and peanuts. It was a Bacchic revelry quite dissimilar to the loneliness Mary had previously found, and the good cheer uplifted her downcast spirits.
Sensing a congenial welcome with all this holiday celebration, Mary walked up to a man counting out coins at his table.
“Trick-or-treat, mister.”
The hunched-over man looked up at Mary, trying to understand the sight of this caped girl before him. He returned to his counting.
“Trick-or-treat, mister,” Mary repeated.
“Get lost.”
This unexpected Scrooge contradicted the spirited setting, and Mary stood there quite confused. But then from a nearby table, a voice like a toad trying to sing soprano slung its bow and shot an arrow at Mary as if hitting through a dozen axe heads.
“Come here, sweetie, come here.”
Mary turned and beheld a middle-aged woman with a pile of hair atop her hair to rival the length of her own face. She wore red lipstick and her large boobs rested on the table next to a glass of red wine.
“Oh, look at you, honey! Look at that costume. So ready for Christmas. Look, Lou! Look what we got!”
“God dammit, Louise!” said a man at the bar. “Give the kid a break!”
“Shut up, Harry! I know this kid. We’re like twins, right, honey? I used to be just like her – all cheeks and pony tails. Cutest thing in Queens!”
“Hanging out in bars even back then, eh, Louise?”
“Fuck you, Harry!” she said, but then with a smile, the toad disappeared and the soprano returned. “So sweet!”
The sounds within Auntie Noose’s Bar seemed not to match the festive sights Mary had first encountered and she looked to the door to see if Johnny or Carmine had entered to call off the whole thing.
“Come closer, sweetie,” said Louise, drawing Mary in by the hand. “Let me take a look at that dress.”
“Try it on, Louise!”
Louise swung her head toward the bar and shouted, “Fuck off!” She then turned to Mary and felt the material of the cape. “Oh, you’re so pretty. Just like me. Don’t pay any attention to those guys.”
From the corner of the bar, someone had made kissing sounds with his lips and Louise took it personally.
“God damn you’s guys! Can’t you see I’m talking to the little girl?” Regaining composure, Louise straightened out her blouse and said to Mary, “Never mind them, honey. Son of a bitch, he is.”
Mary felt like running away.
“What a pretty dress. What’s your name, honey?”
“Mary.”
“Mary. Such a pretty name. That’s a Christmas name, it is. Do you like Christmas, honey?”
“Uh, huh.”
Christmas bells on the handle of the front door rang as a man entered Auntie Noose’s and made his way over to sit at the bar. Seeing Mary in her costume and Louise stroking her hair, the man scrunched up his nose and picked from a bowl of peanuts.
“What the hell’s that kid doing here?” he asked the bartender.
“She wandered in. Thinks it’s Halloween or something.”
“What’d she order?”
“Nothing. She’s trick-or-treating, I guess.”
“Give her a fuckin’ calendar!”
The bartender leaned over the bar and addressed Mary.
“Hey, kid! You’re gonna have to leave. This ain’t no playground.”
Harry added, “Take Louise witch ya’!”
“Weren’t you ever a kid, Lou?” asked Louise.
Louise then mumbled “fuckin’ loser” so Mary wouldn’t hear but Mary heard.
Mary wondered if this would be a good time to say “trick-or-treat” and leave but the battle of words between these adults intimidated her.
“Now, Mary,” Louise continued, “you probably should be on your way. These damn drunks ain’t no place for a little princess like you. But you’re so pretty, honey. Just like me. Like a Christmas angel.”
The bartender was still watching Mary. Louise tried to stall Mary’s inevitable eviction.
“Where’s your manners, Lou?” she said to the bartender. “Can’t you offer Little Mary here some eggnog or something? Where’s your manners? Come on. It’s Christmas.”
“Ain’t got none.”
“Take this then, honey,” offered Louise. She took two dollars out of her deep brassiere and placed them inside Mary’s basket. “From Louise. Buy yourself a dolly or some skates. Now off you go, Mary. Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
Instead of approaching any more of these people, Mary turned to exit and as she neared the door, she heard Louise still speaking.
“Just like me. Angel, she is, that one.”
“‘Cept she ain’t no drunk.”
“Fuck you!”
Mary stepped onto the wet pavement where Johnny and Carmine were waiting. Carmine, himself shivering, approached with Mary’s coat and helped her to bundle up. Johnny opened up Mary’s hand and found nothing.
“Nothin’, Mare!”
“No, I got it in the basket. See?”
Mary and Johnny looked inside at the two dollars. Johnny grabbed the money.
“That’s it? Dammit, Mare! What are you been doing in there?”
“Johnny, I try.”
“Let it go, Johnny!” Carmine defended.
“Let what go? Christmas? Christ! It’s the time for giving. She should be getting lots of cash! There ain’t nothing wrong here but the way she’s doin’ it!”
“Johnny, it’s not Halloween. These people probably aren’t used to seeing a kid in a costume asking for something. And besides, people usually give out candy at Halloween – not money.”
“Exactly, stunad’! That’s why this should be working. If they don’t got candy, then they’re gonna give money. That’s the plan!”
All three of the Bellaforchettas stood on Arthur Ave. angry and frustrated. Christmas was never a truly festive time for the family, especially with their parents usually at work and the family too poor to afford joyous gifts and relief from crippling fiscal burden. This year there was the nice five-foot fir tree in the living room but without colored lights and an angel on top, its presence brought little holiday cheer. Mary and Carmine had done their best to string it with tinsel and colored popcorn but the tree still stood quite destitute.
“Mary,” Johnny directed. “Mary, I want you to think that if we don’t make any money doin’ this, Mama and Papa are gonna have a rotten Christmas morning because we ain’t getting’ them nothin’.”
The cold December air began to slap Mary in the face and she wanted to cry. On the one hand, Johnny was so mean to her but on the other, she felt a tinge of comfort and belonging because here she was in the cold drizzle working on a project with her older brothers. She felt so many things at once: frightened of the bars and being out on the streets at night and safe in the Christmas company of her brothers. With their parents so often absent, at least the Bellaforchetta children had each other.
“One more, Mary?” Johnny asked.
Mary shook a little but knew that Johnny wasn’t really asking a question.
“Or else we got nothin’.”
Mary turned around to see Zio Pappelecco way down the street shivering all alone in the light rain.
“Alright, one more.”
The Bellaforchettas walked silently up the street until they reached an eastern section of the neighborhood unknown to Mary. The hardware store, the model train store, the shoe repair shop this far up Arthur Ave. – these places were not part of her familiar surroundings. But neither were the bars at night. And Mary now looked up to where Johnny had taken them, and without speaking, she prepared for one more uncomfortable experience and handed her coat over to Carmine. The long wooden sign above their heads read O’ Dizzie’s and Us Restaurant and Bar, and Mary took a deep breath, glanced at her brothers, and held tightly onto her basket.
And in she went.
Little Red Riding Hood had less trouble traversing the deep, dark woods than Mary had upon entering these smoky places with adults too drunk to fork out a dollar or two to a poor girl at Christmas. While she actually wanted to accommodate her brother’s scheme on earning some money to buy Christmas presents, Mary still longed to be back in her bedroom, out of the cold rain, and surrounded by her dolls and books and procured Christmas decorations. She had recently found a Nutcracker soldier in its original box next to a green Chevy parked on the street. Someone had just left it on the curb with some other moving boxes and Mary took it home because she had the perfect place for it by her window, and besides, she figured, she would put tinsel all around it and make it look Christmassy like no one else would ever be able to do.
The Nutcracker served as more than just a holiday decoration for Mary. It became her hiding place, and in its mouth, she stashed away little bracelets and bobby pins. Sometimes as she would sing “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” to herself, she would lift the wooden handle on the back of the soldier to make its mouth open and pretend that Santa had brought her fancy jewelry and engagement rings. Her idea now was to hide her Christmas money in the Nutcracker’s mouth, and no one, not even bossy Johnny, would find it. Unfortunately, Johnny was not letting her keep any money to hide.
Maybe O’ Dizzie’s and Us would be different, she hoped. It sounded different, that’s for sure, which she noticed when stepping into the bar. Music was playing and Mary could identify Christmas songs like she had heard in the department store up on Tinton Ave. What she didn’t know at the time, though, was that her entrance was timed perfectly to Ray Conniff’s “Christmas Bride,” a tune which would become Mary’s favorite every December even years later as a mother and grandmother.
O’ Dizzie’s and Us dazzled Mary. Colored light bulbs hung from every corner of the bar and miniature Christmas trees in silver and pink and blue stuck out of emptied Chianti bottles on every table. A large felt “Ho Ho Ho” banner stretched out across the room and under it ran little children with cookies in their hands. This was quite a place, Mary thought – a bar for children. It suddenly donned on her, though, that this was some kind of private party because everyone seemed to know each other and there were about thirty people greeting an old woman at the head of a long table in the middle of the room. Mary suddenly felt very silly dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood, intruding in on this celebration. She knew it would be best to leave the bar but the party looked like so much fun that she couldn’t walk away.
A man carrying a bottle of wine brushed past Mary toward the old woman and addressed the crowd.
“Quiet! Quiet!” he yelled.
Conversations stopped and people turned to listen to the man.
“I want to thank you all first for coming tonight. Every one of you is in our hearts this year.”
A couple sitting nearest to Mary kissed each other and a little girl in a frilly dress jumped up onto the man’s lap.
“This is no ordinary Christmas as you all know,” the man continued. “This year marks the 80th birthday of my mama, Michelina Tortelli!”
The man raised his glass into the air and everyone followed. Cheers of congratulations poured forth and various people moved over to the old woman and kissed her on the cheek and forehead.
The man issuing the toast settled everyone down with his hands and continued by saying, “You are all a blessed part of the Tortelli family and we wish you the best and merriest Christmas this year of our mama’s 80th!”
Applause and whistling filled the room and Mary felt so good to be part of the celebration.
Then, the old woman slowly stood up from her chair and half leaning on the table, began to speak. The room went silent.
“God’s blessing,” the old woman said. “Tanks God for my bee-yoo-tee-ful son, Vincenzo.”
The old woman grabbed her son’s face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth and the room exploded in more applause, more kissing, and tanti auguri, which Mary recognized as “happy birthday.” The man looked like he was about to cry. Mary was in Christmas heaven.
But then the little girl sitting on the man’s lap in front of her turned around and pointed her finger at Mary.
“Daddy, what’s that?”
The man looked at Mary, shrugged his shoulders in puzzlement, and said, “bo.”
But his wife was not so indifferent. She slapped the shoulder of the old man next to her and said, “Peppy, who’s the kid?”
An old man with a toothpick in his mouth spun around to Mary, looked her up and down, and answered, “It’s Little Red Robin Hood.”
“Little Red Riding Hood!” corrected the little girl.
“I think it’s the Busalacchi girl,” the old man said. And then to Mary, “You’s Gina Busalacchi, right? Nick and Maria’s kid.”
Mary didn’t know what to say. She had never heard of these people.
“No, that ain’t Gina Busalacchi,” said the woman. “Gina Busalacchi’s twenty-five years old and pregnant again with Bobby Balistreri’s baby. This kid’s someone else.”
“Well, who are you, kid?” asked the old man.
Mary was too terrified to identify herself since she had no relation to these people and the awkwardness of standing there at this party where she truly didn’t belong spilled out of her as “trick-or-treat.”
Confusion furrowed the old man’s face.
“What the hell she say?” he asked.
“Just who are you, little girl?” asked the woman.
“Mary.”
“Mary Busalacchi?” considered the old man. “There ain’t no Mary Busalacchi.”
“Peppy, she’s not a Busalacchi. Who are your parents?” asked the woman.
Mary confessed in discomfort, “Sal and Teresa Bellaforchetta.”
“Who the hell’s they?” said the old man.
“They’re no one, Peppy,” answered the woman, now becoming quite annoyed. “Girl, are you supposed to be here?”
Fear overcame Mary. Why were these people picking on her? She wanted to run out of there but the old man leaned over the table and yelled out to Mama Tortelli, “Michelina, who the hell’s Bellaforchetta?”
The old woman did not understand the old man. She looked up at her son and said, “Che detto?”
The old man, as if to be better communicate, yelled even louder, “This kid says she’s a --.” He paused and asked again, “What’s you name?”
Mary was mortified but got out “Mary Bellaforchetta.”
The old man yelled, “Sherry Forchetta!”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders. Either she didn’t know the family or she hadn’t heard the question.
Poor Mary. This back-and-forth commotion reminded her of all the times this December she had pulled down on her Nutcracker’s handle while its mouth and big white teeth opened and closed, and at this moment standing inside O’ Dizzie’s and Us, Mary felt as if she were the one trapped inside its clenching jaws. Sometimes as she looked out her bedroom window at the rain or even the light snow falling on the fish guts lying in the gutter, Mary would involuntarily open and close the Nutcracker’s mouth and once she even snapped in half a plastic beaded anklet wrapped around the soldier’s teeth. Mary was now that shiny, conspicuous piece of jewelry caught between these two old, confused people.
Why did Christmas have to be so scary, thought Mary. And why wouldn’t her legs cooperate with her heart’s desire to flee?
“Little girl! Little girl!”
Someone at the end of the long table had called out to Mary, and when she turned, she saw the birthday woman herself summoning her with a beckoning finger.
“Come here.”
In accordance with a terrifying need to run (and run anywhere), Mary proceeded toward the old woman whose birthday celebration had gathered together this bombastic group. The woman resembled Louise from Auntie Noose’s: big hair, big boobs, big voice. But this one with her warm hands on Mary’s arms reminded Mary more of Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve – and, best of all, without the drunken “fuck you’s” which had earlier spooked the jingle bells out of Mary.
“What is your name, sweet girl?”
“Mary.”
“Meddy, what are you doin’?”
“I’m trick-or-treating.”
“Bellissima, ragazz’! But you should be home with your mama and daddy.”
The old woman held up the Christmas tree skirt wrapped around Mary’s shoulders to admire the holiday costume and kissed Mary on the cheek.
“Meddy, I am Mama Tortelli, capito? You bring your mama and daddy to my pasticceria at the corner next week. Do you like cannoli, Meddy?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And maybe a rum cake for your daddy,” Mama Tortelli said. “Now you must go home, Meddy. You must go to be with them tonight.”
Mary was more than pleased to be released. This night of trick-or-treating had not gone well and strangers from all over had distressed her to no end. Maybe Johnny wasn’t such a good brother after all.
But before Mama Tortelli turned her out into the cold winter’s night, she shouted to her son Vincenzo to fill up the basket of this precious “Little Red Robin Hood.”
“Vinci, Vinci, piu, piu!” she instructed. “Give Meddy that pannetone!” And to Mary: “You like cannoli, Meddy? From my store, see? The most bee-you-tee-ful desserts in the village.”
Mama Tortelli’s family gathered around Mary, and with the old woman smiling in approval and kissing the cheeks of her grandchildren, she oversaw the abundance spilling into Mary’s basket.
The Tortelli family blessed Mary that Christmas evening with a basket overflowing with homemade cookies, cannoli, crispy pizzelles, and rum babas. Under the matriarch’s protection, Mary benefitted not with dollar bills but with sweet words and kind pastries. Christmas had arrived for Mary and as she stepped out of O’ Dizzie’s and Us and onto the wet pavement of Arthur Ave., a light snow began to fall on her red velvet shoulders. Tiny snowflakes touched her warm cheeks and powdered her basket of baked goods. Mary was proud to be seen so decorated in her Christmas costume with food to bring back home to her family, and the walk home through the dark forest of wolfish shoe shiners, packs of smoking stunades, and drunken bocciagalupes would not molest the Christmas blessings that danced in Mary’s head.
“Shit! What took you so long?” snapped Johnny, grabbing the basket and peering inside. “There better be over ten bucks in there!”
Johnny ran his paws through the pastries and upon finding nothing, shoved the basket back into Mary’s hands.
“Four bucks all night?” he screamed. “I coulda done a better job!”
Carmine wrapped Mary up in her winter coat but Mary refused.
“No, I don’t need it,” she said, pushing it away.
Carmine, deciding that Mary had had enough (that they all had had enough for that matter), took her by the arm and began walking briskly back down Arthur Ave. Three bars was the deal they had made with Johnny, and now that ten o’clock proved to be the time when only the worst of the faccia brutts populated the streets, Carmine saw to it that his little sister should be spared this trash. Johnny, incidentally, now showed little to no interest in his own plan and followed the two through the snowy night with his head down.
The three Bellaforchettas walked silently homeward. The scowl on Johnny’s face precluded any conversation, a stifling limitation that would cripple every significant relationship in his upcoming adult life. But on this winter’s night, the trick would be on him, for Mary and Carmine delighted in the sugary smells coming from the basket and imagined how happy their parents would be with such wonderful pastries for Christmas.
When the three Bellaforchettas approached Mt. Carmel Church, the baying laughter of Luis the shoe shiner echoed off the church’s façade and into the receiving ears of Johnny. He took the four dollars out of his pocket, making sure it was all there, and ran off toward Luis and two other Hispanics. There was no farewell; there was no acknowledgement; there was no turning back. Johnny was just gone. So Carmine and Mary continued to walk home without their older brother, the instigator of the evening’s failed money-making scheme. But Mary did turn around to take one last look. She saw Johnny laughing with his friends and smoking some kind of cigarette. Mary held tightly onto her basket and smiled at Carmine.
“You, okay, Mary?”
“Uh, huh.”
And Mary was okay. With Carmine at her side, Mary placed aside the horrors of the evening and delighted in the wintery snow now escorting them home. It was a light, fluffy snow that seemed to explode upon collision. Mary watched it coat Carmine’s dark hair, and under the outdoor colored Christmas lights of Mama Tortelli’s pastry shop, she thought her brother looked quite handsome and strong. But then, Mary did always enjoy the snow.

The wet snow on the branches of an overgrown pine tree splattered down upon the wooden eaves of the roof. The Van Hauser children jumped at the crash, and Sophie snuggled up closer to Barry on the sofa. The snow was falling outside, but in the warmth of the house, Papa had finished his story and sat looking at his grandchildren. With the lights of the tree blinking in the background, the children stared at Papa in silence.
Now, it would be preposterous to imagine that a man of Papa’s tact and erudition would relate such a vulgar story to such fine children as the Van Hausers without the learned gift of omission. One of Papa’s greatest talents, in fact, was the ability to think and not speak, so the story the kids actually heard was quite an abridged version (although Papa got a kick out of recalling to himself the verbatim narrative of chooches and stunades that he had known for almost forty years). Naturally, the story of Little Mary Bellaforchetta had made a frightening impact on the children, and the travails of Emmet Otter now seemed somewhat trivial in comparison.
A faint motorized sound filled the silence of the room. It came from the porcelain angel atop the illuminated Christmas tree and Sophie looked up to see its outstretched wings brush against the green needles. The lights of the tree twinkled off the silver tinsel and the angel’s wings retreated toward the automaton’s white gown.
“See how nice it is when the only sounds come from the falling snow outside,” Papa said.
Sophie considered the moving angel. She wished that she could go trick-or-treating as an angel for next Halloween.
“And we’re so warm and safe inside,” Papa added.
“But not Nonni!” protested Duncan. “She’s out there.”
The children looked toward the front door.
“Your grandmother’s fine. She’s used to the snow.”
Papa was correct. Nonni was used to the snow, but, still, who wants to stand in it as it gets in your eyes as you’re trying to manage bags of groceries? So Nonni, unable to retrieve her keys, rang the doorbell. The Van Hauser children flew off the sofa and ran to the front door. Barry got there first and yanked it open with the door knob hitting the wall. In the stark yellowness of the porch lights, the children beheld their grandmother’s eyes peering over supermarket bags. They could see that Nonni’s coat was covered in snow and when she entered the warm house, the children threw their arms around her cold clothes and welcomed her home with hugs and greetings. Barry and Bridget took the bags from her arms and they all followed Nonni into the kitchen.
Surrounded by blinking red, green, blue, and yellow, the perched angel continued to flap her wings and the motorized sight pleased Papa. He stood alone in the glowing quiet of the family room and gazed down at the wrapped presents for the kids under the tree. Nonni seemed to add ten more gifts each day during the Van Hausers’ visit. Zucchini bread may have ruined Christmas for Ron and Carol, Papa thought, but it certainly wasn’t going to mess it up here with Nonni around.
“It’s going to be a busy Christmas,” Papa said.
The multiple voices of laughter from the kitchen redirected Papa’s reflections and drew him to rejoin the others. He found the children helping Nonni unpack the groceries as she sorted out certain ingredients on the kitchen counter. Duncan was trying to get her attention by showing her a new judo kick with an “ahh!” and he nearly knocked out of her hands a small bag of candied fruit. Nonni placed the fruit next to some pistachio nuts which she then began to chop. Bridget opened up a carton of ricotta cheese for Nonni, and Barry collected the emptied plastic grocery bags and stuffed them into a Santa cozy behind the fridge. Sophie, singing a new song she had learned in school, stood next to Nonni and helped her measure out a tablespoon of vanilla.
There was no need for Papa to enter the kitchen and assist with Nonni’s holiday baking. Nonni had all the help she needed to make her special Christmas cannoli, and besides, with her loving grandchildren all around in the warm kitchen, Christmas had already come for Nonni.

Praying on Purple

I wrote this poem in honor of Pygmalion, who sculpted the perfect woman, fell in love with her, but suffered in the horrible truth that he had fallen for a mound of wax. Venus stepped in, however, and animated the clay and restored his faith in love -- kind of a weird myth.


Praying on Purple

Pygmalion had his Cyprian ivory,
praying on purple for wax and for flesh.
His Galatea concealed his art
with the blessings of beguiling foam from the sea.
A portent of sorrow he avoided.
No fired clay-gift like Pandora
breathed life from a lame workman
possessing of iron and metal
but of his violet-crowned beauty,
acceptor at holy feast.
Pygmalion owed his libations
to the Golden of the beautifully-fired chamber
and kissed Love as often as his chaste island sculpture.

Exogamy

(a poem in response to Minoan mythology)

Exogamy

Still I lie awake with preoccupations of love
for doomed Phaedra and her savaged son,
far too distant from Crete to drop the spear,
the lair, the knife, the net, to catch and kill
and stop the terrible fate of Minos’ iniquitous house.
Amazonian blood yet flows at Troezen
and traps the daughter of a bull-lover.

The Iron Box

Thanks for taking a look at my latest short story, "The Iron Box." This story is a remnant of a folk tale I studied while in grad school. It was written and re-written entirely on the set in L.A. (between craft service trips) during Sep and Oct of '09. If you have any suggestions on how it might be improved, I'd love to hear them.



The Iron Box

The boy was stuck in the purblind oven for seven days, and on that seventh day, he caught a troubled cockroach which wandered in through a crack in the oven’s door, and the boy ate the cockroach. The bug was cold and crunchy and popped in his mouth when he chewed down upon its shingled shell. And because the boy hadn’t had any food during his entire captivity, he didn’t at all mind the lingering aftertaste of rotten potato skins which the bug had left behind in his dry mouth. On that seventh and fortuitous day, the boy couldn’t rest because he craved more and more and more creeping cockroaches and sought to find them in the dark even if it meant severing each and every finger while shoving them through that tiny slit in the door.
The darkened oven was two feet high and three feet deep at best. It was large enough to roast an adult pheasant, a pan of turnip leak pudding, or a small boy. Inadequate cleaning had left behind crispy burnt crumbs in its corners which had attracted the intruding cockroach. Why the boy had never picked at and nibbled on the crumbs during those seven days of captivity is as mysterious as how he suddenly got trapped inside the iron prison itself. Even he couldn’t remember the exact moment of confinement but what he did know was that a living cockroach, just off the hunt of insect droppings in the larder, tasted almost as good as the gingerbread juices embedded in the recent memory of his taste buds.
As the hours passed since the catching and devouring of his first cockroach, the boy grew more and more predatory in his attempts to secure his next meal. He figured out that if he put his ear to the ground (really, the iron base of the oven), he might pick up a slight vibration or sound which would alert him to move swiftly and stealthily after his next prey. If he were lucky, one of the cockroach’s antenna or threadlike legs might brush across his cheek or forehead, thus alerting him. Then he would be sure to know he were not alone in the dark. The rotten taste of his first cockroach, see, had left an unsatisfied yearning in the bottom of his gut so it was a matter of consequence to now stay awake to greet his next guest.
And so he waited. And waited. In the dark. In the silence. With hunger crying from a pit once unfamiliar, the boy lay motionless on the iron floor.
What he wouldn’t give now for what he once knew: a stolen turnip, an unearthed radish, a week-old slice of salt bread. Anything to overturn the pain he was experiencing. One cockroach merely fed a newfound obsession for what he was lacking, and it was this nascent stage in his propelled maturity which would indelibly mark a compulsion for dissatisfaction that would plague the uneven course of his long life. Even years later as a high-ranking postmaster of his affluent burg, fear of dearth would disrupt his sense of continence, and the delight which one might imagine from a celebratory holiday feast of cabbage cakes, lentil soup with fresh parsnip, boiled goose kidneys wrapped in streaky bacon, and wild juniper berries floating in dark treacle atop walnut dumplings could not temper this misattunement. It would be seven days and one cockroach for the rest of his long life.
Truly, and paradoxically, with silent darkness all around, the boy had never known such loneliness and now such tumult. A discordant orchestra of clanging sounds jangled his attempted concentration, and buzzing on the left and ringing on the right initiated an alarming hiatus that derailed his hunt for new prey. What was it about the darkness that could create such a racket? How was he ever going to lure another cockroach inside this iron box of reboantic noise as long as his head screamed as it did? And in concert with the clattering in his head, a twitch in his left leg from lying motionless for seven days in a contained space no larger than a bucketful of cats began to animate the silent prison, and if the boy had any chance at all of catching another cockroach, his own inadvertent thumping against the side of the oven would scare them away for sure. But he waited. And waited. And twitched. And waited.
And waited.
Aurora had risen over the East seven times during the wretched boy’s captivity but the only dawning that would engage the boy’s mind was how fast he could now cup his right hand down upon an anticipated cockroach. He began to quietly practice the action of snapping down his palm onto the charred floor, and hours would pass in this steady occupation. He figured that when the time came for a cockroach to slip in through the slit in the door again, he would be ready to capture it, as long as the bug couldn’t hear the clamoring in his head, of course. And maybe he wouldn’t eat the intruder so quickly. Maybe he would smack it around a bit in good play. Being alone in the dark for this amount of time invited company of any kind; in fact, the boy imagined keeping a cockroach with him in the box as long as his hunger could sustain the wanting.
Rather than feeling hopelessly abandoned like a cottontail cast out of a warren of pygmy rabbits for greedily feeding on stored piles of limited, communal nuts and seeds, the boy wondered how much harm he had lately afflicted upon his family with his ever-growing appetite. He did not mean to cause any trouble. He said his prayers at night before bed, he helped his sister jump out of the way of the skittish goats, why he even stopped sneaking sips of the dark lager beer his father had stored in the cellar. What punishment was he now serving? True, he enjoyed pulling the dog’s tail once in a while and, yes, he did tell that same sister last Christmas that if she didn’t hand over her holiday sugar stick, she might one day get lost in the woods with only red mushrooms to eat, but, on the whole, he thought of himself as a mindful boy. And then all this occurred and the boy lay in misery in an iron box with only his hand for a pillow. There was nothing in the Bible that warned against this.
He had heard about poor Job, the man in the Old Testament who lost everything and wandered throughout the desert all alone. And as far as he knew, God saved Job from being alone forever. There were his own occasions, in fact, while lying in the flowery meadow on the mountaintop when the boy had sought the warm pleasures of solitude, usually by counting the yellow and brown honey bees or by tracking the exact highway leading to the nearest formicary, but being alone in this box, with its absence of flowing fresh air, now introduced the strangeness of loneliness. And loneliness is not the same as being alone. Being alone helps one resuscitate a bit from the chaos of the world, of which even little boys are aware, but loneliness, with its infinite nothingness, cuts off the breath of those boys who usually bound over rocky ridges and jump into the pebbled riverbeds that pool the wiggling tadpoles of boys’ utopias. It was this nothingness which had now concentrated all of the boy’s attention.
Could it be, he wondered that God could see into the iron oven and still allow him to go hungry for seven days? Or were the surrounding woods so dense with oak and beech that not even a glimpse of him in the darkness would alert the angels up above? God’s light revealed all, but here, there was nothing but nothing.
God alone decides which boys will ascend to sunny Heaven to feast on honey-sweet pinecones and which ones will assist the devil in smashing up the mountainous icebergs down below in freezing Hell with their toes used as repentant ice picks, as he had been told repeatedly by the step-mother who now wore a black mantilla even outside of church. Her recent sway over the household forewarned of the mischief inflicted by little boys, and her incessant sweeping out of any little creature or bug from their small dwelling in the clearing frightened this boy in imagining that she would one day, out of frustration, take up the broom and disinfect him as well. If God knew he were being punished here, would He save him from a fate of sleeping atop Satan’s stalagmites so far from the warmth and light in Heaven?
But all these worries would do him no good. He must concentrate on the crack in the door. If one cockroach entered, then another must follow. Whenever the boy had seen one hornet descend on a nettle bush, for example, another would soon appear. He had seen this a million times while walking through the forest: one hornet on one bush, then two, then three, and so on. That is why the boy kept his awaiting face on the floor in the iron oven. That is why he anticipated an end to his hunger.
As he waited to bring down his cupped hand upon the next cockroach, the boy recalled how effective this type of snare had been last summer with the mice – really, just one mouse. A little gray one. When the cat Trauben had failed to return one day after entering the dark wall of forest trees near their tiny cottage, mice of all sizes and colors scurried out of the fields and into the thatched corners of the house (which greatly distressed his veiled step-mother). So to prove his worthiness to the family, the boy spent the next few days constructing a mouse-catching contraption which he called his mouse house – really, just a metal pail turned upside down with a string attached to its handle. The idea was that by propping up the pail with a stick, if a mouse then snuck under the pail to fetch the tiny slice of goat cheese he had so cleverly placed, the boy would pull on the string from his brilliant hiding place behind the log pile and drop the pail right down upon the pilfering culprit. The plan would have been a heroic success all summer long if only it hadn’t been for the evasive and suspicious nature of the little gray mice who tended to scamper away before the string was engaged, making the trap a near-failure – really, a huge failure, for the pail the boy used to catch the mice was his step-mother’s favorite pail, see, and when she found out how he had wasted his time and used up all her kitchen string with which she tied together the legs of her dinner foul, not to mention the ill-use of her pail, she screamed all night and beat him with an ox’s tail.
But the boy shook these remembrances out of his head. He decided to act, so he stuck his finger in the hole in the door. The tip and nail of his left forefinger squeezed through easily enough but to his surprise, the boy was able to manipulate not only this topmost portion but the second joint just as well. Were his fingers shrinking? Earlier, only one joint had fit into the slit. Now – two! Perhaps the Lord was willing to rescue him by shrinking all of his body, piece by piece; after all, God, as he was told, grants occasional miracles. This happened last summer when the cat, before it went missing, climbed up the forbidden tree behind the old outhouse and ate two minutes worth of castor beans but survived anyhow since, as his father later explained, “God already has too many cats in Heaven.” If God had intervened with the cat, why shouldn’t He also with a boy? Nevertheless, the boy figured that not eating anything for seven days except for a thirty-second chewable cockroach must be the real cause of this change in his finger. And maybe in a day or two, with enough shrinking, his entire body would be able to pass through the crack in the door. These thoughts encouraged the boy, but a sudden fit of black and white dizziness seized him tightly and the boy passed out, hitting the ground with his left ear suctioning onto the floor, cutting off all sound but rescuing him still from that awful clanging in his head.
During his two hours of dreamless sleep, a tiny black cockroach, the kind that fits easily into a little boy’s mouth, entered the iron box looking for a crumb or any possible burnt thing. It zigzagged diagonally across the floor, as cockroaches do when searching for food, and settled right under the boy’s chin. Its antenna detected a fleshy thing, albeit an inedible one, so it crawled across the thing’s cheek and over its nose and down around its mouth to drop instinctively to the flat surface of the oven, whereby it quickly scampered back out the door.
Without the cockroach, the oven remained quiet. And motionless. And the dark stillness in the box would have reminded a philosopher or anyone exploring the starry universe of that penultimate moment billions of years ago when time and space had yet to marry to create that miracle of recognizable life which animates little boys, makers of ovens, and the cockroaches that crawl into them. When Chaos was in peace. And with the cockroach gone and the boy unconscious, the iron box existed without the purpose of having a purpose and it, in a sense, did not even exist. But because nourishing Nature loves a vacuum, the iron box would soon sustain life, and in a short time, the boy awoke and found himself once again alone in the dark enclosure.
Upon reanimating, the boy, to his surprise, detected something new: the warm nutty smell of almond tea cakes, similar to the ones he waited for each autumn when the days grew darker and there were fewer outdoor chores to perform. By early evening on such days, the family would gather around the stone hearth and listen to his father play a somber tune on the fiddle. If all went well (meaning that his step-mother, annoyed again over the boy’s spilling of some milk or tracking in a few fallen leaves onto her swept floor, would not cast him out into the cold and dark wind for an hour or two), the family would share a plate of roasted almonds powdered with local orris root or baked into simple cakes. But if all did not go well, the boy would be sent early to bed while his step-mother made sure to loudly stir the copper pot of goat’s milk, roasted almonds, and wheat flour and sing sweet songs of Mariolatry as she poured out plentiful servings. It was this rich smell of warm almonds which uplifted the boy from lying downcast on the floor of the iron oven.
Almonds, see, had always been the favored nut of the boy and during those shadowy autumn afternoons, he would try to be especially obedient during the hour before the warm almond cakes were placed on the wooden dining table. His father sometimes noted how full of concentration he would be while savoring each earthy bite. It was enough engagement for the family, in fact, to amusingly nickname him Nose because he could sniff out warm almonds like a hound after forest truffles. And it was this predilection for almonds that stirred the awakening boy in the box so that he did not even mind bumping his head on the roof of the oven in search of the source of the smell.
Blinking the last bit of black and white dizziness out of his eyes, the boy quickly ran his fingers over the floor of his prison to locate the almond that he surely must have previously overlooked. Nothing. So, in hopes that one might be lodged somewhere in a nook or corner, he checked to his left and he checked to his right. Nothing. Perhaps in one of the corners behind him, but that would take some effort of movement, which was not in his favor, since he already fit so snuggly in the box like great-grandfather Wenzeslaus in the wooden coffin which was actually intended for his dying Lilliputian wife who had no need for it after drowning herself in a riverbed of reeds to save the family “from the expense of it all,” as they all agreed. So with great difficulty to his back, legs, and arms, the boy did manage to turn himself around and he, thus, checked the remaining corners. Nothing.
God is a tricky god, the boy insisted, slamming his cupped hand down upon the ground. He made the cockroach to resemble the almond, and in the dark, they both feel quite similar in size and shape. Why couldn’t an almond have wandered in instead? But one cockroach was better than none at all, so with that modicum of continuing hope, the boy stuck the two joints of his finger through the crack in the door and wiggled them around to the outside universe. Upon finding nothing, he frowned and brought his finger back inside, lifted it to his nose, and smelled it. It did not smell like almonds at all, so the boy, now defeated and utterly hungry, collapsed against the side of the iron box.
And just stared out into nothingness.
What is it that motivates little boys to hope for silly things like rotten-tasting cockroaches, almond-scented fingers, and a bit of help from a forsaking God? What makes them think that out of the darkness may come some colliding moment of consequence to yaw the unfair course of their affairs? For seven long days, the boy had been trapped inside this cold iron box with nothing to eat but one troubled cockroach, which really doesn’t promise much nourishment for any kind of survival for anyone. What a silly boy – sticking his finger through a hole to search for an almond. What a silly boy – hoping for something out of nothing.
Or does this boy, trapped so despairingly in an oven somewhere in a universe quite inconsequential to his trifling concerns, carry within his matter a five-billion year old trace of that erstwhile promise that while, yes, out of nothing does come nothing, nevertheless, there does occur every once in a rare while something out of something? And with a microscopic collision of chance and hope, this new something materializes into a recognizable form from which continual life may flourish. Would this little bit of hope for something encourage the boy to poke that finger in the hole one more time?
So with an involuntary jerk of his left leg against the side of the oven, the boy stirred once again by reconfiguring his body and intent, and with some confidence, he took that diminishing finger and stuck it right through the crack in the oven’s door! He wrenched it, he twitched it, he stretched it ... nothing.
Oh, the indestructible thread knotted so unjustly by the horrible Moirae! Could there also co-exist in the ambivalent universe a force which has woven boys’ fates so that even heroic determination cannot unlock this taut fabric? Does it take such Herculean effort to unravel such planned, entangled threads or do we in part allow the knots to form out of random collision to cut off the breath of tethered life? And it was such a breath indeed that the boy expelled on this day – a breath, alas!, stillborn with anticipated hope. But this time, an unusual consequence occurred: when the boy moved to withdraw his finger, he found that he could not. A force beyond his awareness had miraculously intervened in the boy’s fate, as the universe often dictates, for on this seventh and fortuitous day, the boy was not alone anymore.
Coincidence or fate – what did it really matter, for the boy’s eyes widened in the darkness and the chill that swam across his skin awakened a tingling which stirred his blood. Something out of something had grabbed hold of this little boy in the iron box. It was the boy’s own determination to exit which marked this momentous collision of his finger and the force which now held it.
Alarmed and excited, the boy panicked a bit to imagine what invisible force had besieged him on the other side of the door. Had God intervened by sending down one of His angels in response to the prayers issued by his family back home? Or was his step-mother correct in knowing that the devil first selects those boys whose greed and gluttony for sweets like gingerbread and root meal rob the family of daily food? That was, after all, a consuming indulgence of his recent impudence when he voraciously attacked the strange, sugary-paned house in the middle of the heavy woods. Hunger, fright, and fatigue from wandering for days in a gnarled forest of deep-throated baying had compelled his fingers to eagerly grab at the warm bread pudding plastered haphazardly on the window sill. At the time, he had figured that if he were not the determined one to raze the cottage bite by bite (in order to enter, as was his intent), then surely the truculent blue jays or bandit-raccoons would eventually succeed. After that, he found himself alone in the dark with a cockroach that tasted like rotten potato skins.
But what was this new force on the other side of the box which held him so firmly? Could it be the divine intermediary to which he had prayed? Its power must surely be tremendous and frightful, he quivered.
And then as when the stormy skies above the fields of hollyhock and raggleweed open up when picnicking prayers have been granted, the captive forefinger once again belonged to the boy. He jolted backwards with its sudden release and sat upright, stupefied in the quiet box.
The boy tried to listen for any movement originating from outside but an orchestra of clanging weight returned to his head and a cacophony of ringing vibration intercepted his concentration. Frustration propelled his fisted hand to strike hard against the iron door. And just like that, in unexpected surprise, either planned by the fates in the universe or by mere coincidence, the door began to open outwards.
They say that when the famous poet hundreds of years ago floated up to Heaven to behold the chaste woman he deified, the brilliant light of paradise absorbed the poet into the blessed hive of harmony. That sweet reunion between man and light did not occur in this instance, however, for the intruding light streaming into the oven by the opened door, blinded the boy and forced him to squint sharply in order to endure the pain to his eyes. The stinging, in fact, repelled his desire to escape, so that as long as his eyes burned as they did, he wanted nothing to do with the savior who had opened the door of his release. Was God’s light supposed to be so painful?
Of course, his eyes did adjust, and in a few seconds, the boy was able to relook out the door. What mitigated the brightness of the light was an approaching figure emerging closer and closer to him, first in black, then in gray, and finally appearing in the fleshy color of a rotund angel with long, wispy curls. But this was more than an angel, the boy surmised. It was the Virgin Mary herself, sent by glorious God up above, to deliver him from this captivity in response to the prayers issued forth by his devote step-mother with the drawn veil. How he had mistakenly vilified his father’s new wife, who had once sent him on a journey through the dark, dangerous woods with nothing but a thin slice of stale salt-bread. He had spent that entire day diligently searching for the good kinds of mushrooms but when cold dusk retired the falling rays of the sun, the boy could not locate his step-mother at the designated spot in the clearing from where they would all return safely home. Guilty feelings now struck the boy, for he must have been so wrong about his father’s new wife, and the presence of the Virgin Mary, in her immaculate form now before him, attested to his step-mother’s prayerful relationship with the Lord.
But when she spoke, the Virgin issued forth a voice as recognizable as the Bible on Sundays.
“Brother, brother, it is I.”
The boy cocked his head in confusion. How was it that the Blessed Virgin contained the high, sputtering sound of a little girl? So the boy leaned in closer to the figure to ascertain his uncertainty; after all, being trapped in a darkened iron box for seven days does distort one’s senses.
Beholding the Virgin, he noticed an angel with a very white face.
“It is I. Your sister. Come to rescue you from this oven.”
If the boy’s brow had been any less furrowed, a litter of ermines could have still settled quite comfortably within its trenches.
How could this be, he wondered. His own sister come to release him? Why, she couldn’t even chase down a refractory goat or lift its hind legs let alone rescue a boy as strong as himself. And as for wiliness, well, she had none. It was she, in fact, who had eaten her own slice of bread so early in the day and then spent the rest of their time in the forest pleading with him to share his ration. No, it couldn’t be his stupid sister. But there she was. Standing in the light. So fat now. Her face -- twice the size he had remembered! And with a smudge of white cream frosting resting on the edge of her lower lip.
“Is that the frosting from the window sill?” he asked.
“Of course not,” laughed the girl. “This is fresh cream. I’ve had lots of it the last couple of days. The house is full of it!”
Fury exploded inside the boy and boiling blood gushed forth and swelled to his hot head and knuckled fingers. His eyes burrowed into his sister’s fat face and he gritted his teeth like a snarling dog.
“How long have you been here?” he asked slowly, staring at her lower lip.
“Seven days. Like you,” she said, licking off more of the white cream.
Seven days. Seven days with only one cockroach. A cockroach that tasted like rotten potato skins and crunched down inside his mouth in pure disgust (truth be told). But being the only meal to wander inside the oven, it was a meal most welcomed. And he waited and waited and waited for just one more bug to crawl inside, one more cockroach to satisfy his intense hunger. And then the smell of warm almonds, which drove him nearly mad, sent him on a frantic search for one tiny nut. Nothing. No second cockroach. No almond.
But there she was. His own sister. Fat from feasting on white cream frosting. Warm bread pudding. Marshmallow pie. Juniper tarts in treacle custard. Sugar sticks. Nutmeg cookies. Gingerbread biscuits. And almond cakes!
The light from the outside danced off the white frosting on his sister’s lip, striking the flints of his fury.
“You miserable little wench! You have been out there feeding your fat face while I have been stuck here starving?” The boy scrutinized the hateful chubbiness which padded his once-skinny sister. “How did you get all that food?”
“Why, from the old woman who lived in this house,” she replied.
The boy could not recall ever seeing an old woman.
“And you thought to hoard it all yourself.”
“Why, no, brother. I had no choice.”
“I doubt that, sister. I can see by the two of you now that you have eaten my share and have allowed me to remain trapped in this darkness where you didn’t have to see me at all!”
“But, brother, she kept me from you and in that way, I was able to learn all of her own secrets of burning things in the hearth.”
“Humph! This all sounds like sin. Then where is she now, sister? Tell me or I shall surely box your ears!”
“She is dead, brother. I pushed her into the burning coals of the hearth because she wanted to fatten me up and eat me.”
The little boy wondered whether it were better to die thin and starving with shrinking fingers or stuffed with lentil bean pie inside the belly of an old woman. His fingers were now half the size of his sister’s and he could clearly see from her enormity that she had benefitted greatly in the presence of the old woman.
“I should have been the one to fatten up,” the boy flatly stated.
“Oh, no, brother. She said she didn’t like to eat little boys because they cuss and fib and always jump about.”
The boy reflected on how little jumping about he had actually done in the last seven days. The oven was barely large enough to properly accommodate him when he was lying still and the longer he remained without food of any kind, the smaller the box actually seemed.
“But, brother, I am here to rescue you,” the girl now timidly repeated, for this was not the reception she had anticipated.
“Now listen to me, you pig!” the boy commanded. “While you have been gorging your face with all kinds of creamy pies and sweets and no doubt handfuls of almond biscuits, I have been trapped inside this box with absolutely nothing to eat! Nothing! My body is shrinking to the size of a baby billy goat because I have had nothing to eat and all I have done in here is pray to Heaven that you, the sister I was instructed to protect, have been safe alone out there in the dark forest without my assistance. While I have waited and prayed to God above like Father and Mother have taught us, you have been feasting on creamy sugar icing and have quite forsaken me, thinking only of yourself! God punishes girls like that!”
The girl, as if detecting the last bit of white frosting around her mouth, wiped her lower lip with her finger and coughed in order to redirect her brother’s gaze from her growing shame.
“Now,” the boy continued, “you are going to help me get out of this oven and if you don’t do exactly as I say and just as quickly, I am going to summon the devil who will rise up to grab you by the throat and shove your fat, pig-like body into piles of sharp, freezing ice in the pits of eternal Hell!”
The girl gulped in fear.
“Now get me out of here!”