playing poker. The kitchen smelled of burning. Muddie had made breakfast. She’d tried to make Elena’s fried dough, but what emerged from the pan were hard, bitter lumps instead of the airy sweet confections we were used to. Elena had gone, moving to Woonsocket to live with one of her sisters. We never got a chance to say good-bye. Da went grimly to work and came grimly home.
The social worker was a woman with tight curls and big yellow teeth that she kept flashing at us in an imitation of a smile. We stared at them, fascinated, half expecting them to leap out of her mouth and chatter on a table, just like in a cartoon. We told her how perfect a father Da was, but all we saw was teeth and we knew they would chomp us into bits no matter what we said. We were suddenly aware of Da’s old pants hanging from the towel rack in the kitchen, of my tap shoes sitting in the dish rack. The normal cheerful jumble of the household looked suddenly suspect in our eyes, too.
By the time Da came home from work and opened the door, the house was tidied up, everything put away. He closed the door and stood looking at a clean house.
“What’s wrong?”
We told him about the social worker and he sat at the table, his head in his hands.
“She asked us if we ever saw you kiss Elena,” I said. “We said no.”
“She asked us where our Bible was and we pretended that we couldn’t find it,” Jamie said.
“Do we have a Bible, Da?” Muddie asked.
“We did the best we could,” I said.
“I’m sure you did, my girl.”
“You could talk to that woman,” Muddie said. “You could explain things and tell her what a good father you are.”
“What’s the use?” Da said. “They’re against us.”
I asked the question we were all dying to ask. “Can’t you talk to Delia, Da? Can’t you make it up with her? Where is she, where did she go?”
“I don’t know, maybe she’s with those nuns of hers.” Suddenly, he grabbed all of us, reaching to gather us in. “I could never talk to Delia,” he said. “I can’t start now.”
In playground battles, the tactics are vicious and the play dirty. You can insult your opponent’s mother or his looks or his abilities with a ball and bat. You can make him cry. But if that person shows up at your door the next day, offers you an orange, and says, “Wanna play?” you go.
So we thought the fight would just go away. Then one day a letter came telling Da to show up for a court hearing before a judge.
That night I saw the light in the kitchen and I went out to see, hoping it was Delia come home. It was only Da, smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table. He held out one arm and I walked into it, and he pressed me against his side. We didn’t hug much in our family, and I leaned in, studying the way his dark hair curled against his ear. He stared down at the table and I saw the document on it, with names bold and black — official names that were foreign to me, like they didn’t belong to Da and Delia — and the words CUSTODY and HEARING.
Fear entered me then, a fear so big I didn’t think my body could contain it. Da was afraid of the courts, afraid of the officials, and he had already decided all was lost. I knew then, for the first time, that Delia was going to win.
Twenty-eight
New York City
November 1950
When the phone rang, I ran for it and then stood over it, hesitating. In my deluded brain the ring sounded like Billy’s. That’s how much I needed to talk to him.
I picked it up and just listened.
“Kit? Are you there?” It was Nate. “The newspaper, did you see it?”
“I saw it,” I said. “Do you know if…”
“He saw it.” Suddenly, I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me and Billy. I wanted him to know what he’d done to us. “He spent the night here. He saw the headline. He left. He’s gone. He’s gone for good.”
“Didn’t you explain that —”
“He wouldn’t listen. He hates me. He hates you.”
“Now, wait a minute, I can —”
“No, you can’t. You’ve lost him. Don’t you get it? All the lies you’ve told him? Why would he believe you now? He’ll never believe you.”