ChapterTwenty-Four: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

I swear Marie’s house looks as if it has been ransacked by robbers. Crap was everywhere. Laundry lined her living room table and I never could find a place to sit on her couch because there were always boxes on it. Newspapers were stacked up against her hallway walls. As we sat on her bed sipping cokes, I asked if her mother ever put anything away. “Never,” she said, “she leaves the stuff out hoping one of us will put it away, but we never do.”
Marie has three older brothers; way older, like twenty years older. Marie is the youngest, her mother’s little accident. Her housekeeping skills are just like her mother’s. Crap lines her bedroom floor; dirty clothing, shoes and books are scattered together everywhere. I always feel as if I should start cleaning up. My mother would have a real freak-out if she came home and found my room looking like Marie’s. I mean, if I forget to wash the dishes at night, I find them the next morning all stacked in the middle of my room. I could just imagine what she would do if she came home and found my crap littered all over the apartment!
Sitting there on Marie’s bed, drinking our cokes and talking about the happenings at school, I realized her bedroom seemed to be locked in time. Still the same pink bedspread on her bed, the same pink and blue curtains, and the same stuffed animals that lined her walls, one teddy bear with an ear torn off, a stuffed rabbit with an eye missing, and a black and white stuffed kitten that I had given her on her seven birthday. They were all still there in between her two baby dolls. Half listening to her go on about how she thought being class president would be a lot of fun and she was hoping to really make a difference, I picked up the stuffed kitty and started poking at it. What influence, I thought, would she have on the cafeteria menu to control the grease content? Could she tell the nuns to stop being so mean, and could she please ask the janitor to please use a scented air fresher instead of just bleach to clean the bathrooms? I mean, what issues do a bunch of fifteen year olds have besides being sent to an all girls high-school? Without realizing it, I had torn one of the stuffed animal’s legs. I looked over at Marie.
“You know, Gianna, not all of us have so much anger as you do,” she said, taking the stuffed animal away from me and placing it back between her baby dolls.
“What anger? I am just stating the facts. High-school sucks, especially in an all- girl’s high-school!”
She quickly changed the subject. I sat there for a while listening to her parakeet chirp away. I never understood her fondness for the birds. To me, they should be set free, not caged up. Once when we were in second grade I let out one of her parakeets to fly around her room. She had gone to get us some cokes and while she was gone I let the thing out. It flew around her room for awhile and then it hit her bedroom widow and dropped to the ground. Before I could scoop the damn thing up and stick it back into its cage, hoping that Marie would not notice it lying on its side and not chirping until I left, she walked in on me leaning over the thing. She looked at me and then at her bird on the floor—thank god the thing was not dead only stunned. She gathered it up in her hands and blew on his face to wake him up and I started to cry thinking I had killed her bird and then crying out of relief that I had not killed her bird when I saw its wings start to flutter. Marie put it back in its cage and then began to sip at her coke and politely asked me never to let her bird out again.
That was Marie – she never yells, never says anything mean. Throughout our eight years of friendship she has always tried to understand me, or at least pretend to understand. I had recently started wearing safety pins in my ears and black, rubber bracelets mixed with the cheap fake silver ones I had gotten at the Indian shop. My hair was cut short and shaved in the back and, yes, my ‘tail’ was dyed blonde. Even now, with my crazy look and new-found attitude, she was still my friend.
How Marie and I have ever stayed friends though all these years I don’t really know. I mean, last year we hung out more because we both were on the softball team. She asked me why I hadn’t joined the softball team at St. Scholastica. I asked her if she had seen the girls that join the softball team –all upper classmen who look mean and bitchy. Plus, I didn’t really want to play softball anymore. I only played at Bethesda because there was nothing better to do during recess.
Maybe we stay friends because we have a history together. Familiar things, like how her mom would make us Swedish pancakes every Sunday after church, sprinkling just enough powdered sugar on top of them, letting Marie and I eat as much as we wanted. Or how we were forced to go to Sunday school – but at least we had each other for company, and how we both despised Mrs. Rough, our fourth grade teacher who made us spell out words in front of the classroom. And how we both enjoyed walking though Indian Boundary, pretending we were Indians on our way home, hunting for rocks and sticks; ending our long journey of four blocks at the Baskin Robbins on the corner of Jarvis and Western. And then we’d order milkshakes, even in the middle of winter, drinking them so fast that we would get a brain freeze! I always ordered a Mint-chocolate chip and Marie always got a chocolate one.
“Hey Gianna,” Marie says out of the blue, “why don’t you come over Sunday after church for some pancakes—like old times?”
“Marie, I haven’t been to church since Christmas.”
“So, it should be fun, maybe we will see the Mueller boys!”
“Fine, but your mom better let me eat as many pancakes as I want for me having to get up so early.”
“Deal.”
***
Sometimes I feel so guilty because I had made “the promise” to Pastor Thomas when I was confirmed that I would never miss a Sunday of church. Come on, I didn’t know what I was saying. I was only nine. Plus, I only said it because I knew that if I flunked out of confirmation class, my mother would have really sent me away! She wanted to have a big party after I was confirmed. Was it really a lie that I had told in order to appease my mother and not flunk out of my spiritual awaking at nine or was it the simple need to save my soul from eternal damnation? You betcha, I never intended to go to church every Sunday—I only said it to get the money at my party.
As I was opening up my front door I started thinking how I used to have a crush on the older Mueller boy who was now attending Luther North. When I was in the sixth grade and he was in eighth grade he asked me to come sit on his lap and I started to cry. I was still mad at myself for starting to cry in front of him. Why I had done that? I headed to my bedroom, thinking I needed to ask Marie why I had started to cry because she would know. And then I heard my sister crying.
Anna was sitting on the couch sobbing. The apartment was dark and the smell of burnt coffee was coming from the kitchen. Someone had forgotten to turn the coffee pot off again—Mother! Before I could say anything Anna rushed over to me and hugged me for dear life.
“Get off.” I snapped, pushing her off me as I dropped my back-pack to the living room floor.
“Nanna was in a car accident and Mom and Dad are at the hospital!”
“What?” And before I could say anything the phone started ringing.
I ran to the kitchen and picked up the phone. It was my mother crying hysterically and talking at the same time. I could not understand a word she was saying—something about Nanna having to stay in the hospital overnight because the doctors needed to run some more tests.
“Is she OK?” I cried through my own tears, which were running down my cheeks.
“Yes,” my mother squeaked, “but I need you to call all the relatives to let them know.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
God, I hated calling people on the phone. I hated being the bearer of bad news.
“Why me, why can’t you do it?”
“Because,” she said through clenched teeth, “I am at the god-damn hospital and the phone book is at home.”
“Fine,” I said, hanging up the phone on her.
She called back two seconds later and started screaming at me.
“Don’t you ever hang up on me again if you know what is good for you.”
“Whatever,” I shot back.
“Don’t you whatever me.”
In the back ground I heard my father tell my mother to stop yelling at me because everyone in the waiting room was staring at her on the phone. Then she hung up on me.
“Bitch,” I said, and proceeded to curse her out as I went to look for her address book that had all the relatives’ phone numbers in it. How I hated my mother at that moment in time. All I wanted to do was go to the hospital and be with my Nanna.
“Dear God,” I whispered as I ransacked my mother’s drawers looking for her address book, “please let my Nanna be OK.”
I found the damn thing in the bathroom under one of her Harlequin romance novels.
Taking a seat in the kitchen, I started dialing numbers. I started with the A’s. Anna kept crying that Nanna was going to die. I told her to shut the f-up. Whereupon she yelled back that she was going to tell on me that I swore at her. I was yelling a bunch of curse words at her as I was dialing the first number in my mother’s phone book, which was my Nanna’s cousin. She answered right when I told my sister to shut the f-up. Thank goodness the distant cousin is a bit deaf and did not recognize my voice and hung up on me, thinking I was some prank caller. Before I called her back, I stomped in the living and slapped my sister across the head and told her shut up or else. She kicked out at me and I slapped at her again, missing her head and landing my hand against the lamp. It went crashing to the floor.
“You are in so much trouble,” she yelled as she ran to her room, locking it behind her.
“Whatever! Come out of there and I am going to beat the crap out of you,” I yelled as I went back to the phone and bypassed all the A’s, and just started calling the closet relatives.
The problem was that in the midst of my mother’s hysterics she forgot to give me any details on my Nanna’s condition. For instance, my Aunt Stella asked if Nanna was seriously hurt. “I dunno, ” I replied. And then calling my Uncle Leo, he asked what hospital she was in. “I dunno.” And then getting hold of my Aunt Connie in Florida, she asked how long Nanna was going to be in the hospital. “I dunno.” And finally when calling my Papa in Palm Springs, he shouted, “What the hell DO you know?”
“All I know,” I said through tears, “is that I was told by my mother to call everyone and tell them that Nanna was in a car accident and that she is in the hospital.” Whereupon my grandfather responded, “God don’t, she is going to need a new car and I’m not paying for it.” He then he hung up on me.
And then I heard the front door open.
**