Worn Masks by Phyllis Carito Read Free Book Online Page B

guess, there is a big dish with what
could be pieces of chicken over pasta–was that polla alla cacciatora ?”
    “My momma would put on her gremiule da ma cellaio , a butcher’s apron, take the big knife, and
go into the backyard. I’d watch from the window as the chickens scurried. They
knew she was there to take one of them. She wasn’t wearing her gremiule da
cuoco, cooking apron, held up full with feed in it for them. Momma was fast
as she bent over to snatch one. Then with one quick twist she’d wring the
chicken’s neck. The head would flop over, but the feet would still be
shuddering.” Aunt Maggie’s shoulders were trembling as she said this. “She’d
grab the pot, place it next to the chopping block. I could never watch the
rest.”
    “Who else came to the party, Aunt Maggie?”
    “Nana. Wasn’t Nana there? She’d have a sweater on, always a
sweater. She made them. She made one for me and under the buttonholes she had
sewn a beautiful piece of blue ribbon. Nana was always crocheting, knitting,
always sewing. She had a button box and a ribbon box. She let me have a scrap
of the same blue ribbon to hang my scapula around my neck,” she took a breath,
looked over to the psychologist who nodded at her, “but it didn’t matter.”
    “What didn’t matter?”
    “The El, the train was screeching above me on the elevated
tracks.” Aunt Maggie looked as if she was going to be sick, her nostrils
twitching. “Garlic, and sweat.” Aunt Maggie’s head curled into her chest, her
arms inched across her body to hold herself steady.
    Aunt Maggie became quiet, and then she said, “The amico. Papa’s
amico . He was from the city. A big shot. He wore a shiny suit and a slouch
hat. He ripped off the buttons of my sweater. My scapula didn’t protect me. He
unraveled my ribbons.”
    The psychologist consoled Aunt Maggie, saying it was never her
fault. She had held on to this for sixty-eight years! Aunt Maggie looked at
Mary Grace. Mary Grace couldn’t breathe. She believed it now. How could this
have happened to her aunt? How could no one ever have told her? 
    Aunt Maggie wept saying, “Your momma, I heard her. She told your
father I could have stopped him. “She’s dirty, opened her legs, phew, a
puttanta! She wasn’t so innocent.” Your mother said that. Never would I
look her in the eye after that.”
    Mary Grace’s mother knew! Was that why she disliked her? It seemed
crude, but would she really blame Aunt Maggie? Her mother was always so
righteous, somehow too good for everyone else, always turning her head away
when people spoke, like listening to them was
below her. Mary Grace felt the sting of her moth er’s coldness, and the
times she had heard her cut Aunt Maggie off in mid-sentence. 
    That evening Mary Grace cried as she had cried as a child,
whimpering into her pillow, “It is like there was an entire family story that I
never knew about.”
    And, as there was no one else, she consoled herself. You were just a kid, Gracie. Families are crazy. It
is a terri ble thing, but why are you getting all hung up on this now?
    Mary Grace couldn’t answer that. She was
exhaust ed.
But she didn’t go to sleep.
    Mary Grace got back up and studied every photograph, which one was
Papa’s trusted friend? How did her father and Uncle Paul really feel? She went
back into the trunk. There was nothing to
reveal what had hap pened to Aunt Maggie, but again she saw the carefully
penned letters from her dad to her mom. Before she had been certain there
couldn’t possibly be anything useful in the letters. She hadn’t been interested
before in reading them—but, now she wanted to know, what were they doing in
Aunt Maggie’s trunk?

 
    Lost Love
    Chapter 13
     
    BACK AT HER apartment, where normally she found peace in the quiet
and comfort in her simple and bare surroundings, the weight of the living room
along one wall covered in books almost from floor to ceiling, Mary Grace
couldn’t focus on any one