Whistling In the Dark Read online

  Troo looked up from her bowl and said crabby-like, “What’s she got wrong with her now?” and took another bite of cereal. As much as I loved Troo, I had to admit that she could be ornery like Mother if she didn’t like you.

  “Dr. Sullivan gave me this.” Nell wiped her hands on her shorts and pulled the chair out next to me. We watched as she took a piece of paper out of her blouse pocket and ironed it down on the table.

  Hepatitis.

  “Isn’t that when you got really bad breath?” Troo said. “That’s what Willie told me. He said Dr. Sullivan has it and—”

  “You nincompoop,” Nell spat out. “That’s called halitosis.” I was impressed with Nell knowing that. Or maybe she’d just made that up to make Troo and me feel stupid, which she could mostly do.

  “Dr. Sullivan says hepatitis is a sickness in Mother’s liver.” Nell’s voice suddenly got all wobbly. “It’s not good.” She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door. Nell had her own room and didn’t have to share like me and Troo. If I had to list the order of like around here, I would say Nell was in first place, Troo a very close second and me—well, there was something about me that always made a sad look come onto Mother’s face when I caught her staring at me. I had no idea what it was about me that made her look at me like that. Probably my imagination.

  After that hepatitis talk, maybe a week later, Nell told us that things were getting even worse. Now Mother had something called a staph infection, which was a very bad sickness. Much worse than anybody could’ve ever imagined. Even me. Nell cried and cried until Troo went into her bedroom and slapped her and told her to shut the hell up.

  Mother was at St. Joe’s Hospital almost the whole month of June. And it looked like she might miss the Fourth of July, which was a darn shame because once I heard her tell her best friend, Mrs. Betty Callahan, that she should’ve named Troo Bottle Rocket—that’s how much Mother loved the Fourth.

  By then, Hall had pretty much stopped coming home for supper. He would wake us up later when he crashed into the living room furniture and started cursing a blue streak, sometimes in another language, which I took to be Swedish. And Nell had begun to get on Troo’s nerves so much that Troo could barely look at Nell in her white blouse and saddle shoes, going on about Elvis . . . Elvis . . . Elvis. I thought Nell was okay. Not great. I always tried to keep in mind what Daddy had said about her being only the third worst big sister in the world. But Troo, who never liked Nell much in the first place, started getting so fed up with her that she would chase Nell around the house and hold a toothbrush up to her lips and sing “You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog” over and over real loud until Nell had had it up to here and smacked her a good one. Then I’d have to settle Troo down and give her something of mine, like my favorite steely marble, so she’d promise not to try and smother Nell in her sleep.

  After Nell told us about that staph infection, I thought it would be a good idea to head up to church and do a little praying that morning, even though I thought God had some kind of deafness and wasn’t listening to one darn thing I was tellin’ Him. Nell didn’t want to come with us because she was gonna go walk up to Fillard’s Service Station and see her boyfriend, Eddie Callahan, who worked up there and was Mrs. Callahan’s son. That was how Nell was spending her days. Going gaga over Eddie Callahan. When Mother came home, Nell would be in big trouble for minding Eddie Callahan instead of Troo and me, the way Mother had told her to. Troo already had her tattletale list with a capital T all figured out. She even wrote it down.

  1. Nell says you didn’t tell her she had to do me and Sally’s wash so she isn’t.

  2. Nell broke the turn-on knob off the television and now Sally can’t watch Sky King and that made her cry more than once. (I told her to take that crying part out, because Mother would only get mad at me.)

  3. Nell will not give us money to go to the Uptown so we had to miss a Sandra Dee and Troy Dona hue movie.

  And so on. The tattletale list was longer than Troo’s Christmas list. And every day she grew more excited about showing it to Mother when she came home.

  I mostly liked Mother of Good Hope church and school because they were only six blocks away and the O’Malley sisters could walk to them. The part I didn’t care for was that we had to pass Greasy Al Molinari’s house to get there. One of Troo’s most favorite things to do in the whole world was to stand in front of the Molinaris’ gray house and holler very loudly, “Greasy Al is such a little shit.” She also called him other names like wophead and spaghetti for brains, and sometimes, when she was really out of sorts, she would sing that Harry Belafonte song “Day-O,” but instead she would say, “Dago . . . da da daaago.”

  Troo was sure Greasy Al was the one that had stolen her bike last summer, and that’s what she was so mad about. I could never stop her, even though God and Daddy know I tried, so we always ended up getting chased halfway to school by Greasy Al, who threatened to bronze our butts if he ever caught us, which he wouldn’t, because his right leg was sort of withered up from polio. Greasy Al couldn’t run exactly, but he could walk very fast in a hunched-up limpy kind of way if he wanted to go after you. I always said to Troo, “What are you gonna do if he ever catches you? He’s got that switchblade, you know?”

  Troo would laugh and laugh and this wild look would come into her eyes, like she didn’t care if Greasy Al caught her. That bothered me. Almost every day I wished Daddy was here to calm her down because I didn’t think Troo would be long for this world if she kept this sort of wild thing up.

  That morning Troo was dawdling behind me, a little cranky because I’d told her I wasn’t in the mood to get chased by Greasy Al, so like Mother said, she better mind her p’s and q’s. She was kicking a rock the way she liked to do when she was thinking and then she said real quietly, so that I almost didn’t hear her, “She’s gonna get better, right, Sal?”

  I didn’t turn around because if I did she’d get real mad. Troo hated it if I caught her being scared because she forgot to whistle in the dark. I figured out what that meant by paying attention to details. Granny wasn’t getting the hardening of the arteries after all. Mother and Troo were two peas in the pod, both of ’em always pretending that things were okay when they weren’t.

  “Yeah, she’ll be fine,” I said over my shoulder, but wondered what would happen if she wasn’t. Would Troo and me just go on living with Hall and Nell? Or maybe go stay with Granny and Uncle Paulie? Oh, Troo would just despise that. She avoided Uncle Paulie whenever she could. When I asked her why, she said, “Cooties.” I suspected it was more than that, but never did ask her again since I did not wish to have Troo’s volcano mad erupting all over me. Besides, Granny’s house was too small, and she was in a bad way money-wise. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that.

  “If she dies, what’ll we do?” Troo kicked at the rock and it flew past me. “Do you think we’d have to go live at the orphanage?”

  Every year around Christmas our Brownie troop would go to the orphanage up on Lisbon Street called St. Jude’s, who was the patron saint of lost causes. That was a very mean thing to call your orphanage and musta made those poor orphans feel really hopeless. We would sing “What Child Is This?” and give them presents like holy cards wrapped in green tissue paper and red ribbons, and I hated it. I just couldn’t stand looking at those kids who didn’t have fathers or mothers or anybody else who gave one hoot about them. And that made me say, “No. We won’t ever have to go live in that orphanage. I promise.”

  Troo had stopped in front of the Piaskowskis’. The yard was all weedy and the house looked like it was shedding and a concrete statue of Jesus was laying on its side next to the porch like it was taking a nap. Nobody ever saw much of Mr. or Mrs. Piaskowski after Junie’s funeral.

  “That would be just about one of the worst things that could ever happen to you, gettin’ murdered like that,” Troo said. We held our breaths when we walked past and didn’t talk much for the rest of the way, but I was thinking that maybe t
here were some other things that could be worse.

  After mass half the neighborhood was standing out on the church lawn and I heard Mrs. Callahan, who was still Mother’s best friend and had been for a long time, say to Mrs. Latour in a very tired voice, “Helen is resting peacefully.”

  Mrs. Latour said back, “I heard that Hall has taken up with Rosie Ruggins.”

  And then Mrs. Callahan said back to her, “Helen should never have married him in the first place.” It was rude to eavesdrop, but no one would tell me if Mother was getting better and I had to find out so I could get prepared if she wasn’t. What Mrs. Callahan said, I took that to mean that Mother might be dying since she was Resting in Peace, which was what it said on Daddy’s gravestone. And what Mrs. Latour said about Hall? That probably meant that Hall was gettin’ some of the sex from Rosie Ruggins.

  When Mrs. Callahan turned and saw us, she said in a surprised voice, “Well, O’Malley sisters, hello!”

  I looked down at Mrs. Callahan’s bare legs in front of that church. She had on a little gold ankle bracelet and she wore blouses sometimes too unbuttoned. Granny told me Mother and Mrs. Callahan were crazy little she-cats when they were young, when they lived in houses next door to each other across from the cookie factory.

  Mrs. Callahan bent down and said, “Are you okay, Sally?” I tried not to cry even though my eyes were blurry because Mrs. Callahan smelled so much like Mother and I bet she had made her kids sunny-side-up eggs for breakfast. “We’re fine, Mrs. Callahan,” I said. “Hall and Nell are taking very good care of us. Mother’s gonna get better, isn’t she?”

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

  CHAPTER SEVEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “She’s fine,” Troo answered for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  What a genius my sister was!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  When the rain started pelting the window, I tried to fall asleep, but that attic heat felt like a too-heavy blanket laying all over me and all I could think about was that Frankenstein monster murdering the three of us while he grunted, “Me . . . me . . . me . . . like you.” Boy, that Fast Susie could make a story sound so real. I got the sweatiest I had ever gotten, hearing that monster’s clunky shoes creaking on the attic steps. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I rolled off that stinky old mattress and decided that even if Hall was snoring drunk, I needed to get home.