Chapter One
The first time I began to understand that the words gone and dead have different meanings I was about six years old. The year was 1961. It was a cold winter day in February, which wasn’t unusual for Churubusco, a speck of a town in Upstate New York. I was immersed in making hearts out of construction paper along with the rest of the kindergarten class when Mr. Baxter, the elementary school principal, summoned Mrs. Gadway into the hallway. Mrs. Gadway had taught us at the very beginning of the school year that principal ended with the word “pal” and that we should always think of Mr. Baxter as our pal. But by the serious way he motioned for her, he seemed more a threat. We all stopped our cutting, gluing, and glittering and watched wide eyed. I wondered what kind of trouble kindly Mrs. Gadway could possibly have gotten into to be taken out in the hallway.
“Bet Brenda’s in trouble,” Mike said. “She’s using crayons to color her fingernails.”
My gaze went to Brenda Hannigan, the skinny little girl with a mess of frizzy red hair. She dropped the crayon, pulled a tissue from her pocket, spat on it, and began working furiously to wipe off the red crayon from her fingernails. She’d finished only three fingers when the door opened; however, it was my name spoken.
“May I see you out in the hallway?” Mrs. Gadway said.
I looked at Brenda before standing, hoping Mrs. Gadway would see the colored fingernails and change her mind about calling me out.
“Come on, Vicky.”
My classmates watched in silence as I left the room. Mr. Baxter was nowhere in sight. In the hallway, Mrs. Gadway bent down to talk to me face to face. She brought me close to her. I could smell her breath and tried to back away, but she pulled me closer.
“Your daddy called the school, honey. He’s coming to pick you and your brother up.”
“Can I finish my Valentine?” It was a surprise for Kevin. I hadn’t yet drawn the birds on it; glitter would be their feathers.
“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you bring it home with you and you can finish it there? You see, your grandma is…is gone.”
“Where’d she go?”
Before I even saw Kevin, I heard the thumping of his feet as he came running toward me. He was coming from the wing of the junior high school.
“No running in the halls, young man.” Mrs. Gadway stood to show her authority.
“Don’t tell her!” he yelled, wiping his drippy nose with the sleeve of his opened coat. “She’s my sister. I’ll tell her.” He reached me and pulled me next to him.
“Where’d Grandma go?” I said.
Glaring at Mrs. Gadway, he said, “You told her?”
“This should be handled by an adult.”
“I’m her brother.”
“Do not raise your voice with me, Kevin Finley.”
I watched the power struggle, knowing I had something to do with it.
“Vicky,” she said, “why don’t you go get your things?”
“Yeah, Dad’s on his way,” Kevin said. “I’ll help you.”
Amid whispers, I gathered my things, eyeing the bottle of glitter. Kevin collected my papers, scooping up the Valentine and putting it in my schoolbag. So much for surprises.
“Got your lunchbox?” he said, helping me slip on my boots, coat, hat and gloves.
I nodded.
“You have to go to the main office to wait for your father,” Mrs. Gadway said. She bent down again and took my face in her hands, gazing into my eyes. “Honey, I’m so sorry. Okay?”
Another nod, but I wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. When I shuffled by Brenda, I saw that she had repainted her fingernails fire-engine red.
Daddy said very little in the car as I sat alone in the back seat. Kevin asked how Grandpa was doing.
“Shell shocked.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
I called up to the front, “Is she coming back?”
No one answered, so I asked again. Kevin turned and looked at me. I see that his eyes are filled with tears. “No, she’s not.”
I suddenly had worries: Who was going to put out my clothes in the morning? Who was going to run a comb through my hair to search for knots? Who was going to tell me to brush my teeth?
These had become big concerns the night before I was to start the first day of school. Until then, I had selected my own pants and shirt for days filled with playing with paper dolls, watching cartoons, and swinging on the tire hanging from the maple tree in the front yard. As for the brushing of my hair and teeth, I accomplished both with little effort and no follow up from Grandma. Kindergarten was to change all that.
The night before I was to start school, Grandma came into my bedroom with a bag from Woolworths and took out a couple of dresses, one plain, the other frilly—three pairs of pants—all the same style but in different colors—and three matching polo shirts. Striped. I hated stripes. She then took out a package of white underpants and put them in my drawer, except for one pair, which she placed on the end of my bed along with the frilly dress.
“Now, these are your school clothes,” she said. “I won’t have you looking like little Orphan Annie to give people more to talk about. Come on, let’s get you in the tub.”
Kindergarten also meant cleanliness, I soon realized. Grandma scrubbed my neck and behind my ears, the skin on her arms wobbly, her sagging breasts grazing my face. “I’m too old for this,” she muttered.
Wincing, I said, “I don’t wanna go to school.”
“Well, it’s not about what little girls want.” Grandma rinsed the washcloth and handed it to me. “Wash good down there.” She pointed to the gap between my legs.
Long after she had sent me to bed, I tiptoed into Kevin’s room. He was propped on his elbow, an opened book lying next to him.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I don’t wanna go to school.”
“Sure you do. You’ll have fun. We’ll be on the bus together.”
“I hate that dress.”
He scrunched up his mouth. “Grandma’s pretty much got her heart set on it.”
“Are you scared?”
“Nah,” he said, “but seventh grade’s gonna be a lot harder.”
Just then, Grandma yelled from the bottom of the stairs, “What’s that chattering I hear? Vicky, go to bed.”
Kevin called back, “She’s just worried, Grandma. I’m talking to her for a minute.”
To no one in particular and loud enough to be heard, she said, “If your mother was here then maybe she could deal with this nonsense. I go out and buy her daughter clothes---”
Kevin got up and shut his door. He rolled his eyes and went back to his bed. He patted it and said, “You can sleep in here tonight.” He took one of his pillows then pulled a sleeping bag from under the bed and shook it out. “I’ll sleep down here.”
I crawled under the covers. The only other time Kevin had ever let me sleep in his bed was during a thunderstorm. Was school as scary as repeated streaks of lightning cutting through a blackened sky, followed by wall-shaking claps of thunder?
“I hope my teacher’s nice,” I mumbled. Kevin didn’t answer, and I looked over the side of the bed to see that he was deep into his book. “I can’t wait to read.”
He glanced up at me. “Want me to read it out loud?”
“Not too loud, so Grandma won’t get mad.”
He smiled and then began, and before I knew it, he was waking me up for school the following morning. Soon, Kevin and I were waiting in front of the house. The bus eventually turned the corner. I used to watch from the porch window as it pulled up to our farmhouse and took my brother away for the day, then wait endless hours until it brought him back. Now it was my turn to be carried into that same world.
The bus came to a squawking stop and gave a loud sigh, the doors opening. Kevin helped me up the steps and guided me to a seat. He sat beside me. I noticed there were other boys his age who shot him sidelong glances and snickered. He didn’t seem to notice. I also noticed a scattering of redheads in various sizes. I tugged on Kevin’s sleeve.
“What’s wrong with their hair?” I whispered, never having seen so much shocking red hair on a single head before. And now there were several in my midst alone.
“They’re the Hannigans,” he said. “They live in that big farmhouse off Whalen Road.”
I nodded, having little idea where Whalen Road was. Peering at me over the seat was the smallest of the Hannigans. We stared at each other without speaking, and later that morning I found we were in the same classroom.
My fears about Mrs. Gadway were put to rest immediately after I met her. She told me my dress was very pretty but that she would send a note home to my mother telling her I should come to school in play clothes.
“I don’t have a mother,” I said, causing a couple of the children to look at me as if I had said something in a different language.
“Well, then, I’ll send the note to your father. You do have a father, don’t you?”
I nodded.
School wasn’t so bad, and it had the biggest playground I’d ever seen. I was eager to climb the monkey bars, but when I did, swinging upside down, my dress went over my head, causing all the kids to tease me. Brenda started the commotion by singing, “I see London, I see France, I see Vicky’s underpants.”
Grandma read the note. It was the first thing I handed her from my schoolbag, even though Mrs. Gadway had told me to give it to my father. She breathed hard and tossed the note in the garbage. “So, besides being told how to dress, what else did you learn today?”
I stared at the crumpled letter resting on top of the garbage, wondering how I could get it without Grandma seeing me. “I learned a new song.”
“Really?” she said, pouring water in a pan then carrying it to the stove, indicating it was going to be macaroni-and-cheese night. “Let’s hear it then.”
“Five little monkeys jumpin’ on the bed. One fell off and bumped his head. Mommy called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumpin’ on the bed.”
I was about to go to four little monkeys, but Grandma stopped me. “Mommy calls the doctor, my eye. Where was Mommy when you needed your diaper changed? Where was Mommy when you needed your nose wiped? Where was Mommy when you’d wake up in the middle of the night cryin’ hysterical from a bad dream?” She pulled a box of elbow macaroni from the cabinet, going on about how her son should have never married that girl. “You tell Mrs. Gadway your mommy is gone.”
Like Kevin had done the night before, I shut her off by slipping away to the living room, where I turned on the television and watched Batman and Robin fight evil. Later, when she was drying me from my bath that night, she started singing the song, except she sang, “Grandma called the doctor.”
Apparently, when my grandmother keeled over on that cold February day and the ambulance arrived, it was too late to call any doctor. By this time, I’d adjusted to kindergarten. Now I had to adjust being in a household down to four little monkeys.
Turns out Grandma wasn’t gone at all. There she was lying in that strange but comfortable-looking box. Kevin held my hand and walked me up to it, instructing me to kneel next to her. Kevin knows things about religion, so I followed his lead as he made the sign of the cross. Under my breath, I said, “One, two, three, four” then bowed my head. I pretended to pray but didn’t know what to say. Besides, I kept trying to see if her eyes were going to open. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching and saw Dad standing in a corner with a small gathering of people. He motioned for me to come to him, and I did. He lifted me, cradling me in his arms. “We’ll be okay,” he said, not once but several times. I looked around the room and spotted Grandpa sitting in the front row. I hardly recognized him in his suit.
“Grandpa’s sad,” I said.
“Why don’t you go make him smile,” Dad said, putting me back on my feet.
I went to Grandpa and rested my hand on his knee. He looked down at me and without any effort on my part, gave me a crinkly-faced smile.
“There’s my angel,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses. He pulled me up onto his lap and I stayed there, resting against his sunken chest while groups of people came in, their voices hushed as they told us how sorry they were. Grandpa kept a tight grip on me while saying, “Never got to tell her goodbye.” My father remained standing in the corner, shaking hands and talking to each person who went to him. Kevin kept looking at the doorway every few minutes, as if he expected someone important to walk in.
Most people who came in I didn’t recognize, until the flock of redheads appeared. Brenda Hannigan was steered in my direction by her robust-looking mother, then prodded to speak.
“Sorry your grandma died,” Brenda said.
“That’s okay,” I said, noticing a hint of red in her cuticles.
We both began to giggle, though I wasn’t sure why. Mrs. Hannigan expressed her condolences to Grandpa then led Brenda away. Two of the Hannigan boys were scuffling their feet and fidgeting with their suits as they stood near Kevin, but his eyes kept darting toward the doorway.
At the cemetery, the priest said some prayers, tossed some water on the closed box, and then left us to say our goodbyes. Grandma was gone. Gone. This was how my mother’s disappearance had been explained to me. I began noticing the many gravestones surrounding us. Kevin said that Grandma would also have one soon.
“See,” he said, pointing to one nearby. “It’s going to have her name on it, just like” —he crouched down to get a better look. “---like Ross Soucia.”
I went next to him and reached out, touching the letters. “What does this say?”
“He was born on July 6, 1908, and he died on November 19, 1952.”
‘Oh,” I said, reminded of the prayer all the old people had said during mass. Something about beginnings and ends. It got me to thinking, and I said, “Where’s Mommy’s stone?”
It was a question that turned Grandpa and my father’s red, moist eyes in my direction. Kevin cleared his throat, stood, and walked back over to Grandma’s box.
“What you talkin’ about?” my father said.
“Where’s Mommy’s stone?” I stood tall, realizing it was probably the first time I had asked a question about the woman I couldn’t testify actually having existed. There was no memory of her for me.
“We’re here for Grandma,” my father said. “She’s the one we’re mourning.”
Instead of standing in the cold any longer, my father walked over to me and grabbed my hand to lead me out of the cemetery. We trudged through the few inches of snow toward the car, no one speaking.
I climbed into the back seat along with Kevin and scrambled up to my knees so I could gaze out the back window as we drove away. I began to think about this woman, wondering what she’d looked like. Then I began to miss her, to miss a woman I had never known, more than I missed my grandmother.