Ghost Years, page 5
“You’ve seen her more than once?”
“Yes, she’s standing in the hallway now outside my room. Sometimes she comes in.”
“Does she speak to you?”
“Not always. She’s nice, she wants to know if I feel all right.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know, she’s never told me. I call her Rose, our grandmother’s name, because she died before I was born. I can pretend that’s who she is.”
“Nanny didn’t have blonde hair, it was brown. She wasn’t so nice to me. Your visitor must not be Nanny’s ghost.”
Sally was lying in bed when she told Roy about the phantom woman.
“I haven’t told anyone else about her, only you. Should I tell Mom?”
“That’s up to you, Sal. You know she believes there are spirits around her sometimes.”
“What are spirits?”
“Mom thinks they’re the souls of dead people. They can appear as ghosts that only Mom can see.”
“Do they talk to her?”
“Ask Mom.”
“Have you ever seen them?”
“No, Sal, I haven’t. Do you want to get up now and have breakfast with me?”
Sally shook her head.
“I want to stay in bed. Rose might come back.”
“Okay, I’ll be in the kitchen. Mom’s still sleeping. Call if you want me.”
Roy left the room. His mother, Kitty, came into the kitchen while he was eating a bowl of cereal.
“Good morning, Roy. I heard you talking to someone. Was anyone here?”
“I asked Sally if she was hungry.”
“No, it wasn’t her voice.”
Kitty sat down at the table. She had gauze bandages wrapped around her hands and arms up to her elbows. She wore bandages during the night to cover the gooey ointment she rubbed over her eczema sores so it wouldn’t get on her sheets and pillows.
“Sally sees ghosts, did you know that? She talks to them. To one, at least.”
Kitty’s brown eyes were cloudy, almost grey. She had not yet brushed her hair or pencilled in her eyebrows.
“When did she tell you this?”
“Just now, when I was in her room.”
“The one she talks to, is it Nanny?”
“No, it’s a woman about your age who has blonde hair. Sally calls her Rose, though.”
Kitty began unwrapping the bandages. She winced as she pulled them away from her skin.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Roy, you’re eating. I’ll undo these in my bedroom. My sores are itching.”
“It’s okay, Ma, I’m almost finished.”
“Mary Ann, her name is Mary Ann. The blonde woman who visits Sally.”
“How do you know?”
“Ouch, the bandages always stick to my arms.”
Who Shot John
“Like I told the officer, this girl was on the street. Young, pretty, blonde, but dirty. I mean filthy, like she hadn’t washed her face and most probably the rest of her in weeks. She was pushin’ a shopping cart, had clothes in it, shoes, other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“Hairbrush, comb, broken umbrella. She asked me could I help her. It was rainin’, not real hard, a gloomy afternoon, nobody else around.”
“Help her how?”
“She said she needed a place to stay, that she got thrown out of where a guy she knew lived.”
“Did she tell you why he’d made her leave?”
“Somethin’ about an argument. She offered to have sex with me if I took her in.”
“How old are you, Mr. Kozinsky?”
“Forty-two.”
“The girl is seventeen. What did you do then?”
“Like I said, she was real pretty, had on a little skirt, her blouse was mostly unbutttoned, and she was barefoot. I thought it might be okay if she had a bath, I admit it, but there were too many things wrong. I didn’t know she was that young.”
“What things?”
“She could be a junkie, a thief, or just plain nuts, I don’t know. I gave her ten dollars.”
“Is that when the kid showed up?”
“Yeah, right then. He come runnin’ around the corner. Eleven, twelve years old, my guess.”
“He’s twelve.”
“Shoutin’ there’s a guy lookin’ for a girl stole somethin’ from him, wavin’ a gun.”
“We’ve talked to the kid. His name’s Roy, lives in the neighborhood.”
“What about the guy chasin’ after her?”
“We got him, holding him on a weapons charge.”
“That’s when I split, soon as I heard the word gun. The kid tell you?”
“He did.”
“What about the girl? She all right?”
“She’s in custody. Her head’s messed up. You can go now.”
Kozinsky stood up.
“Sergeant?”
“What?”
“Can I get my ten dollars back?”
Saturday in the House of God
Harmon Mangel’s family moved into Roy’s neighborhood a week after the Pedersen house burned down. The Mangels rented a third-floor apartment on Menominee Street a few doors down from the scorched remains. Harmon was ten years old, the same age as Roy. He was a short, scrawny kid who wore glasses and had crewcut red hair. When Roy asked him what his favorite sport was Harmon replied, “I like baseball, but I’m not a very good player.”
“I’ll help you get better,” Roy said. “Baseball’s my favorite sport, too. I’m the shortstop on our team. I want to be like Luís Aparicio, the rookie shortstop on the White Sox.”
“What’s the name of your team?”
“The Scorpions. We play mostly at Heart-of-Jesus park. Have you been there?”
Harmon shook his head.
“I’ll take you. You can meet all the guys.”
Roy did not see Harmon Mangel often, so he never did take him to the park. Whenever Roy offered to play baseball with him, Harmon said he had to study or go to Hebrew school or to the synagogue with his parents.
“What’s a synagogue?” asked Roy.
“A temple. It’s where our family goes to worship. We’re Orthodox Jews.”
“My mother’s a Catholic, she goes to St. Tim’s. Where’s your temple?”
“On Warsaw Avenue, next door to a candy store.”
“Oh yeah, Kapp’s. They have good doughnuts and pinball machines. Have you gone in there?”
“No. My parents don’t want me to eat candy.”
“I’ve never been in a synagogue. Can I go with you sometime?”
“Probably. I’ll ask my father.”
A couple of weeks later, on a Friday after school, Harmon told Roy he could go with him to the synagogue the next morning if he wanted to.
“Saturday is an important day in our religion. The temple will be full.”
“I asked my mother what an Orthodox Jew is and she said she wasn’t sure. She said she passed by your temple once and saw a lot of people dressed in black standing around in front of it.”
“Meet me at my house tomorrow morning at nine o’clock,” said Harmon. “We’ll walk over together.”
The synagogue was a one-story yellow building squeezed in between two six-flat apartment houses.
“You’ll have to wear a yarmulke to go in,” Harmon told Roy. “I brought an extra one for you.”
Harmon took two black beanie-sized caps out of a pocket of his coat and handed one to Roy.
“Here, put it on toward the back of your head. You have to keep it on while you’re inside.”
“Why?”
“To be humble in the house of God. It’s how you show respect for Him.”
“God doesn’t live here,” said Roy.
“He lives in the hearts and minds of His chosen people.”
“Is He a Jew?”
“He must be.”
“What about Jesus?”
“Jesus was Jewish and He was God’s son.”
Roy followed Harmon into the synagogue. Every seat was filled and dozens of bearded men were standing in the aisles holding an open book and mumbling in a language Roy did not understand. A low hanging balcony was suspended over the room. It was so low Roy was afraid that it might collapse.
“Who sits up there?” he asked Harmon.
“Women. Only men are allowed to sit downstairs. The men and women never sit together.”
Roy looked up at the balcony. Every woman was holding a book open and mumbling like the men. All of them were wearing black dresses and had black scarves or shawls over their heads. The men below were wearing big black hats. Most of the boys had long wispy sideburns that curled out from their heads. The light in the room was dim and it was very hot, so hot that Roy began to sweat. Despite the heat almost all of the men wore heavy black overcoats. Roy could barely see the front where there was a low stage upon which several men were standing, reading, mumbling and repeatedly nodding their heads.
Roy felt trapped. If there were a fire he knew that he would be trampled to death. He looked around for Harmon but didn’t see him. Roy figured that he had gone to sit or stand by his father and that his mother must be in the balcony. Roy was suffocating, he had to get out. He squeezed himself like a snake through the sea of overcoats back to the door through which he and Harmon had entered and pushed it open. Once he was on the sidewalk and able to breathe normally again Roy took off the beanie, stuffed it into a back pocket of his trousers and began to run.
He did not stop running until he’d gone the six blocks to Heart-of-Jesus park. Kids were already playing ball on one of the two diamonds, so Roy sat down on a bench to watch them. His friend Winky Wicklow, a fellow Scorpion, came over and sat down next to him.
“Hey, Roy. I thought maybe you weren’t gonna play today. We’ve got a game against the Gophers on the other field at ten-thirty. You left your glove at my house yesterday. I brought it with me.”
“I’ll play,” said Roy.
“What’s wrong? You don’t look so good. You feelin’ okay?”
“I just escaped from Dracula’s castle. I thought I was gonna die.”
Winky laughed. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Vampires, man. I was trapped in a room full of vampires. It was the creepiest place I’ve ever been.”
“You’re crazy, Roy. Dracula’s castle isn’t real. And even if it was it wouldn’t be around here.”
“I was crazy to have gone there. Anyhow, I got away.”
Roy stood up and took the beanie out of his back pocket.
“What’s that?” Winky asked.
Roy walked over to a garbage can and tossed the cap into it. Winky got up and stood next to him.
“You must’ve had a bad dream, huh, Roy? I’ve had some. Once I dreamed that my sister Mary was boiling human ears and fingers in a big pot on the stove in our kitchen.”
Roy watched a batter hit a line drive into the gap between left and center.
“He’s runnin’ like his hair’s on fire,” Winky said.
“I know the feeling,” said Roy. “Let’s go play catch.”
Big Things
Roy’s friend Paulie Dnieper wanted to be a priest. He was thirteen, a year and a half older than Roy. His father, Big Paul, was a handyman, and Paulie lived with him, his mother, Marta, and older sister, Julia, in the basement apartment of a building down the alley from Roy’s house. Paulie’s father and mother had both been born and raised in Poland; their families emigrated to Chicago when Big Paul and Marta were in their late teens. The two boys were sitting on the ground in the doorway of the Dniepers’ apartment drinking orange Nehi sodas. It was warm for April but windy, rain was on its way.
“We got the game in just in time,” said Roy.
“Yeah, good thing we started early.”
“Why do you want to be a priest?” Roy asked.
“I won’t have to empty garbage cans and unplug drains for a living. The church will take care of me when I get old.”
“Do you believe in God?”
Paulie took a big slug of his Nehi.
“Sure,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“My mother says if there’s really a God He wouldn’t let guys like Hitler murder millions of people.”
“God’s got a reason for everything He does. He made us, didn’t He?”
“Our parents made us.”
“How’d they do it? By magic?”
“They put their bodies together and our fathers stirred the pot.”
“With what? What pot?”
“I don’t know exactly. Didn’t your father tell you how?”
“He doesn’t talk about big things. He’s a janitor.”
“What about your mother?”
“You kiddin’?”
“How about Julia? She’s sixteen, and her tits are gettin’ big.”
“I don’t look at ’em.”
Roy finished off his bottle of pop and got to his feet.
“You gonna keep your bottle?” asked Paulie. “I can get two cents for it.”
Roy handed him his empty.
“See ya,” he said.
By the time Roy got to the back gate of his house there were puddles in the cracks in the alley. He wished he had a big sister.
The next time Roy was at Paulie’s house, Big Paul, wearing dirty overalls and a woollen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, said to him, “Why you ask Paulie he want be priest and about God exist?”
Roy looked up at Big Paul. There were holes in his face, black circles with spikelike hairs sticking out of them. His blue eyes were small with tiny red dots in the whites. Big Paul’s hair was a scrub brush with brown bristles erect as infantrymen at attention.
Roy shrugged his shoulders. “I never knew a kid before who wanted to be a priest.”
“What you talk about Hitler?”
“He killed a lot of people, didn’t he?”
“German army invade my country, murder my uncles and cousins.”
Big Paul rubbed his thick fingers back and forth through the scrub brush.
“You smart boy, huh?”
“I don’t know,” said Roy.
“What work your father do?”
“Nothing. He’s dead.”
Big Paul bent forward and gripped Roy’s shoulders with his large hands. Roy thought that if he wanted to Big Paul could push his body straight down through the floor into the earth below.
“You want talk sometime you come me, okay?”
Roy nodded.
Big Paul held onto him for what seemed to Roy a very long time.
Baseball
“Last night I watched a weird movie about Dracula’s daughter. She bit into women’s necks and drank their blood like her father, only she just attacked girls and women, never boys or men.”
“Do you think that means she likes to have sex with other women?”
“I don’t know. There are guys who go for other guys, so it probably goes for women, too.”
Roy and Jimmy Boyle were sitting on the outfield grass at Heart-of-Jesus park after their game against the Artesian Street Rockets. Roy was ten years old, Jimmy was eleven.
“Dracula’s daughter looked a lot like Miss Freddezza. Remember her?”
“Yeah, I had her in third grade. She wore long, black dresses and a black wig that tilted to one side or the other. She was mean to all the boys in our class. I guess she could be one of those kind of women.”
“Dracula’s daughter had bushy dark eyebrows and dark eyes and most of the time held the edge of a cape over her mouth and nose, uncovering her face only when she bent down to bite a girl.”
“Do you know how women have sex with each other?”
Roy didn’t answer Jimmy right away. He looked across the park to where two women were walking together pushing baby buggies ahead of them.
“I’m not sure,” Roy said.
“Homos play with other guys’ weenies,” said Jimmy. “That’s what my cousin Neal told me, but girls don’t got weenies.”
Roy liked girls, he knew that, but he didn’t know much about sex, what people, male or female, actually did. He watched the women pushing their buggies slowly along the sidewalk that encircled the field. One of them had long blonde hair, the other was a brunette with her hair pulled back in a bun. They were talking and laughing. It was better to think about baseball.
A few days later, while Roy was making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen of his house, he overheard his mother talking on the telephone in the hallway.
“Yes, Diana, but I don’t trust him. There’s always been something about Lou Drexel that isn’t right.
“Okay, I understand, he’s handsome and all that, but he lied about Monique. ‘Kitty,’ he said, ‘I’ve never even met her.’
“It wasn’t a mistake, honey. He got her pregnant, then paid for the abortion. You don’t forget that if it happened two or even ten years ago.
“You keep saying that. So he’s a hunk and can keep a girl happy, for a while, anyway. And Monique didn’t kill herself.
“No, I’m not saying that Lou killed her. I don’t know exactly what happened, neither did the cops. He’s poison, Diana.
“I get it. He gives you orgasms, good for you.
“Diana, are you there?”
Roy’s mother hung up the phone. She came into the kitchen chewing her lower lip.
“What happened, Ma? Is Diana all right?”
“She hung up on me.”
Kitty turned around and walked out of the kitchen. Roy bit into his sandwich. It needed more jelly.
Catholic Girls
When Kitty was told that Our Lady of Everlasting Obedience was closing and the building and property sold she was shocked and upset.
“Not enough people go to church anymore,” said June DeLisa. “The parishioners are being told to go to St. Mona’s.”
“ ‘The Moaners’ we used to call them. That’s ten miles away, it’s a hardship for our old neighborhood. People could just walk over. What excuse do they have for closing?”
“Money, what else?”
“The Pope’s not broke.”
“Business, Kitty. The church is a business, like everything else. If customers stop coming, the shop gets shut.”
