“Don’t get too attached,” her mother, Agnes, said from the doorway. “They won’t all make it.”
And some would be dinner one day.
Gia nodded. She understood; you cleared your plate even if it turned your stomach, but she could feed them lettuce or strawberries sometimes, let them hop on the grass, keep them safe from chemicals. Animals with eyes on the sides of their heads were designed to detect danger instead of pursuing it. That was where Gia could help them. They were otherwise helpless in their box.
“Put more straw for the babies; then I need you inside.”
Her father set up folding tables next to Nonna’s old statue of the Virgin Mother and the peony bushes she’d planted when Gia had been born. The green parakeets on the phone wire hopscotched over each other, someone’s pets set free. Her brother was riding a bike in the street in lazy circles, one of the castoffs Uncle Frank had brought home from the dump, with her cousin Tommy on the back. At fifteen, Leo was already too tall for it. His knees stuck out like open car doors on either side. He slowed down long enough for Tommy to kick over an empty garbage can.
A window popped open across the street as Leo circled back toward the house, and Joseph Salerno’s mother stuck her head out, still in rollers at noon.
“Leo!” she called. “Hey, Leo!”
Leo slowed to a stop. Her father rested the folding table against his leg and turned to watch.
“Next time you fight my son, don’t hit him in the face. He couldn’t see right for a week.”
Leo smiled and waved. The window slammed shut. He was the best fighter in the neighborhood. Everyone wanted to fight him in the lot behind the rectory, even scrawny Joseph Salerno. Instead of worry lines creasing her mother’s forehead, she was smiling, shaking her head. Even her father smirked as Leo threw the bike down on the lawn. He earned straight Cs to Gia’s As and broke more things than he fixed, but their parents called him old stock, a leftover of their life on the Lower East Side, where men did pull-ups off fire escapes and got into scraps over crooked looks. Leo had been born with it even though he’d never lived there, even though they’d moved here to get away from all that. It made for good war heroes, cops, firemen, people who could stomach danger.
“How come he never has to help? He didn’t even go to church.” Neither did her father, not even on Christmas or Easter, because he’d heard too many unanswered prayers in the South Pacific. He studied instead, his GED books spread around him on the kitchen table.
“Women pray.” Her mother stepped aside in the doorway, handing Gia a peach apron. “Men move heavy things. Now come on.”
Her mother could type eighty words per minute and moved like a typewriter ribbon, light on her feet, mousy curls springing around her head. She scheduled jurors for court in Queens, but on weekends, she was always barefoot, carried cigarettes in her apron pocket, stripped the beds on Sunday morning before church and hung them to dry on the line afterward, thumbing through Reader’s Digest with a glass of milk and a cigarette for recipes she would never make. She had the same wiry build as Leo, the same blue eyes and slightly disheveled look, as if the wind had blown them around for a few minutes and suddenly stopped. That was probably why she favored Leo more and her father favored Gia. They were mirrors of each other.
Gia tucked the last rabbit into the hutch. It wavered on its gummy legs, sniffing her fingers, eyes dark under the pink lids. Gia moved him closer to his mother, nestling him in beside the others. Food rabbits shouldn’t have names, but this one was Buster.
Inside, Gia didn’t complain about pouring milk from the big container to a small one or putting sugar cubes in a bowl with a tiny spoon, even though it was ridiculous, just like ironing shirts or polishing spoons or wiping down the kitchen wallpaper after cooking fish. Women’s work stank. Polished silver wasn’t necessary for survival, not like fishing or chopping wood. But at thirteen, it was expected of her. She hated it.
“When you’re done, change into one of Lorraine’s old dresses and brush your hair. A nice dress, please. No more shorts for today.”
Gia groaned, wishing she could sit on the dock with her feet in the water and watch leaves float until she forgot about chemicals and becoming a young lady, but said nothing. One warning was enough, and she wanted to ask her father, again, if she could take the boat out by herself, so she wore the apron, poured milk, transferred sugar, and swept the kitchen without being asked before Aunt Ida and Uncle Frank pulled up in their convertible, top down, Aunt Ida’s hair tied in a yellow scarf even though they lived only two blocks away.
When it was time to change, Gia dabbed her mother’s day cream on until she looked like a wet shell, brushed her hair, bobby pinned the wisps behind each ear. Lorraine’s old seafoam frock with the white collar was tolerable even though it came down past her knees and the seam itched, but it had pockets in front. When no one was looking, she’d carry Buster around like a baby kangaroo.
Outside, Uncle Frank was going on about the new houses across the canal having Westinghouse air conditioners, washer/dryer units, and dishwashing machines so the ladies could kick their heels up all day. In the kitchen, Agnes and Aunt Ida were talking about fertilizer for African violets, clanging plates. Her father lit the barbecue, making everything smell like charcoal and lighter fluid.
It was painfully boring. Uncle Frank and Aunt Ida stirred up a kind of disgust in Gia with the way they watched everything and stored it up to gossip about later. Did you notice how the paint chips off the shutters? Or the grease on the stove? Where’s their pride? It made Gia miss the uncles she’d never met, her father’s three brothers lost at war, who used to sit on the stoop in the Lower East Side and knew everyone in the neighborhood, playing cards with real bets, letting the kids see their hands. Getting stuck with Uncle Frank and Aunt Ida instead wasn’t fair.
Gia lingered. Window light turned dust suspended in the air to gold, making Gia almost pretty in the mirror, not movie-star pretty, but more like a mer-creature who’d surfaced to see what land was all about. She hadn’t quite grown into her nose or gotten past her fear of tweezers to fix her eyebrows, but her features were sharp and symmetrical. Hazel eyes and brown hair were a good combination, according to her cousin Lorraine.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Lorraine smiled in her honeycomb dress and white headband like a magazine model on the hood of some fancy car, staring at the stars. Any pretty Gia felt evaporated. Plus she smelled like powdered sugar and warm butter from the bakery, a hint of anise from the amaretto cookies, almond paste. At seventeen, Lorraine took nursing classes and knew how to tap bubbles from an IV drip, pushed a cart of snacks and games around in the cardiac wing while the doctors joked about how she’d do the old men in just by smiling. Lorraine was perfect, but instead of being jealous, Gia adored her.
“Hey, you.” She held up a little bag. “Makeup time.”
Gia sighed as Lorraine set up shiny tubes on the desk. This was probably Agnes’s idea now that Gia was starting eighth grade, but the extra attention from Lorraine was nice. Gia sat up straight, closed her eyes for the tickle of brushes and powders over thin skin, delicate bones. A girl was a terrible thing to be most days, but Lorraine made it seem easy, even for Gia.
“Not a lot,” Gia mumbled.