Penny from Heaven

  “You bet!” I say, and I can’t keep the excitement out of my voice.

  Me-me says, “Bah. That boy?”

  Everything is quiet for a moment, and I push a few mushy gray peas around on my plate. Next to me Pop-pop burps, and we all look at him at the same time.

  “What?” he says.

  “The bills are due,” Me-me tells my mother.

  My mother gets up and goes to the front hall. When she returns, there is an envelope in her hand. She hands it to Me-me.

  Me-me studies it and says, “Slave wages.” Then she goes into the kitchen and takes down a white jar with a picture of a cow and the words “Milk Money” on it and drops the check in. It’s where Me-me keeps money for grocery shopping.

  “A perfectly good education being wasted,” Me-me says.

  “Don’t start, Mother,” my mother says. “I’ve had a long day.”

  But Me-me is like Scarlett O’Hara when she gets it into her head to chew something to pieces.

  “You were the best nurse in your graduating class,” Me-me says.

  “Enough,” my mother snaps.

  “I’ve held my tongue too long as it is,” Me-me snaps back.

  My mother stands up without another word and walks out of the room, slamming the door. Me-me gets up and carries her plate into the kitchen and bangs it on the counter. Scarlett O’Hara starts barking and Pop-pop says loudly, “Where’s the steak? I thought you said we were having steak.”

  And me?

  I just sit there, listening to the silence.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mrs. Morelli’s Brains

  The sign outside says FALUCCI’S MARKET. BEST PORK AND MEAT CUTS.

  When I open the door, a little bell rings.

  “Look who it is,” Uncle Ralphie calls from behind the long marble counter.

  He’s wearing an apron and talking to a slender woman with stockings that have a tear near the ankle. A little boy with a grubby neck is clinging to one of her legs, and another kid with a smear of jam on his face is wrapped around her other leg. She turns, and I see the round bump of her stomach.

  “Mrs. Chickalos,” Uncle Ralphie says grandly, “do you know my beautiful niece, Penny? My late brother Freddy’s girl, God rest his soul.”

  Mrs. Chickalos turns to me and says in a soft voice, “How do you do?”

  “Glad to know you,” I say.

  Uncle Ralphie turns back to Mrs. Chickalos. “Now, you’re sure you don’t need any ham? I got a real nice ham in the back, just delicious.”

  “I can’t afford that,” she says in the same soft voice.

  “Don’t you worry about that, you hear me?” he says. “You just take care of these beautiful children of yours.”

  Actually, the kids could stand a bath before anyone would call them beautiful, but that’s Uncle Ralphie for you.

  I watch as my uncle cuts and wraps a large chunk of ham and puts it in the bag. Then he wraps up a whole chicken and sticks it in there, saying, “The bones’ll make a good stock. You can get two, maybe three, meals out of it.” He winks. “Good for the baby.”

  She reaches into her handbag, but he just waves her away. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Falucci,” she says.

  He beams at her. “My pleasure.”

  She gathers up her bag and walks out of the store, the kids hanging on to her skirt.

  “Ralphie,” Aunt Fulvia says as soon as the door closes.

  “What?” Uncle Ralphie says. “They’re good people, patanella mia.”

  Patanella mia is Uncle Ralphie’s nickname for Aunt Fulvia. He says it means “my little potato.” A lot of my Italian relatives have nicknames.

  “‘Good’ doesn’t put dinner on the table,” she snaps back.

  Uncle Ralphie’s always giving people food on credit, and it drives Aunt Fulvia crazy. She’s the one who really runs the store. Aunt Fulvia sits on a little stool behind the register at the door like a sentry, ringing up purchases, putting half the money in the till and half in the pocket of her skirt. Frankie says that way the government doesn’t get the money.

  “I suppose she still hasn’t paid us what she owes from last month,” Aunt Fulvia says, and then leans over to look at the sleeping baby in the carriage next to her. Baby Gloria can sleep through anything, even Aunt Fulvia.

  Uncle Ralphie throws up his hands.

  “We’ll be in the poorhouse at this rate,” Aunt Fulvia mutters.

  Uncle Ralphie may be a softy, but he always gets paid back eventually. Every now and then things will just show up at the store on the back step, like a box of records or some macaroons, and Uncle Ralphie will give a low whistle and say, “Look what some little bird has left.”

  The bell on the door rings and Jack Teitelzweig is standing there. Jack’s two years ahead of me at school, and I don’t know him very well, but his brother Stanley is in my grade.

  “If it isn’t Jack Teitelzweig!” Uncle Ralphie says. “I got your mother’s order all ready.”

  “Hi, Penny,” Jack says, glancing back at me.

  Before I can say anything, the bell on the door rings again and my cousin Frankie bursts in, out of breath.

  “I’m here!” he announces.

  “You’re late,” Aunt Fulvia tells him.

  Frankie’s twelve, with dark hair and brown eyes like me. Most people think we’re brother and sister, which I don’t mind except when he gets into trouble. His mother, Aunt Teresa, is my father’s sister.

  “I had to help Ma with the baby,” he says. Frankie’s got a baby brother, Michael, who’s two months old.

  “You’re changing diapers now?” Aunt Fulvia asks.

  “Sure I am!” he says, his eyes wide and innocent as an altar boy’s. He’s had a lot of practice. He’s been an altar boy at St. Anthony’s for a few years now. He likes it okay, except he sometimes falls asleep during the services.

  “You’re full of excuses, huh, kid?” Aunt Fulvia says, and then shakes her head. “You two go pack up those deliveries.”

  I hear Jack say to Uncle Ralphie, “Thanks, Mr. Falucci,” and then he’s gone.

  “Say, I think she believed you,” I tell Frankie.

  “’Course she did,” he says with a sly wink.

  Frankie’s father, Uncle Angelo, spent some time in jail a few years ago. He robbed a five-and-dime store, but he wasn’t a very good criminal. When he robbed the store, he also took a bunch of candy bars. He ate the candy and threw the wrappers out of his car window as he made his getaway, so the police just followed the trail of candy bar wrappers and caught him. Frankie’s crazy about his father and thinks being a criminal would be neat. I worry about him sometimes.

  We go back to the meat locker. The store is mostly a butcher shop, but we also sell groceries and fresh produce. Over at the butcher table, Uncle Dominic is wearing a bloody apron and grinding beef into hamburger with the hand grinder. He likes working in the back. This way he doesn’t have to deal with customers, which is just as well. I don’t think his slippers would be good for business.

  “Hi, Princess,” Uncle Dominic says to me.

  “What’s the big buzz?” I ask.

  “The mound’s looking real good for Dem Bums,” he says. “I think we’ve got a shot at the Series.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie scoffs. “A shot at losing.”

  The Dodgers have made it into the World Series before, but they always lose. The Yankees beat them last year after seven games. It’s enough to make a Bums fan cry.

  “They’ll pull through, you’ll see. You gotta have faith,” Uncle Dominic says, and I want to believe him.

  See, a long time ago, before I was born, Uncle Dominic played baseball. He was in the minor leagues and played all over—Newport News, Virginia, and Greenville, North Carolina. He was invited to spring training with the Dodgers, but then something happened, and he quit baseball, and now he works for Uncle Ralphie in the store. He’s still pals with a few of the fellas, and sometimes he
has good gossip. I don’t know why anyone would trade catching balls for chopping up meat, but then it’s just one more thing I’ll probably never understand.

  Uncle Ralphie walks into the room.

  “You two kiddies think you can carry all this?” he asks us.

  “Penny’s got to carry that hair around all day,” Frankie snickers, and I smack him.

  Me-me thinks I pay too much attention to baseball and not enough to fashion. She got it into her head to give me a Toni home perm at the beginning of the summer and left the solution on too long, and now my hair looks like brown cotton wool.

  “All right, then,” Uncle Ralphie says, and he lowers his glasses to the end of his nose and goes over the list with us. “The bag with the pork loin is for Mrs. Giaquinto, and the one with the chickens is for Mrs. Wiederhorn. You know where they live, right?”

  “Sure, sure,” Frankie says.

  “This bag here with the brains goes to Mrs. Morelli.”

  Frankie rolls his eyes and says, “What? She lose hers or something?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, you think this is enough?”

  All the Italian ladies around here are crazy for strange things like calf brains and tripe, which is cow stomach, and sweetbreads, which are animal parts I don’t think anyone should be putting in their mouth. They like to fry the calf brains. Actually, it all tastes okay, as long as you don’t think too hard about what you’re eating.

  “You two are a pair of regular comedians, aren’t you?” Uncle Ralphie shakes his head. “Maybe you should go work for Jack Benny.”

  “Maybe we will,” Frankie says.

  Uncle Ralphie cuffs him lightly on the shoulder and says, “Where’d you get that smart mouth, kid?”

  Frankie says, “From you,” and we all laugh.

  “Ralphie!” Aunt Fulvia hollers from up front.

  “What now, patanella mia?” Uncle Ralphie shouts back.

  “There’s a fella up here saying he ordered a whole lamb, and I don’t have any record of it,” Aunt Fulvia says.

  Uncle Ralphie groans and slaps his forehead. “I forgot all about Mr. Leckstein’s lamb.” He gives a long-suffering sigh. “You two get moving, and tell Mrs. Giaquinto I threw in some ham hocks for free.”

  As we pass Aunt Fulvia on the way out the front door, she calls after us, “You kids make sure you get paid, you hear me?”

  We hop onto Frankie’s bicycle. It has a basket in the front for the groceries. Pop-pop backed over my bicycle at the beginning of the summer. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t run over me, too. I don’t think he should even be driving, but just try telling him that.

  The first stop is to see Mrs. Giaquinto, who we know as Ann Marie Harrison. Ann Marie used to date our cousin Benny, who’s on Uncle Angelo’s side of the family. Ann Marie and Benny would take Frankie and me to get ice cream. But then Benny went off to college last fall and Ann Marie married some other fella, and we haven’t seen her around much lately.

  I ring the doorbell, and after a moment the door opens a crack.

  “Who is it?” Ann Marie asks in a nervous voice.

  “It’s Penny and Frankie,” I say.

  The door opens wider and we can see her. She’s real pretty, with doe eyes like Elizabeth Taylor’s.

  “Hi, kids,” Ann Marie says.

  “How you doing, Ann Marie—I mean, Mrs. Giaquinto?” Frankie asks, blushing.

  “You’re getting tall, Frankie,” she says. “How’s Benny?”

  “Good. He’s studying to be an accountant, you know.”

  “Yes,” she says, and there’s something sad in her eyes.

  “Uncle Ralphie put some ham hocks in the bag,” I tell her.

  “Who you talkin’ to, Ann Marie?” a man’s voice shouts in the background.

  Ann Marie turns, and we see the purple bruise on her cheekbone. “It’s just the grocery delivery, honey.”

  Frankie’s mouth drops open, and before he can close it, the body of a huge, muscled man fills the doorway. The fella looks like a wrestler, and he’s wearing a white undershirt and his eyes are bloodshot.

  “What do you kids want?” he barks, and I can smell the whiskey on his breath.

  Frankie steps in front of me and holds up the groceries. “Delivery.”

  The fella looks us up and down, then takes the bag.

  “What’re you waitin’ for? A tip?” he growls.

  “Thanks, kids,” Ann Marie says, pressing some bills into our hands.

  He shoves her inside and slams the door shut.

  “‘What’re you waitin’ for? A tip?’” Frankie mimics angrily.

  I’m steering now; Frankie’s sitting in back. “You see her cheek?” I ask.

  Frankie doesn’t say anything, but his arms tighten around my stomach.

  Mrs. Wiederhorn’s a widow, and when she opens the door she says, “Children! How are you? Are those for me? Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll get you some lemonade.”

  “Thanks,” we say.

  It’s a small house, and every surface has a crocheted doily on it. She leads us into the kitchen, where a tired old cat stares at us from a cushion in the corner.

  “Hi there, Miss Sniff,” I say to the cat. “How old’s Miss Sniff, anyhow?”

  “Oh, very old, dear. Mr. Wiederhorn gave her to me for our fiftieth anniversary. Help yourselves,” she says, and pushes a plate of cookies toward us.

  We each take one. They’re hard as rocks.

  I politely sip my lemonade and pocket my cookie. It rubs against the lucky bean, which I always carry with me now.

  Mrs. Wiederhorn is smiling at us. She doesn’t seem to notice that she’s still wearing her nightgown and it’s lunchtime.

  “How are the cookies, dears?” she asks.

  “Real good,” I say.

  “If you’re trying to kill someone,” Frankie murmurs under his breath, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

  “What was that, Frankie?” Mrs. Wiederhorn asks with a confused look.

  “I said they’re better than my own mother’s,” he says with a bright smile. Frankie’s the best liar I know.

  “Aren’t you sweet,” she says, pleased. “Take another.”

  “We don’t want to ruin our dinner, ma’am,” Frankie says quickly.

  “Such good children,” she says, and then turns to me. “How is your father, Penny?”

  “Uh—uh,” I stammer, “good, thanks.”

  “Your father is such a lovely man,” she says. “He always brings me tomatoes from his garden.”

  Next to me Frankie groans, but I elbow him in the ribs and just say, “He sure is.”

  Everyone knows that Mrs. Wiederhorn’s been a little forgetful since her husband died. Well, a lot forgetful, I’d say, seeing as my father’s been dead for years now.

  She pays us and then offers us more cookies, but we say we have to go.

  “We got more deliveries,” Frankie tells her.

  We wait until we’re out of eyeshot of her house, and then we both throw our cookies into a bush.

  Frankie says, “She’s pazza.” Pazza is Italian for “crazy.”

  “Yeah, but she’s nice, right? I mean, the cookies and all?”

  “I guess,” he says.

  “You ever been to Mrs. Morelli’s house?” I ask as he pedals down the street.

  “Nah, but I know Johnny Ferrara. He lives next to her.”

  The Morelli house looks sort of strange, like someone started to paint it and then gave up halfway through. There’s a fence around the backyard with a sign that says BEWAR OF DOG. Looks like the Morellis can’t spell in addition to not being able to paint.

  “You got the brains?” Frankie asks as we walk to the front door.

  “Do I ever!” I say, and grin.

  The geraniums on the front porch are dead, and a chair with a broken seat leans against a post. Frankie rings the doorbell, and a dog starts barking from behind the fence. A big dog, judging from the barking.

 
“What do they need a guard dog for?” Frankie asks, looking around. “Nothing here worth stealing.”

  “Maybe we should come back later,” I say nervously.

  “Is she home or what?” Frankie says, standing on tiptoe and peering in through the window of the door. “I can’t see a thing.”

  The gate to the fence is shaking like the dog is throwing his whole weight against it. I don’t want to meet this dog.

  “Frankie,” I say, tugging his shirt, but he just ignores me and rings the bell again.

  “Hey, Mrs. Morelli! Delivery from Falucci’s!” he shouts.

  There’s a cracking sound. We turn and see the most enormous dog standing on what used to be the gate to the fence. It’s a monster of a dog—Doberman–German shepherd, maybe a little rottweiler around the face. Whatever it is, it’s mean and it starts growling when it sees Frankie and me standing there on the porch.

  “Good dog,” Frankie says as we slowly back away from the door. “See, we’re leaving.”

  For a minute, it seems like the dog is going to back down, but then his whole body goes still, the way the principal, Mr. Shoup, gets before he whacks you with the ruler.

  “Run, Frankie!” I shout.

  We run for the bicycle like our lives depend on it, which they do. Frankie jumps on, and I grab on after him, and he starts pedaling. The dog doesn’t seem to care that we’re off his property, because he takes off after us, drool frothing at his mouth. This dog’s out for blood!

  “Faster, Frankie! Faster!” I shout as the dog lunges at my feet.

  The dog is a bite away from me, and I’m thinking that the lucky bean that Uncle Dominic gave me is more of an unlucky bean when Frankie shouts, “Throw him the brains! Throw him the brains!”

  I’m still holding the bag of calf brains.

  “Here ya go, boy!” I shout, flinging the bag.

  The last thing I see before we round the corner is the dog standing in the middle of the street gobbling up Mrs. Morelli’s brains.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Man Who Can Fix a Toilet

  I’m standing on the beach, my toes squishing in the sand.

  The sky is blue, and the sun shining down is hot and bright. In front of me is the ocean, the waves rolling in, one after the other, and behind me is the boardwalk, with its rides and caramel corn and hot dogs. Overhead, gulls squawk down at me like the old Italian ladies Nonny plays cards with. All around me kids are running in and out of the shallows, dodging the waves. They shout and squeal, their cries mixing with the gulls and the crashing waves. But one voice stands out from all the others, calling to me.