Draft ANGEL

ONE

The White Bird

 

Brother Anthony looked up into the broad expanse of sky above the churchyard, framed by the two soaring steeples of the church and the neighboring school building. There he caught sight of what appeared to be a perfectly white pigeon. For a moment he wondered if it might even be a dove. It seemed too beautiful to be an ordinary pigeon.

The bird glided effortlessly through the air, tracing graceful circles between the towering brick buildings. It soared so high that it nearly disappeared from view before swooping almost to the ground and then rising skyward again. For several moments it seemed to dance with a joy all its own.

It vanished briefly behind the tall brick wall separating the churchyard from Johnson Avenue. As he watched, Brother Anthony found himself wondering whether there might be something extraordinary about the bird, as though it somehow embodied a soul finally set free. The thought lingered only for a moment before he smiled to himself, recognizing how easily grief could give rise to such sentimental imaginings.

The bird reappeared, circling high between the church's twin steeples before diving gracefully toward the earth once again. It landed nearby, paused almost thoughtfully, then took a few unhurried steps in the brother's direction. With a sudden flutter of its wings, it lifted into the air, climbed effortlessly into the morning sky, and disappeared once more beyond the brick wall.

Brother Anthony remained where he was, gazing upward, half expecting the bird to return. It never did. Somehow, he sensed that a creature so free could never remain in one place for very long.

As he stood quietly in the churchyard, he realized that the bird's graceful dance through the morning sky had somehow given expression to the sorrow and hope that now filled his heart.

 

TWO

Friars Max and Anthony

 

Friar Maximilian Mary Bernwinkler, OFM Conv., a somewhat timid yet hard-working fifty-nine-year-old Franciscan priest, was known to most people simply as Friar Max. By 1995, he had been pastor of Most Holy Trinity Church in Williamsburg for seven years. The people of the parish loved him greatly. He was dedicated to his ministry, a powerful preacher, a reverent presider at Mass, a genuine “people person,” and truly a gentle soul.

Friar Max was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Before entering the Franciscans and taking a religious name, as was customary in the 1950s, he was known to family and friends as Tommy. His earliest experience of the Catholic faith was instilled in him at St. Joseph Monastery in Irvington, West Baltimore. “The Monastery,” as it was locally known, was a historic church administered by the priests and brothers of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, commonly known as the Passionists.

Irvington was a neighborhood of tree-lined streets, single-family houses, and row homes, populated largely by stable, multigenerational blue-collar and middle-class families. The Monastery and its religious, social, and cultural life were central to many of the Catholic families who lived there. So strong was that parish identity that many residents would simply say they were from “the Monastery” before saying they were “from Irvington.”

Tommy carried that Catholic identity throughout his early years, including his time as a student at downtown Baltimore’s Calvert Hall College, a high school conducted by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, from which he proudly graduated in 1954.

Friar Anthony Mary Abruzzo, OFM Conv., was born the same year as Max and raised in Lackawanna, New York. Before entering the Franciscans and taking his religious name, he was known to family and friends as Vinny. After his initial years in the Order, and throughout most of his active ministry, he would come to be known simply as Brother Anthony. His home parish was St. Anthony of Padua, a proud Italian-American parish whose congregation included families drawn to Lackawanna by its growing steel industry.

Vinny’s own family was among them. In 1913, his grandfather had come with his family from Rosburgo, a small seaside village on Italy’s Adriatic coast. He found work in the mills of the Lackawanna Steel Company and later with the industrial giant Bethlehem Steel, which took over the Lackawanna company in 1922. Vinny’s father followed in his own father’s footsteps and spent his entire working life in those same mills.

Vinny chose another path. After graduating from Lackawanna High School in 1954, he left behind the smokestacks, pollution, and industrial grit of his hometown and entered the Conventual Franciscans.

That same year, Tommy Bernwinkler left Baltimore to do the same.

The two eighteen-year-olds met as novices at Mount Saint Lawrence Novitiate in Becket, Massachusetts. The secluded retreat in the mountains of western Massachusetts introduced them to a world far removed from the urban neighborhoods in which they had been raised. For Vinny, it stood in sharp contrast to the steel mills and industrial landscape of Lackawanna. Although Tommy missed his family and friends in Irvington, he found comfort in the peaceful and stable atmosphere the Becket retreat provided.

Their lives as Franciscan novices offered both young men profoundly new beginnings as they entered adulthood. Yet neither friar ever entirely lost the character of the place from which he had come.

 

THREE

A Dark Secret

 

Twenty-two young men entered the 1954–55 novitiate class at Mount Saint Lawrence in Becket. Coming from small towns and large cities, they arrived on the isolated mountaintop during the first week of August 1954. All of the new novices had graduated from high school the previous spring.

Father Tadeusz Robaczewski, OFM Conv., known simply as “Father Teddy,” was the Novice Master, a position he had held at Becket for the previous two years. Thought by many to be a living saint, Father Teddy was gentle and kind, but equally firm in matters of religious discipline. He set a good example for the young novices through his devout prayer life and his willingness to share in even the most menial household chores. Most of all, he was a good listener and wise counselor to the young men under his care and direction.

Father Teddy was born in 1899 in Kraków, the ancient and venerated former capital of Poland. At the time of his birth, Poland had long since been erased from the map and divided among foreign empires. At nineteen, he joined other Polish soldiers who longed for the restoration of their homeland and had placed themselves under the command of General Józef Haller. After serving in battle for only a few months, he and his unit were surrounded by German forces and compelled to surrender at Kaniów, Ukraine, in May 1918.

Following his release from captivity on November 16, 1918, he returned to a newly independent Poland. A few months later, he entered the Franciscan Order at the ancient friary attached to the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in the heart of Kraków’s Old Town. The friary dated from the Middle Ages.

After completing his years of formation, Father Tadeusz was ordained to the priesthood in 1926. Shortly afterward, he immigrated to the United States, where he served for many years in Polish parishes in Baltimore, Maryland; Shamokin, Pennsylvania; Chicopee, Massachusetts; and Elmhurst, New York.

His deep faith, his youthful wartime experience as a soldier, his life as an immigrant, his years of parochial ministry, his love for the Franciscan Order, and his outstanding moral character made him an excellent choice for Novice Master. He had embraced the ministry enthusiastically when assigned to Becket in 1952.

Each new class of novices soon learned to conform strictly to the rigorous daily schedule. They rose early each morning for Mass and faced the difficult task of learning to use prayer books known as breviaries. The psalms, readings, and other prayers contained in them were recited entirely in Latin. The novices also spent hours each day in the chapel for communal prayer, sometimes spoken and formal, and at other times observed in silence through extended periods of meditation.

Morning and afternoon work periods kept them busy cleaning and maintaining the novitiate buildings, tending the gardens and lawns, and caring for the extensive property. Much of the surrounding acreage consisted of vast wooded areas crossed by isolated paths and long driveways. Each evening, following Compline at 9:00 p.m., the novices began the observance of “Grand Silence.” No conversation or other unnecessary noise was permitted until after the celebration of Mass the following morning. This was the new world and way of life into which Vinny and Tommy were introduced. Father Teddy quickly became a trusted, guileless, and holy guide for both of them, especially during the earliest days of their novitiate year.

Meals were served in the novitiate refectory, where the professed friars and novices sat at long, narrow tables facing the center of the room. The professed friars were seated according to seniority, determined by the dates of their first profession of vows. Because the novices had not yet professed vows, their places were determined by their dates of birth. Father Teddy, his assistant novice master, and the senior member of the professed community sat at a separate table at the head of the room.

This same order governed many of the practical arrangements of their structured religious lives. It determined, for example, the location of each novice’s bedroom. The oldest occupied the first room along the hallway, followed in order by the others.

Because Vinny and Tommy had been born during the same week in July 1936, they often found themselves side by side in the ordinary activities of life at Becket. Throughout the novitiate day, their frequent proximity naturally led to small talk and playful banter.

Early in the novitiate year, Vinny and Tommy discovered their shared lifelong passion for baseball. At seven, Vinny graduated from simply playing neighborhood games with younger children and joined a boys’ baseball team organized by his church’s Fathers’ Club. The team played against similarly organized teams throughout the Buffalo area.

Tommy shared a similar story. When he was seven, his father arranged for him to join a baseball club organized by a local community association. The boys played at Gibbons Field, near Maiden Choice Run in Irvington. The grounds, later known as Slentz Field, had long been associated with organized amateur baseball in Baltimore.

Both boys excelled at the sport and eventually played on their high school varsity teams. Their shared love of baseball helped give rise to their blossoming friendship during those early days at Becket. It also inspired considerable rivalry. Vinny was a die-hard fan of the storied New York Yankees, while Tommy, like many other Baltimoreans, had become an enthusiastic devotee of the Baltimore Orioles. Formerly the St. Louis Browns, the newly renamed team had played its first home game in Baltimore in April 1954.

Recognizing the enthusiasm many of his novices had for baseball, Father Teddy occasionally bent the rules. When evening games were scheduled, he could easily be convinced to move Compline to an earlier hour and delay the beginning of Grand Silence so the novices could gather in the recreation room and listen to radio broadcasts of professional baseball games. They followed the action through the friary’s large, mahogany-encased Philco radio-phonograph console.

At 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 9, 1954, Vinny switched on the console as an eager Tommy stood beside him. They waited for the vacuum tubes to warm until a faint hum emerged from the speaker. Vinny then slowly turned the illuminated dial toward WINS in New York City.

The scene repeated one from the previous evening, when they had gathered around the same radio to hear the Yankees defeat the Orioles 8–2 at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. On September 9, however, the tide turned. The Orioles defeated the Yankees 1–0.

“We’re even again,” Tommy joyfully declared.

“Until next time,” Vinny muttered as he switched off the radio. The two joined the other novices and quietly retired to their rooms.

On a late September afternoon, not long after their evenings in front of the radio listening to those two consecutive baseball games, as well as others, Vinny and Tommy took a walk together during some free time. They followed the long driveway leading from the main novitiate building toward the entrance to the property.

As they walked, they shared stories about their childhoods and the reasons they had decided to join the Conventual Franciscan friars. By then, their friendship had become deeper than either had expected. They spoke happily about their experiences as new Franciscan novices, the warm friendship they had developed in such a short time, and the hopes they shared for their future in the Order.

As they neared the main road, Tommy abruptly changed the tone of their conversation.

“Can I share something with you I’ve never told anyone?” he asked in a hesitant and bashful voice.

“Of course. I think by now you know you can trust me with your secrets,” Vinny replied. He stopped himself from chuckling, believing Tommy was about to reveal some ordinary childhood embarrassment, perhaps the awkward first time he had kissed a girl.

“This is serious,” Tommy said as he looked fearfully into Vinny’s eyes.

“You know I come from a parish run by religious priests,” Tommy continued. “When I was a little kid, I adored the Passionist priests and brothers in my home parish. I thought they were perfect people, the closest people to God on earth.

“That was certainly how my super-Catholic grandmother always spoke about them. She was a lifelong member of the parish. So was my dad, and so was I.

“One of my father’s best friends was an older priest in the parish who had been there for almost all of my dad’s life. Those priests and brothers were a constant presence in our family history, in our lives, and in our home. They could do no wrong.

“When I announced to my mom and dad, and to everyone else in my family, that I wanted to become a Franciscan, everyone seemed confused, even bewildered. My grandmother was happy about it, but one day she sort of jokingly told me she was praying I would change my mind and switch to the Passionists.

“The truth is, I admire just about every Passionist I’ve ever met. They are good men and deeply dedicated to their work. Most of them are probably going straight to heaven when they die. I would never say anything bad about their community. But I could never join them.

“The main reason I jumped ship and decided to come here is mostly because of one thing.”

Tommy hesitated.

“When I was fourteen, I belonged to Troop 180, the Boy Scout troop at the Monastery. During a camping trip, I was molested by one of my scout leaders. And it didn’t happen only once. He did things to me a few more times after that.

“But he wasn’t only a scout leader. He was a Passionist brother. He told me he loved me, that I was special to him, and that what we did together was nobody’s business but ours. For nearly a year, I believed him. Then he was suddenly transferred from Baltimore, and I never saw him again.

“It made no difference to me whether he was a brother or a priest. Men of God, really, nobody, should ever do things like that. I love the Passionists, but I could never belong to the same religious community as that man.”

 

Tommy paused again before finally admitting what frightened him most.

“I feel like I hate him.”

A long, uncomfortable silence followed Tommy’s confession.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Vinny said after a long pause, his voice somber and nervous.

The two turned around and walked back up the driveway toward the serenity of the novitiate building at the top of the hill. As they reached the front door, the bell calling them to Vespers sounded loudly.

They would not discuss the dark secret revealed that day until many years later.  They just didn’t talk about it.

At Vespers that evening, Father Teddy intoned the opening versicle: Deus, in adiutorium meum intende.

The friars responded: Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina.

Tommy’s thoughts stalled at those words: “O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”

 

FOUR

New Religious Names

 

At the conclusion of their novitiate year, on August 15, 1955, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Tommy and Vinny professed their first temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. On the day of their profession, they also adopted their new religious names: Tommy became Maximilian Mary, and Vinny became Anthony Mary.

Tommy chose Maximilian in honor of Father Maximilian Mary Kolbe, OFM Conv., a confrere who had been imprisoned and put to death by the Nazis at Auschwitz only fourteen years earlier. Among the friars there was already a strong belief that Father Kolbe would someday be canonized by the Church and recognized as a saint.

Vinny chose Anthony primarily because of his devotion to St. Anthony of Padua, one of the most beloved Franciscan saints in the Catholic world. The name also honored his home parish and the generations of his family who had worshiped there since his Italian grandfather arrived in the United States in 1913.

Both young friars chose to add Mary to their religious names as an expression of their devotion to the Blessed Virgin and their desire to place themselves under her protection.

Their common devotion to Mary, something they often discussed during that year, centered particularly on the powerful words of her Magnificat in the Gospel of St. Luke: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.” Both young friars had decided to make those words a central theme in the way they hoped to live their religious lives.

Although they had formally adopted new religious names, the deep friendship they formed at Becket ensured they would always privately call one another by their given names: Vinny and Tommy.

After departing the novitiate, Vinny, now formally known as Friar Anthony, and Tommy, now formally known as Friar Max, continued their formation as classmates at St. Hyacinth College and Seminary in Granby, Massachusetts. Founded in 1927 to educate young Franciscan friars, this venerable institution prepared many of them to serve blue-collar and working-class parishes in communities stretching from Alabama to Maine, particularly throughout the eastern United States.

Anthony and Max were members of St. Hyacinth’s graduating class of 1959. The following year, they were stationed together as student friars at St. Francis High School in Athol Springs, New York, where they completed an apostolic year.

Located a few miles south of Buffalo, Athol Springs was quieter than industrial Lackawanna immediately to its north. For Anthony, the assignment brought him close to home again. For Max, western New York was an entirely new world. There he encountered for the first time the massive industrial landscape along Lake Erie, where winds sweeping in from the lake carried smoke and grime from the steel mills.At the time, St. Francis served as a residential high school for boys, some of whom might later enter the Franciscan community themselves. Max and Anthony spent their apostolic year serving as teachers’ aides, assisting seasoned friars who had taught at the high school for years, and they also worked as dishwashers in the residents’ dining room. It was an enriching year of service together, but afterward their paths began to diverge.

Max continued his studies for the priesthood at St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer, New York, the theological school of the Order. Anthony’s vocation, however, was that of a religious brother. Rather than continue with seminary studies, he chose to prepare himself for a life of service through nursing.

Anthony enrolled in the nursing program at Boston College. While studying there, he lived with fellow Conventual Franciscan friars at St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Church in nearby Chelsea, a gritty, densely populated working-class city across the river from Boston.

In 1964, after completing his theological studies at St. Anthony-on-Hudson in Rensselaer, Friar Max was ordained to the priesthood by the local bishop, the Most Reverend William A. Scully, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, just across the Hudson River from the seminary.

His first assignment as a young priest took him to Bessemer, Alabama, and the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, a parish founded by the Conventual Franciscans in 1940 to serve Black Catholics who had often been neglected in the Birmingham area and throughout that part of the country. He would often say the four years he spent in Bessemer were among the most rewarding of his life, and it was there his real seminary training began.

In the same year Max completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood in Albany, Anthony completed his studies at Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus. He graduated summa cum laude with his second college degree, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

That summer, both friars began the first major ministries of their religious lives. Max was assigned to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Bessemer, Alabama, while Anthony was assigned to the Conventual Franciscan missions in Costa Rica.

Anthony departed the friary in Chelsea and traveled to New York, where he sailed aboard one of United Fruit’s Great White Fleet “banana boats,” bound for Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. Although United Fruit no longer regularly operated passenger service aboard its ships, the company had continued a tradition of transporting Franciscan friars free of charge to destinations in Costa Rica. Many of these religious men were serving in company towns and among the families of United Fruit workers, and their presence was beneficial not only to the people they served, but also to the company’s image and business interests.

Anthony arrived in Puerto Limón on the Caribbean coast a few days later and then set out on the long and tedious overland journey to his ultimate destination, Golfito, a remote village on the country’s southwestern Pacific coast. By then a well-established Franciscan mission site, Golfito would become Anthony’s home for the next ten years. There he helped establish a medical clinic serving the poor and needy of the surrounding area, particularly families who worked on the banana plantations.

Those ten years in Costa Rica enabled Anthony to put into practice the medical training he had received, but more importantly for him, they offered the opportunity to live a missionary life devoted to serving the poor and needy in an isolated and underdeveloped part of the world.

 

FIVE

Let God Do the Rest!

 

John F. Himar, known from childhood as Jack, was an only child born early in 1942. He spent the first years of his life on a dairy farm in Elmont, Long Island. The farm stood near Cambria Heights, Queens, directly across the Queens-Nassau county line. His parents were devout Baptists and active members of Queens Baptist Church in nearby Queens Village.

The Himars were poor but proud, hardworking, deeply religious farmers of German heritage. They were determined to preserve their culture and livelihood as suburban development increasingly threatened Elmont’s remaining farms and longtime rural residents. Despite the uncertainty surrounding them, the family never abandoned its hope of preserving a way of life sustained by generations of Himars.

Jack’s great-grandfather, Johann Himar, had emigrated to America with his wife and seven children from the Kingdom of Prussia during the 1880s. He was remembered as a man who never tired and who worked with zeal and passionate strength until the day he died. Those who came after Johann, like generations of Prussian Himars before him, worked the land with the same persistence and devotion. Christian faith was equally central to the lives of every generation of the family.

From Jack’s earliest childhood, his parents instilled in him a strong faith and a traditional, firmly grounded work ethic. “The two are inseparable,” his father often said. As soon as Jack was old enough to help milk the family’s small dairy herd, he worked at his father’s side every morning, seven days a week, in the milking parlor. The work was done “the old-fashioned way,” as his father liked to say. The Himars had not yet acquired mechanical milking machines, so the morning ritual was always labor-intensive.

Jack learned quickly, driven in no small part by his desire to please his stern and demanding father. He had been taught to treat the man with deferential and unquestioning respect. His father’s authority was absolute. Neither his judgment nor his wisdom was ever to be questioned.

Jack was raised to believe attendance at Sunday church services was not merely expected but obligatory. After rising before dawn and completing the morning’s work in the milking parlor, he bathed and dressed in his “Sunday-go-to-church clothes.” The family ate breakfast together at the kitchen table before climbing into Mr. Himar’s aging 1950 Chevrolet pickup. Each clutching a well-worn Bible, they squeezed together on the broad bench seat for the ten-minute drive to Queens Baptist Church.

On one Sunday morning in 1954, when Jack was twelve years old, the congregation finished singing every verse of the familiar hymn “Blessed Assurance.” The pastor then instructed everyone to be seated and open their Bibles.

“Please turn to the Book of the Prophet Nahum, chapter one, verse two.”

To Jack, the pastor’s voice sounded unusually severe as he read the passage aloud. Jack heard in its words the voice of a jealous and vengeful God, furious with anyone who refused to do his will. He felt his body tighten against the hard-wooden pew as he considered their meaning. Bowing his head, he prayed with fervent yet fearful hope he would never find himself numbered among the enemies of such an angry God.

In September 1956, at the age of fourteen, Jack entered Elmont Memorial High School on Ridge Road. He graduated in 1960. Throughout those years, he remained very much a loner. He had few friends and kept mostly to himself. Many of his classmates considered him odd, perhaps even something of a bookish misfit. Nevertheless, he was largely spared the ridicule and mistreatment often directed toward young people who seemed different. His classmates generally left him alone.

Jack loved reading the books assigned in his high school literature classes. He yearned to absorb as much knowledge as possible about the world, history, cultures, different religions, and the villains and heroes of every time and place.

In the autumn of 1958, during Jack’s junior year at Elmont, he and his classmates were assigned passages from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The portrayals of Catholic clergy in those excerpts seemed to confirm much of what Jack had heard about the Church. Its leaders were greedy, hypocritical, worldly, and corrupt. He found it difficult to understand how people who claimed to be Christians, especially church leaders, could fail to practice the faith they professed.

Yet the passages also left him with questions. Did Chaucer’s characters truly represent the Catholic Church, or were they merely human beings who had failed to live according to its teachings? Could the same accusations still be made more than five hundred years after Chaucer had written his most celebrated work?

Jack had to find out.

During the spring of 1959, as the winter snow gradually melted, buds appeared on the trees and daffodils began pushing their way through the soil. After months of indecision about how best to learn more about the Catholic Church, Jack finally resolved to visit the nearest one he could find.

In the early afternoon of Saturday, March 28, Jack opened the Queens classified telephone directory and ran his finger down the listings under “Churches, Roman Catholic.” He soon found Sacred Heart of Jesus in Cambria Heights, not far from his home in Elmont. He remembered passing the church at 115^th Avenue and 222^nd Street on previous occasions, but he had never given it much thought.

That Saturday marked a new beginning for him. Before long, he was making the twenty-five-minute walk from his home in Elmont to the church in Cambria Heights. He resisted the urge to run toward it.

When Jack arrived at Sacred Heart of Jesus, he was pleased to find the doors unlocked. His own church would not ordinarily have been open on a Saturday afternoon unless a community prayer service had been planned or a visiting preacher had come to lead a revival. He wondered whether something special was taking place inside and, with growing curiosity, stepped through the doors to find out.

The atmosphere inside the church seemed very somber, but it was not without activity. Apart from the sunlight filtering through the enormous blue-tinted windows, no lights were illuminated. The church contained none of the ornate appointments or elaborate decorations Jack had expected to find in a Catholic place of worship. Rows of candles stood on metal racks near statues and other religious objects, but none were lighted.

No one seemed to notice his arrival or question his presence. A few people knelt alone in widely scattered pews, while others waited in orderly lines along the side walls near what Jack assumed were the infamous confession boxes. A profound silence hung over the church, broken only by occasional whispers and the subdued sounds of activity beyond a plain wooden altar rail, which unmistakably divided the sanctuary from the rest of the church.

Several women quietly mopped, dusted, and moved things about. Each wore a simple work dress, with enormous curlers held beneath a cumbersome hairnet. Their appearance struck Jack as both peculiar and amusing.

Nearby, two men stood on ladders, apparently preparing to remove purple cloths concealing statues. An elderly man moved among the tall candles, carefully placing brightly polished brass followers over the fresh white wax. Everything suggested preparations for something important, although Jack had no idea what it might be.

He knew the following day was Easter Sunday. At Queens Baptist Church, there would be a longer-than-usual sermon, a few additional hymns, and a community breakfast after the service. Still, he could not imagine why any church would be bustling with so much activity a full day before a holiday observed so simply in his own congregation. The mystery intrigued him greatly.

As Jack stood behind the last pew near the entrance and gazed about, kind seemingly ageless Black woman approached him.

“Welcome to our church, young man. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you here before, but I’m so glad you stopped by.”

She smiled broadly and looked directly into his eyes with a warmth that immediately put him at ease. Speaking in a hushed tone and with an unfamiliar but pleasant cadence, she formed each English word slowly and deliberately.

“Can I help you with anything, or should I be asking if you are here to help us?” she continued, her voice filled with kindness and appreciation.

Jack could not determine where she had come from, although her accent suggested someplace far beyond New York.

He told her he was a Baptist and had never before stepped inside a Catholic church.

“How interesting,” she responded. “I was once a Baptist myself. For a while, I belonged to a Pentecostal church, but now after many years I know what’s most important to me, no matter what, is just that I follow Jesus, that I love God and love other people in the way I hope they will love me. Now that I’m older, I’ve come to understand something. We’re not called to place labels on other people. We’re simply called to love them and let God do the rest.”

Jack liked the way she spoke to him and wanted to hear more.

 

SIX

The Phone Call

 

The telephone rang at 7:10 that morning.  It was Monday, March 23, 1998.

“Brother Anthony?”

“Yes?”

The brother heard heavy breathing on the other end of the line. There was a long silence before the woman finally found the words.

“Angel...is dead. They found his body early this morning in a vacant lot on Johnson Avenue.”

“Oh, God, no,” the brother replied, anguish filling his voice.

“I’m so sorry. This is...this is devastating news. I don’t even know what to say.”

He spoke very quietly, tears welling in his eyes. Though shaken by the news, his gentle voice offered some comfort to the grieving woman on the other end of the line.

The conversation lasted only a minute or two—just long enough for her to share her sorrow with the one person she knew would understand.

“I’m on my way to open the Center in a few minutes,” he said softly. “But let’s get together later. I really want to see you. Maybe we can somehow find a way to give a little bit of consolation to each other then. I never imagined today would start with such sadness. I’m so sorry.”

After a few final words of reassurance, they said goodbye.

 

SEVEN

3:42 A.M.

 

Winter refused to loosen its grip on Brooklyn that year. It was late March 1998, but before dawn the air remained bitterly cold. Darkness still clung to the streets as the distant rattle of an elevated J train echoed hauntingly between the aging brick buildings. It was as though winter itself had pronounced a merciless sentence against the coming of spring, determined to deny every promise of warmth, renewal, and new life.

At 3:42 that morning, the nearly lifeless body of an apparently homeless man was discovered by the driver of a donut truck who had just picked up his daily load from a nearby bakery. Already running behind schedule, the driver had pulled over along a desolate stretch of Johnson Avenue to relieve himself.

Not far from the intersection with Bushwick Place, he noticed a man on his side at the edge of the sidewalk beside a vacant lot littered with broken glass and weeds. The man lay between two objects apparently abandoned there years before: the charred shell of a burned-out 1978 Dodge Colt and the rusted remains of an old General Electric refrigerator.

As he relieved himself against the chain-link fence bordering the vacant lot, the donut driver took notice of the poor soul lying nearby. At first, he assumed he had come upon just another homeless man sleeping off the previous night's bottle, not an uncommon sight along that stretch of Johnson Avenue, even on a bitterly cold night like this one.

But something was different.

The man appeared to be in his late twenties, far too young, the driver thought, to be passed out in a gutter. His eyes were unnaturally wide open, fixed on something that wasn't there, while his mouth remained frozen in an expression of unspeakable agony. For a fleeting moment, the donut driver wondered if he had stumbled upon someone still caught between life and death.

He had no way of knowing he was witnessing the final moments of a life shaped by trauma, sorrow, and burdens few people had ever understood.

Ordinarily, when he noticed a drunk passed out along his route, the donut driver simply kept moving, scarcely giving it a second thought. By sunrise, and certainly by the time he finished his deliveries, the sight was long forgotten.

That morning on Johnson Avenue, however, something gave him pause. Perhaps it was the young man's age. Perhaps it was the expression frozen on his face. Or perhaps it was simply a fleeting awareness of his own mortality. Whatever the reason, the donut driver decided to call for help.

Before putting the truck back into gear, he picked up his cell phone, flipped it open, and called the 90th Precinct.

"Nine-O. Can I help you?" came the raspy voice of the desk officer.

“There’s a homeless guy lying, maybe dying, out here on Johnson Avenue. He’s at the edge of the lot on the north side of the street, between White and Bushwick Place. Something doesn’t look right.”

"Thanks for calling, sir. I'll try to get a car over there as soon as one's available. But I've gotta tell you, bums sleeping on the sidewalk aren't exactly our highest priority."

Relieved that he had done what he could, the donut driver put the truck into gear and pulled away.

"Just another drunk in the gutter," he muttered to himself as he turned onto Bushwick Avenue and headed toward his first stop in Greenpoint. There were donuts to deliver, and his customers would not appreciate another delay.

 

EIGHT

A Quiet Vulnerability

 

Angel's frequent drunkenness and drug-induced stupors, together with his torn clothing, urine-stained pants, matted hair, and generally unkempt appearance, had earned him the reputation of being just another neighborhood bum. Yet those who knew him, even if only in passing, regarded him as gentle and harmless and accepted his presence. He was hardly ever loud or abusive, and aside from his disheveled appearance and the occasional nap on a sidewalk or in a vacant lot, he exhibited none of the disruptive or offensive behavior people often associated with chronic alcoholics and drug addicts.

There was a sadness about Angel, a quiet vulnerability stirring compassion in those who came to know him. On the rare occasions when he was sober, he could be genuinely charming. In those moments, the gentleness at the heart of his character became unmistakable.

 

NINE

Please Call My Godmother

 

It was not unusual for Angel to be found passed out on the street. Time and again he had been discovered in that condition and, somehow, had always managed to recover. This time, however, was different. There would be no recovery.

At last, the long struggles burdening so much of Angel’s life had come to an end. The traumas of his past and the addictions holding him captive had finally claimed him.

The woman at the door asked to speak with Brother Anthony.

"He's my friend," she told the church secretary as she was shown into the small parlor of the rectory.

Although it was only nine o'clock that morning, it had already been a long and heartbreaking day.

Mrs. Thompson had been awakened shortly after seven by a telephone call from the police. In Angel's pocket they had found a note, scribbled on the back of a business card from the Trinity Human Service Center, 153 Johnson Avenue. It read:

“In case of an emergency or death, please call my godmother, Mrs. Olivia M. Thompson. Her number is 718-384-3234.”

From the moment she hung up the telephone after receiving the awful news, Mrs. Thompson knew she had to call Brother Anthony. She knew how much he had come to care for Angel and how deeply the news would grieve him. Although she would have preferred to tell him in person, she called him immediately. Now, only two hours later, she had come to the rectory to be with the one person she believed truly understood her sorrow.

Her trip to the church was partly out of a sense of obligation to Brother Anthony, who had asked her to come, but she was also driven by her own need for consolation and a desire to understand how Angel's life had come to such a tragic end. She knew the depth of the brother's love for Angel and believed that, in sharing their grief, they might somehow comfort one another.

They were the two people who had known Angel best, each having walked with him through different stages of his troubled life. Both had loved him with a pure and unconditional love, the kind of love parents are meant to have for their own children. Their friendship with one another had grown out of their shared concern for Angel and the many times they had tried desperately to help him. Now they were left not only with the sorrow of his death, but with a painful sense of defeat over a life they had been powerless to save. They needed to confide in one another, to share their memories of him, and perhaps most of all, to search their own souls for some understanding of why Angel had ultimately lost his struggle.

When Brother Anthony entered the parlor, they greeted one another with a sad but heartfelt embrace. Both were in tears, and for several moments neither could find the words to speak.

They sat together in the parlor for hours. Through many tears and a few warm smiles, they shared their memories of Angel, the troubled young man they had each come to love as though he were their own son.

"Brother Anthony, our sweet Angel's problems began long before he was brought into this world," Mrs. Thompson began.

 

TEN

The Shadows of Others

 

To understand the deeper meaning of Mrs. Thompson's words, she and Brother Anthony began to look beyond Angel's short and troubled life to the lives of those who had come before him. They recognized that Angel had, in many ways, lived in the shadows of their struggles. Like all children, he had been born into a story already well underway, a story shaped by people he had never known, choices he had never made, and wounds he had done nothing to cause.

At the center of that story was his mother, Julia.

Long before she held her infant son in her arms, Julia had endured struggles of her own. The circumstances of her life, the choices she made, the disappointments she suffered, and the wounds she carried became part of the world into which Angel was born. In ways neither mother nor son could have understood at the time, some of those burdens would eventually become his as well.

 

ELEVEN

1974

 

Julia Delacrus was a single mother living with her three children in a small, rundown apartment on Moore Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Her oldest child, a boy she named Angel, had been born when she was seventeen. His father, a man Angel would never know and about whom he would never be told anything, was also his grandfather.

Julia’s second child, a boy she named Eddy, was born when she was eighteen. His father could have been any one of several men, most of whom were better described as clients. Her third child, a girl she named Amanda, was born when Julia was twenty-three. Amanda’s father was Alfredo Jimenez, the only man Julia would ever truly love with all her heart, and the only person who would ever truly break it.

Julia's own childhood had instilled in her a profound sense of self-contempt and doubt. Those wounds followed her into adulthood and complicated her already difficult life as a young, single mother of three. She desperately wanted something better for her children, but too often that desire became a source of anguish rather than hope.

Julia tried to convince herself that she would raise her children differently from the way her own parents had raised her, not merely differently, but better. She often told others that she never wanted her children to experience the "evil of hell on earth" she herself had known.

Yet Julia was deeply wounded. Her weaknesses were many, and the burdens she carried often overwhelmed whatever strengths she possessed. Of all the ways she had learned to survive, perhaps none was more powerful than denial.

 

TWELVE

A Dingy Apartment on Boerum Street

 

Julia's parents, Spanish-speaking immigrants from different Central American countries, had met in Brooklyn when they were both in their late teens. After a hastily arranged marriage in the office of some long-forgotten city clerk, they moved into a small, dingy second-floor apartment on Boerum Street, only three blocks from the apartment where Julia would later spend much of her adult life.

Julia was born just five months after her parents' marriage. She would never have brothers or sisters, and her experience of family life was anything but normal. When she was a toddler, barely able to walk on her own, neighbors would sometimes find her wandering alone in the stairwell of their building. On one occasion, the elderly woman who lived upstairs discovered her sitting on the steps, eating chips of paint that had flaked from the rickety banister leading to the fourth floor.

Whenever neighbors confronted Julia’s parents about their inattentiveness to their daughter, they usually responded with a string of curse words and angrily told them to mind their own business. Often, both were too drunk even to realize that Julia had wandered out of the apartment. This was the only home Julia knew throughout her childhood and teenage years, a place marked by neglect, instability, and trauma. Later in life, whenever she attempted to recall those early years, her mind’s eye saw little more than a sickening darkness.

Her parents were emotionally distant and largely indifferent to her needs. Her father was frequently unemployed, though when he did find work, it was usually as a janitor or building custodian. His indifference was compounded by cruelty: he was extremely abusive toward Julia.

Her mother maintained steady employment as a cleaning lady in a Manhattan office building. She worked nights and was rarely home in the evenings, leaving Julia alone for long stretches with her father.

One of the few bright spots in Julia’s childhood came in the sixth grade, when she met Sylvia Thompson at nearby I.S. 49. Officially known as William J. Gaynor Junior High School, it had opened in the 1930s, around the same time as the adjacent Williamsburg Houses. The complex was among the earliest public housing developments constructed in the country and opened with great fanfare. To those who lived there, however, the Williamsburg Houses were known simply as “the projects.”

The two girls quickly became close friends, and through Sylvia, Julia came to know Mrs. Thompson. As their friendship grew, Julia began spending more time at the Thompson family’s apartment in those projects and gradually developed a close bond with Sylvia’s mother. To Julia, their home seemed like one of the most beautiful, even prestigious, places to live in all of New York City, at least compared with the place on Boerum Street she was forced to call home.

 

THIRTEEN

Fashion Flair

 

Julia loved going to Eli Whitney Vocational High School on North 6th Street in the North Side section of Williamsburg. Her best friend, Sylvia had been at her side since they first met in the sixth grade at I.S. 49. Julia had many other friends at Eli Whitney, and for years school had been the one place where she felt safe and believed that people genuinely cared about her.

During the 1966–67 school year, her last complete year at Eli Whitney, Julia was a junior and did very well in nearly all her classes. She and Sylvia had enrolled in the school’s cosmetology program and dreamed of someday becoming beauticians, an ambition enthusiastically encouraged by their favorite cosmetology teacher, Mrs. Shefield.

Mrs. Shefield had taken a special interest in Julia and Sylvia and often reminded them that they were fine young women with promising futures. She told them how proud she would be if they someday opened businesses of their own.

"It takes a lot of work, girls, but I know you can do it," she would tell them with a warm smile and unmistakable conviction.

Julia and Sylvia were also members of the Volleyball Club, and both played the sport well. On the court they were fiercely competitive, playing with passion and a determination to defeat whatever team stood opposite them.

Near the end of that school year, the girls eagerly helped with Fashion Flair, a fashion show sponsored by the Dressmaking, Cosmetology, and Music Departments. The evening was a great success, and Julia was especially proud to have played an important part in making it happen.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson attended the show. Knowing that Julia’s parents had not been there that evening, they afterward invited her to join them and Sylvia for pizza at a neighborhood restaurant.

“I’m sorry your folks couldn’t come tonight,” Mrs. Thompson said.

“Well, my mother works nights,” Julia replied.

As they ate together, Julia and Sylvia spoke enthusiastically about how much they loved Eli Whitney and about their plans for the coming school year—especially everything they hoped to do for the next Fashion Flair.

 

FOURTEEN

Shattered Dreams

 

Not long after Julia started high school, she began fantasizing about becoming a beautiful model like the women pictured on magazine covers. She and her friends searched the advertisements in the New York Daily News promising careers in modeling. If only she could somehow find the thirty-dollar “finder’s fee” those agencies demanded, she thought, surely someone would discover her.

She dreamed of living in a fancy apartment on the Upper East Side and imagined herself signing autographs for admiring fans on the streets. Whenever she had the chance, usually in the evenings while her mother was at work, Julia would carefully apply elaborate makeup and stand before the mirror brushing her long, dark hair. Gazing at her reflection, she imagined herself transformed into the beautiful woman she hoped someday to become.

Her father, usually drunk, ridiculed her whenever she dressed in her favorite clothes and tried to make herself look pretty. He would scream at her that he didn't want any daughter of his looking like a common slut. Even worse were the times he told her that if she insisted on looking like a whore, he had the right to treat her like one.

Those words remained with Julia, as did the smell of liquor on his breath, the unwanted touch of his mouth against her face, and the terrible things he did to her when her mother was away. She learned that resistance often made things worse. Sometimes she simply surrendered to his demands, closing her eyes and trying desperately to separate her mind from what was happening to her body.

On one such night, as she lay trapped beneath him, Julia fixed her attention on the little radio playing on a table beside the bed. She closed her eyes and listened desperately to the music, trying to escape somewhere beyond that room. A Beatles song was playing, its refrain insisting that love was all anyone needed.

Tears streamed across Julia's cheeks and disappeared into her hair.

She hated her father. There were times when she wished he would just drop dead.

The memories of those years would remain among the most painful of Julia's life. And so, shortly before her seventeenth birthday, news came of an event that brought her a sense of relief she would never admit without shame: her father had been stabbed to death during a racially charged street fight on Graham Avenue.

His killer was never identified or arrested. Julia never knew his name.

In the darkest recesses of her wounded heart, however, she would think of that unknown man as the person who had finally set her free.

 

FIFTEEN

They Had Never Loved Her

1968

 

Once it became obvious that Julia was pregnant, her mother, now recently widowed, wanted nothing more to do with her and threw her out of their apartment. She told Julia that if she couldn't even identify the baby's father and wanted to "sleep around," then she was no better than an alley cat and deserved "to live like one."

Julia resented her mother for what she regarded as the woman's incredible stupidity. She could never understand why her mother had seemed so devastated and grief-stricken after her father's death. Her parents had never shown affection for one another. They had spent much of their time together drinking heavily and had fought often, sometimes violently. Julia did not believe they had ever truly loved each other. She could not believe it.

Of one thing, however, she was certain: they had never loved her.

And so, Julia was happy to leave the apartment that held so many dark secrets and painful memories. She never wanted to return.

She never did.

 

SIXTEEN

A Close-Knit Family

 

After her mother threw her out, Julia first found refuge in the home of her most proven best friend, Sylvia, who still lived with her family in one of those Williamsburg Projects on Stagg Walk.

The Thompsons were a close-knit Black family, proud of their heritage and deeply committed to their community. Hanging prominently on the living room wall was a larger-than-life portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mrs. Thompson greatly admired the civil rights leader and believed deeply in the message of justice, human dignity, and concern for others that he preached.

The Thompsons believed that the troubles of their neighbors were, in some measure, their troubles as well, regardless of race or religion. They lived with a strong sense of responsibility toward those in need and did not hesitate to open their home to Julia.

They had always treated her with kindness, and now, pregnant and with nowhere else to go, Julia gratefully turned to them for help.

Mr. Thompson worked in Manhattan as a janitor at New York University. During the day, Mrs. Thompson cared for several young children in her apartment. Technically, she operated an unlicensed day care center, but because she provided a much-needed service to families in the neighborhood, no one complained. Sylvia also had a twelve-year-old brother named Tyrone.

"Honey, you can't stay here forever, but child, I just can't stand the thought of you out on the street with nowhere to go," Mrs. Thompson told Julia as she showed her a small cabinet beside the living room couch where she could put her belongings.

"We're gonna find somebody who'll take you in. Don't you worry now," she assured her in the kindest of voices.

The six months Julia spent with the Thompson family were among the happiest of her entire life. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were warm and affectionate people who showered their two children with love.

In the evenings, Mr. Thompson would invite Julia to sit at the kitchen table with Sylvia and Tyrone. While Julia listened, Sylvia and Tyrone would tell him about their day at school and the new things they had learned. Mr. Thompson would then entertain all three of them with stories about things that had happened at NYU, often laughing heartily as he recalled some amusing incident involving a student or professor.

They loved hearing him laugh and tell his stories. Although they suspected some were far too outrageous to be entirely true, they always begged him for another, or asked him to repeat one they had heard many times before.

Julia felt very lucky to have a seat at that table.

Before going to bed each night, Sylvia and Tyrone always hugged and kissed their parents. "Never forget how much I love you," Mrs. Thompson would tell them, always reminding them to say their prayers before they went to sleep.

As much as possible, the Thompsons included Julia in the ordinary rhythms of their family life, and for perhaps the first time, she began to understand what it felt like to be loved.

Once, while helping in the kitchen, Julia accidentally dropped a plate into the sink, where it shattered. She immediately froze, lowered her eyes to the floor, and began to cry as she waited for Mrs. Thompson’s reaction. At home, her mother would have slapped her across the face and called her “so estúpida.”

Mrs. Thompson simply placed a gentle hand on Julia's shoulder.

"Don't worry about that now, honey. We've got plenty of plates in that cabinet."

 

SEVENTEEN

Have You No Morals?

 

Because of her pregnancy, Julia was forced to drop out of high school in December of her senior year. One of the guidance counselors at Eli Whitney made it clear there was no place for her there.

"There is no room in our fine school for girls who set a bad example for others," he told her. "You should be ashamed of yourself for getting into this condition. Have you no morals? With people like you, what is this world coming to?"

Mrs. Thompson was indignant when Julia told her what the counselor had said.

“Well, you’ll be a great help to me here at home with the children during the day,” she assured her. “And what does that guidance counselor know anyway, honey? He should know better. He’s got problems of his own, mind you! But I’m not going to add to those nasty rumors going around. We’ll just leave it at that.”

Julia thoroughly enjoyed helping Mrs. Thompson care for the children. She taught Julia how to change diapers and feed the little ones, and how to cradle them in her arms and sing sweet songs to soothe them when they became unsettled. Julia played all sorts of games with the toddlers and read storybooks to the older children, all of whom were under the age of five.

Mrs. Thompson teased Julia that she was "in training" for the baby who was coming. As she watched Julia tenderly caring for the children, she would often smile and tell her, "It fits you so well. You're gonna be a good mamma."

 

EIGHTEEN

March 22, 1968

 

The baby was born on March 22, 1968. He was four weeks premature and very small, too small to be released from the hospital right away. During his first few days of life, he experienced respiratory and digestive problems commonly associated with premature birth. Julia’s doctor at Greenpoint Hospital, Dr. Edith Goldstein, assured her that she believed the baby would be all right but that he would need to remain in the hospital for a while for tests, treatment, and observation.

Mrs. Thompson had remained with Julia throughout her labor and returned each day while the baby slowly gained strength. She was one of the first people to hold him in her arms.

"Now don't you worry, honey. This baby's gonna be just fine," she told Julia in her warm, reassuring voice. "We're gonna say a lot of prayers and trust the dear Lord in heaven to protect him."

She looked down at the tiny child cradled in her arms.

"Why, just look at him. He's so beautiful, just like a little angel." She smiled at Julia. "Don't you worry now, honey. God will protect your little angel."

Angel.

Julia let the word linger in her mind as she gently took the baby into her own arms and kissed him on the forehead.

My little Angel.

 

NINETEEN

We've Got a lot of Praying to Do

 

On April 3, Julia brought Angel home from the hospital. The baby’s presence in the Thompson home was both exciting and exhausting for the entire family. Although Julia faithfully attended to all of Angel’s needs, during his first days at home she found herself wanting to sleep nearly all the time.

On Angel’s second evening home, Julia had just fallen asleep on the couch when Mrs. Thompson awakened her shortly after eight o’clock. There were tears in her eyes, and her voice sounded desperate.

“Julia, there’s terrible news! They’ve killed Dr. King. It’s just terrible.” She struggled to contain herself. “It’s a good thing you brought the baby home when you did, because they’re saying there’s gonna be violence in the streets.”

That evening and the days that followed were tense in New York, while terrible violence erupted in cities across the country. Julia watched the news on television with growing fear. She became anxious whenever she heard the wail of a police siren or even the most innocent commotion coming from the street below.

Dr. King's assassination devastated Mrs. Thompson as though someone she had personally known and loved had been killed.

A few days later, on the day of King's funeral, Julia sat quietly beside Mrs. Thompson as they watched the television coverage together. A reporter summarized events that had unfolded throughout the country in the wake of the assassination, dwelling heavily on the violence and destruction.

Julia reached for Mrs. Thompson’s hand as a succession of contrasting images appeared on the screen before them: an old news clip of Dr. King delivering his stirring speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; National Guardsmen in riot gear marching through a city street; a Baltimore business district in flames; rioting and looting in Chicago; and finally, a dignified, veiled Mrs. King making her way to her husband’s funeral.

Mrs. Thompson wept.

In Julia's arms, Angel slept peacefully, his tiny face seemingly untouched by the anguish surrounding him. The tranquility of the newborn child stood in stark contrast to the grief felt by Julia, Mrs. Thompson, and so many others across the nation that day.

Mrs. Thompson looked down at the sleeping baby.

"That child's been born into a changed world," she said solemnly. "We've got to pray that he can grow up in a world where people learn to love one another. But there's so much work to be done, Julia. Sometimes I don't know if it's gonna be possible."

She paused, still looking at Angel.

"We've got a lot of praying to do."

Seconds later, Angel awakened and began to cry, announcing in the only way he knew that it was time to be fed.

 

TWENTY

Tears

 

Julia and Angel remained with the Thompson family for only six weeks after he came home from the hospital. Now that Angel was part of the picture, Julia worried she and the baby might become too great a burden on the family who had cared for and supported her for so many years, especially during those most recent weeks. Grateful for all the Thompsons had done for her, she decided it was time to move on. It seemed to her the most responsible thing to do.

An opportunity had come through a beautician named Yolanda Rodriguez, who owned a beauty shop and an adjoining apartment near the post office on Debevoise Street. As a young woman, Yolanda had worked in the same beauty salon as Mrs. Shefield, Julia's former cosmetology teacher at Eli Whitney. Although the two women were not close friends, Mrs. Shefield had felt comfortable asking Yolanda to help Julia by giving her work and a place to live.

"She owes me a big favor," Mrs. Shefield had explained. "I loaned her some money a few years ago when she was having trouble with her creditors."

Julia saw the arrangement as an opportunity. Working for Yolanda might provide a home for herself and Angel while also giving her a chance to pursue the dream she had once imagined for herself in the beauty business.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, Sylvia, and Tyrone all had tears in their eyes as Julia stood at the apartment door with Angel in her arms and kissed each of them goodbye.

“We’re only going to be living a few blocks away,” Julia assured them, fighting back tears of her own. “And I promise I’ll bring Angel to visit as much as I can.”

The entire family walked outside with her to the waiting car service. Together they loaded Julia's few possessions into the car before saying their final goodbyes.

Then Julia climbed in with Angel, and the car pulled away, carrying mother and child the eleven blocks to Debevoise Street, to a new home and a new way of life.

 

TWENTY-ONE

Yolanda

 

Yolanda Rodriguez was a forty-two-year-old Puerto Rican woman who had never married and had no children. For fifteen years, she had operated Salón de Belleza Rodriguez and lived in the adjoining apartment. She offered Julia and Angel the spare bedroom rent-free in exchange for cooking, laundry, and keeping both the apartment and salon clean. Although Julia would receive no regular wages, Yolanda promised that she could wash and rinse customers’ hair and share in whatever tips they gave her.

At first, Julia believed the arrangement offered everything she needed: a way to provide a home for herself and Angel without further burdening the Thompsons, an opportunity to work in a beauty salon, and a measure of independence. Within a few months, however, she would regret moving to Debevoise Street.

Yolanda was eccentric, and her surroundings reflected her personality. The walls of both the salon and apartment were painted mustard yellow, while the doors, window frames, and baseboards were purple. Strings of multicolored “love beads,” as Yolanda called them, hung in the doorway separating the two spaces. In one corner of the kitchen stood a two-foot statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Several rosaries hung from its outstretched arms, three fingers of its right hand were missing, and a candle burned continually before it.

The apartment was always clean but smelled strongly of disinfectant and cigarette smoke. Yolanda was a chain smoker and could rarely be seen without a cigarette dangling from her lips or held between two heavily ringed fingers. She wore tight leather pants, high-heeled sandals, brightly colored blouses, and more jewelry than Julia had ever seen on one person. Her bleached hair, usually streaked with pink or purple, was pulled into a long ponytail. A purple rose tattooed on her forearm bore the words Yolanda the Rose.

Most of the time, Yolanda was cheerful, witty, and full of life. She chatted freely with her customers and kept a bowl of candy in the salon for neighborhood children, telling each of them to pray for her as she handed out the sweets. Sometimes she played opera records and sang along in her deep, raspy voice, entirely unaware of how badly she mangled the Italian or German words. Her customers found the performances enormously entertaining, although no one had the heart to tell her why.

At other times, Yolanda retreated into an unsettling silence. She would sit for hours in her orange recliner, smoking one cigarette after another and staring at the wall. During those periods, Julia often took Angel for long walks simply to escape the tension in the apartment.

Yolanda frequently disappeared for days or even weeks, claiming that she stayed with a boyfriend in Bedford-Stuyvesant who Julia never met. She would return during the day to work in the salon, although sometimes she failed to appear even for that. Julia never knew where Yolanda went or much of anything about her private life. Despite living and working together, the two women never developed a close bond.

What had initially seemed like a fair arrangement gradually became oppressive. Caring for an infant while cooking, doing laundry, cleaning the apartment and salon, and washing customers’ hair left Julia exhausted. With no regular wages, little money of her own, and nowhere else to live, she began to feel she had exchanged one form of dependence for another.

One night, Julia dreamed that she had become three inches tall and was trapped inside a cage filled with mice. She cried out for someone to rescue her, but the other mice told her to be quiet and accept what she was, just another lousy mouse.

“Help me! Help me! I’m trapped!” she screamed, waking both herself and Yolanda.

Her greatest consolation was Angel. When she held him close, gazed into his eyes, and caressed his smooth cheeks, she felt a love unlike anything she had ever known. He gave her little rest, but he also gave her a reason to keep going and the strength to struggle through each day.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Mother’s Little Helper

 

Not long after Julia moved in with Yolanda, she noticed her regularly swallowing small, round blue tablets from one of several prescription bottles. Yolanda said a doctor at a mental health clinic on Flushing Avenue had prescribed the Valium to calm her nerves.

One afternoon, Angel had been crying for what seemed like hours. Exhausted and nearly in tears herself, Julia walked back and forth through the apartment with him in her arms, unable to soothe him.

Yolanda opened one of her prescription bottles and shook a blue tablet into the palm of her hand.

“Here, take this,” she said, offering it to Julia. “It’ll give you a little peace in the head.”

Julia hesitated.

“But those are yours.”

“I’ve got plenty,” Yolanda assured her. “They don’t call it ‘mother’s little helper’ for nothing.”

Within an hour, Julia felt the tension slowly leave her body. Angel’s crying no longer seemed quite so unbearable, and the troubles surrounding her appeared to lose some of their power.

During the weeks that followed, Yolanda offered her another pill whenever she seemed especially anxious or overwhelmed. Before long, Julia began asking for them. Eventually, she stopped asking and simply helped herself from the bottles Yolanda kept in a kitchen cabinet.

Yolanda never complained. Perhaps she did not mind sharing, or perhaps she never noticed any were missing. There always seemed to be several bottles.

For the first time, Julia discovered how easily a little blue pill could soften the sharp edges of an unbearable day.

 

TWENTY-THREE

Oscar Rosario, One of the Boys

 

During the hot summer evenings of 1968, Julia often sat on the steps outside the beauty salon and talked with teenagers from the neighborhood. She soon discovered many of the boys found her attractive. Sometimes four or five of them gathered around her at once, each competing for her attention. Julia enjoyed being pursued and began to recognize in her attractiveness a kind of power—something she had rarely experienced before and quickly learned to enjoy.

One night in late August, Oscar Rosario, a seventeen-year-old boy from the neighborhood, remained after all the others had gone home. Julia thought he was kind and handsome. Although she did not love him, she had grown very fond of him during the two months they had known each other. Of all the boys who gathered around her on the salon steps, Oscar was the only one whose attention truly mattered to her.

Yolanda was away again, so Julia invited him into the apartment to watch television.

“I’d really like it if you came inside and spent some time alone with me,” she said.

They sat together on the couch, both aware neither had come inside simply to watch television. Before long, their nervous excitement gave way to kissing and tender exploration. What followed was something Julia had never experienced before: physical intimacy she had freely chosen.

What her father had done to her had taken away her innocence, but it had not been an act of love, nor had it been something she had chosen. With Oscar, Julia discovered for the first time she could decide whom she allowed to touch her. She experienced affection, tenderness, and pleasure without fear.

Afterward, they lay quietly together on the couch, listening to the rhythm of each other’s breathing until they fell asleep in one another’s arms.

Julia expected Oscar to return the next day, but he did not. He did not come during the following week or the week after. Her heart grew heavy as she struggled to understand why someone who had seemed so tender and loving had suddenly abandoned her.

“Why hasn’t he come back? Doesn’t he want to see me?” she asked herself again and again.

Unable to quiet the questions or the ache they caused, Julia began helping herself more frequently to Yolanda’s little blue pills. Whenever the anguish became unbearable, she swallowed one and waited for the pain to soften.

One night, Julia lay awake listening to the sounds of the city drifting through the open windows of the apartment and salon. Several of the neighborhood boys were still gathered on the steps outside, their voices clearly audible from her bedroom.

Then she heard one of them say Oscar had been bragging about “finally bagging that bitch Julia.”

Julia stared into the darkness, stunned. What she had believed was an intimate and tender experience had been little more than a conquest to him. She felt exposed and humiliated, as though something freely given had somehow been stolen from her after the fact.

Memories of her father intruded upon her thoughts, becoming confused with memories of her night with Oscar. Rage gradually displaced her grief, and for a while she felt nothing but contempt for him. She wondered whether all men were alike and whether contempt might be the only protection she had against them.

Yet her thoughts kept returning to the tenderness she had believed she and Oscar shared. Confused and heartbroken, Julia swallowed two of Yolanda’s little blue pills. Then she wept until her pillow was soaked with tears and finally drifted into a heavy sleep.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Brand New Clothes for Angel

 

In the days after learning what her encounter with Oscar had truly meant to him, Julia developed a new resolve.

From now on, I’m in control, she told herself as she considered the many needs she and Angel faced.

If boys like Oscar intended to use her, Julia decided, they would no longer do so for nothing. She began inviting young men into the apartment and made it clear that her attention came at a price. Before long, she was earning what seemed to her like a great deal of money.

The first thing Julia did with her newfound wealth was to go shopping on Graham Avenue and buy new clothes for Angel. For the first time in his young life, he had clothes that had not come from a thrift shop or been worn by someone else.

When Yolanda asked where she had found the money, Julia lied and told her that the clothes were gifts from Mrs. Thompson.

 

TWENTY-FIVE

Lucky to Have a lot of Friends

Because Yolanda was rarely home at night, Julia had considerable privacy for receiving the young men she thought of as her “dates.” On several occasions, Yolanda asked suspiciously about the boys who gathered on the steps in the evenings and the occasional visitor who came looking for Julia during the day.

“I’m just lucky to have a lot of friends,” Julia told her.

Julia was certain Yolanda would be furious if she discovered what was happening in the apartment. But the money had become too important to give up, and because Yolanda was hardly ever there, deceiving her did not seem especially wrong.

Whenever fear, sadness, or shame threatened to overwhelm her, Julia returned to the little blue pills in the kitchen cabinet. They dulled her uneasiness and allowed her to push aside her doubts, at least for a while.

Before long, more young men were seeking Julia’s attention than she could easily accommodate. She struggled to care for Angel, complete all her work in the apartment and salon, and receive the “dates” who arrived after the salon closed at seven. Sometimes Angel slept only a few feet away in his crib while Julia was with one of them.

Julia managed to save more money than she had ever possessed before. For the first time in her life, she felt somewhat independent and believed herself to be in control. Yet her encounters brought her no affection or pleasure. Each one left her feeling a little emptier than before.

The neighbors eventually became suspicious of the young men entering the beauty salon after hours and began telling Yolanda something questionable was going on. When Yolanda confronted Julia about the complaints, Julia once again denied everything.

“I can’t help it if I have a lot of friends who like to come in and visit the baby,” she replied, although even she knew how unconvincing the explanation sounded.

Faced with Yolanda’s anger, the burden of her work, her worsening reputation, and the constant feeling of being used, Julia came to hate her life and despise the person she believed she had become. More and more, she relied on those little blue pills to quiet her fear and self-loathing, but the relief never lasted for long.

Angel remained her greatest source of purpose, the only person who gave her a reason to keep going.

 

TWENTY-SIX

Prostíbulo Rodríguez

 

Although Julia continued to deny everything, Yolanda could no longer ignore the neighbors’ complaints. Whether the accusations were rumors or the truth, they were beginning to damage her business. She no longer felt comfortable leaving Julia alone at night, which greatly interfered with her habit of disappearing for days at a time.

Some of Yolanda’s regular customers stopped coming to the salon because of what was being said. Then one morning, she discovered someone had used a bar of soap to scrawl PROSTÍBULO RODRÍGUEZ across the entire length of the salon’s large front window.

The words labeled her salon a house of prostitution.

Yolanda was infuriated.

The final straw came one afternoon when Carmen Vargas, one of her oldest and most faithful customers, leaned toward her and spoke in a whisper.

“Of course, I don’t believe a word of it, Yolanda, but people are saying you’re looking for other girls to work in your so-called prostíbulo.” Carmen shook her head gravely. “You’d better do something before these rumors destroy your business. And frankly, at my age, I don’t want to have to find another hairdresser.”

Shortly after Christmas, Yolanda told Julia she would have to find somewhere else to live. She and Angel had to be out of the apartment by the end of January.

“Even if you’re telling me the truth and nothing has been going on here, I’ve still got my business and my reputation to worry about,” she said. “So, you and the baby have to go. I’m sorry.”

Then her voice became more severe.

“And if those ungodly rumors are true, if I ever find proof, I’ll put you out on the street that very minute. But it’s winter, and you’ve got that baby to take care of, so I’m giving you until the end of January.”

Yolanda mumbled something under her breath before piously quoting from the Book of Proverbs:

“The sinner who conceals his sins shall not prosper.”

The words pierced Julia’s heart. Yolanda’s sudden religiosity struck her as peculiar, but she could not dismiss the warning. As Julia considered the unintended consequences of her choices, she realized sinner was precisely what she believed herself to be. Now, she thought, she had brought an entirely new predicament upon herself.

Before long, Julia found herself standing before the kitchen cabinet, shaking two little blue pills into her palm. She swallowed them quickly, hoping they would silence Yolanda’s words along with her own accusing thoughts.

For the first time in her life, Julia felt ashamed not because of something another person had done to her or accused her of, as her parents and the guidance counselor at Eli Whitney had done, but because of choices she herself had made.

Her father had called her a whore. Now she feared she had become exactly what he had always said she was. She blamed herself entirely, imagining herself no different from all the horrible people who had lived wicked lives and were now rotting in hell.

Then she looked into Angel’s eyes and wondered why he had been given her for a mother instead of someone better—someone worthy of him.

Julia had never felt so alone.

During Julia’s final weeks on Debevoise Street, life between her and Yolanda became increasingly tense. Yolanda spent every night in the apartment and seemed to watch Julia’s every move. She forbade Julia from bringing anyone inside.

“I don’t care if your mother herself comes over here. No one is allowed in my house unless I invite them,” she decreed.

Julia stopped seeing her “dates,” partly because Yolanda’s watchful presence made it impossible, but also because she had grown tired of being intimate with strangers and the emptiness each encounter left behind. Part of her felt relieved.

Thank God, she thought.

Yet she soon returned to the kitchen cabinet and reached for another little blue pill.

Just one more, she promised herself. This will be the last.

Young men continued coming to the door looking for Julia. Yolanda chased them away with humiliating insults, making certain everyone nearby could hear her. She was determined to restore her good name among her neighbors and customers.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

I Love You

Mrs. Thompson heard Julia was having trouble and asked her to come to the apartment on Stagg Walk. She welcomed Julia with open arms and told her it had been far too long since her last visit.

“I love you and that baby so much,” she said. “You’re family to me, honey. Both of you.”

Mrs. Thompson sat beside Julia on the couch and gently met her eyes.

“Honey, I heard you’re in some kind of trouble...and some of the things people are saying about you ain’t too nice.” She paused. “What’s going on, child?”

Sitting beside Mrs. Thompson on the couch, Julia struggled to find the words. Shame and a profound sense of failure overwhelmed her. Then she began to cry, deep, uncontrollable sobs rising from somewhere within her.

Once she began speaking, years of carefully guarded secrets poured out. Julia told Mrs. Thompson about her parents and the unspeakable things her father had done to her. Then, for the first time, she revealed the truth she had carried alone since Angel’s birth.

Her father was also Angel’s father.

Julia went on to describe the eight months since leaving the Thompson home: the oppressive arrangement with Yolanda, the nightmare about being trapped in a cage with mice, and the summer evenings spent with the boys outside the salon. She told her about Oscar, how tender and wonderful their night together had seemed and how betrayed she felt after discovering what it had meant to him.

Finally, Julia confessed how anger, desperation, and the need for money had led her to accept payment from other young men. She also reluctantly admitted using Yolanda’s little blue pills whenever she felt frightened, ashamed, or overwhelmed.

“But I stopped taking them,” she said. “I don’t want them anymore.”

She told Mrs. Thompson how used and empty she felt and how deeply ashamed she had become. She feared she was a terrible mother, unworthy of the beautiful child she loved more than anything in the world.

Then came one final admission.

“I think I’m pregnant again,” Julia whispered. “And this time I don’t even know who the father might be.” She lowered her eyes. “Yolanda says I’m a terrible sinner. Maybe she’s right.”

“Honey, before I say anything else, I want you to listen to me carefully.”

Mrs. Thompson looked deeply into Julia’s eyes. Tears filled her own.

“I—love—you,” she said slowly, emphasizing each word with a tenderness seeming to come from Jesus himself.

Then she wrapped her arms around Julia and held her for a long time while the girl sobbed. Mrs. Thompson now knew everything, and still she held her.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Julia understood the awesome power of being fully known and unconditionally loved.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

Doña Maria

 

Lizzy, Mrs. Thompson’s next-door neighbor, had an elderly friend named Doña María Lopez who needed a young woman to live with her in her apartment on Moore Street. Doña María had hoped to find an experienced home attendant but had never considered taking in a single mother with one baby and possibly another on the way.

Mrs. Thompson and Lizzy made a special visit to Doña María and appealed to her to accept Julia on a trial basis. They acknowledged Julia had experienced troubles but explained how deeply she wanted to become a good mother and build a better life for herself and Angel.

“You know,” Mrs. Thompson told her, “young people today got so much working against them. But if we give them a chance, wonderful things can happen.”

Both women promised to visit regularly and support Doña María if the arrangement became difficult.

“I suppose it might be nice to hear the precious sounds of children in my apartment again,” the older woman said as Mrs. Thompson and Lizzy prepared to leave.

The two women exchanged satisfied smiles. They had convinced her.

Doña María was eighty-four years old and, on days when her arthritis became especially severe, could barely get out of bed. Her only child, a son named Alberto, lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and could not provide the daily assistance she needed.

Doña María urgently needed someone to help her with the ordinary details of life, while Julia needed to leave Yolanda’s apartment as soon as possible. Taking Julia and Angel into her home on a trial basis offered a possible solution for both.

Julia knew about Doña María’s reluctance and resolved to do everything she could to please the elderly woman. She also did not want to disappoint Mrs. Thompson, whose kindness had once again rescued her from a desperate situation.

On the morning of January 13, 1969, Julia and Angel left Salón de Belleza Rodriguez and moved three and a half blocks away to Doña María’s apartment on Moore Street. By noon, Julia had carried over all their belongings, including Angel’s crib, and mother and child had begun yet another new chapter of their lives.

 

TWENTY-NINE

The Moore Street Apartment

 

Doña María lived in poverty. Although she kept her small apartment clean and tidy, the four-story, turn-of-the-century building bore unmistakable signs of age and neglect. Above the front entrance, within the triangular peak of the doorframe, a Star of David remained as a relic of the building’s original Jewish occupants.

Years of peeling paint exposed different colors across the wooden façade, from the sidewalk to the deteriorating latticework along the roof. A rusted fire escape clung precariously to the front of the building, with missing rungs on several of its ladders.

Inside, cracked steps sloped away from the wall toward an unsteady banister. The dark green walls of the stairwell were dirty and scarred with holes, while small fluorescent lights provided only a dim and eerie glow. When a bulb burned out, weeks might pass before anyone replaced it. Even the stench of a dead rodent somewhere within the building was not unusual.

Amid all this deterioration, Doña’s apartment remained an island of cleanliness and order.

Doña María’s apartment consisted of four rooms and a tiny bathroom. It was a typical Brooklyn “railroad apartment,” with each room leading directly into the next like a line of railroad cars.

A large bedroom faced the street, while the kitchen overlooked the backyard. Between them were two smaller interior rooms: a second bedroom and a living room. Because neither had an outside window, interior windows in the dividing walls allowed light to pass from one room to another.

Built into one corner of the kitchen was a cramped bathroom containing a bathtub and toilet but no sink. Its only light came from a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling.

The apartment had two doors opening onto the hallway. The kitchen door served as the main entrance. The other, located in the front bedroom, was heavily bolted and never opened.

Doña María slept in a double bed in the large front bedroom. An enormous crucifix hung above it, its ceramic figure of Jesus gruesomely painted with bruises, open wounds, and scarlet streaks of blood. Julia slept in the smaller bedroom with Angel’s crib beside her bed.

The living room contained a couch, a matching chair, and an old waist-high Philco radio. There was no television. A black telephone rested on a thick telephone book beside the couch, always covered with a crocheted doily as though its presence needed to be concealed.

Above the radio hung a large image of the Virgin Mary bearing the words Nuestra Señora de la Providencia. Tucked into its lower corners were two memorial cards: one for Doña María’s deceased husband and the other for her deceased grandson. A worn green carpet covered most of the floor.

The kitchen had only the most basic necessities. It was furnished with an old refrigerator that often emitted a loud, mysterious hum, a white porcelain-faced gas stove with a small oven beneath it, and a wooden table surrounded by four matching chairs. A large, ancient-looking porcelain sink dominated the room. It had two basins, one noticeably deeper than the other, and numerous chips darkened by years of heavy use. Torn linoleum patterned in yellow and red squares covered the floor. The wooden entrance door had two keyed locks and a heavy sliding bolt.

 

THIRTY

Dios te salve, María, llena eres de gracia

 

Julia’s responsibilities as Doña María’s home attendant included cleaning the apartment, taking clothes to the launderette, buying groceries, preparing meals, and accompanying her to medical appointments. Sometimes she helped Doña María dress. On especially difficult days, the elderly woman needed assistance washing herself and using the toilet.

In return, Julia received room and board along with a weekly stipend of fifteen dollars. For the first time in her life, she was earning money through work she could feel proud of, and the accomplishment gave her a new sense of dignity.

Angel adjusted easily to his new surroundings. Nearly ten months old and curious about everything, he held on to the furniture as he explored the apartment, cautiously testing his balance as he learned to walk.

On her better days, Doña María could be surprisingly energetic. She was a kind woman, and Julia soon realized they would not merely get along but might become good friends.

Doña María adored small children and quickly began doting on Angel. She held him on her lap, sang to him, and whispered affectionately in Spanish. Angel seemed to brighten whenever she pronounced his name Ángel. Often she called him Angelito, which Julia found especially endearing.

Doña María also showed motherly concern for Julia and the baby growing inside her.

“Are you sure you’re taking care of yourself?” she frequently asked.

She warned Julia against lifting anything too heavy and urged her to rest during the day.

“We want to have a healthy baby,” she would say, as though she herself were part of the expectant family.

Many evenings, Julia and Doña María sat together in the living room listening to Spanish music on the old Philco radio. Doña María would tell stories about her life, sometimes repeating the same ones night after night. Julia never minded. With each telling, some new detail emerged.

She spoke of growing up “dirt poor” in the Puerto Rican countryside, el campo, as she called it, where chickens wandered through the house and her mother placed pots beneath the leaking roof whenever it rained.

“But we were happy,” she told Julia. “We had a strong family, plenty of faith, and lots of love. We didn’t know what we didn’t have.”

Doña María often reminisced about Fernando López, “Nando,” as she always called him—whom she married in 1905 when she was twenty. Their son, Alberto, was born in 1909, bringing great happiness to them both. In 1920, fifteen years after their marriage, the family left Puerto Rico and settled in Brooklyn. Doña María still became tearful whenever she recalled her final farewell to her mother.

“It seems like only yesterday when I said goodbye to my mami, knowing I wouldn’t see her again until we met in heaven. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

She would touch a floral handkerchief to the corners of her eyes before continuing.

After settling in Brooklyn, Nando found work as a poorly paid stevedore on the East River piers and remained there for most of his working life. He and Doña María were married for fifty-two years before his death from cancer in 1957.

Doña María also spoke about the prejudice they experienced as Spanish-speaking newcomers to Williamsburg. She remembered Germans and Italians making it clear Puerto Ricans were not welcome, even fellow Catholics at Sunday Mass.

“They should have known better,” she would say, lingering disappointment still evident in her voice. “Sometimes people even looked at us strangely in church. Imagine such a thing!”

Julia loved listening to Doña María and gradually came to think of her as the grandmother she had never known.

“If I am your abuela,” Doña María said with a broad smile, “then you are my nieta. And for this, I am very blessed.”

Doña María’s son, Alberto, came every Saturday and remained until Sunday morning so he could spend time with his mother and take her to Mass. A devout Catholic, Alberto was sixty years old and widowed. His only child, Franky, had served in the United States Army for eleven years before being killed in Vietnam in 1965 at the age of twenty-nine.

Alberto was pleased with Julia’s work and the close relationship she had developed with his mother.

“You and Angel have brought my mother a joy I haven’t seen in her since my father died,” he told Julia one day.

His words meant a great deal to her. Julia told him she had also found a new sense of happiness and felt deeply grateful for the home she and Angel now shared with Doña María.

Doña María’s poor health sometimes prevented her from leaving the apartment. On better Sundays, Alberto accompanied her three and a half blocks to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompei on Siegel Street. The modest church occupied a building once used as a rope factory during the days of Brooklyn’s busy shipping industry.

They often invited Julia and Angel to join them, but she always declined.

“I wasn’t raised going to church,” she explained. “Besides, if I ever walked inside one, lightning might strike me.”

Doña María occasionally suggested having Angel baptized, but Julia showed little interest, so she did not press the matter. She and Alberto continued speaking openly about their faith, which Julia found both fascinating and mysterious. She struggled to believe God cared about her personally or could forgive the sins she believed she had committed.

Why spend all that time in church, she wondered, if I’m probably going to hell anyway?

Doña María began teaching her Spanish prayers from an old, leather-bound prayer book brought from Puerto Rico many years before.

“My mami gave me this when I made my First Communion,” she would remind Julia with pride.

Julia especially loved one illustration of Jesus surrounded by children, one of them seated lovingly on his lap and gazing into his face.

After Julia learned the prayers of the Rosary, Doña María invited her to pray each evening before bed. This much, Julia decided, she could do.

Guided by Doña María, Julia slowly began to feel drawn toward the other María, the one whose image hung above the old Philco radio.

“Dios te salve, María, llena eres de gracia; el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús,” Doña María would begin.

Julia responded:

“Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén.”

At first, Julia found their evening prayers awkward and uncomfortable. In time, however, they gave her a sense of peace unlike anything she had ever known.

 

THIRTY-ONE

New Beginnings, New Friends.

 

As Julia settled into life on Moore Street, she began forming friendships with people throughout the neighborhood.

Downstairs lived an elderly man named Rafy Gonzalez, whose bedridden wife was slowly dying. Julia never saw Mrs. Gonzalez, but Doña María often spoke sorrowfully about her.

“Pobrecita, she can’t even get out of bed. But Rafy takes such good care of her. Él es un santo.”

Rafy greeted Julia as “my sunshine” or corazón. Whenever he could not leave his wife alone, Julia gladly went to the grocery store or pharmacy for him.

Across the street, Gertrude Hodes operated a small candy store called Hodes’ Confectionery. Her German great-grandparents had settled in Williamsburg during the 1870s, but most of the family had since moved to Long Island or New Jersey.

“I’m the last Hodes left in Williamsburg,” she once told Julia sadly. “The family doesn’t keep in touch the way we used to.”

Gertrude frequently set aside broken lollipops and improperly packaged candies she could not sell, generously sharing them with neighborhood children and sometimes adults. Julia became a grateful recipient and occasionally stopped by the store to see whether Gertrude had saved anything for her. She readily confessed to having quite a sweet tooth. Gertrude welcomed the visits, whether Julia came for sweets, conversation, or the latest neighborhood gossip.

Julia also befriended Sonia Washington, a Black woman in her early twenties whose father pastored the Faith Tabernacle Holiness House of Pentecostal Prayer, a small storefront church on Humboldt Street. Julia remembered attending a Wednesday evening prayer meeting there with the Thompson family several years earlier. The loud praying and impassioned preaching had frightened her so badly she vowed never to return. Sonia attended Hunter College on scholarship and devoted much of her spare time to political activism. She often spoke passionately about the social and economic barriers confronting minorities and women.

“Look at us, Julia. We’ve been condemned to live in this ghetto, and somebody’s responsible. I know I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Julia enjoyed Sonia’s company but did not share her passion for political causes.

Her closest new friend was Gladys Gutierrez, a young Dominican woman her own age. Gladys spoke English well, though with a strong Dominican accent. She was the oldest of eight children and had immigrated with her family three years earlier from Dicayagua Arriba, a small rural settlement in Santiago Province. Despite their different backgrounds, she and Julia quickly developed a warm sisterly bond.

They often sat together on the steps in the evenings and talked about everything imaginable. Even when they disagreed, they respected one another enough to leave the matter unresolved. Gladys came from a deeply religious family but listened sympathetically whenever Julia spoke about an angry, punishing God and what she called “the insignificance of human beings when you look at the whole picture.”

For the first time in many months, Julia felt content. Moore Street was becoming her neighborhood, and the painful memories of Salón de Belleza Rodriguez gradually began to recede.

 

THIRTY-TWO

June 23, 1969

 

Mrs. Thompson and Sylvia rushed to Doña María’s apartment at five o’clock on Monday morning.

“Honey, I had no idea you were this far along,” Mrs. Thompson exclaimed. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital right away. Why did you wait so long to call me, child?”

She picked up the telephone and called New City Car Service.

Breathing heavily and wincing through another pain, Julia mumbled something about caring for Angel and not wanting to awaken Doña María or leave her alone.

After explaining the situation to Doña María and arranging for Sylvia to remain with Angel, Mrs. Thompson helped Julia down the three flights of stairs and into the waiting car. The driver hurried them to Greenpoint Hospital while Mrs. Thompson held Julia’s hand.

“It’s going to be all right,” she repeated soothingly. “You’re going to be fine, honey.”

Two hours later, Julia held a healthy newborn son in her arms and wept with exhaustion and joy. She named him Eduardo Mario, choosing his middle name in honor of Doña María, but she would always call him Eddy.

 

THIRTY-THREE

An Historic Moon Landing

 

Julia and Doña María listened eagerly to the news reports on Sunday, July 20, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. landed on the moon. Radio coverage of the historic mission continued throughout the day.

They remained awake late into the night and listened as Armstrong’s voice reached them from the surface of the moon.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” the astronaut proclaimed.

Doña María shook her head in wonder.

“I never thought I would live to see this day,” she said. “Your children are growing up in an exciting time.”

Julia glanced into the next room, where Angel slept beside his month-old baby brother. She wondered whether landing on the moon would make any real difference in the lives of her children, but she enjoyed seeing Doña María so animated.

As they sat and listened to the news, Doña Maria talked about other historic moments she had heard reported on that same radio.

She recalled listening to reports about Charles Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic flight back in 1927, she remembered hearing the terrible report of the Hindenburg blowing up in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937, she reminisced about sitting by that radio and being saddened by so many reports of air raids and bombings by both the Allies and the Axis powers during World War Two, she remembered the awe she felt when the Soviets put the first man in space in April of 1961, and how proud she had felt as an American when John Glenn became the first United States citizen to orbit the earth in 1962, and she spoke of how sad she had felt when she heard the report that three astronauts had died in a launch pad fire at Cape Kennedy just a little more than two years before that historic moon landing.

Now, through the same old radio, she had heard the voice of a man standing on the moon.

Doña María sat quietly for a moment, marveling at how far humanity had traveled during her lifetime.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

Two Babies

 

Life soon became very different for Julia. Caring for Angel during his first fifteen months had occupied much of her attention. Now she had two babies to raise while continuing her responsibilities as Doña María’s home attendant.

“Don’t worry, Julia,” Doña María assured her. “I might be a weak old lady, but I was a mother once. I still know how to change diapers. Some things in life you never forget.”

Doña María delighted in having the two baby boys in her home and often said they made her feel young again.

“¡Qué lindos estos chiquitos!” she would exclaim.

The presence of the children seemed to rejuvenate her, and she helped Julia as much as her health permitted. Sometimes she insisted on caring for the boys by herself.

“Julia, get out of this apartment for a little while. You need a break, and you should be meeting people. I love taking care of these chiquitos. Don’t worry about any of us. Now, ¡por favor, váyase!”

Mrs. Thompson also helped. The baby boys were cared for nearly every Saturday with her family in their apartment on Stagg Walk. She called those Saturdays her gift to Julia, giving the young mother time for herself and an opportunity to enjoy some of the ordinary things other young women did.

“But believe me, honey,” Mrs. Thompson often said, “I’m the one receiving the gift. These two boys are precious.”

Although still a baby himself, only fifteen months older, Angel adored his new brother. Clinging to the side of Eddy’s crib with one hand, he would reach the other through the bars and gently caress Eddy’s small, nearly hairless head, imitating what he had often seen Julia do.

Sometimes Angel remained beside the crib for a long while, gazing at Eddy and making funny little sounds as though answering his brother’s coos. When Eddy cried, Angel cried. When Eddy smiled, Angel smiled with him. Eddy’s eyes followed his older brother whenever he moved nearby. The bond between them was already unmistakable.

“Those two are going to love each other for the rest of their lives,” Doña María often said.

The thought filled Julia with joy. As she watched her sons together, she felt a quiet gratitude rising within her toward whatever higher power might be watching over them.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

The Pigeon Man

 

Julia often spent her free Saturdays with Sylvia and Gladys. They window-shopped along Grand Street and Graham Avenue or walked to McCarren Park, where they sat on a bench watching young men play basketball and handball.

When they felt more adventurous, they took the double-L train into Manhattan. Sometimes they transferred to another line and remained on the subway until one of them impulsively chose a station. Then they would get off and explore neighborhoods they had never seen before.

Occasionally, they traveled all the way to Coney Island, where they wandered through Astroland and, if they had enough money, rode the Cyclone—a roller coaster they always found frightening but tremendously exciting.

During one such excursion, they transferred to the downtown 6 train at Union Square and got off at Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall. Emerging from the station, they walked to City Hall and admired its stately façade and broad marble steps. They wondered whether Mayor Lindsay worked on Saturdays and imagined him standing behind one of the darkened windows, looking down at them.

The girls sat on the steps and talked about how fortunate they were to live in New York City and in a free country. Before long, a white police officer approached and ordered them to leave.

“You girls got nothing better to do than loiter around City Hall?” he asked. “It’s bad enough we’ve got to support your families on welfare. You don’t have to sit here advertising to everyone how little you’ve got to do.”

Humiliated, they left the steps and moved to a green bench in the nearby park.

Hundreds of people passed before them, many hurrying as though late for important appointments despite the Saturday afternoon. Still smarting from the officer’s words, the girls began amusing themselves by inventing insulting stories about the more unusual-looking pedestrians. They spoke loudly enough for some of their subjects to hear and laughed as their stories became increasingly outrageous.

“You see that lady in the blue dress? I bet she smells so bad her husband won’t go anywhere near her. They probably haven’t had sex in years!”

The girls burst into laughter.

“And look at that goofy-looking boy in the checkered pants. He’s so gay he probably vomits every time he sees a naked girl!”

This brought even more laughter.

“And that old lady with the cane, she only carries it so people will feel sorry for her. The funny thing is, nobody cares about her at all.”

An old man sat alone on a nearby bench feeding crackers to a flock of pigeons. He had a small plastic grocery bag pulled over the crown of his head as though it were a wool knit cap. He wore a threadbare sport coat and trousers so dirty their original color had disappeared. A large pouch hung from his neck. From it, he removed one cracker at a time, crushed it carefully between his hands, and scattered the crumbs before the waiting birds.

He seemed unaware of the girls until, during a pause in their laughter, he spoke.

“You girls like pigeons?”

They looked at him but did not answer.

“These creatures are my best friends in the whole world,” he continued. “Just look at them.”

The girls followed his gaze.

“See how the sunlight touches their feathers? Most people think pigeons are plain and dirty but look closely. You can see purple shining through. Purple is the color of royalty, you know.”

He extended his hand, and one of the pigeons cautiously moved closer.

“All you have to do is give them a little food, and they come to you. They don’t care what you look like, where you live, or how much money you have. They accept you exactly as you are.”

Something in his words quieted the girls.

The old man told them he came to City Hall Park every Saturday and Sunday. During the week, he visited the pigeons in Battery Park, but he avoided the place on weekends because the tourists frightened his friends.

“People say terrible things to me down there,” he continued. “They call me a wino and a bum. Sometimes they tell me people like me ought to be locked away where nobody has to look at us.”

He scattered another handful of crumbs.

“I once knew a man who pushed a cart around those streets and never bothered anybody. Some boys tied him up one night and threw him into the river. He drowned where they threw him.”

For the first time, the old man raised his eyes and looked directly at Julia.

His eyes were bloodshot and filled with tears, yet Julia saw no anger in them. There was only sorrow, and a gentleness she could not explain.

“Why do people have to be so mean?” he asked.

None of the girls knew how to answer.

For a long moment, the sounds of the city seemed to recede. Julia felt as though the man was speaking not only about the policeman or the drowned man but about all who had ever been mocked, rejected, or treated as though their lives had no value. She also knew, without his saying so, he had heard the cruel remarks she and her friends had made about the people passing by.

The old man slowly rose from the bench. Crumbs fell from his lap, and the pigeons fluttered around him before rising together into the air.

“You girls have a nice day,” he said. “Stay out of trouble, and don’t forget to be kind to people.”

Then he winked and nodded toward the steps of City Hall.

“And don’t worry about that policeman. He only thinks he’s more important than everybody else.”

The girls watched as he crossed Park Row and disappeared down Beekman Street. None of them spoke for several minutes.

Back in Brooklyn, they sat at Mrs. Thompson’s kitchen table and told her about the policeman, their cruel remarks, and the old man feeding pigeons.

Mrs. Thompson listened without interrupting.

“Sounds to me like the good Lord might have sent somebody to teach you girls something,” she said when they had finished. “Maybe next time you won’t be so quick to make fun of people.”

“Do you really think God sent him?” Julia asked.

Mrs. Thompson smiled.

“I think God sends us people all the time, honey. The trouble is, we don’t always recognize them.”

 

THIRTY-SIX

Por favor, discúlpeme jovencita

 

During much of the third week of October 1969, Doña María lay sick in bed with a severe case of the flu. The illness weakened her so greatly that Julia remained almost constantly at her bedside.

Frequent vomiting and diarrhea forced Doña María to make repeated attempts to reach the bathroom. Because she was often too weak to walk that far, Julia placed a chamber pot beside her bed. Even then, there were times when Julia could not help her quickly enough. She changed the soiled bedclothes, cleaned the floor, and washed the elderly woman without expressing the slightest impatience.

Doña María was deeply embarrassed by these indignities.

“Por favor, discúlpeme, jovencita,” she repeated in a voice weaker than usual.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Julia assured her. “But are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor?”

Doña María remained adamant. She wanted no doctor.

Once, after becoming violently ill, she sat on the floor beside the chamber pot, too weak to stand. Julia knelt beside her and gently wiped her face with a damp cloth.

“I’m calling a doctor,” Julia said. “You’re too sick for me to take care of by myself.”

“No, niña, no quiero un doctor,” Doña María protested. “I have been through this before, and I will survive it again, si Dios quiere.”

Before Julia could answer, the elderly woman leaned over the chamber pot and became sick once more.

Julia had slept very little while Doña María struggled with the flu. Caring for the elderly woman while attending to the needs of two small children had left her exhausted. She had scarcely found time to care for herself.

By Thursday morning, Doña María announced she was beginning to feel like her old self. Julia was both relieved and grateful.

“I am so glad you were here with me, porque I never could have survived esta enfermedad without your ayuda,” Doña María told her appreciatively.

That afternoon, Julia said she wanted to leave the apartment for a little while and get some fresh air.

“I think I’ll take the boys for a walk along Graham Avenue. Maybe we’ll surprise Mrs. Thompson with a visit.”

“You go and enjoy yourself, cariño. Es un día muy bonito, and you have been cooped up in este apartamento for too long with this sick old lady.”

“You’re not a sick old lady anymore,” Julia said with a smile. “You told me so yourself.”

As much as Julia loved Doña María, she welcomed the opportunity to step outside. After days spent in the close apartment, surrounded by illness and exhaustion, the fresh autumn air felt like a gift.

 

THIRTY-SEVEN

An Unusual Silence

 

Julia used a double stroller whenever she took both boys for a walk. Getting two small children and the bulky stroller from the third-floor apartment to the street was always an ordeal. When Doña María felt strong enough, she helped. On this particular Thursday, however, the elderly woman was still too weak to venture downstairs.

As she had done many times before, Julia first carried the empty stroller down the three flights of crooked stairs and left it in the small vestibule. She then returned for the boys, carried Eddy in her arms, and guided Angel carefully down the steps. After settling them safely inside the vestibule, she wrestled the stroller down the four front steps and opened it on the sidewalk.

Within a few minutes, both boys were securely strapped inside, though neither seemed pleased about it.

As Julia walked along Moore Street and turned onto Graham Avenue, she became aware of an unusual silence. Few people were on the sidewalks, and far fewer cars than usual traveled along the avenue. The groups of teenage boys who ordinarily gathered outside the neighborhood grocery stores had disappeared.

Even the schoolyard beside I.S. 49 was deserted. Usually, at least a few children could be found playing handball there. That afternoon, the courts stood empty.

How strange, Julia thought.

She had spent most of the previous week at Doña María’s bedside and wondered whether something important had happened without her knowing. The silence seemed almost mournful.

Maybe something terrible happened in Vietnam, she thought.

The eerie stillness continued throughout most of the twenty-minute walk from Moore Street to Stagg Walk. After crossing Manhattan Avenue at Scholes Street, Julia glanced at her watch. It was 3:17.

As she struggled to maneuver the stroller over several large cracks in the sidewalk, the neighborhood suddenly erupted.

People leaned from apartment windows, screaming and cheering. Drivers pounded their horns. Somewhere in the distance, Julia thought she heard gunshots being fired into the air.

The sudden commotion terrified Angel, who immediately began to cry. Eddy soon joined him.

“What in the world is going on?” Julia asked aloud as she hurried toward the Williamsburg Houses.

Four minutes later, she knocked on the Thompsons’ door with both crying children in her arms. She had left the stroller downstairs before carrying the boys up the two flights of stairs. Entering a building with two children and a stroller, she had long ago decided, was far easier than leaving one.

Car horns continued blaring outside, while cheers echoed between the buildings.

Thirteen-year-old Tyrone opened the door, scarcely able to contain himself.

“The Mets won! The Mets won! The Mets won!” he chanted.

At last, Julia understood.

The streets had been silent because much of New York had been watching or listening to the World Series, something far removed from her thoughts during Doña María’s illness.

Mrs. Thompson hurried to the door and joyfully took the boys from Julia while Tyrone breathlessly explained what had happened. The Mets had defeated the Baltimore Orioles in the fifth game, winning the World Series four games to one. They had scored two runs in the eighth inning to take the lead, and only minutes earlier, Cleon Jones had caught the final fly ball at Shea Stadium.

“They won the whole thing!” Tyrone exclaimed. “The Mets won the World Series!”

He explained how extraordinary the victory was. Since joining the National League seven years earlier, the Mets had been known as one of the worst teams in baseball. Now, against nearly everyone’s expectations, they were champions.

Tyrone rushed to the living room window, threw it open, and leaned outside.

“The Mets won!” he shouted into the jubilant afternoon. “The Mets won! The Mets won!”

All across New York, countless other voices joined his.

As Tyrone breathlessly explained the game, Mrs. Thompson settled onto the couch with Eddy cradled in her arms and Angel sitting on her lap. Almost as soon as she touched them, both boys became quiet.

Mrs. Thompson was pleased about the Mets’ victory, but she did not share Tyrone’s exuberance. Julia enjoyed his excitement and felt exhilarated by the celebration she had witnessed in the streets, though baseball itself meant little to her. She was far happier simply to see Mrs. Thompson and to be back in a place where she felt so completely at home.

Later that afternoon, Julia pushed the stroller back along Graham Avenue toward Doña María’s apartment. A steady procession of cars moved in both directions, most with their windows open and filled with people ready to celebrate. Drivers sounded their horns while passengers leaned from the windows, waving their arms and shouting about the Mets.

Messages written in soap covered some of the car windows:

METS ARE NUMBER ONE!

WORLD CHAMPION METS!

ORIOLES, GO HOME!

The entire neighborhood seemed caught up in the celebration. Julia felt herself becoming part of it as she walked toward Moore Street, pushing the stroller with both boys now fast asleep.

It was good to see so many people celebrating together. Too often, the sounds rising from those streets had been angry or sorrowful. On this October afternoon, the people of New York had something joyful to share.

The Mets won, the Mets won, the Mets won, Julia repeated silently as she turned from Graham Avenue onto Moore Street and headed toward the building where she and her children lived with Doña María.

 

THIRTY-EIGHT

Alfredo

 

The months following the Mets’ World Series victory passed quietly for Julia and her children. Angel learned to speak in short sentences, Eddy took his first uncertain steps, and Doña María’s health improved and declined with the changing seasons. Life in the Moore Street apartment settled into a familiar rhythm. For perhaps the first time, Julia experienced a measure of stability.

Then, in March 1971, when she was twenty, Julia met twenty-four-year-old Alfredo Jimenez.

They met one evening at the Gutierrez apartment, where family and friends had gathered to welcome several cousins who had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic. Julia and Alfredo barely spoke during the hour and a half they spent in the crowded living room. Yet amid the lively conversation surrounding them, they repeatedly exchanged glances.

Whenever Julia looked across the room, Alfredo seemed to be looking back.

She found him strikingly handsome. His deep voice carried above the others, and each time she heard it, she felt her heart beat faster. She wanted to speak to him but lacked the courage. She feared he might reject her or somehow recognize how powerfully he had already affected her.

It’s all in my head, she told herself. He isn’t really looking at me.

“I’ve got to get back to the boys and Doña María,” Julia announced as she prepared to leave.

She wanted to ask Alfredo whether he would be visiting the Gutierrez family again, but fear carried her through the apartment door without so much as a goodbye.

To her surprise, Alfredo followed her into the vestibule.

“Cariño, eres muy bonita,” he said. “How would you like to get together with me sometime?”

Julia was elated. Without realizing how eager she sounded, she immediately answered, “Of course. When?”

They met the following evening at five o’clock. For more than two hours, they sat talking inside Alfredo’s warmly heated 1958 Chevrolet Impala, parked in front of the building where Julia lived with her boys and Doña María.

Afterward, Alfredo called on her almost every day. Julia quickly fell deeply in love with him, with the kind of passion she had previously encountered only in romance novels. For the first time, she believed she understood what those stories were trying to describe.

Alfredo was Dominican and had been introduced as one of Gladys’s cousins, though Julia never fully understood the precise relationship. The Gutierrez family seemed to include a vast network of relatives, close friends, and people from the same village who regarded one another as family.

It was not long before Alfredo asked Julia to be his girl. She eagerly accepted.

She had never felt such a powerful attraction to any man. Alfredo appeared sensitive and affectionate, qualities Julia found especially appealing in someone who otherwise presented himself with such masculine confidence. He stood six feet tall and had a strong, muscular build, an olive-brown complexion, expressive black eyes, and a neatly trimmed goatee. Julia thought he was nearly perfect.

Alfredo was almost as devoted to his Impala as Julia was to him. He had purchased it from a used-car dealership on Flushing Avenue and treated it like a prized possession. Its body was sky blue, and its white vinyl roof gave it the appearance of a convertible.

He became angry whenever anyone touched the car without permission or made a disparaging remark about it. Once, after a man insulted both the Impala and Alfredo’s masculinity, Alfredo punched him in the face.

Julia should have recognized something troubling in the incident. Instead, she accepted Alfredo’s explanation that the man had deliberately provoked him.

Alfredo could talk endlessly about the car and its many features. Julia rarely understood him, but she loved listening to his voice.

“This is one of the best Chevrolets ever made,” he told her proudly. “It has a V8 engine, a 348 with a four-barrel carburetor.”

“That’s really interesting,” Julia would reply, though the words meant nothing to her.

All she cared about was being near him.

Doña María did not share Julia’s admiration.

“Watch out for that young man,” she warned. “There is something about him I do not trust. Of course, I cannot tell you who you may see, but please be careful. Con cuidado, muchacha. I have lived on this earth long enough to recognize certain things.”

Julia appreciated Doña María’s motherly concern but dismissed her suspicions. She attributed them partly to the tension she had occasionally noticed between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, an animosity she neither shared nor fully understood.

To Julia, Alfredo seemed flawless. She was happy to feel wanted and believed herself loved.

One afternoon, as they sat together in his car, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” began playing on the radio. Alfredo reached for Julia’s hand.

“I will always be there for you, mi cariño,” he promised. “Whenever you are hurting, I will comfort you. We will get through every difficult time together, porque tenemos amor.”

Julia listened and believed every word.

From then on, whenever she heard the song, she thought of Alfredo. Its image became inseparable from the promises he had made. She imagined his love carrying her safely above all the troubles of her life.

How can Doña María not understand the love we have? she often wondered.

She chose to forget the elderly woman’s warnings and surrendered herself completely to the hope of their romance.

Alfredo often called and invited Julia to ride with him.

“Quiero llevar a mi muchacha bonita a dar una vuelta,” he would say. “Come with me.”

They drove throughout the city, sometimes without any particular destination. During those rides, they talked about Julia’s troubled past, Alfredo’s family in the Dominican Republic, and the hardships each believed life had imposed upon them.

Julia did not tell Alfredo everything. She revealed only enough for him to understand she had been with men before and had experienced things she did not wish to discuss.

One night, they parked at the end of South Fifth Street, near the East River and almost directly beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. There, their relationship became intimate for the first time.

Julia entered the moment willingly, convinced she was giving herself to a man who truly loved her.

Afterward, as they sat together in the car, Alfredo told her she was the first woman he had ever truly loved. He said she was beautiful and unlike anyone he had known before. He even suggested God had brought them together.

Julia loved Alfredo and believed she would do anything for him. He seemed to love her in return, and for a time, this gave her greater happiness than she had ever known.

 

THIRTY-NINE

A Player?

 

Alfredo appeared to get along well with Angel and Eddy. He held them in his arms, played with them, and treated them with affection. Seeing him with her children filled Julia with happiness and encouraged her to imagine him becoming a father to her boys.

During the first several months of their relationship, Alfredo visited the Moore Street apartment frequently, much to Doña María’s displeasure. The elderly woman did not openly complain, but she offered him little welcome. Whenever he arrived, she usually withdrew to her bedroom while he and Julia sat at the kitchen table discussing their lives, dreams, and hopes for the future.

At times, however, Julia sensed parts of Alfredo’s life remained hidden from her. He sometimes disappeared without explanation and returned expecting her not to question him.

“Why can’t you tell me where you were last night?” she would ask, struggling to contain her anger.

Alfredo always seemed to have an excuse. He had been helping a friend, visiting relatives, working late, or dealing with trouble involving his car. Julia loved him so desperately that she usually accepted whatever explanation he offered.

“I understand,” she would finally say, even when she did not.

Julia would have married Alfredo without hesitation, but rumors circulating through the neighborhood suggested he was a player. People claimed he had several girlfriends, countless former girlfriends, and children living in both Brooklyn and Queens.

Gertrude Hodes heard women discussing Alfredo in her candy store and passed what she had learned to Doña María. The elderly woman once again tried to warn Julia.

Julia refused to believe the rumors. She could not imagine Alfredo deceiving her after everything he had promised. She did not ask whether the stories were true because some part of her feared what the answer might be.

Over the next two and a half years, Julia and Alfredo’s relationship became an on-again, off-again love affair. Even after periods of unexplained absence, he always returned. He remained a recurring presence in Julia’s life and in the lives of her boys, but he never gave her the security or commitment she desired.

His uncertain place within the family remained a source of uneasiness. Julia continued hoping he would eventually devote himself fully to her and the children, while Doña María remained suspicious of his intentions.

In time, the elderly woman stopped warning Julia about him. She had already expressed her concerns and repeating them only created tension between them.

In the end, I cannot control what other people choose to do, Doña María reminded herself.

She had said all she could. Julia would have to discover the truth about Alfredo for herself.

 

FORTY

Berto

 

When Eddy’s third birthday arrived on June 23, 1972, Julia could hardly believe how quickly the time had passed. Since the day of his birth, life with her two boys had settled into a comforting routine. Angel and Eddy had become active, joyful children, and their days in Doña María’s Moore Street apartment were filled with happiness, adventure, and excitement.

Life was good.

Gladys’s youngest brother, Roberto, always known as Berto, was one year older than Angel and two years older than Eddy. He had become a familiar presence in their lives, often accompanying Gladys when she visited the apartment. Berto loved those visits because Angel and Eddy were his best friends.

Berto was a cheerful and pleasant child, and Doña María always welcomed him warmly. She enjoyed watching the three boys spread their toys across the apartment and lose themselves in the imaginary worlds they created together.

“Los niños have such wonderful imaginations,” she once remarked to Julia.

Doña María often sat near the boys as they played and asked questions about their toys and adventures. They eagerly explained how their toy helicopter could fly or how they had to protect the apartment from an evil monster hiding beneath the couch or in the next room.

“That is very interesting,” she would tell them, matching their excitement. “We are so blessed to have you here to protect us.”

“Son muy buenos niños, chicas,” Doña María often said to Julia and Gladys. She wanted them to know how highly she regarded the boys and how much she enjoyed the life they brought into her home.

Angel and Eddy also visited the Gutierrez apartment with Julia so they could play with Berto there. On especially fortunate days, Julia and Gladys took the boys to the playground near the Bushwick Houses, a place they all loved.

When the weather was warm, the three friends spent hours playing on the sidewalks and front steps of the buildings where they lived. They became completely absorbed in their games and often failed to hear their mothers calling them home.

The boys were almost always together, leading many people to assume they belonged to the same family. Whenever anyone asked, they proudly said they were cousins.

They repeated it often, even to one another. Before long, they truly believed it.

 

FORTY-ONE

Brotherly Love

 

Doña María loved doting on Angel and Eddy. She had become Julia’s adoptive grandmother and the boys’ beloved Abuelita, a role she embraced with great joy. She delighted whenever they called her by the endearing Spanish title, and everyone knew how much it meant to her.

Her grandmotherly devotion was especially evident in the way she shared her faith with them. She whispered prayers into their small ears and often told them they were little saints.

By the time Angel was three years old and experimenting with his growing vocabulary, he greeted nearly everyone, including complete strangers, with the words, “Dios te ama.”

He was repeating what he so often heard from Doña María.

“Dios los ama más de lo que pueden imaginar,” she affectionately reminded the boys. God loved them more than they could imagine.

Although Doña María showed great affection toward both children, she shared a special bond with Angel. She taught him every Spanish prayer he was able to learn. Julia found it adorable when he pronounced the Spanish words and folded his hands in imitation of Doña María whenever she prayed.

She also taught Angel how to ask for her blessing and make the sign of the cross.

“En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo,” Angel proudly recited.

With great seriousness, he moved his small right hand from his forehead to his chest and then from his left shoulder to his right. When he finished, he gently kissed the back of his thumb, crossed over his tiny index finger.

Doña María often said his name perfectly matched his sweet, almost seraphic disposition.

“Ángel,” she would say, lingering over the name as if savoring the sound of every syllable.

Even in their earliest years, Angel and Eddy occasionally became too rough with one another. Such quarrels were natural for brothers so close in age, and the squabbles were never serious. Before long, each would ask the other for forgiveness.

“Jesús nos enseñó to forgive others as we ask God to forgive us,” Doña María reminded them.

Angel had always been small in stature, and Eddy quickly grew to equal him in size. People often assumed the boys were twins. In some ways, they seemed almost inseparable enough to be so.

As they grew, their brotherly affection deepened. Each became fiercely protective of the other.

Doña María frequently called Julia’s attention to their devotion by recalling the words of Saint Paul.

“Love one another with brotherly affection and honor one another,” she would say. “Estos chicos already understand.”

She believed the love Angel and Eddy shared was not only a blessing from God, but also one of the ways they honored him.

 

FORTY-TWO

August 6, 1973

 

“Mrs. Thompson, I think Doña María is dead,” Julia cried into the telephone. “She’s lying on her bed. She feels cold, and she won’t wake up. I think she’s dead. What am I supposed to do?”

“Honey, first you’ve got to calm down,” Mrs. Thompson told her. “Then call an ambulance. I’m coming right over. By the time they get there, I should be there too.”

When Mrs. Thompson arrived on Moore Street later that Monday morning, a steady rain, unusual for early August, was still falling. Two police cars and an ambulance were parked outside the building where Doña María had lived for more than forty years.

Julia sat at the kitchen table, weeping as a female detective asked the questions required whenever someone died at home. She answered as best she could, but her words repeatedly dissolved into sobs. Angel and Eddy stood on opposite sides of her chair, clinging to their mother and crying loudly, although neither fully comprehended the gravity of the moment.

As the ambulance attendants carried Doña María’s body from the apartment on a gurney, Julia clung to Mrs. Thompson and wailed.

“We didn’t get to say goodbye to her,” she cried. “What are we going to do now?”

The medical examiner later concluded Doña María had suffered a heart attack and died peacefully in her sleep. She was eighty-eight years old when Julia found her on the morning of August 6, 1973.

 

FORTY-THREE

What Am I Going to Do?

 

Almost immediately after learning of his mother’s death, Alberto began making funeral arrangements, including a viewing planned for the following Thursday evening. He arranged for Doña María to be laid out at the Tommaso Funeral Home at the corner of Bushwick and Johnson Avenues, a long-established neighborhood institution where his father, Nando, had also been taken after his death sixteen years earlier.

The funeral home was simple and clean, without any notable elegance. Nevertheless, it was respected and appreciated by neighborhood families from many racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds.

The Tommaso brothers, who operated the funeral home, had earned the affection and trust of the community through their kindness and professionalism. They were also known for their generosity toward families who struggled to meet the considerable expenses associated with burying a loved one.

The brothers assisted Alberto in arranging a funeral Mass for Doña María at her parish church, Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii. The Mass would be celebrated on Friday, August 10, at nine o’clock in the morning. Afterward, she would be buried beside Nando in their family plot at Calvary Cemetery in nearby Woodside, Queens.

Julia attended Doña María’s Thursday evening wake with both boys and accompanied them to the funeral Mass the following morning. It was the first Catholic service she had ever attended. She was so overwhelmed by grief throughout the Mass, however, she retained almost no memory of it afterward.

Angel and Eddy seemed bewildered and frightened by everything happening around them. Even so, they remained close to their mother and caused her no additional distress during those painful days.

Julia was grateful beyond words for Mrs. Thompson’s presence. She remained beside Julia through the wake, the funeral Mass, and the burial, gently guiding her through customs and rituals with which she had no familiarity.

Beneath everything lay Julia’s terrible awareness of what she had lost. Doña María had been her adoptive grandmother, protector, and source of stability. Now she was gone, and Julia was truly on her own for the first time in her adult life.

As Julia kept a tearful eye on her two young sons, she carried another fear she had shared with no one. She was almost certain she was pregnant again, this time with Alfredo’s child.

What am I going to do? she asked herself again and again.

 

FORTY-FOUR

Honoring Her Memory

 

The following Sunday, Alberto made his usual visit to the Moore Street apartment. Earlier in the day, he had attended Mass at Our Lady of Pompeii for the first time without his mother. On his way to the apartment, he stopped to buy lunch for Julia and the boys.

Ordinarily, Julia would have prepared a generous Sunday meal by the time Alberto and Doña María returned from church. The table might include arroz con gandules, pernil, tostones, maduros, ensalada de aguacate, and habichuelas guisadas. Rice, pork, plantains, avocados, and stewed beans were staples in many Puerto Rican homes and among the family’s favorite foods.

Soon after Julia moved into the apartment, Doña María had patiently taught her how to prepare each dish. From then on, these foods became the heart of the family’s Sunday meals.

This Sunday, however, Alberto had encouraged Julia to rest. He offered to bring food from a neighborhood Chinese takeout restaurant instead. Julia appreciated both the opportunity to rest and his thoughtful gesture.

Alberto had other important reasons for visiting. He needed to collect many of the personal belongings and family mementos his mother had treasured.

He gathered the large crucifix from her bedroom, the image of Nuestra Señora de la Providencia, her worn leather-bound First Communion prayer book, several pieces of jewelry she had kept but seldom worn, and a few other cherished possessions.

Finally, he collected her antique Philco radio.

Before leaving, Alberto invited Julia to join him at the kitchen table for what he described as a serious conversation.

He had spoken with the landlord, he explained, and Julia and her children would be permitted to remain in the apartment, provided she caused no trouble and paid the rent on time.

Alberto offered to pay three or four months’ rent while Julia searched for work or found another means of supporting her family.

“It is the least I can do after everything you did for my mother during these past four and a half years,” he told her gratefully.

He also gave Julia the furniture, household goods, and other belongings remaining in the apartment.

Julia was nearly speechless. When she finally found her voice, she thanked Alberto and promised to do everything possible to honor Doña María’s memory in the home where the elderly woman had lived for so many years.

In time, Julia would remember that promise with profound shame.

 

FORTY-FIVE

She’s Now with God

 

“But where is Abuelita?” Angel asked several days after the funeral. He could not understand Doña María’s continued absence. “Is she coming back?”

Julia gathered Angel and Eddy close and explained that Doña María had gone to a place more wonderful than anything they could imagine.

“Do you remember how she always said her prayers and reminded us how much God loves us?” Julia asked. “She is with God now, in a place called heaven, and she is very happy there.”

“Can we visit her?” Eddy asked hopefully.

“We can visit her in our dreams and whenever we think loving thoughts about her,” Julia replied. “She can still see us because she is with Jesus.”

“Is that why Jesus isn’t in the bedroom anymore?” Angel asked.

“Yes,” Julia answered, uncertain how to explain the missing crucifix or anything else about death.

“Doña María is also with her mother, whom she had not seen for a very long time,” Julia continued, tears filling her eyes. “I am sure being with her again makes Abuelita very happy.”

“Mommy, you’re not going to go away from us too, are you?” Eddy asked fearfully.

Julia pulled him closer.

“No, Eddy. I plan to stay with you and Angel forever,” she promised, offering the only reassurance she could.

 

FORTY-SIX

P.S 147

 

For months, Julia had been telling Angel he was a big boy now and would soon attend school like other children. Angel did not understand why children had to go to school. The thought of spending his days in a strange place, separated from his mother and Eddy, frightened him.

From the apartment’s front window, he often watched children walking to school each morning. They usually traveled in small groups, carrying heavy book bags over their shoulders. To Angel, they seemed part of a solemn procession making its way toward the enormous school building on Bushwick Avenue, between McKibbin and Seigel Streets.

P.S. 147 appeared dark and forbidding to him. He had passed it many times while walking with his mother and imagined terrible things happened to children inside. Some of his friends had filled his mind with frightening stories.

“When you get to first grade, they hit you across the back if you don’t answer the teacher’s questions or do your homework,” Berto had warned him. Berto had completed kindergarten the previous June and spoke with the authority of someone who had already survived the place.

School was the last place in the world Angel wanted to go.

On September 10, 1973, Julia walked a fearful Angel the two blocks to P.S. 147 for his first day of school. Along the way, she struggled to hold back her tears. She felt as though she were losing her baby and could not believe how quickly he was growing.

Julia accompanied him through the imposing front entrance and into the classroom where he would spend his kindergarten year. His teacher was Mrs. Winterling, a fifty-seven-year-old woman who had taught at the school for twenty-five years.

Julia hugged Angel, kissed his forehead, and told him to be a good boy. When she turned to leave, he began to cry inconsolably.

Only weeks had passed since Abuelita had disappeared from his life. Now his mother was walking away from him too.

Mrs. Winterling had comforted many frightened children on their first day of school. She took Angel by the hand and, with the gentleness of a caring grandmother, led him toward the other children. They were seated in a circle on a large purple shag rug, and several were still sniffling through their own tears.

Mrs. Winterling sat in a chair at the head of the circle, rising high above the twenty-three small children gathered around her. Her presence commanded their attention and respect, though some regarded her with fear.

Many of Angel’s new classmates appeared to share his bewilderment. For the first time, their mothers had left them in an unfamiliar place with people they did not know.

Angel cried through most of the morning. When his relieved mother returned at eleven thirty to take him home, he felt an anger toward her unlike anything he had experienced before.

For weeks afterward, Angel begged Julia to let him remain at home. In his young mind, school was the worst thing ever to happen to him. His mother seemed cruel and indifferent to his suffering whenever she forced him to return to Mrs. Winterling’s kindergarten class.

Julia pleaded with Angel to be a good boy and stop fighting with her each morning. Nevertheless, their daily struggle continued for more than a month.

After his initial fear and discomfort, Angel slowly accepted how much his life had changed. He could no longer spend every carefree day at home playing with Eddy or sitting for hours at his favorite perch beside the apartment’s front window.

Gradually, he began to enjoy being a kindergarten student at P.S. 147. He especially loved drawing and displayed a remarkable talent for it. Art had delighted him ever since he first picked up a crayon as a small child.

Mrs. Winterling frequently praised his work and displayed his pictures for the other children.

“Now, boys and girls, this is how you should draw,” she would tell the class. “Look at the beautiful job Angel has done.”

Angel enjoyed the praise and attention she gave him.

He also noticed Eddy beginning to look up to him in a new way. Each morning, as Angel prepared to leave, Eddy begged Julia to let him go along.

“I want to go too,” he would say.

“Soon enough, papi. Your turn will come next year,” Julia assured him, already dreading the day when both boys would be away from her.

Angel walked to P.S. 147 each morning with Berto, who was in first grade, and Berto’s older brother Ricardo, a fourth-grade student at the same school. The Gutierrez brothers would stand outside the apartment building and call up toward the front window. In the high-pitched unison of their young voices, they would almost sing Angel’s family name.

“De-la-Cruz!”

Angel would hurry down the stairs and join them, eager for another day at school and more time with Mrs. Winterling, for whom he had developed great affection.

 

FORTY-SEVEN

Puta!

Not long after Angel started school, and several weeks after Doña María’s funeral, Julia sat with Alfredo at the kitchen table and excitedly told him about her pregnancy. She had kept the news to herself until she felt certain.

“No puedo creer que you let yourself get embarazada!” Alfredo shouted when she finished speaking. His anger erased every trace of her happiness.

“¿Cómo puedo saber si that baby is even mine?” he demanded. “¿Cómo puedo saber si you’re nothing but a puta?”

The word struck Julia with tremendous force. She had imagined the news would make Alfredo happy. She had even allowed herself to hope the baby might persuade him to marry her and become a father to Angel and Eddy.

Instead, he looked at her with contempt.

“Stay away from me, bitch,” he said.

Alfredo left the apartment and walked out of Julia’s life forever.

Later the same evening, Julia went to a liquor store and bought a small bottle of rum. She drank the entire bottle and awoke the following morning sprawled across the worn green carpet in the living room.

Angel stood over her, trying to awaken her.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” he asked with all the innocence of a five-year-old.

At that moment, Julia wanted only to be dead.

Several weeks later, she learned Alfredo had been arrested in connection with the robbery of a bodega on the South Side. A customer had been shot and killed during the crime.

“They say he didn’t pull the trigger, but he helped rob the place,” Gladys told her.

The death of an innocent person horrified Julia, but she felt no sympathy for Alfredo.

“He deserves whatever is coming to him,” she replied bitterly.

Although Alfredo had been introduced as some sort of cousin, Gladys shared Julia’s anger and disappointment.

“I can’t believe he turned out to be such a terrible person,” she said. “I don’t think he was ever really our cousin.”

Julia hoped he was not.

 

FORTY-EIGHT

Thanksgiving 1973

Julia endured tremendous losses during August and September of 1973. First, she lost Doña María and the security of the life they had shared. When Angel began school, Julia felt as though she had lost part of him as well. Her baby seemed to be growing up too quickly and no longer spent his days at home with her. Then she lost Alfredo, the only man she believed she had ever loved with all her heart.

Her love for Alfredo had turned to bitterness after he rejected both her and their unborn child. Even so, she missed their time together, their long rides in his Chevy Impala, and the intimacy they had once shared.

During the months following his departure, Julia often sat with Eddy in the mornings and wept.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” he would ask, sometimes crying in sympathy without understanding the cause of her sorrow.

Those were difficult days. Julia struggled with profound loneliness and despair. Once again, she became consumed by the belief she was a terrible sinner, condemned to suffer on earth and destined for hell after death. Sometimes, she wished death would come soon.

Her despair did not disappear. Some mornings, she struggled to get out of bed. Some nights, she remained awake imagining everything she had lost. Yet even during her darkest moments, Angel and Eddy continued to need her. Their dependence sometimes felt overwhelming, but it also gave her a reason to keep moving forward.

Julia began to understand more clearly her responsibilities as the single mother of two children, with a third soon to be born. Angel and Eddy brought her tremendous consolation, and she loved them with every fiber of her being. Despite everything she had lost, she still had much for which to be thankful.

Their innocence and gentle spirits strengthened her desire to live. At bedtime, she tried to pray with them, recalling the prayers Doña María had taught her. After the boys fell asleep, Julia often remained beside them and gazed upon their peaceful faces. During those quiet moments, she allowed herself to believe perhaps God loved her after all and everything might someday be all right.

Hope did not return all at once. It came in brief and uncertain moments, often while Julia watched her children sleeping or remembered the prayers Doña María had taught her.

Mrs. Thompson had always been a mother figure to Julia. During the autumn and early winter of 1973, Julia relied upon her more than ever for guidance and support.

Julia began making regular visits to the Thompsons’ apartment on Stagg Walk, while Mrs. Thompson frequently visited Julia and the boys on Moore Street. Their relationship, already close after many years, deepened during this painful period. Julia willingly turned to the older woman for advice and listened carefully to her counsel.

Mrs. Thompson could not take away Julia’s grief, but she refused to let Julia face it alone. Her visits brought conversation, encouragement, and a sense of order back into the Moore Street apartment.

She did not hesitate to urge Julia to make better choices and create a more stable life for her family. Although Julia welcomed her advice, she did not always act upon it as quickly as Mrs. Thompson wished.

At times, Mrs. Thompson chastised her with the loving firmness of a seasoned mother correcting her adult child. Julia understood the concern behind her words and usually took her guidance to heart.

Their lives were still filled with difficulties, but Mrs. Thompson remained a powerful source of goodness and stability for Julia and her sons.

On November 22, Julia, Angel, and Eddy joined the Thompson family for Thanksgiving dinner. Julia still mourned Doña María and carried the wounds Alfredo had left behind. Yet as she sat among the Thompson family with her sons beside her, she understood gratitude did not require her to forget her suffering. It required only the recognition that love remained.

For the first time in many months, Julia truly felt able to celebrate. She knew she still had much for which to be thankful, especially the companionship and unwavering love of her faithful surrogate mother, Mrs. Thompson.

 

FORTY-NINE

Uncle Tyrone

 

On a sunny but chilly Saturday morning in early December 1973, Julia and her two sons arrived at the Thompson apartment after a spirited walk from Moore Street.

At five and four years old, Angel and Eddy were energetic children who loved walking through the neighborhood with their mother, especially when their journey took them along Graham Avenue toward the Thompson home.

As they made their way down the avenue, the boys repeatedly ran ahead of Julia and hid behind mailboxes or inside the entranceways of stores facing the sidewalk. Their bulky winter coats slowed them in the morning cold, but Julia still had to quicken her pace to catch them. With every hurried step, she felt the weight of the baby growing within her.

Angel and Eddy laughed heartily whenever Julia pretended to be surprised upon discovering their hiding places. By the time they reached Stagg Walk, she was breathing heavily, but she had enjoyed their playful journey as much as they had.

Tyrone met them at the door of the Thompson apartment. Now seventeen, he had grown into a mature and personable young man.

He had agreed to watch the boys while Julia and Mrs. Thompson went shopping. Angel and Eddy adored Tyrone, who possessed many of his mother’s finest qualities. He played with them inside the apartment and frequently took them to the nearby playground, where he pushed them on the swings and followed them down the sliding board.

Tyrone’s neighborhood friends also enjoyed spending time with the boys. He introduced Angel and Eddy as his nephews, and they affectionately called him Uncle Tyrone. He was the only person they knew as an uncle, and neither boy understood he was not related to them by blood. The distinction made no difference. The love between them was real.

One afternoon, Tyrone and his friends taught Angel and Eddy how to play football in one of the small grassy areas between the apartment buildings. The older boys took care not to play too roughly, though everyone enjoyed tumbling onto the grass during their gentle tackles. Angel and Eddy shrieked with delight whenever someone threw them the ball and allowed them to run the length of the lot without being caught.

Nearly every Saturday, the boys begged Julia to take them to see Tyrone. Sometimes, he came to Moore Street and watched them there. Angel and Eddy always enjoyed their time with him and often became tearful when the day ended and they had to say goodbye.

Julia was grateful for Tyrone’s affection toward her sons and the special bond he had formed with them. She regarded him as a positive male influence, something both boys greatly needed.

His willingness to care for Angel and Eddy also gave Julia precious opportunities to spend time with Mrs. Thompson, run errands, or simply enjoy a few hours free from the constant responsibilities of motherhood.

 

FIFTY

The Sweetest Thing You’ve Ever Said

 

One Saturday, while the boys were in Tyrone’s care, Julia and Mrs. Thompson planned a shopping trip along Grand Street. They especially wanted to visit Santori’s Children’s Clothing Store, known throughout the neighborhood for its bargains on irregular merchandise.

The owner of Santori’s had arrangements with several local garment factories, which supplied the store with clothing they could not sell through regular retailers because of minor imperfections. Such items were in great demand among neighborhood families.

When Angel and Eddy were not wearing secondhand clothing from a thrift shop, their new clothes almost always came from Santori’s. The garments might have been irregular, but they were often the finest clothes the boys owned.

Julia and Mrs. Thompson kissed the children goodbye and reminded Tyrone to give them something to eat. They then set out for Grand Street.

As the two women walked along the busy shopping district and peered into store windows, Mrs. Thompson asked Julia about the government assistance she had promised to pursue several months earlier.

“What do you mean you still haven’t applied?” Mrs. Thompson demanded.

More than three months had passed since she first urged Julia to meet with a social worker and apply for welfare.

“You cannot do this without help from the system,” she continued. “That is why the help is there, child. You should have applied a long time ago, even before I first mentioned it. How are you going to take care of those children and yourself if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do? Especially now, with another baby coming?”

Aside from food, Julia’s largest expense was the monthly rent of approximately one hundred seventy-five dollars. She also paid about twenty dollars to Brooklyn Union Gas, twenty-five dollars to Con Edison, and fifteen dollars for telephone service.

Julia had considered getting rid of the telephone because she rarely used it and regarded it as a waste of money. Mrs. Thompson strongly opposed the idea.

“You need a telephone in case of an emergency,” she insisted. “Remember how important it was on the day Doña María passed.”

Mrs. Thompson sometimes believed she was among the few people who could speak plainly to the occasionally stubborn young woman.

Julia sometimes fell behind on her rent, though never by more than two months. Her landlord displayed considerable patience. Julia could not decide whether his understanding came from compassion or pity whenever he saw her standing with two small children and another baby visibly on the way.

Despite the serious conversation, their shopping trip proved successful. They purchased two pairs of pants and two sweaters for each boy. Mrs. Thompson also bought Tyrone a New York Jets sweatshirt. She knew he would love it and probably wear it until it became tattered and fell apart.

A month after their visit to Santori’s, Julia finally met with a social worker and received approval for public assistance. She began receiving two public-assistance checks each month for approximately two hundred dollars each, along with vouchers used to obtain booklets of food coupons.

Julia cashed her assistance checks for a fifty-cent fee at Jerry’s Check Cashing and Service Center on Graham Avenue. She took the food vouchers to a pawnshop on Broadway, where the owner exchanged them for seventy dollars in food coupons.

She could also bring the children to the clinic inside the Health Department building on Maujer Street whenever they became ill or needed vaccinations.

Government assistance allowed Julia and her family to survive, but the money rarely covered every bill while also providing enough food. Somehow, with careful choices and occasional help, she kept a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Although Julia often felt overwhelmed and close to falling apart, she remained deeply grateful to Mrs. Thompson for guiding her through one crisis after another.

“I don’t have an official godmother,” Julia told her one day, “but if I could choose one, I would want it to be you.”

“Why, thank you, honey child,” Mrs. Thompson replied with delight. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

 

FIFTY-ONE

April 14, 1974

 

Julia’s daughter Amanda was born at Greenpoint Hospital on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1974. Only a short time earlier, her father, Alfredo, had been sentenced to five to seven years in prison for his role in the bodega robbery.

Unlike her brothers, Amanda came into the world with little more than a whisper. Her quiet entrance seemed to foretell her early temperament. She rarely cried and never displayed the restless energy Julia remembered in Angel and Eddy as infants.

Mrs. Thompson once described Amanda as “the most hushed baby” she had ever encountered and privately wondered whether something might be wrong with her.

Concerned, Julia took Amanda to the clinic inside the Health Department building on Maujer Street. After examining her, the doctor assured Julia her daughter was perfectly healthy.

“Some babies are simply quiet and do not cry very much,” he explained. “It may be the beginning of the temperament she will have as she grows older. There is nothing wrong with being a quiet child. Be thankful she does not keep you awake all night.”

The doctor’s reassurance comforted Julia, but her concern did not disappear entirely. For a long time, she continued watching Amanda closely and wondering whether her unusual silence concealed something no one else could see.

 

FIFTY-TWO

I’m Hispanic, and We’re All Catholic

 

Not long after Amanda’s birth, Gladys warned Julia of something she had heard. If Julia’s children died young, they might go “straight to hell” because she had failed to have them baptized.

“Si no bautizas a estos niños pequeños, irán al infierno, que Dios no lo quiera,” Gladys repeatedly told her.

Gladys’s dire warning filled Julia with fear. As she considered whether to subject her children to such a religious ritual, she remembered Doña María occasionally insisting they should be baptized “in case something happens to them.”

Julia did not fully understand her sudden urgency to consult a priest. She could think only of her beautiful children suffering in the fires of hell alongside people who had committed terrible evil. The thought tormented her.

Although Julia considered herself a terrible sinner and could not afford the expenses associated with three baptisms, she decided to visit All Saints Church on Throop Avenue and speak with a priest.

She was not even certain whether she had been baptized. Her own spiritual fate seemed less important, however, because she believed it had already been decided.

“I’ve committed so many sins in my life, I probably don’t have any chance of going to heaven anyway,” she had told Gladys on several occasions.

Julia was extremely nervous as she waited in the church’s small parlor. Ordinarily, she entered churches only to sit quietly or beg for money whenever she desperately needed food.

Father Giovanni entered the parlor and greeted her with a friendly handshake. He was a very tall but bony and frail-looking elderly priest of Italian descent.

The priest wore white socks, which contrasted sharply with his black shoes and trousers. Julia found it difficult not to stare at them after he sat down. His black trousers were faded and nearly threadbare, especially around the knees.

He wore the customary black shirt of a Catholic priest, but its top two buttons remained open. The small white collar insert, which Julia associated with mysterious and divine authority, was unfastened. Instead of resting neatly beneath his chin, it protruded awkwardly from the left side of his collar like a tongue sticking out in mockery.

“So, let me understand this correctly,” Father Giovanni began, his voice filled with disapproval and disbelief. “Each of your children has a different father. You are uncertain about the fathers of the two older children, the baby’s father is in jail, and you are not married. Is all of this correct?”

Julia was too ashamed to reveal the identity of Angel’s father, and she had no idea who had fathered Eddy. As she attempted to explain her troubled life and make excuses for her past choices, she felt completely humiliated.

“And why, may I ask, do you want them baptized now?” the priest continued. “Your oldest son is already six years old. Why did you not bring him here before?”

Julia could think of no sensible answer. Father Giovanni had seemed friendly when he entered the room, but he now reminded her of a Grand Inquisitor.

She imagined him condemning people to burn, like the religious authorities from medieval Europe who had killed the “real Christians,” according to stories her friend Sonia had once told her.

When Father Giovanni asked about her religion, Julia answered timidly.

“Catholic, sir.”

Other than Doña María’s funeral Mass, Julia had never attended a Catholic Mass or any other regular Sunday service. She sometimes entered one of the neighborhood’s many churches and sat alone in the silence. In those sacred spaces, she reflected upon her unhappy life and begged God for forgiveness and help. She knew, however, Father Giovanni meant something different when he asked about her religion.

As she looked into his suspicious eyes, Julia silently defended her answer.

I’m Hispanic, and we’re all Catholic, so I’m not really lying.

She knew she could never explain such reasoning to him. Instead, she avoided offering details about her religious practices and promised to raise her children “in the one true faith,” as Father Giovanni described it.

While signing several papers, the priest announced the baptisms would take place the following Saturday morning, June 15, 1974.

Because of Julia’s obvious poverty, he agreed to waive the customary fee of fifteen dollars for each child. He nevertheless told her he expected some contribution to the church.

Before leaving, Julia asked whether Mrs. Thompson could serve as godmother for the children. Father Giovanni told her this would not be possible because Mrs. Thompson was not Catholic.

But she is the kindest and most religious person in the whole world, Julia wanted to tell him. I cannot imagine anyone who would be a better godmother.

She remained silent, afraid of angering him.

When Julia left the parish office and heard the door close behind her, she felt much as she had whenever her father belittled her and made her feel insignificant.

Gladys was delighted when she learned the children would be baptized. She immediately offered to ask her parents, Esteban and Beatriz, to serve as their godparents. She assured Julia they would be honored to accept.

Mrs. Thompson told Julia not to be upset because she could not officially serve as godmother.

“Is that going to stop me from being a Christian example for those precious children?” she asked. “That is all that really matters. I’ll always be their spiritual godmother if that is what you want. Now, don’t you fret about it.”

Julia still feared for her children’s souls, but Mrs. Thompson’s words brought her comfort. Officially or not, she knew her children already had their spiritual godmother.

 

FIFTY-THREE

Do You Reject Satan, the Father and Prince of Sin?

 

Julia and her children entered the cavernous interior of All Saints Church well before the appointed hour that Saturday morning. The only other soul present was an elderly woman kneeling devoutly at an altar rail.

Behind the rail, towering above her, stood a larger-than-life statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The statue’s eyes seemed to gaze lovingly upon the woman, as though animated by Mary herself.

The woman wore a black dress and a delicately knitted chapel veil, neatly pinned to her thinning white hair. Her deeply wrinkled hands were folded close to her face, clutching a rosary. She held her head profoundly bowed, as though pleading for mercy not only for her own sins, but for the sins of many.

The only sounds inside the church came from the city beyond its walls. At intervals, the clatter of passing trains on the nearby elevated tracks filled the ancient building. Car horns sounded sporadically. Distant voices drifted in from the streets, mingling with the cheerful cries of children at play, the wail of a passing ambulance, and countless other urban sounds Julia could not identify.

As she listened to the stillness of the church against the clamor outside, Julia watched the elderly woman praying with such earnest devotion. She reminded Julia of Doña María.

Julia wished the Doña could have been present. She imagined how happy the elderly woman would have been to witness the baptisms of the children at last.

The thought suddenly reminded Julia of Alberto. Annoyed with herself, she realized she should have invited him to the ceremony. Amid all the preparations, she had completely forgotten.

By ten o’clock, everyone Julia had invited to the baptisms had arrived.

Gladys’s parents, Esteban and Beatriz Gutierrez, had agreed to serve as godparents for all three children. Gladys and her brothers and sisters were also present.

The Thompson family came as well. Mrs. Thompson wore an elegant white dress and an enormous, wide-brimmed light blue hat decorated with small red plastic roses.

Rafy, the elderly man who lived downstairs from Julia, attended and smiled throughout the ceremony with a happiness she had never before seen in him.

Gertrude came too, although she made it clear to Julia she was a Lutheran and felt uneasy about entering a Catholic church. Nevertheless, the occasion was too important to miss.

“I’ll put my fears aside and pray in Lutheran,” she told Julia. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

Julia assured her she did not mind at all.

Her friend Sonia Washington had also received an invitation, but she said she needed to attend a women’s rights rally in Washington Square that day and hoped Julia would understand.

Julia understood completely and took no offense. She had not really expected Sonia to attend. On several occasions, Sonia had described the Catholic Church as “the church of the Inquisition and one of the most oppressive institutions on earth.” Julia’s invitation had been more of a courtesy than an expectation.

As the ceremony began, Tyrone Thompson held the boys’ hands, with Angel standing on his right and Eddy on his left. He watched over them, kept them quiet, and helped them understand when they needed to stand or move.

Mrs. Thompson held Amanda in her arms.

Looking sternly into Julia’s eyes, Father Giovanni asked, “What do you ask of God’s Church for your children?”

“Baptism,” Julia answered.

“You have asked to have your children baptized,” the priest continued. “In doing so, you are accepting the responsibility of training them in the practice of the faith. It will be your duty to teach them to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and neighbor. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?”

Julia swallowed hard. Hoping not to reveal her uncertainty, she answered, “I do.”

As the children’s godparents, Esteban and Beatriz stood beside Julia and promised to help her fulfill this responsibility.

Later in the ceremony, Father Giovanni invited Julia, the godparents, and everyone present to join in the profession of faith.

“Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?”

“I do,” they answered.

“Do you reject Satan, the father and prince of sin?”

“I do.”

As Julia repeated the words, she felt like a hypocrite. Although she hoped life would be different for her children, she believed the devil had already gained possession of her own. In her mind, she had committed too many sins ever to become close to God.

She hoped her fear was not visible as Father Giovanni led the children toward the baptismal font.

When Angel and Eddy approached, Tyrone proudly helped each boy into place. Because they idolized him, Julia knew his presence encouraged their good behavior. He appeared honored to participate and seemed as proud of the boys as any uncle could have been.

Father Giovanni poured water over Angel’s head, followed by Eddy’s, baptizing each boy in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When Amanda’s turn came, Mrs. Thompson carried her to the font and gently supported her while Father Giovanni poured water over the baby’s head. Esteban and Beatriz stood close by in their role as the children’s official godparents.

As Mrs. Thompson leaned over the baptismal font with Amanda in her arms, the small red roses around the brim of her light blue hat trembled gently above the water.

The entire ceremony lasted approximately twenty minutes. Afterward, everyone walked back to the Moore Street apartment for a simple lunch of chicken, rice, and beans, which Julia had prepared the previous evening.

Angel continued asking the same questions along the way.

“Why did we go to that church and see that man? Why did he pour water on our heads?”

After Rafy gave him a dollar bill, Angel stopped asking questions and began hoping other guests might give him money as well.

“Julia, I am so glad you have seen fit to give these children religion,” Mrs. Thompson told her enthusiastically, a broad smile filling her face.

That night, Julia dreamed about Doña María.

In the dream, the elderly woman appeared young and beautiful. She stood at the foot of Julia’s bed and thanked her for having the children baptized in the faith.

Her presence comforted Julia, but Doña María also warned her of difficulties the family would have to endure.

“But don’t lose hope,” she said.

Doña María’s image slowly faded into the likeness of Jesus upon the crucifix which had once hung above her bed. The image then became a brilliant light, sparkling for a moment before dissolving into the darkness.

The dream remained vivid when Julia awakened the following morning. She believed Doña María’s spirit had somehow visited her.

For the first time in many months, Julia felt both hope and peace.

 

FIFTY-FOUR

Mommy’s Special Apple Juice

 

During the summer of 1974, Julia began settling into the new shape her life had taken. She was raising three small children, each of whom required her care and attention in a different way. With each passing day, her responsibilities seemed to grow heavier.

She could still rely upon the Thompson family. Mrs. Thompson had become her most trusted confidante, Sylvia remained her dearest friend, and Tyrone continued to occupy a special place in the lives of the children. He was their beloved Uncle Tyrone and, in some respects, had filled part of the space left by the absence of a father.

Tyrone’s availability had recently begun to diminish, however. He had developed a close relationship with a girl from his high school who lived in the Roosevelt Houses near Lewis and DeKalb Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“My girl lives in Bed-Stuy, and it’s a long walk over there,” he explained to Julia. “Saturday is the best day for me to see her.”

Consequently, he could no longer spend as much time with Angel and Eddy on Saturdays as he once had.

Tyrone and his girlfriend were also participating in a special summer study program at Eastern District High School, which occupied most of their weekdays. Sundays belonged to church.

Angel and Eddy did not understand why Uncle Tyrone was no longer available whenever they wanted him. They only knew something had changed.

Julia continued to worry about Amanda. The baby seldom responded to noises, laughter, or the affectionate voices of those speaking to her. Julia remembered Angel and Eddy reacting much differently during their infancy.

Amanda rarely cried and often seemed not to make eye contact, even with the people who held, cuddled, and fed her. Although the doctor had assured Julia her daughter was healthy, she could not free herself from the feeling something might be wrong.

While the boys occupied themselves with their usual games, Julia often remained beside Amanda’s crib. She waited and hoped for the baby to cry out, wave her arms, kick her legs, or erupt into the restless movement Julia remembered so well from her sons.

Any such outburst would have reassured her, but it rarely came.

Her worry gradually deepened into a kind of maternal sadness, one without answers. She sensed a problem she could neither name nor explain and had no idea what she might do to resolve it.

In her most fearful moments, Julia began imagining terrible possibilities. She even wondered whether Alfredo had somehow brought a curse upon her and the baby.

During those days, desperation gradually took hold of Julia. Mounting expenses, unpaid bills, and her constant worry about Amanda left her with little emotional relief. Day by day, she sank deeper into depression.

If only I could get hold of some of those little blue pills Yolanda used to call “Mother’s Little Helper,” Julia thought.

Perhaps, with their help, the world would no longer seem to be crashing in around her.

She began wondering where she might obtain them.

Not long afterward, Angel and Eddy found Julia drinking from a bottle of what she called her “special apple juice.”

When the boys asked if they could have some, Julia pulled the bottle close to her.

“No, this is something only mommies are allowed to drink,” she told them. “It’s Mommy’s special apple juice.”

If I can’t get those pills, at least my special juice can give me some comfort, she thought.

Her “special apple juice” soon became a regular presence in the apartment. Julia did everything possible to hide the bottles from the boys and from anyone who visited, especially Mrs. Thompson, Sylvia, or Gladys.

Her secrecy allowed her to believe she remained in control.

At least I understand what this could do to my family, she told herself.

Such awareness did not prevent her visits to the corner liquor store from becoming increasingly frequent.

 

FIFTY-FIVE

I’ve Never Actually Walked on the Beach

 

At 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 4, 1974, Julia left her Moore Street apartment and walked with her three children to the Thompson home on Stagg Walk.

Angel and Eddy ran ahead with their usual excitement and energy. Julia laboriously pushed the stroller carrying the ever-quiet Amanda along Graham Avenue. As the boys moved nearly a block ahead of her, she wondered how she would ever catch them. Nevertheless, she continued toward them with tired but determined perseverance.

The family had been invited to the Thompson home for one of their festive Sunday dinners. Despite the effort required to get there, Julia was happy to make the journey down the avenue with the three children who had become the center of her life.

During the meal, they shared recent happenings in the lives of both families.

Sylvia had taken a job as a stylist at a prestigious salon on Park Avenue in the City. Tyrone and his girlfriend, Monica, who was also present for dinner, had decided to apply to New York University. Both hoped to continue their studies after graduating from Eastern District High School the following spring.

Mrs. Thompson had recently received a Certificate of Appreciation from the local city councilman for her service to residents of the Williamsburg Houses. Mr. Thompson spoke modestly about his promotion to chief custodian after many years of janitorial work at NYU.

Julia excitedly shared the news of both boys attending P.S. 147 during the coming school year. Angel would enter first grade, and Eddy would begin kindergarten. She also spoke about the happiness she had experienced at their baptism and told Mrs. Thompson she had surely been the finest godmother imaginable on their special day.

As the conversation continued, Tyrone described a recent trip he and Monica had made to Rockaway Beach. They had spent the day sitting on the sand and riding the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

“I’ve been to Coney Island and Astroland, but I’ve never actually walked on the beach or put my feet in the ocean,” Julia explained.

“No way,” Tyrone exclaimed. “How is that possible?”

“Well, we’re going to have to do something about that,” Mr. Thompson declared. “How would all of you like to take a trip to Rockaway this coming Saturday? You can go together, and I’ll pay for the subway fares, lunch, and a few rides for the boys at Playland. It will be my treat.”

“Wonderful!” Mrs. Thompson exclaimed. “And I’ll keep Amanda here with me so you can all enjoy the day at the beach without any worries.”

 

FIFTY-SIX

Rockaway Beach

 

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