By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole Page B

eat in restaurants where waiters bring her things on trays. Marcella’s words say, I’ll show you how to look after my brother , but underneath she is saying, I know you won’t look after my brother. I know you’re not good enough for him.
    Rose wants to sit down. She knows it will be one more black mark against her but how long, really, can she stay standing up? After three years of keeping company, three years of nothing better coming along, she has almost decided to marry Tony, but worries the price may be too high. Is Tony worth spending hours and days cooped up in the kitchen on the back porch of hell, listening to Marcella? Worse yet, turning into Marcella? Thoughts of getting older, getting fat, making babies, oppress Rose. When she thinks about being locked into a kitchen like this one, what she imagines is lying in a coffin, the lid nailed down on top of her.
    She sways a little: heat, exhaustion, the cramps in her legs. She steps back and lets her legs buckle, settles into a chair. Marcella doesn’t notice: she is singing to her food now, singing a song in Italian with a high sweet voice that doesn’t match Marcella at all. It’s like those songs Tony sings sometimes, when he’s drunk or happy or sad, the songs that make Rose wish she really did love him. Another memory stirs and Rose is again back in that other kitchen at home, watching Annie knead bread. Annie sang as she kneaded, clear and strong and a little shrill on the high notes, emphasizing the beat more than the melody and punching the bread down on each beat. “ Would you be free from your bur -den of sin? There’s power in the blood , power in the blood! ”
    Quickly Rose knows she has to leave; she stands up even before Marcella notices she was sitting down. “I got to go, Marcella, sorry, I’ll see you later,” she says, grabbing her purse.
    â€œWhat…where are you going? Tony’s coming over, what am I going to tell him?”
    â€œTell him…tell him I’ll see him later. Thanks for the cooking lesson, Marcella.” Rose is already out the door, flinging the words back as she runs down the steps, teetering on her heels.
    Out in the street, ninety-five degrees seems blessedly cool. Rose walks through the streets, hearing the babble of Italian voices, waiting till the sound ebbs and she hears only English again, out on the broad main streets. She looks hungrily at stores, speakeasies, movie theatres.
    A movie. That’s what she needs. She wants to get far, far away, and only the movies can take her far enough. She is a thousand miles from home, in Brooklyn, New York, where she has always wanted to be. But now she knows that even Brooklyn is not really far enough; it is full of little pockets, little holes you can fall down and find yourself back home, or someplace too much like it.
    She can’t go to a movie alone. She walks, aimlessly at first, then with some purpose, down to the candy store at Bushwick and Myrtle, just beyond the edges of Tony’s neighbourhood. It’s a tiny store spilling over with people. In the lot outside a bunch of little kids play with alleys, and there are two sagging benches laden with old men reading newspapers and muttering to each other through clouds of cigar smoke. Inside, in the dim and crowded interior, Rose can see a row of people jammed elbow-to-elbow at the counter getting sodas or egg creams. But in front of the store, the reason she’s here, is a knot of fellows who usually hang out there in the evenings after work. This being Saturday, the ones who get a half-holiday are there early, lounging around the steps, carrying on with each other and checking out the girls. One of them, Danny Ricks, who works at the Navy Yards, whistles as Rose comes down the street.
    â€œYou better watch yourself,” Rose says, slowing down and smiling at him. “A lady don’t take that kind of thing from bums like you.”
    â€œMy