Chapter 4D

Martha Jane and my mother helped me walk into our apartment, where they settled me face up on the sofa and placed a wet rag over my face. Mom called the relative who lived closest to us in town, my Grandma Rose Ricci, to hurry over in their car and get me to nearby St. Joseph's Hospital. But Grandma Rose was too distraught to drive and she called my Aunt Frances, who in turn was so distraught she called my Aunt Josephine, who in turn was also so distraught she called her niece, my cousin Josephine Louise, who lived a couple of miles away in the big house next door to my Aunt Frances at the other end of Lauderdale Street. That seemed to calm my mother, who knew that Josephine Louise drove like the wind.

Within 20 minutes Josephine Louise arrived in Aunt Frances' black 1948 Dodge, the car packed to the hilt with relatives like clowns in a circus act. They rushed into our little apartment and shook the walls with their hysteria. Martha Jane, stroking my forehead and cheek with the cool wet cloth, watched calmly with me as yet another car, my aunt Josephine Sansone's red Buick, drove up and halted in the access drive behind our building, and Grandma Rose and the Ricci's and Gagliano's got out. They had not yet entered our back door when a third car, my grandfather's Oldsmobile, pulled up behind the Buick.

"My God," Martha Jane whispered incredulously. "How many more of them are there?"

I said dryly, "Nobody knows."

My distraught mother, looking toward the back door and seeing all the people, put one hand to her cheek and moaned, "Oh, lord, they'll all see my house in such a mess!"

They entered noisily, all the women moaning and wailing and my Aunt Frances swooning into a chair. Soon the place was so full, no one could walk. Aunt Frances' husband, my Uncle Johnny, coolly and sanely brought the crowd to attention. "You all remember why we're here," he said, gesturing toward me with his hat. "We gonna take him to the hospital, or we gonna stand around and faint?"

They all gaped at each other momentarily, then everyone started issuing different instructions at once. My mother and Josephine Louise edged their way to me through the panic. The two of them calmly lifted me into Josephine Louise's arms.

"Come on, Speedy," she said, carrying me with one arm around the back of my neck and the other under my knees. "While they work this out, we'll go to St. Joseph's. Follow me, Betty," she said to my still distraught mother, and she wiggled her way through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out to her car. My mom and Martha Jane followed, with Uncle Johnny almost casually in the rear, hat in hand. The last I heard from the others, they were still screaming at each other in my living room about who was going in who's car...

At St. Joseph's I was cleaned, poked, wrapped, injected, xray'd, gowned and wheeled up to a bed with a window overlooking the project a few blocks away. A doctor who looked and sounded like Joel McCrea with a Southern accent told everyone I was a sturdy kid and no great damage was done--although I would have to keep my arm in a sling for a several days to keep from stretching torn muscles around my left rib cage, and I'd have a fat cheek for a while, and I'd have to wear a thick pad on my side for a few weeks to restrain movement there, and I was warned to not strain myself by attacking any more trees.

I was in St. Joseph's for two days, strapped tightly in a corset to keep my torso immobile, and continually monitored by a nonstop parade of Italian aunts, uncles, godparents, great-aunts and uncles, great-grandmother Nifa and her two morbid sisters, cousins, near cousins, and several people I never saw before who claimed they were related. Nurses groaned and complained, shuffling people in and out of the waiting room and forced to keep count of how many people were in my room at once. I was kissed on the cheek by innumerable elderly aunts, most of whom appeared grieved as if I were dead and already laid out in my coffin instead of propped up in bed.

I was obliged to "be nice" and appreciative and, as Josephine Louise whispered to me with her luscious, red, magnificently sexy mouth close to my ear at one point, "Look as if you're in mortal pain, Speedy. These old Victorians just thrive on melodrama."

Martha Jane visited me each day, but we were hardly able to have a few words between ourselves. On the second day she had enough time alone with me. While the others were out getting coffee, we had a brief chat.

"I'll bet you just love all this attention," she said.

"Martha Jane, you know I feel so creepy around them. I get the same questions: Hi, Speedy, how are you? How old are you now, Speedy? How are you doing in school? What do you want to be when you grow up? Did it hurt bad? Was your--?"

She interrupted, touching my hand. "Now, Listen. You should be grateful all these people care so much for you. Your Grandma Rose has been so nice, they could have just sent you straight home two days ago, but your Grandma Rose is footing the whole bill so you could be more comfortable here."

"But--"

"But nothing, Speedy. You have to admit, that was very generous."

Guiltily, I conceded, "Well, I do like my Grandma Rose, she's the only one I like."

"And your poor Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny--"

I groaned and slapped my forehead. "No, not Aunt Frances!"

"Stop that, hon, I know she's hysterical and irritating, but she means well. Your daddy was her all time favorite, and so are you."

I moaned in mock dismay, "No, no, not Aunt Frances..."

"Stop, it squirt," she reprimanded gently. "They all love you, and you know it. You devil, you're just eating all this up. It's more attention than you or anybody else gets in a lifetime."

"Okay," I pouted.

"Don't say okay unless you mean it."

"Okay."

She rose and gathered her sweater around her shoulders. "I gotta go study, hon." Leaning down to me, she looked back at the door to see if anyone might be listening. She whispered, "You get well. Hear me?"

"Okay."

"Because..." She licked my ear. "I miss us."

I smiled, blushing. "Me too."

With a peck on the cheek she was gone. And just in time for the return of Aunt Frances, Uncle Johnny, Grandma Rose, Aunt Josephine, Aunt Lucille, Aunt Mary, Uncle Louie, Mom, my sister, Aunt Catherine, one of my *other* Aunt Catherine's, Aunt Yiya, Aunt Theresa, Grandpa Joe, another Aunt Josephine, Uncle Vito, Uncle Lawrence, Aunt Cecilia...

By the end of the second day I felt well enough to start getting unbearably bored again. Whenever I shifted restlessly my injured side would sting and cramp. Except for visits to the restroom and the coffee shop, Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny were a permanent fixture in the room, Uncle Johnny sighing restlessly and winking at me now and then, recognizing our mutual discomfort. The worst part of the day was when Aunt Frances began cajoling my mother into moving out of the project.

My mother protested, "But I want my children and I to have our privacy," trying to be as nice as she could about it. "And where would we stay? I wouldn't want to take rent money from all my relatives. I just can't live that way."

"But, Betty," my Aunt Frances pleaded. "You and Speedy could live with *us*."

On hearing that, I raised my eyes to Heaven. Please, Jesus. Not that.

My mother said no, it just wouldn't work. She thanked Aunt Frances. She told her she had a good relationship with my stepdad-tobe, it looked as if they were steady now, and perhaps they would marry in a year or two. I was grateful for her persistence. Not only would I not be able to bear seven days a week of Aunt Frances, but leaving the project meant leaving Martha Jane. Aunt Frances didn't let up all day, but Mom didn't give in and didn't even appear to be tempted--for which I was deeply grateful. Maybe there really was a God.

In a spare moment, when no one was looking, I found myself unable to resist the urge to stick out my tongue at Aunt Frances. I did so, briefly, about half an inch of it. And just as I did, Aunt Frances looked at me.

I withdrew my tongue immediately, but already her big round eyes had widened and her eyebrows rode halfway up her forehead.

She turned to Uncle Johnny, beside her. "Johnny, did you see what he did?"

"What'd he do, Frances?" asked Uncle Johnny, trying to keep awake.

"He stuck his tongue out at me."

Uncle Johnny's repressed laugh started out as a smirk, then he deftly transformed it into a wheeze, and then a mild cough. "Forget it, Frances. The boy don't feel well."

Three or four weeks later, when Martha Jane was with me again, my cheek had cleared but I was still wearing the heavy restraining pad at my left side, held in place by thick layers of gauze around my middle. Martha Jane turned the lights out early. I had already got into bed and was lying on my back when she turned out the last light and walked over to the bed. In her jeans and white shirt she lay down beside me and began taking off my clothes in the dark. When my shirt came off she traced the bandage with her finger.

"That's horrible what that little rat did to you."

I said stoically, William Holden-style, "I can take it."

"Sur-r-re, you can, cowboy." she said. "You sure threw a fit. I knew you had a temper, but... I had no idea it was that much of a temper."

I sat up while she removed my shirt. She unbuckled my belt and unzipped me, shoving my pants to my knees. She stood up, pulling my pants off past my feet by its legs.

"I hope you never get so mad at me that you direct that awful rage at me, Speedy."