Sleepers (7 page)

T
HE WOMAN’S VOICE
was soft and low, barely above a whisper. The edge of a veil hung across her face, her hands curled against the darkness of the booth, the tips of her fingernails scraping the base of the wood.

“Bless me Father,” she began. “It has been six weeks since my last confession.”

We both knew who she was, had seen her more than once walking the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, arm in arm with the latest man to catch her fancy. She was a woman our fathers smiled about and our mothers told us to ignore.

“I’m not happy about my life, Father,” she said. “It’s like I don’t want to wake up in the morning anymore.”

“Why?” I asked, my voice muffled by the back of John’s shirt.

“It’s wrong,” she said. “Everything I do is wrong and I don’t know how to stop.”

“You must pray,” I said.

“I do, Father,” she said. “Believe me, I do. Every day. It’s not doing any good.”

“It will,” I said.

“I sleep with married men,” the woman said. “Men with families. In the morning I tell myself it’s the last time. And it never is.”

“One day it will be,” I said, watching her hands curve around a set of rosary beads.

“It’s gonna have to be soon,” the woman said, holding back a rush of tears. “I’m pregnant.”

John looked at me, both hands locked over his mouth.

“The father?” I asked.

“Take a number,” the woman said. The sarcasm could not hide the sadness in her voice.

“What are you going to do?”

“I know what
you
want me to do,” the woman said. “And I know what I
should
do. I just don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“There’s time,” I said, sweat running down my neck.

“I got lotsa things,” the woman said. “Time just isn’t one of ’em.”

The woman blessed herself, rolled up the rosary
beads, and put them in the front pocket of her dress. She brushed her hair away from her eyes and picked up the purse resting by her knees.

“I gotta go,” she said, and then, much to our shock, she added, “Thanks for listening, fellas. I appreciate it and I know you’ll keep it to yourselves.”

She knocked at the screen with two fingers, waved, and left the booth.

“She knew,” John said.

“Yeah,” I said. “She knew.”

“Why she tell us all that?”

“I guess she had to tell somebody.”

John stood up and brushed against the wall, accidentally sliding open the small door to the confessional. A man knelt on the other side, obscured by the screen.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” the man said, his voice baritone-deep.

“So?” John said. “What’s that make you? Special?”

John opened the main door and we both walked out of the booth, our heads bowed, our hands folded in prayer.

5

W
E SPENT AS
much time as possible outside our apartments. John and Tommy—the Count and Butter—had no televisions at home, Michael—Spots—wasn’t allowed to watch anything when he was alone, which was most of the time, and my parents would often just sit and watch the Channel 9
Million Dollar Movie.
The radios in our apartments were usually tuned to stations
that focused on news from the old hometowns of Naples or Belfast. So the bulk of our daily entertainment came from what we read.

We pored through the
Daily News
every day, working our way back from the sports pages, letting Dick Young and Gene Ward take us through the baseball wars, then moving to the crime stories up front, ignoring all else in between. We never bought the
Post
, having been warned about its Communist leanings by our fathers, and you couldn’t even
find
a copy of
The New York Times
in Hell’s Kitchen. We read and we argued over the stories, blaming the writer if he dared offer criticism of a favorite player or gloat over the tale of a criminal we thought was being given a bum’s ride.

We saved our money and sent away for
Classics Illustrated
comics and waited patiently for the package to arrive in the mail. What comic books we couldn’t buy we stole from candy stores outside the neighborhood, the four of us keeping a combined collection in our basement clubhouse where we stored them all—
The Flash, Aquaman, Batman, Superman, Sgt. Rock, The Green Lantern
—in large boxes, protected by strips of plastic, each carton carefully labeled.

We collected baseball cards in the summer and traded them the year round. The cards, too, were organized and labeled, kept in team order in rows of shoeboxes. The hard piece of bubble gum which came with each pack was set aside until needed for the summer bottle-cap competition. Then the chewed gum would be mixed with candle wax and poured inside an empty 7Up bottle cap for use in the popular street game.

None of us owned any books and neither did any of our parents. They were a luxury few in Hell’s Kitchen could afford—or would want. The bulk of the men were literate only to the extent that they could follow the racing sheet of a newspaper; the women limited their reading to prayer books and scandal sheets. People thought reading to be a waste of time. If they saw you reading,
they figured you had nothing better to do and wrote you off as lazy. For me and my best friends it was a damn good thing we had a library to visit.

The public library in Hell’s Kitchen was a large concrete gray building sandwiched between a tenement and a candy store. It was divided into two sections. The children’s reading room faced Tenth Avenue and was always crowded. The adult section was in the back and was empty and quiet enough to hide a body in. It was well manned and well stocked, the half-dozen librarians accustomed to the unruly habits of their guests. It was open every day except Sunday, its large black doors swinging wide at nine.

My friends and I read quite a few books inside that library, after school on winter afternoons. We also created our own share of havoc. We laughed when we should have been quiet. We brought in food when it wasn’t allowed. Sometimes, we slept at our seats, especially if the previous night had been hard. The library was the only place besides church and home where thievery was not permitted. In my time there, I can remember no book ever being stolen.

We also went there for the quiet. There was so much shouting and screaming in our lives, if we didn’t have some kind of sanctuary, we might have gone crazy. Plenty of people in our neighborhood
did
go crazy. But not us. We had the library. It was like home should have been but never was. And, since it was like a home, we didn’t just read, of course. We also raised a little hell.

I
WAS SITTING
at a light wood table in the back room of the library, reading a hardbound copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, immersed in the mental battle waged by Edmond Dantes in his desolate prison cell.

“C’mon Shakes,” John said, nudging me with his elbow. “Do it.”

“Not today,” I said, gently putting down the book, careful not to lose my place. “Tomorrow,
maybe.”

“Why not today?” Tommy demanded from the other side of the table.

“I don’t feel like it,” I said. “I wanna read.”

“You can
always
read,” John said.

“I can
always
knock over a row of books.”

“I bet you two
Flash
comic books you can’t do it today,” John said.

“I’ll toss in two
Green Lanterns,”
Michael added, raising his head from a
National Geographic
spread across his knees.

“The new ones?” I asked.

“Just got ’em the other day.”

I nodded my head toward Tommy. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he wanted to know.

“What do you got?”

“Nothin’,” Tommy said. “I just wanna see you do it.”

“So?” Michael said. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Pick a book,” I sighed.

Moments later, I reached the top level of the library fiction shelf, a copy of
Moby-Dick
in my hand. John and Tommy were stationed at opposite ends of the aisle, watching for passing librarians. Below me, Michael held the wooden ladder with both hands.

“Take your time,” he said. “They must all be on a coffee break.”

There were twenty-five books on the shelf, all arranged by author. I pressed the dozen on my left to one side, tipping their covers toward the center. I did the same to the books on the other end, arranging them so that each depended on the weight of the novel beside it. I dropped
Moby-Dick
in the middle of the shelf, making slight adjustments until it caught the weight from both sides. I scanned the row with satisfaction and then moved down the steps of the ladder.

“Think it’ll work?” Michael asked.

“It’s a can’t-miss,” I assured him.

“Who should we get?” Tommy said, coming up behind my right shoulder. “You know, to test it out?”

“How about Kalinsky?” John suggested, one foot resting on the base of the ladder. “Everybody hates her.”

“Not everybody hates her,” Michael said. “So, let’s leave her outta this.”

“Sorry, Mikey,” John said. “Forgot about her and your dad.”

“Just pick somebody else,” Michael said.

“How about Miss Pippin?” I asked. “Anybody’s father goin’ out with her?”

T
OMMY STOOD AT
the counter in the middle of the large room, patiently waiting as Miss Pippin, a tall, worried-looking blonde, stacked a handful of children’s books on top of a file cabinet.

“Hello,” she said, turning to face Tommy. “Do you need help?”

“I can’t find a book,” Tommy said.

“Do you know the name of the book?” she asked, moving her glasses from the chain around her neck to her eyes. “Or who wrote it?”

“It’s called
Moby-Dick,”
Tommy said shyly. “I think a guy named Herman wrote it.”

“You’re half right,” Miss Pippin said. “It was written by Herman Melville. It shouldn’t be all that hard to find.”

“That’s great.” Tommy nodded his head and slapped the top of the counter with his palms. “Did you know there was a movie made about it?”

“No,” Miss Pippin said. “No, I didn’t. But the book is much better.”

“How do you know?” Tommy said. “If you didn’t see the movie.”

“I
know,”
Miss Pippin said, stepping out from behind the counter. “Follow me and we’ll get you your book.”

“Right behind you,” Tommy said.

M
ISS
P
IPPIN RESTED
her hands on the edges of the step-ladder, scanning the bookshelves left to right. We sat at a table at her back, only Michael facing her. John and I were across from each other, catching quick glimpses of Miss Pippin in profile. We were settled behind the pages of large picture books, our eyes visible, peeking over above the covers.

“Well, you couldn’t have looked for it very long,” Miss Pippin said to Tommy. “There it is. Right up there.”

“Where?” Tommy said. “I don’t see it.”

“Right there,” Miss Pippin said, one sharp-nailed finger pointing up. “On the top shelf.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Pippin,” Tommy said. “I can’t see it. I left my glasses in school.”