Many of us, mostly the boys, had felt the ruler across our knuckles, but never would one of us have thought of not allowing Sister to bring her discipline down on us.

  It was clear that Rosalinda was not going to let Sister touch her with that ruler. She moved quickly past Jimmy and out the door, and for Jimmy’s part in it, his long leg stretched out in time to trip Sister. She had to catch herself as she stumbled over Jimmy’s extended foot.

  Then out the door went Sister Mary Sebastian, followed by Jimmy, and me, and the rest of the class. The pursuit was on, and for a moment it looked like Rosalinda was going to run into the girls’ bathroom, which would have been a dead end for her; but at the last second, she turned into the boys’ bathroom. Sister Mary Sebastian screeched to a halt, turned, and realized we were all behind her.

  “Get back into that classroom! All of you.” And then after another moment of staring at the door, she said, “Vinny go in there and get her.”

  Jimmy pulled me forward and pushed me ahead. The rest of the class huddled at the doorway of the classroom. I went in to find Rosalinda against the wall, wide-eyed, staring at the urinals.

  “You got to come out.”

  “No. I can’t let her hit me. My father said you don’t let anyone hit you.”

  “But you can’t be in the boys’ bathroom.” As soon as I said it, I realized I wasn’t helping. And then it came to me. “I’ll be right back.”

  I came out and said, “Sister, can I take Rosalinda down to Mother’s Superior’s office?”

  Sister Mary Sebastian looked at me and then back to the classroom door where the other students were still lingering. “Yes, Vinny. You do that, and I’ll meet you down there. The rest of you get back into that classroom and begin writing the times tables—twenty times. And do not be out of your seats when I return.” She ushered them all back into the room.

  I escorted Rosalinda out of the boys’ bathroom and quickly down the steps and across the hall to Mother Superior’s office. I sat with her outside the office until Sister Mary Sebastian joined us. She moved right past us and into the office. Rosalinda and I sat in silence until Sister returned. “Your mother is on her way. Vinny, come back with me to class.”

  I left her then, sitting by herself in this new school, where she knew hardly anyone, not understanding why she was in trouble, why it was wrong to feel bad about seeing a boy’s head being banged against a blackboard, why it was wrong to not allow someone to hit her.

  Rosalinda wasn’t in school Thursday or Friday.

  First thing on Saturday morning I had to go to the rectory. Jimmy was there, too. Father Spagnolli made it clear that we were not to speak. I was to clean the vessels. “ . . . and, they better sparkle, Mr. Rutigliano.” Jimmy was to go with Father to work in his office.

  Around ten, I took a break and went outside into the courtyard between the rectory and the convent. There was Rosalinda bringing a bucket of water out of the back door and emptying it.

  “Rosalinda? Rosalinda.”

  “What are you doing here, Vinny?”

  I hesitated to say I was cleaning in the rectory, and she shrugged and started to move toward the door. “No, don’t go. I got in trouble and I have to polish the vessels—the chalices, in the rectory.”

  “Oh, no, because of me. Vinny, I’m so sorry.”

  “No, no, because Jimmy and I were, were, ah, talking during a mass.”

  “Oh.”

  “What are you doing here, Rosalinda?”

  “Cleaning the floors—every Saturday for a month, for not obeying Sister Mary Sebastian.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Vinny. You helped me.”

  I could see in her face the embarrassment coming back from being in the boys’ bathroom. “I guess you never thought you would end up trapped in a boys’ bathroom.”

  That is the day Rosalinda and I started smiling at each other.

  We remained friendly for the next few years, but it wasn’t until the end of eighth grade when I realized that I wouldn’t be seeing Rosalinda anymore that I understood how much I liked her. I was going to St. Raymond’s High School, and she was going in the opposite direction to Monroe High School. She said her parents couldn’t afford to send her to Catholic school anymore, but she was relieved because maybe there would be more of her kind in the public school.

  “More girls?”

  “No silly, more Puerto Ricans.”

  I asked if I could see her over the summer, but she said her family went back to Puerto Rico in the summer to visit her grandparents.

  “I thought you were from Florida.”

  “Sister didn’t want to announce that I came from Puerto Rico.” She shrugged.

  “Oh.” That was all I managed to say. What I wanted to ask was, “what was the big deal?” but that was forgotten as she kissed me on the cheek and ended our time together. “Bye, Vinny.”

  My family never went anywhere, but to church and Nona’s on Sunday afternoons. I had to work in the grocery store all summer to help with tuition. I thought about Rosalinda a lot, how brave she was, but I never thought about Rosalinda’s life.

  Jimmy went to the same school as Rosalinda that fall, and he stopped being an altar boy, so I didn’t see him either. I heard he dropped out of school by the end of that year. It wasn’t until the end of senior year that the three of us would meet up in the same place again.

  My buddies and I decided to go to the dance at the Park Chester Center to hear a band, although today, I couldn’t even tell you who they were. We took the bus there and lots of people showed up to see these guys play. All these years later I still remember that night so well. I remember they were a good dance band, not because I danced, but because by then I liked to watch the opposite sex move. And, who I saw moving to the music was Rosalinda.

  After the girls danced together to a song they liked, they spread out again to the sides of the room and the boys approached them as a more intimate song began to play. Rosalinda was standing near two other girls. A guy walked toward all of them, just ahead of me, and I heard him ask Rosalinda to dance. The other girls jumped him. “You don’t want no spic wrapping her arms around you. We’ll dance with you front and back.”

  Rosalinda quickly turned away and headed to the door. I followed her out through the tangle of people reentering the dance floor. Outside she ran into Jimmy. He was hanging with some of his buddies, and he was looking pretty wasted. The three of us went off for a walk, reconnecting through our experiences beginning in sixth grade. “That crazy nun was scrambling my brains. You were one tough girl to challenge her.” Jimmy laughed. Then we shook our heads about the punishments at the rectory and convent that we were obligated to complete.

  After the dance, Rosalinda and I talked for a long time. Was it possible my sixth-grade crush could be my girlfriend? I asked her if she was going to college. “You live in a bubble Vinny, a nice shiny bubble, but you don’t see nothing. I can’t go to college, I’ve got to work, to help my parents.”

  Later that night I went up the avenue to The Hole, and planned on drinking myself silly. Who should I run into, but Jimmy again. He just added to my misery. “You’re one naive fucker.” He chuckled. “You thought you had Rosalinda all signed up. You should have gotten what you could have when you had the chance.” The rest of the night was on me, and he easily drank me under the table.

  Soon after, I was glad to leave for college. College was another set of rituals, and I managed my way through them, although I wasn’t sure why I was getting a business degree and going along with the plan to take the CPA test. I had no real passion for it.

  In my senior year at Hartford University school officials came to my dorm one night to tell me I had to go home. My father had a heart attack. At his funeral mass Jimmy greeted me in the vestibule of the church. He told me his father had also died and that made him take a good look at his life. He realized that he was on his father’s path to be a drunken Irishman. Losing his dad had called him off that path and back to how we had been brought up with religious rituals. I couldn’t believe it. He had cleaned up his act. He told me he had passed the high school equivalency, and he was going away. Jimmy was going into the seminary to study for the priesthood.

  He smiled. “Every Irish family has to have a priest.”

  I looked around the church and many memories flooded in. I looked around the church and hoped Rosalinda would appear, but she didn’t. I asked Jimmy if he knew anything about her, but he said there was no word. I wanted to apologize to her for assuming I understood her life, and I must admit, anything about life at all.

  At the end of the mass Jimmy came over and handed me a medal of St. Jude Thaddeus. “What’s this for?”

  “Lost causes.” Jimmy walked back up the aisle as if he was heading home.

  IT WAS FIFTEEN years later when the letter from St. Clare’s Elementary School arrived and my wife Fran asked me if I was considering going to the reunion celebrating the fifty-year jubilee for the school. My first answer was absolutely not. Why would I go back there? Fran and I lived in Connecticut with our three-year-old twin girls, and this was where our life was now.

  About a week later my younger brother, Michael, called and said he would consider going, if I went with him. Fran gave me a hard time then. “Oh sure, go with your brother, but you wouldn’t take me and show off your beautiful wife.”

  “It’s grade school—there isn’t anything from then I stayed connected to—why would I want to go back there?”

  Then the next letter came informing me that they would be honoring classmates who were lost to war, and they were going to have a special posthumous plaque for my older brother, Anthony, for his valor in Vietnam.

  Michael called me. “I feel like we really have to go, for Mom and Dad.”

  THE FIRST PERSON I met at the reunion, which seemed right to me, was Father JT Brennan. “Jimmy. Ah, sorry, that would be Father Brennan.” He pulled me into a hug and all the tension was gone. “What’s the “T”?

  “James Thomas.”

  “Are you here at St. Clare’s?

  “No, I’m at St. John’s on 123rd Street.”

  “Tough area.”

  “Good parish to work with children.”

  I could see that Jimmy had found what really felt right to him. Michael and I walked around and I saw a woman who I recognized, but couldn’t place her name. Yet, I knew she was probably from my class.

  She smiled and walked over to me. “Hello Vinny.”

  “Lydia?” She certainly wasn’t greasy Lydia anymore. She was a totally put together woman, who told me she ran a company, Maids in a Row, and how she went about creating it. She now has twenty-seven employees, with twenty-one maids working in high-end client’s homes.

  “Enough about me, what do you do Vinny?”

  “CPA.”

  “Family?”

  “Oh, yes, a great wife, Fran, and twins—little girls.”

  I felt awkward. Was I supposed to pontificate about my life? I was glad they started the ceremony for Anthony and the other students who had died. After Anthony went into the service my parents were happy to have me go to college. By the time Michael came of age the war had passed. I could tell the ceremony distressed Michael, and I was about to suggest we leave when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Rosalinda.”

  “Linda, now. How are you Vinny?”

  “Good. CPA, married and have twins.”

  “Oh my, a resume.”

  “Oh, sorry, I get it. So, tell me Linda, why the name change? I always wondered about your unique name.”

  She told me about her business The Linda Angels. She was an RN Practitioner who brought nurses into the homes of people with chronic diseases.

  “Why use Linda?”

  “I was originally named after a nurse that my mother said saved my life when I was born. The name Linda has origins that mean soft and tender, and even beautiful. I love being able to help people through nursing in their own home.”

  I just wanted to continue to talk with her. You could see the joy she had in her life. She told me about her husband, Tony Rodriquez, and how they worked together.

  Did I have anything to contribute? My classmates were living full compassionate lives, but I was as boring and cynical as I’d always been. What was there to believe in? Some people turn their lives around and some stay buried in the blind faith they were brought up in. I knew I shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have looked back.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sunday

  VIVIANA COULD HARDLY wait to get home and show Kathleen the ring, the perfect ring.

  Commitment but no engagement. They’d both lived through so much. Happiness was sometimes scarier than despair. The potential for loss was always a moment away. Kathleen’s reaction reminded Viviana of that. “You’ll get married. You’re a traditional woman. The business will fail.”

  “Have you forgotten what we’ve already lived through? You make me mad right now—you can’t be happy for me? You can’t believe enough in us to know that none of this happens without you.

  “You think Milo has had an easy life, and will convince me to give up the shop, maybe even my writing. Is that what you think? Trust me, I know the true Milo, and he knows my commitment to us—you and me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not that. It’s my sisters. It’s my lies. I never told them when I was in Ireland why I left my nanny position. I’m afraid it is going to come up again. Yes, I’m always afraid of that.” She shivered. “Of course, you and Milo are a wonderful couple.”

  “You have to talk with at least Catherine. She won’t desert you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re still living in that past as if our life isn’t real—it’s real. You are a successful business woman. The shop even won best town business two years in a row.”

  “We have to get ready to go to the airport.” Kathleen was always ready to walk away from a difficult conversation.

  Airport Arrival Terminal 5—Baggage

  “THERE THEY ARE.” Kathleen maneuvered her way through the people claiming luggage, with Milo and Viviana following close behind. Suddenly she stopped short.

  Eileen swung a bag off the luggage belt and called out. “Our darling Kathleen!”

  Hugs ensued, but as Kathleen pulled back, she whispered, “Your hair.” She looked from one sister to the other. Each had a modern haircut, Eileen’s with wispy bangs and her wavy hair flowing just above her shoulders, while Catherine’s was shorter and sassy, parted to the side and framing her face. Viviana caught how Kathleen reached up and held her braid that sat off the right side of her head and twisted down to her waist. Hadn’t they all had the same hair for all their lives? What was going on?

  Once settled in the car the three sisters spoke over each other with their strong Irish brogues. Milo and Viviana exchanged smiles, as they could barely understand the conversation. At one point, Viviana looked over her shoulder to where Kathleen was sitting behind Milo. She noticed how she was again holding her braid and wondered if Kathleen even realized it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Monday (morning)

  KATHLEEN OFTEN HAD waves of thoughts about why she had to come to America. Why did her parents choose her? Most times she pushed the thoughts down with a scolding, Why does it matter?

  This visit from her sisters stirred it all up again, and it was gnawing at her insides. She came out of her room to sit in the living room. She could hear the soft tapping of Viviana’s typing on her computer, and once in a while Viviana’s muffled voice reading aloud a section of what she had written. Both were soothing sounds to her.

  She sat back on the couch and closed her eyes.

  Then Viviana put on some classical music, and Kathleen knew she was deep into the story she was working on and the music worked to surround and protect her from any other distractions. Kathleen sat up and shook off her grogginess, but in that motion a memory came flooding in.

  Mum came into the room where we slept, Catherine and I on one bed and across from us Eileen. Mum always called each of us “my sweet lass” and that morning when I opened my eyes, she was sitting on the edge of Eileen’s bed, but Eileen was already up and gone from the room. Catherine was still soundly sleeping, curled up facing the wall as she often did with her bum pushing into the side of my back. “Kathleen, my sweet lass, you know you are a very smart one and Dada and I need your help.” She remembered now still feeling groggy, and trying to wake up, so she could hear what she would get to do. Catherine fed the chickens and gathered the eggs, and Eileen took care of the baby and helped Mum cook, and all she did was go down to the pub to encourage Dada to come home.

  The rest was a blur in her memory, but it had to do with a very special way that she could help. She would go to America and take care of three little lasses. Their Mum needed help. She would get to go on a ship, go across the ocean, and see beautiful new places. The lilt in her mother’s voice was positive, but her eyes were so sad.

  Kathleen pressed the palms of her hands deep into her eye sockets. Why me? She had never questioned her parents.

  Suddenly Viviana was standing in front of her. “Are you okay?”

  “Must have fallen asleep and was having a bad dream.” Kathleen was out of breath. Her entire body tensed. But she knew that Viviana most certainly thought the dream was about when she was a nanny, not the journey that brought her there. “I’m good. I’m sure they’ll be up soon, probably adjusting to the time change. I’ll go knock on their door and then start some tea.”

  “They’re already up and outside. They’re taking a walk down to the pond. We were waiting for you to get up. I didn’t realize you were awake and here in the living room.”

  “Well, let the activities begin.” Kathleen got up from the couch and scurried into the kitchen.

  Monday (night)

  “EVERYTHING WENT FINE today. Kim and Mei did a great job. The shop looked wonderful. What is bugging you?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I’ll just be glad when they’re back on the plane.”

 

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