LITMIR.BIZ

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of pain, the great eyes those of someone else, the mouth softer as if from much crying. He traced with his finger the line of her face, kissing it, sighing and murmuring of a past he had never known.

      As he put the picture away, his eye fell upon something in one corner of the trunk. It was a tiny jewel box of purple velvet. He had never seen it before. Its presence surprised him, for he had gone through the trunk many times. The little purple box opened when he pressed the spring lock. Inside it, nestling in a silk couch was a black cameo on a gold chain. The dim writing on a card under the silk told him what it was. ‘For Maria, married one year today. Svevo.’

      His mind worked fast as he shoved the little box into his pocket and locked the trunk. Rosa, Merry Christmas. A little gift. I bought it, Rosa. I’ve been saving up for it a long time. For you, Rosa. Merry Christmas.

      He was waiting for Rosa next morning at eight o’clock, standing at the water fountain in the hall. It was the last day of classes before Christmas vacation. He knew Rosa always got to school early. Usually he barely made the last bell, running the final two blocks to school. He was sure the nuns who passed regarded him suspiciously, despite their kindly smiles and greetings for a Merry Christmas. In his right coat pocket he felt the snug importance of his gift for Rosa.

      By eight fifteen the kids began to arrive: girls, of course, but no Rosa. He watched the electric clock on the wall. Eight thirty, and still no Rosa. He frowned with displeasure: a whole half hour spent in school, and for what? For nothing. Sister Celia, her glass eye brighter than the other, swooped downstairs from the convent quarters. Seeing him there on one foot, Arturo who was usually late, she glanced at the watch on her wrist.

      ‘Good heavens! Is my watch stopped?’

      She checked with the electric clock on the wall.

      ‘Didn’t you go home last night, Arturo?’

      ‘Sure, Sister Celia.’

      ‘You mean you deliberately arrived a half hour early this morning?’

      ‘I came to study. Behind in my algebra.’

      She smiled her doubt. ‘With Christmas vacation beginning tomorrow?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      But he knew it didn’t make sense.

      ‘Merry Christmas, Arturo.’

      ‘Ditto, Sister Celia.’

      Twenty to nine, and no Rosa. Everyone seemed to stare at him, even his brothers, who gaped as though he was in the wrong school, the wrong town.

      ‘Look who’s here!’

      ‘Beat it, punk.’ He bent over to drink some ice water.

      At ten of nine she opened the big front door. There she was, red hat, camel’s hair coat, zipper overshoes, her face, her whole body lighted up with the cold flame of the winter morning. Nearer and nearer she came, her arms draped lovingly around a great bundle of books. She nodded this way and that to friends, her smile like a melody in that hall: Rosa, president of the Holy Name Girls, everybody’s sweetheart coming nearer and nearer in little galoshes that flapped with joy, as though they loved her too.

      He tightened the grip around the jewel box. A sudden gusher of blood thundered through his throat. The vivacious sweep of her eyes centered for a fleeting moment upon his tortured ecstatic face, his mouth open, his eyes bulging as he swallowed down his excitement.

      He was speechless.

      ‘Rosa . . . I . . . here’s . . .’

      Her gaze went past him. The frown became a smile as a classmate rushed up and swept her away. They walked into the cloak room, chattering excitedly. His chest sank. Nuts. He bent over and gulped ice water. Nuts. He spat the water out, hating it, his whole mouth aching. Nuts.

      He spent the morning writing notes to Rosa, and tearing them up. Sister Celia had the class read Van Dyke’s The Other Wise Man. He sat there bored, his mind attuned to the healthier writings found in the pulps.

      But when it was Rosa’s turn to read he listened as she enunciated with a kind of reverence. Only then did the Van Dyke trash have significance. He knew it was a sin, but he had absolutely no respect for the story of the birth of the infant Jesus, the flight into Egypt, and the narrative of the child in the manger. But this line of thought was a sin.

      During the noon hour, he stalked after her; but she was never alone, always with friends. Once she looked over the shoulders of a girl as a group of them stood in a circle and saw him, as if with a prescience of being followed. He gave up, then, ashamed, and pretended to swagger down the hall. The bell rang and afternoon class began. While Sister Celia talked mysteriously of the Virgin Birth, he wrote more notes to Rosa, tearing them up and writing others. Now he realized he was unequal to the task of presenting the gift to her in person. Someone else would have to do that. The note that satisfied him was:

       Dear Rosa:

       Here is a Merry Xmas

       from

       Guess Who

      It hurt him when he realized that she would not accept the gift if she recognized the handwriting. With clumsy patience he rewrote it with his left hand, scrawling it in a wild, awkward script. But who would deliver the gift? He studied the faces of classmates around him. None of them, he realized, could possibly keep a secret. He solved the matter by raising two fingers. With the saccharine benevolence of the Christmas season, Sister Celia nodded her permission for him to leave the room. He tiptoed down the side aisle toward the cloak room.

      He recognized Rosa’s coat at once, for he was familiar with it, having touched and smelled it on similar occasions. He slipped the note inside the box and dropped the box inside the coat pocket. He embraced the coat, inhaling the fragrance. In the side pocket he found a tiny pair of kid gloves. They were well worn, the little fingers showing holes.

      Aw, jiminy: cute little holes. He kissed them tenderly. Dear little holes in the fingers. Sweet little holes. Don’t you cry, cute little holes, you just be brave and keep her fingers warm, her cunning little fingers.

      He returned to the classroom, down the side aisle to his seat, his eyes as far away from Rosa as possible, for she must not know, or ever suspect him.

      When the dismissal bell rang, he was the first out of the big front doors, running down the street. Tonight he would know if she cared at all, for tonight was the Holy Name banquet for the altar boys. Passing through town, he kept his eyes open for sight of his father, but his watchfulness was unrewarded. He knew he should have remained at school for altar boy practice, but that duty had become unbearable with his brother August behind him and the boy across from him, his partner, a miserable fourth-grade shrimp.

      Reaching home, he was astonished to find a Christmas tree, a small spruce, standing in the corner by the window in the front room. Sipping tea in the kitchen, his mother was apathetic about it.

      ‘I don’t know who it was,’ she said. ‘A man in a truck.’

      ‘What kind of a man, Mamma?’

      ‘A man.’

      ‘What kind of a truck?’

      ‘Just a truck.’

      ‘What did it say on the truck?’

      ‘I don’t know. I didn’t pay any attention.’

      He knew she was lying. He loathed her for this martyr-like acceptance of their plight. She should have thrown the tree back into the man’s face. Charity! What did they think his family was – poor? He suspected the Bledsoe family next door: Mrs Bledsoe, who wouldn’t let her Danny and Phillip play with that Bandini boy because he was (1) an Italian, (2) a Catholic, and (3) a bad boy leader of a gang of hoodlums who dumped garbage on her front porch every Hallowe’en. Well, hadn’t she sent Danny with a Thanksgiving basket last Thanksgiving, when they didn’t need it, and hadn’t Bandini ordered Danny to take it back?

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