The Cross-eyed Gypsy

Francine heard the sound as she was preparing for bed. A faint pitter-patter, more like the nocturnal scratching of a small rodent, filtered through the living room to the half-closed door of her bedroom. It was almost midnight. She went to the front door and peered through the peep hole; no one was visible in the hallway.
Tap, tap, tap. Francine looked a second time. 'Who's there?”
The security chain firmly latched, she cracked open the door. A dark-haired boy wearing feety pajamas and a somber expression was staring up at her. Francine undid the chain. Sauntering into the apartment, the toddler wrapped his arms around Francine's thighs and shouted, “Babussssshka!”
“And you are?” No reply.
Disengaging herself from the child's arms, Francine went out into the hallway. The building was absolutely still. She returned to the apartment to find the refrigerator wide open. The boy was sitting on the living room sofa munching a dill pickle. Francine reached for the pickle, but the child scowled, twisting his body away. He had a broad face and huge, brown eyes; the skin being unusually fair, the pallid complexion heightened the intensity of the eyes. “Where are your parents?” The boy hiccupped and, stuffing what remained of the pickle in his mouth, chewed at a perverse angle. “You're mother, father?”
The pickle gone, he wiped his vinegary hands on the flannel pajamas. “Babushka!”
“Babushka?” Francine repeated. Where had she heard the word before?
At Mary Mother of Mankind school where she worked, there was a lushly illustrated children's book, Baba Yaga - a Russian folk tale about an old woman, a babushka, who lived in the woods and communed with the animals.
Francine heard footsteps in the hallway. “Igor! Igor!” Mrs. Antonelli, the elderly lady who lived on the third floor, was yelling frantically. Francine went back out onto the landing. “Looking for the little boy?”
Mrs. Antonelli rushed into the apartment and, her chest heaving spasmodically, threw her arms around the child. The boy kissed the old woman on the cheek then buried his face in her faded, blue bathrobe. “I have no strength in my arms,” the old woman whispered apologetically. “Perhaps, you could help me get him back to bed.”
Lifting the child in her arms, Francine carried the boy up two flights of stairs into the old woman’s cluttered den where a single mattress had been thrown on the floor. She settled the child under the covers; as she straightened up, Igor reached out and grabbed her hair. She unballed the tiny fist, prying the fingers loose one by one, kissed the palm and turned away.
“Spahseebah.”
Francine turned to the old woman. What did he say?”
“He thanked you.”
For what?”
Mrs. Antonelli thought a moment. “He is very polite when it comes to food. Did you give him anything to eat while he was in your apartment?”
“He found a pickle in the refrigerator.”
“Well there you have it.” Mrs. Antonelli cupped the child's face in her mottled hands. “Go to sleep,” she said with mock severity. “And no more funny business!”
“Gdeh Atyets?” the little boy said.
“Your father’s working,” she replied and turned the light out.
In response to Francine's baffled expression, she noted, “A half dozen words of Russian I learned. No more no less.” Like a swaybacked horse tightly hobbled at the ankles, Mrs. Antonelli inched her way back into the kitchen and put the kettle on. A thick, gold crucifix hung from the old woman's neck. Statues of the Madonna and various saints were sprinkled through the apartment which smelled of garlic and tomato sauce. “Igor lives with his father in the apartment at the far end of the hall. Moved in the beginning of September. Come from Russia via Israel.”
Francine sat down at the kitchen table. On the chair next to hers was a brown teddy bear. One of the eyes was missing; the other hung from the socket by a single thread. The arms and torso of the toy animal were unnaturally thin, the bulk of the stuffing having collapsed into the animal's legs. Francine touched the solitary eye and it came loose altogether. She rolled the thin filament of yellow thread over in her fingers and watched it disintegrated into powdery fragments. A blind, edematous teddy bear of Russian parentage. Was the toy a metaphor for a way of life? Francine didn't think she would want to visit much less live in a country that produced such a physically challenged creature. “Where's the mother?”
Mrs. Antonelli raised a rheumatoid hand in a disparaging gesture. “A real pootan! After they'd been in Israel a few months, she ran off with a paratrooper.” The water began to boil. She poured two cups of tea and placed the sugar bowl on the table. “Since they'd already bought tickets to come to America, the husband left without her.”
“None of which explains what the boy doing in your apartment?”
“The father works at an all-night gas station. When the baby-sitter quit, he had no one to mind the child.”
“And you volunteered?”
The old woman shrugged. “How they live! A couple of folding chairs. Card table in the kitchen. No decent furniture, hardly any clothes.” She lifted the tea to her lips and blew several times before tasting. “I gave them bedroom curtains, a few towels and sheets, a spider plant.” The old woman shook several pills from a plastic bottle onto her outstretched hand. Placing one under her tongue, she washed it down with the hot tea. “Beta blockers. What a life!” She put the second pill in her mouth and took another sip. “Igor comes over after supper, watches a little television and goes to sleep. By sunrise, the father's home.”
Pointing at the plastic container, Francine said, “You're in poor health. It isn’t fair.”
“You of all people,” the old lady shot back, “should know life ain’t fair?”
Francine blushed and lowered her eyes. When the tea was done, she walked quietly back into the den. The boy was lying on his back with a thumb in his mouth, making a raucous, sucking sound that was both soothing and unnerving at the same time. A thin, blue vein coursed erratically across the underside of his chin. Francine knelt down, kissed the child and left the apartment.

Only a few years out of high school, Francine Spicuzza became a nun, joining an obscure order, the Sisters of Perpetual Devotion. The nuns lived separate from the community and supported themselves by manufacturing chocolates and jams which they sold in a monastery store. Unfortunately, even as a child Francine had a problem with chocolate; it made her skin break out.
Hives. Nettle rash. Urticaria. By whatever name, the malady raised itchy wheals on her back and chest. At first, she accepted her suffering as a form of spiritual penance, a mystical trial not unlike that of Job’s in the Old Testament. But after three years of semi-cloistered existence, of life dedicated to prayer and confectioneries, Francine asked to be transferred to an administrative position. Six months later, she left the convent altogether. There had been no crisis of faith, no spiritual, dark night of the soul. Francine returned to Rhode Island, took an apartment on Federal Hill and found work as secretary at Mary Mother of Mankind parochial school. No one ever doubted her sincerity or religious zeal. Simply stated, the chocolate did her in.
It had been jokingly suggested that God banished Francine from the convent for being an erotic - albeit, unwitting - temptress. Her body, a Minotaur’s maze of supple curves and angles, turned heads everywhere she went. The lips, too, were invitingly full with a suggestive pout. When she smiled or expressed even mild emotion, the malleable features seemed to pull at cross purposes giving her face an unpredictability that was as irresistible as it was unfathomable.

Before going to bed, Francine went to the kitchen. In a drawer, beneath a lumpy pile of dishtowels, was a gray brochure fashioned from ornate, deckled paper. For $16,000, a person could travel - air fare not included - to the Ukraine, Moldova, Saint Petersburg or the Ural Mountains and adopt a Russian child. Two months earlier, she'd contacted the non-profit, missionary group but done nothing since. Sixteen thousand dollars. Francine could work a dozen years and not save enough money to recoup the expense. Her meager salary barely covered rent and living expenses. Food, clothing, shoes, health care and entertainment - nothing came cheap. And would an agency even consider her, an unmarried woman with a marginal job?
An old maid cousin on her father's side got pregnant with donor sperm. The child - she was a teenager now - was energetic, a straight-A student and member of the debating society at school. Artificial insemination. Francine had briefly toyed with the idea. Very briefly. With her luck, the fertility clinic would match her with an escapee from Bridgewater, the state hospital for the criminally insane. Evil sperm. Deranged, psychopathic sperm torpedoed halfway up her vagina to the mouth of the cervix where, with predatory zeal, the flagellating monster would burrow, head first, into one of her unsuspecting ova. The grim thought sent waves of nausea knifing through her bowels.
A nun with The Sisters of Perpetual Devotion had done adoptions in an Eastern European country. Bulgaria or Rumania. Francine couldn't remember. The peasants, poor and uneducated dirt farmers, believed adoption was a sinister pretext. Foreigners 'bought' their children for body parts. The internal organs - kidneys, livers, hearts, bowels, spleens and lungs were harvested as organic replacements for the terminally ill. External organs such as eyes, hands, legs and ears were only slightly less valuable. In death as in life, the materially less-fortunate would benefit the rich.
Francine picked up the brochure again and held it to the light. Most of the two dozen youngsters pictured were orphans, abandoned at birth. Some were gypsies; others malnourished with glaring birth defects. In one picture, a darkly beautiful, kindergarten-aged child sat stiffly in a straight-backed chair, a cardboard sign draped around her neck. On the sign, which tilted at a crazy angle, was scrawled: Marina, age 6, Gypsy, severe cross-eyes.
But for the infirmity and languorous expression, the picture might have been comical - pathetically touching, even. A parody of the real thing. But crossed eyes were the sign of the devil. No self-respecting Slavic family would ever adopt a Gypsy child - certainly not one capable of the evil eye! Sixteen thousand dollars for a throwaway child no one wanted; a less-than-perfect creature possessed by demons. And her own kind, the Catholics, was serving as intermediaries, baby brokers! Francine tossed the brochure aside and went to draw a bath.

You of all people ...
Later that night in bed, Francine remembered Mrs. Antonelli's biting commentary, the brittle glint of consternation in her gray eyes. Earlier, as she was rinsing the teacups in the sink, Mrs. Antonelli asked, “What are your future plans?”
Since leaving the convent, Francine structured her life on the singular, guiding principal that complications were bad, routine and sameness the supreme good. “I'll stay with the school,” Francine replied. “Another ten years I'll have my pension.”
The old woman stared at her curiously, a queer smile tilting her wrinkled lips at an oblique angle. She scratched her ear and snorted through her nose, making a rather disagreeable sound. “You act like you're still married to God.”
Francine winced as though she had been soundly slapped. Mildred Antonelli grabbed Francine's wrist and held it firmly. “Sweet kid like you deserves better.” Her tone was strangely pleasant, confidential - like two girl friends having an intimate heart-to-heart. She didn't volunteer an explanation of the previous remark and Francine, still flustered and taken aback, never asked.

In the morning as she was leaving for work, Francine spotted Igor in the lobby next to a short, good looking man in his early thirties. The father had the same broad features and walnut-colored eyes. A blizzard of curly brown hair fell down below his collar in the back. When she approached, the child reached out and took Francine by the hand. The man quickly separated them. “So sorry,” he said with a thick, guttural accent and hurried the baffled boy away.
“Babushka!” Igor shouted hoarsely just before the heavy, oak door slammed shut behind her.

One Saturday in May, Francine was returning home with a bag of groceries. Three blocks from the building, she saw the Russian crossing toward her from the other side of the street. If the Russians in 3B were poor and the slutty mother ran off with an Israeli soldier, it was not Francine’s problem. She might feel sympathy - even say a few prayers - but their misfortune lay safely outside the scrupulously narrow margins of her life.
“For you I carry.” He relieved her of the bag. “I gipt you back apartment.”
Francine worked out a rough translation in her head and decided not to argue the point. “That’s very nice. Where's your son?”
“Igor wit Mrs. Antonelli. Goot woman. Very goot woman!” When they reached the apartment, he placed the bag on the kitchen table. “I say goodbye now.”
“Yes, goodbye and thank you.” He smiled and disappeared into the hallway.
Later that evening, Francine went to the Russian's apartment. The man fetched his son and followed her back downstairs. She dragged a 19-inch Sony Trinitron out of the closet. “Mrs. Antonelli tells me that you don't have a television, and it just so happens I have this nice set that no one ever uses.”
The Russian gawked at her with a muddled expression. “What means just so happens?”
“That's just an expression, an idiom. It doesn't mean anything.” She saw that the man was even more confused. “Do you have a television?”
“No television.”
“Then you take this one.”
“What for I take?”
Francine began gesticulating crudely, an impromptu, Cyrillic sign language. “For the boy.”
Only now, the Russian understood that Francine was literally giving him the television. “Why you gipt me?”
“I don't need it.”
Noticing the empty TV stand in the corner of the living room, he replied, “You have nice TV but keep in closet.” He wiped a thick glob of dust off the top of the Sony. “How long in closet you keep?”
“Two years.” Francine picked up the TV stand, carried it out the door in the direction of the stairs. Igor and his father, clutching the bulky set, trailed behind.
The only furniture in the living room of the Russian's apartment was a bean bag chair. Mrs. Antonelli came over with a roll of paper towels and bottle of Windex to supervise the cosmetic restoration. Plugged in, the reception was every bit as sharp as the day it arrived in Francine's apartment. “I am Vladimir.” The Russian extended his hand. “Is new television, no?”
“It hasn't been used very much.”
“I carry groceries and you gipt new television. Is very confusing.”
Francine shook her head violently from side to side. “No, this has nothing to do with the groceries.”
“Welcome to America,” Mrs. Antonelli quipped.
He turned to the old woman. “Is hard to understand American way.”
Francine nodded and backed slowly toward the door. “Every culture has its subtle nuances.”

The Sony Trinitron was a birthday present from Francine’s brother, Mickey. The following week, he was arrested for possession of stolen property - fourteen, large-screen televisions. All Sonys.
Francine was crushed. Mickey was no better than any of the scurrilous characters running around Federal Hill with their ‘hot’ goods - the gold jewelry and designer jeans that conveniently fell off the back of an eighteen wheeler. There were the house parties - usually at some ratty Charles Street walk up that smelled of stale beer and oregano - where people picked over a living room full of designer clothing, the manufacturer’s labels still in tact. Not that Francine was ever invited; she heard about them from friends and relatives. No one would ever think to invite Francine, the ex-nun.
“Lay down with dogs get up with fleas.” That’s what Francine used to tell Mickey when he went off to gamble and do whatever tough guys did at the clubs on Federal Hill. The morning after Mickey’s arrest, Francine called the local parish and made an appointment to meet with the priest. “What is this in regards to?” the secretary asked.
“A personal matter that requires spiritual attention.”
Later in the week she sat opposite Rather Rinaldi in the church Rectory. The faint scent of incense permeated the wood-paneled room; a huge, leather-bound volume, Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, sat on the edge of the desk. “Father, I’d like to ask a hypothetical question.”
Father Rinaldi frowned. “We don’t live in a hypothetical world,” he returned in a slightly petulant tone, “but I’ll try to help you as best I can.”
“If a person received a gift and had reason to believe that the item might be stolen ...” Francine didn’t quite know where to go with her thoughts and left the sentence dangling in midair.
The priest sat in a straight backed chair with his hands folded in his lap. A young man with dark-framed glasses and an over serious manner, he pursed his lips and squinted at a point directly over Francine’s head where the far wall and ceiling converged. “Two questions,” Father Rinaldi responded after a brief silence. “What is the nature of the gift?”
“A television.”
“What type?” he pressed.
“Is that important?” The priest only lowered his eyes and examined the back of his hands to indicate the answer was non-negotiable. “A 19-inch Sony Trinitron.”
Father Rinaldi blinked violently. “That certainly is a nice gift, hypothetical or otherwise.” He rose and, with his hands clasped behind his back, began to pace back and forth in front of Francine’s chair.
“The word ‘might’ is a bit vague. Either the expensive TV was or was not stolen.” Now he set his clear brown eyes directly on Francine, skewering her with his piercing gaze like an etymologist's bug on a pin. “Was the TV stolen?” The priest resumed his pacing, but now, instead of moving laterally, he was circling the chair. “Your answer makes all the difference in the world.”
Francine hadn’t anticipated Father Rinaldi’s persistence and was beginning to feel like someone enmeshed in an unseemly act, a crime with spiritual and ethical dimensions. The only thing missing was the 40-watt bulb dangling from an overhead electrical cord. “But you see, Father, I don’t know.”
“There’s no way you can find out?”
“No, not really.” The priest momentarily passed in his perambulations. “I strongly doubt the party concerned will tell me the truth.”
“Then it’s a moot point,” Father Rinaldi said and stopped dead in his tracks. “You can use your hypothetical 19-inch Sony Trinitron without shame or personal guilt.” “In the event the set goes on the blink,” he added as an afterthought, “I wouldn’t advise taking it to a reputable dealer for repairs.”
“No, that wouldn't be wise.”
On the way out, Francine asked about the leather-bound book. The priest put a hand on Francine’s shoulder and smiled wistfully. “A Guide for the Perplexed. Maimonides was a 12th-century Spanish Rabbi. He believed that only by becoming a slave to the a priori laws of God could a soul free himself from the temporal world.” Removing his hand from her shoulder, he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his slender nose. “An intriguing thought, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, it certainly is!” Francine thanked Father Rinaldi and left.

When Francine got home she went directly into the living room and sat down on the ottoman in front of the television. In truth, nothing had changed. She felt no special attachment to the Sony. It was a box filled with elaborate gadgetry and computer chips. Francine, who viewed so little TV, resolved to watch even less, a voluntary abstention like giving up meat during Holy Week.
The a priori laws of God. Most of the people Francine knew viewed the law as a rubber band that could be stretched many times its normal length. When the band broke, you copped a plea or, in the worse case scenario, went to jail. Only imbeciles and honest people (really one and the same) never stretched the band to see how far it would take them. Those Federal Hill types weren’t ‘perplexed by the law. They understood the law - judicial not ecclesiastical - with a broadness and clarity that would have put Maimonides to shame!

A week passed. One night, unable to sleep, Francine got out of bed and wandered into the living room. The Sony Trinitron rested on a walnut stand. She turned the television to face the wall. “There, that’s better.” She hesitated. Something else was needed. Dragging the bulky object to the opposite side of the apartment, she buried the Sony Trinitron in the hall closet under a two-foot stack of brown grocery bags.
Francine drank a cup of warm milk. She read an article in the most recent issue of the Catholic Digest about a Labrador retriever that saved the life of a little boy with a crippled leg. When the milk was finished, she put the cup in the kitchen sink, turned out the lights and went to bed. From the minute her head hit the pillow, Francine was engulfed in an utterly peaceful and restorative sleep. A blessed slumber.

In the evenings sometimes Francine went upstairs to sit with Mrs. Antonelli until the child was settled in for the night. She brought an Arthur, the Aardvark coloring book and crayons. “I saw Vladimir in the market earlier,” Francine said. “The man looked a wreck. Hardly spoke two words.”
Mrs. Antonelli, smelling faintly of Ben Gay, was putting the crayons away. “He got legal papers in the mail yesterday from his wife. She's divorcing him.”
“What grounds?”
“Desertion,” The old woman replied.
“But she ran off with an Israeli soldier.”
“Since Vladimir took the child out of the country, she's claiming he abandoned her.”
“What about Igor?”
“She doesn't care about the child. Just wants a quickie divorce so she can remarry.” From the other room came a light, musical laugh. “Someone's having pleasant dreams,” Mrs. Antonelli observed.

The following week, Vladimir was standing on the front steps of the apartment as Francine was leaving for work. His clothes were dirty and chin streaked with grease. “I am heppy man!”
“And why is that?” Francine asked.
Reaching into the pocket of his blue coveralls, he withdrew a 6-inch, rusty spring. The spring had a tight coil near the center with hooks on either end. Cupping the corroded metal in the palm of his hand, he pushed it under Francine's nose. “Is spring from rear brake shoe 99 Chevrolet. Lest night is slow to work. Boss teach me how change shoe.”
“Mechanics make good money,” Francine confirmed. “My brother, Mickey, is a mechanic.” Almost immediately, she regretted using her brother as a role model.
“Yes, today I heppy man!” He bounded up the stairs two at a time and disappeared into the building.
Vladimir's irreverent approach to the English language mystified Francine. He eliminated every bit of extraneous - and, often, essential - verbiage. Adjectives and adverbs he threw out wholesale; prepositions, connectors, participles and pronouns were intolerable luxuries. And yet, in his clumsy hands, the language assumed a poetic austerity, a dazzling freshness and clarity. Vladimir murdered the language, sodomized it. Yet, with an ingenuous and bewitching charm, he revitalized every word.
“And I verrry heppy to you!” Francine mumbled with a goofy grin. She was totally alone now with no one to hear her irreverent parody.

On Thursday, a Hispanic boy shuffled into the office of Mary Mother of Mankind elementary school. The front of his pants was soaking wet. “You peed your pants, José,” Francine said. The boy began to whimper. “Go sit over there,” She said, gesturing toward an empty bench. Dialing a number, she spoke in Spanish briefly and hung up. “Your mother will be by in a few minutes with fresh clothes.” The boy nodded and screwed his wet bottom firmly into the seat.
Fifteen minutes later, a nun in black habit stuck her head in the room. “An older woman is in the lobby. She needs to speak to you - a private matter concerning one of the children.”
“Which child?”
“Didn't recognize the name,” the sister said and went off to fetch the lady.
The door opened and Mrs. Antonelli shambled into the room. She sat down heavily in the chair beside Francine's desk. “This ain't no social call,” she said morosely. and, raising a crooked finger, pointed at her eyes. “Cataracts. The doctor's scheduled me for surgery next Friday. I'm going to be out of commission for at least a week.”
“What about Igor?” A bell rang and almost immediately there was a huge commotion in the adjacent hallway. “José, por favor,” Francine barked. The little boy jumped off the bench, closed the door with a loud bang, and the bedlam outside diminished by half. José kept looking back and forth from the old lady to Francine. It was unclear how much of the conversation he understood. Mrs. Antonelli smiled at the curly-haired boy who shrugged and studied the wet circle on the front of his pants.
The old woman began to cry, quietly with little outward display of emotion. “For myself I don't care. It’s only day surgery and the eyes will heal.” She took a Kleenex from her purse and dabbed her cheeks. “Without somebody to look after the child, everything falls apart.”
The door opened and petite, dark-skinned woman shuffled into the office. “So sorry!” She grabbed José roughly under the armpit and started whacking him energetically on the lower legs with a hand as stiff as a bristle brush. The boy howled - more from fright and embarrassment than physical pain. The woman dragged him into the hallway and shut the door soundlessly.
“Why does she hit the kid like that?”
“It’s a cultural thing. They all do it.” Francine came out from behind the desk and patted the old lady's hand. “Don't worry. I'll take Igor for the week.”
“God bless you!” Mrs. Antonelli rose to her feet. “Not that I thought for one minute you'd let me down,” she added with a paper thin smile.
As she reached for the door, Francine blurted out, “These South American children don’t swear. They bring their completed homework to school with no excuses. The parents have a reverence for education you won’t find among the inner-city, native-born students.”
“That's nice to know.” Mrs. Antonelli went out the door just as another bell sounded and the hallway erupted in bedlam.

The following week Igor came to stay. His father brought him to Francine's apartment shortly before seven. “Is saint what you are!” He handed her a plastic, grocery bag with clean underwear and went off to work.
“Is not what you are saint,” Francine mumbled under her breath. “Is what you are sexually-frustrated, burnt-out, goody-two-shoes, ex-nun. Ist very unheppy womens.” The child stared at her with a quizzical expression. Francine knelt down and kissed Igor on the cheek. “Drink?” The boy shook his head up and down. She put some juice in a cup with a straw and handed it to him. He opened his mouth as though the straw were three inches in diameter and, with ballet-like precision, draped his tender lips around the plastic tube.
At 8:30 Francine gave him a sip of milk. She made him pee, brush his teeth and brought him into the spare bedroom. “We shall read a nice story.” Francine sat next to him on the twin bed and read from a book of fairy tales. Fifteen minutes later he was sound asleep. Francine bathed, threw her nightgown on and knelt for evening prayers.
What to pray for?
Recently, she prayed a novena for a sick friend. The friend died. She asked God to keep her brother, Mickey, out of trouble. A month later, he sold a carton of food stamps to an FBI undercover agent at the Willow Tap. Then there was the neighbor with marital problems; after Francine sought divine intercession, the husband ran off and was never seen or heard from again. Only once, did she ask something for herself. “Dear God, I'm young. I have certain cravings, unmet needs.” The following week the school custodian, a disheveled man with irregular, yellow-stained teeth invited her to the Taunton race track.
In her darker moments, Francine didn't believe that people were much good. Or, more accurately, she doubted that there were enough decent people collectively to tip the balance in favor of a compassionate universe. At least, not in Rhode Island. Certainly not on Federal Hill! Her faith in God was never at issue. If prayers went unanswered (or produced frightful consequences), it reflected poorly on her own, spiritual shortcomings, not some uncooperative deity. In his inscrutable silence, God remained above reproach.
She leaned back comfortably on her heels in the growing darkness, her mind an open vessel. Half an hour passed. Nothing came to mind. She sat silently, her hands resting idly in her lap. The sun gone down, the room was drenched in total darkness. A peculiar image floated in front of her eyes: the living room of the Russian's apartment with the bean bag chair and ludicrously expensive television. Welcome to America! Finally, Francine moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Dear Lord, two things I ask,” she whispered. “Let no harm come to the Russians, and teach me to pray, again, as when I was a young girl.”
Having finished her prayers, she went to bed. An hour later she felt a pudgy finger jabbing her cheek. “Pee pee,” Igor mumbled. She took him into the bathroom, waited while he did his business then led him back to the other room.
“Do you need a drink?” He shook his head. She turned the light out and went to bed. Thump! She recognized the muffled sound of sturdy, three year-old feet hitting the ground. Igor shuffled back into the room and climbed under the covers next to her. She led him back to bed a second time but hardly crossed the threshold before the child was picking his way through the darkness to the primordial warmth of her quilted comforter. Curling up near her stomach, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and was asleep before she could decide whether or not to let him stay. Gently grabbing the hand, she tried to dislodge the thumb, but it would not budge. She held his forehead with one hand and pulled back firmly on a boney wrist no more than two inches in diameter. The rapacious sucking sound only intensified. “Poor baby.” She let go of the hand and the slurpy noise dropped away to nothing. “Poor Russian baby.” She cradled him in her arms and rocked the child until she, too, was sound asleep.
Shortly before dawn, Igor woke and, hand over fist, climbed on top of her. He gazed at Francine with a look - not so much affection, but bone-deep contentment - then lay his head down gently under her chin and went back to sleep. Lying there in the darkness with the child's sweet breath on her throat, Francine tried to remember a time in her thirty, some-odd years when she felt so totally fulfilled, blessed.
In the morning she cooked cream of wheat with raisins. Igor insisted on feeding himself, navigating the spoon toward his mouth in sweeping arcs. By eight, the father returned. “Was good boy?”
“Yes, Igor was a very good boy.” Holding his son tightly by the hand, he led the child back to their apartment.

By midweek, Mrs. Antonelli, who had been convalescing at her daughter's, called. The operation was a success; her eyes were healing nicely. She would be back in her apartment late Monday. “No hurry,” Francine said. “Take as long as you need.”
On the morning of the last day, Igor's father took some crumbled bills from his pants pocket and thrust them at her. “Is for helping me.”
Francine shook her head emphatically. “I don't want your money.”
“How to pay you?”
Francine thought a moment. “Maybe some day you can return the favor.”
The man squinted as though staring into direct sunlight. “What means return the favor?”
“You can do something nice for me.”
Vladimir's expression suddenly brightened. Abandoning his son in the doorway, he ran off and returned shortly with a Russian-English dictionary. “Pilmani. Is Russian food like dumplinks.”
“Dumplings,” Francine repeated.
“Igor love pilmani.” He smiled, a muted hopefulness tinged with sorrow. “You come join us tonight for supper. Six clock.”
Déja vu. Francine felt a lambent surge of pleasant emotions - like when, in the chalky, early morning hours, the angelic boy slumbered on her chest. She thought a moment. “I'll bring dessert.”
Vladimir held up three fingers. “You, me, baby Igor,” and hurried away.

Mrs. Antonelli came home around lunchtime, a thick, gauze pad taped over her right eye. Though only two inches square, the white pad effectively obliterated the entire right side of her head. Francine brought her up a pot of chicken escarole soup and Italian bread. “How do you feel?”
Mrs. Antonelli shrugged. “It would be obscene, against the laws of nature if I felt like a teenager.” She asked about Igor and Francine assured her everything had gone well. “Did he get up in the middle of the night and try to crawl in bed with you?”
Francine, who had been warming the soup on the range, poured the steamy broth into a bowl and cut several slices of bread. “Pretty much every night.”
Mrs. Antonelli stirred the vegetables - celery, carrots, onions, lentils - and sniffed fretfully. “You made the stock from scratch?” The comment was more like an accusation than offhand remark. Francine nodded. The old woman did not look directly at Francine but, rather, cocked her head at a sharp angle. “And what did you do, with the boy, I mean?”
“For the most part, I let him stay.” Mrs. Antonelli ate in silence. When the food was gone, Francine cleared the dishes. “Last February, I got called for jury duty.”
Like a Cyclops whose solitary eye had been pushed off-center, Mrs. Antonelli glanced briefly at Francine. “You don't say! What sort of cases?”
“Mostly civil. What mattered was that nobody in the jury pool knew each other. We were all strangers. Anonymous. Incognito.” Francine smiled darkly. “When does a person ever get the luxury to slough off their past, reinvent themselves?”
A sputtering laugh filled the room. “In the witness protection program.”
Francine reached out and touched Mrs. Antonelli on the forearm. “If you asked a mutual acquaintance about me, what would they say?”
“I thought we were talking about jury duty,” the old woman replied. She ran her fingers tentatively over the bandage to make sure the taped corners were still in tact and lowered her hands in her lap. “This conversation’s getting stranger by the minute.”
“What would they say?” Francine pressed.
“They'd say Francine was a nice girl with no luck. An ex-nun, who lives a drab and joyless life.” She cleared her throat. “And if they were decent Catholics, they might remember you in their prayers.”
“Vladimir invited me to supper tonight. At his apartment. Just the three of us.
The old woman smiled slyly as though confirming some private intimation. “So being with him is like jury duty; he has no history on you.”
“And the language barrier puts us on an equal footing.”
The old woman crooked her head more sharply to the side as though she were staring straight up through the ceiling to the gates of heaven. “And how does that make you feel?”
Francine cracked a raggedy, perverse smile. “Gloriously free from the dead weight of the past.” Though her voice remained measured, self-contained, tears dribbled down her cheeks. “No longer a failed nun.”
“You were never a failed anything,” Mrs. Antonelli said severely.
Francine cleaned up the dishes and put the rest of the soup in the refrigerator. “So who is the real Francine Spicuzza - the faint-hearted mystic who works at a parochial school or baby Igor's surrogate mother-of-the-week?”
“You are the kind-hearted soul who brought me chicken escarole.” Only now did Mrs. Antonelli lower her head and shift in her seat to face her. “Have a good time tonight with the men folk in 3B,” she said dryly, “and, for God’s sake, wear something revealing.”

The next day, Francine called the local parish and asked to speak to the priest. “What is this in regards to?” the secretary asked.
“A personal matter requiring spiritual guidance.”
Later in the afternoon, Francine was sitting opposite Father Rinaldi in the Church rectory. “Father, I have another hypothetical question.”
The priest removed his glasses and rubbed his face in what resembled a supplicating gesture. “Does this have anything to do with a 19-inch Sony Trinitron?”
“No, of course not!” Francine colored and, with a hint of embarrassment, added, “Well, not directly.”
“Ah!” The priest settled back in his chair. “As you were saying.”
“A man recently separated from his wife, comes to this country from abroad.”
“What nationality is the visitor?”
“Russian.” Buoyed by the priest’s interest in the narrative, Francine added, “The Russian wife has deserted him and run off with another man.”
Father Rinaldi rose from his chair. Head lowered, the priest began pacing the length of the room. “Did the infidelity happen in his homeland or after arriving in America?”
“Neither. In Israel.” The priest’s face clouded over, his eyes narrowing so the pupils were just barely visible. “The part about Israel doesn’t really matter,” she clarified. “It’s what comes after that’s important.”
“Yes, of course.” Father Rinaldi made a face as though he hadn’t heard properly. “So very strange! But then, every time you come to see me with a personal dilemma there’s an unusual twist.”
The intercom buzzed, but the priest ignored it. “How long did you say you and this Russian fellow -” Immediately Father Rinaldi waved a hand, canceling his own words. “I tend to forget that we’re talking in abstractions. The Russian and his unfaithful wife are imaginary characters, theoretical constructs.” The phone buzzed a second time. Father Rinaldi picked up the receiver and, after a short conversation, said, “Hold all calls. This is going to be a bit longer than I anticipated.” He turned back to Francine with a tortured smile. “Now, where were we?”