The Witch of Little Italy by Suzanne Palmieri Page B

wandered around the room, her mother’s room, and traced its features with her fingers. The dresser, the blue paisley wallpaper, the molding.
    In the nightgown, with her hair piled high and her body scrubbed, Elly felt like she should be a ghost wandering around in old Scottish ruins. A shadow at Stonehenge. A barefoot priestess lost in the mist, carrying a secret.
    The winter window grew moss as Elly fell asleep. A pebble woke her. And then a handful of pebbles. She sat up and cupped her hands together to see out of the window.
    “Liz?” She opened the window. “What are you doing here?”
    “Want to go for a walk in the winter wonderland?”
    Elly yanked on her boots and put on the coat she’d borrowed from Anthony. She climbed out the window.
    “You’re a big girl, I’m sure no one would object to you leaving out through the front door. Sheesh!”
    “You don’t know my people.” Elly dusted cold snow from the windowsill off her neck and shivered. For a moment she wanted to take down her hair and grab her hat. She fought the urge. “Where are we going?” she asked.
    “Let’s visit Georgie,” Liz suggested.
    “Who’s that? Someone else I can’t remember?”
    “You don’t remember your uncle? Shame!”
    Elly knew she knew this girl. She didn’t really know how or why, but she knew the glimmer in her eye, the spontaneous fun. It was contagious. “Uncle George is dead.”
    “I know that, silly! Let’s go to the cemetery.”
    It seemed the perfect thing to do on a cold and snowy night in the middle of a dangerous city.
    Liz knew back roads and alleyways. Elly ran next to her new, old friend. Her feet sure on the ground. Soon they were at the gates of Shady Rest next to the Botanical Gardens. “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it?”
    It was. The landscape, already quiet from its burden of heavy stones, was even more subdued from the blanket of soft white. “Come this way. Your family plot is over here.”
    “How do you know so much about my family when I don’t know anything?”
    “I can’t account for your memory loss,” Liz joked, throwing a snowball at Elly.
    “I guess not. I remembered you, though.”
    Liz ran to her and gave her a hug. “Ooh! I knew you would. What did you remember?”
    “You giving Anthony rabbit ears, down by the beach.”
    “Far Rockaway?” asked Liz.
    “I guess so. Mimi said she took me there that summer,” said Elly.
    “Yeah. We all went. It was a great week. Tons of fun.”
    “Anthony says he has pictures, too. That might help.”
    Liz stiffened. “Pictures?”
    “Yeah, why, you not photogenic or something?”
    “No, not really. Anyway … come on! Let’s say hi to George.”
    They stood outside a gated plot under a large tree. Two stones were larger than the rest.
    Margaret Green Amore
    Beloved Mother and Wife
    Born 1895–Died May 8th 1945

    Vincent Louis Amore
    Beloved Husband and Father
    Born 1894–Died May 8th 1945
    “The same day?” Elly recalled Anthony calling it The Day the Amores Died . And then Mimi made mention of “That Day” as well . For a Yalie I sure can be obtuse, thought Elly.
    “Yeah, they all died on the same day, more or less.”
    “All?”
    “Your great-aunt Bunny, her daughter Zelda Grace. You don’t know the story?”
    “No.”
    “Crazy. It’s like mythology around these parts. The Day the Amores Died. Bunny and Zelda are around here somewhere. Wanna say hi to them, too?”
    “All of them?” Elly felt very sad all of a sudden. “I think I want to go back, Liz. I’m cold.”
    “Sure. Of course. Let’s just say hi to good old George, okay?” Liz went through the gate and dusted off a smaller stone. It read :
    George Amore: Always a Child at Heart
    “Boy, did he love you, Elly.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. I hope if you remember anything, you remember playing with George.”
    Fee. Fi. Fo. Fummy …
    “But he was an old man when I was little.”
    Liz laughed. “Your Uncle George was never an old man!”
    Elly