The Cross-eyed Gypsy, Barry Rachin [read the beginning after the end novel txt] 📗

luxuries. And yet, in his clumsy hands, the language assumed a poetic austerity, a dazzling freshness and clarity. Vladimir murdered the language, sodomized it. Yet, with an ingenuous and bewitching charm, he revitalized every word.
“And I verrry heppy to you!” Francine mumbled with a goofy grin. She was totally alone now with no one to hear her irreverent parody.


On Thursday, a Hispanic boy shuffled into the office of Mary Mother of Mankind elementary school. The front of his pants was soaking wet. “You peed your pants, José,” Francine said. The boy began to whimper. “Go sit over there,” She said, gesturing toward an empty bench. Dialing a number, she spoke in Spanish briefly and hung up. “Your mother will be by in a few minutes with fresh clothes.” The boy nodded and screwed his wet bottom firmly into the seat.
Fifteen minutes later, a nun in black habit stuck her head in the room. “An older woman is in the lobby. She needs to speak to you - a private matter concerning one of the children.”
“Which child?”
“Didn't recognize the name,” the sister said and went off to fetch the lady.
The door opened and Mrs. Antonelli shambled into the room. She sat down heavily in the chair beside Francine's desk. “This ain't no social call,” she said morosely. and, raising a crooked finger, pointed at her eyes. “Cataracts. The doctor's scheduled me for surgery next Friday. I'm going to be out of commission for at least a week.”
“What about Igor?” A bell rang and almost immediately there was a huge commotion in the adjacent hallway. “José, por favor,” Francine barked. The little boy jumped off the bench, closed the door with a loud bang, and the bedlam outside diminished by half. José kept looking back and forth from the old lady to Francine. It was unclear how much of the conversation he understood. Mrs. Antonelli smiled at the curly-haired boy who shrugged and studied the wet circle on the front of his pants.
The old woman began to cry, quietly with little outward display of emotion. “For myself I don't care. It’s only day surgery and the eyes will heal.” She took a Kleenex from her purse and dabbed her cheeks. “Without somebody to look after the child, everything falls apart.”
The door opened and petite, dark-skinned woman shuffled into the office. “So sorry!” She grabbed José roughly under the armpit and started whacking him energetically on the lower legs with a hand as stiff as a bristle brush. The boy howled - more from fright and embarrassment than physical pain. The woman dragged him into the hallway and shut the door soundlessly.
“Why does she hit the kid like that?”
“It’s a cultural thing. They all do it.” Francine came out from behind the desk and patted the old lady's hand. “Don't worry. I'll take Igor for the week.”
“God bless you!” Mrs. Antonelli rose to her feet. “Not that I thought for one minute you'd let me down,” she added with a paper thin smile.
As she reached for the door, Francine blurted out, “These South American children don’t swear. They bring their completed homework to school with no excuses. The parents have a reverence for education you won’t find among the inner-city, native-born students.”
“That's nice to know.” Mrs. Antonelli went out the door just as another bell sounded and the hallway erupted in bedlam.

The following week Igor came to stay. His father brought him to Francine's apartment shortly before seven. “Is saint what you are!” He handed her a plastic, grocery bag with clean underwear and went off to work.
“Is not what you are saint,” Francine mumbled under her breath. “Is what you are sexually-frustrated, burnt-out, goody-two-shoes, ex-nun. Ist very unheppy womens.” The child stared at her with a quizzical expression. Francine knelt down and kissed Igor on the cheek. “Drink?” The boy shook his head up and down. She put some juice in a cup with a straw and handed it to him. He opened his mouth as though the straw were three inches in diameter and, with ballet-like precision, draped his tender lips around the plastic tube.
At 8:30 Francine gave him a sip of milk. She made him pee, brush his teeth and brought him into the spare bedroom. “We shall read a nice story.” Francine sat next to him on the twin bed and read from a book of fairy tales. Fifteen minutes later he was sound asleep. Francine bathed, threw her nightgown on and knelt for evening prayers.
What to pray for?
Recently, she prayed a novena for a sick friend. The friend died. She asked God to keep her brother, Mickey, out of trouble. A month later, he sold a carton of food stamps to an FBI undercover agent at the Willow Tap. Then there was the neighbor with marital problems; after Francine sought divine intercession, the husband ran off and was never seen or heard from again. Only once, did she ask something for herself. “Dear God, I'm young. I have certain cravings, unmet needs.” The following week the school custodian, a disheveled man with irregular, yellow-stained teeth invited her to the Taunton race track.
In her darker moments, Francine didn't believe that people were much good. Or, more accurately, she doubted that there were enough decent people collectively to tip the balance in favor of a compassionate universe. At least, not in Rhode Island. Certainly not on Federal Hill! Her faith in God was never at issue. If prayers went unanswered (or produced frightful consequences), it reflected poorly on her own, spiritual shortcomings, not some uncooperative deity. In his inscrutable silence, God remained above reproach.
She leaned back comfortably on her heels in the growing darkness, her mind an open vessel. Half an hour passed. Nothing came to mind. She sat silently, her hands resting idly in her lap. The sun gone down, the room was drenched in total darkness. A peculiar image floated in front of her eyes: the living room of the Russian's apartment with the bean bag chair and ludicrously expensive television. Welcome to America! Finally, Francine moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Dear Lord, two things I ask,” she whispered. “Let no harm come to the Russians, and teach me to pray, again, as when I was a young girl.”
Having finished her prayers, she went to bed. An hour later she felt a pudgy finger jabbing her cheek. “Pee pee,” Igor mumbled. She took him into the bathroom, waited while he did his business then led him back to the other room.
“Do you need a drink?” He shook his head. She turned the light out and went to bed. Thump! She recognized the muffled sound of sturdy, three year-old feet hitting the ground. Igor shuffled back into the room and climbed under the covers next to her. She led him back to bed a second time but hardly crossed the threshold before the child was picking his way through the darkness to the primordial warmth of her quilted comforter. Curling up near her stomach, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and was asleep before she could decide whether or not to let him stay. Gently grabbing the hand, she tried to dislodge the thumb, but it would not budge. She held his forehead with one hand and pulled back firmly on a boney wrist no more than two inches in diameter. The rapacious sucking sound only intensified. “Poor baby.” She let go of the hand and the slurpy noise dropped away to nothing. “Poor Russian baby.” She cradled him in her arms and rocked the child until she, too, was sound asleep.
Shortly before dawn, Igor woke and, hand over fist, climbed on top of her. He gazed at Francine with a look - not so much affection, but bone-deep contentment - then lay his head down gently under her chin and went back to sleep. Lying there in the darkness with the child's sweet breath on her throat, Francine tried to remember a time in her thirty, some-odd years when she felt so totally fulfilled, blessed.
In the morning she cooked cream of wheat with raisins. Igor insisted on feeding himself, navigating the spoon toward his mouth in sweeping arcs. By eight, the father returned. “Was good boy?”
“Yes, Igor was a very good boy.” Holding his son tightly by the hand, he led the child back to their apartment.


By midweek, Mrs. Antonelli, who had been convalescing at her daughter's, called. The operation was a success; her eyes were healing nicely. She would be back in her apartment late Monday. “No hurry,” Francine said. “Take as long as you need.”
On the morning of the last day, Igor's father took some crumbled bills from his pants pocket and thrust them at her. “Is for helping me.”
Francine shook her head emphatically. “I don't want your money.”
“How to pay you?”
Francine thought a moment. “Maybe some day you can return the favor.”
The man squinted as though staring into direct sunlight. “What means return the favor?”
“You can do something nice for me.”
Vladimir's expression suddenly brightened. Abandoning his son in the doorway, he ran off and returned shortly with a Russian-English dictionary. “Pilmani. Is Russian food like dumplinks.”
“Dumplings,” Francine repeated.
“Igor love pilmani.” He smiled, a muted hopefulness tinged with sorrow. “You come join us tonight for supper. Six clock.”
Déja vu. Francine felt a lambent surge of pleasant emotions - like when, in the chalky, early morning hours, the angelic boy slumbered on her chest. She thought a moment. “I'll bring dessert.”
Vladimir held up three fingers. “You, me, baby Igor,” and hurried away.

Mrs. Antonelli came home around lunchtime, a thick, gauze pad taped over her right eye. Though only two inches square, the white pad effectively obliterated the entire right side of her head. Francine brought her up a pot of chicken escarole soup and Italian bread. “How do you feel?”
Mrs. Antonelli shrugged. “It would be obscene, against the laws of nature if I felt like a teenager.” She asked about Igor and Francine assured her everything had gone well. “Did he get up in the middle of the night and try to crawl in bed with you?”
Francine, who had been warming the soup on the range, poured the steamy broth into a bowl and cut several slices of bread. “Pretty much every night.”
Mrs. Antonelli stirred the vegetables - celery, carrots, onions, lentils - and sniffed fretfully. “You made the stock from scratch?” The comment was more like an accusation than offhand remark. Francine nodded. The old woman did not look directly at Francine but, rather, cocked her head at a sharp angle. “And what did you do, with the boy, I mean?”
“For the most part, I let him stay.” Mrs. Antonelli ate in silence. When the food was gone, Francine cleared the dishes. “Last February, I got called for jury duty.”
Like a Cyclops whose solitary eye had been pushed off-center, Mrs. Antonelli glanced briefly at Francine. “You don't say! What sort of cases?”
“Mostly civil. What mattered was that nobody in the jury pool knew each other. We were all strangers. Anonymous. Incognito.” Francine smiled darkly. “When does a person ever get the luxury to slough off their past, reinvent themselves?”
A sputtering laugh filled the room. “In the witness protection program.”
Francine reached out and touched Mrs. Antonelli on the forearm. “If you asked a mutual acquaintance about me, what would they say?”
“I thought we were talking about jury duty,” the old woman replied. She ran her fingers tentatively over the bandage to make sure the taped corners were still in tact and lowered her hands in her lap. “This conversation’s