The Unfinished Angel Read online

  Goats

  SUCH A WORLD is this.

  How am I not even knowing angels from peoples? I am all downside up. Maybe Zola is an angel and I am a people. I am not knowing so many things.

  Maybe Zola is an angel-in-training and will replace me. Maybe I will be transferred! How awful, terrible, unfair, and ghistly! What if I get sent to places with wars and bombs?

  Zola an angel? An angel? Right in my own tower all the time, an angel? Is this why she is knowing so much about angels? Is she a real angel and I am not?

  I am standing in the sky with my head in the mountain.

  No, I am the angel! I am the flisher and floater and mostly invisible being!

  But if Zola is an angel, then maybe she knows where the heaven is and where the angels are meeting, and maybe she knows what the rules are. I could ask her the questions.

  My foot is in my ear and my head is floating away. I am not knowing anything.

  The goats in the mountains are leaning against one another. Beh, beh, beh, they say in a comforting way. Beh, beh, beh. The goats are not worrying about who is an angel and who is a people or what is fair and what is ghistly. They are not worrying about what their mission is or if they will be transferred. They are just eating the grass and leaning and saying, Beh, beh, beh.

  More Peoples

  IN THE MORNING, when I return to my tower, I am still downside up, but there is much hostling and bostling going on at Casa Rosa. Off go Mr. Pomodoro and Zola in the car, while the childrens are all squibbling in the casa, waking up and bouncing soccer balls in the room of living. Paolo is in charge, which does not seem such a smart decision because he is doing most of the bouncing of the soccer balls. Two lamps are broken near the “goal” of the fireplace.

  Jumpy Manuel careens from one end of the room to the other, aiming his big feet at the shizzing ball. “Pow! Pow!”

  Franz shouts, “Glocken!” whenever he kicks the ball.

  “It’s not a stupid glocken,” Paolo grumbles.

  Crash.

  “Oops.”

  Stefan lies twisty on the sofa, his head near the floor, his legs kicking at the drapes above the sofa. Josef is curled up at the other end of the sofa, trying on Mr. Pomodoro’s muddy boots.

  Terese is wearing two dresses, yellow over blue, and ribbons on her ankles. She is in the room of dining, casting a fishing rod.

  “You will hook me,” Nicola says. “Don’t hook me.”

  Quiet Rosetta is staring mournfully out of the kitchen window.

  Much of a sudden, I feel woozy, as if I have an overload of flishing in my own head. There are all these childrens here, and each one has his or her own big story inside, and each one has the childness so intrigueful, along with the absence of so much. They don’t even know some things they are missing. If they had an empty drawer, they would not know what to put inside, what to save up for insurance. Should it be bread or cakes or warm gloves or soft toys or photographs? Should it be friendly words or looks or praise, but how do you put those in a drawer?

  I am feeling so heavy with their stories, stories I am glompsing in splurts, detecting a bit here, a bit there. I see a tiny flash, like a speedy picture, of Franz in the basement of a bell tower, cold and shivering among the mices and roaches. I sense little Nicola falling out of a cart and lying in the mud beside the road. Manuel, I get an image of him in a closet and of big boots kicking him.

  The weight of all their stories is feeling like a big crushing boulder pressing down on me, and I am wanting to push away the boulder and flish wildly so much so fast and remove all those sad things from the childrens and instead fill up their head drawers with chocolates.

  And then I hear Rosetta say, “They’re here. They’re back. They came back.” Rosetta goes into the room of living soccer field and shouts, “They’re back, you nutheads!”

  Outside, there is honk-honking, and there is Mr. Pomodoro and Zola and a lady and a boy and suitcases, and there is Signora Divino, bless her nosy nose, coming up the path, saying, “Who is? Who is?”

  The childrens pour out of the house, eager to meet the newcomers, but also wary. Nicola stands to one side, ready with her warning: “Be nice to me!”

  Signora Divino pushes her way to the front. “Who is? Who is?”

  Eugenia

  MR. POMODORO IS especially bendy as he pulls his long legs and arms from the car and arranges his face in various forms of eagerness and perplexity and fumblingness. When he introduces his wife, Eugenia, and his son, Jake, he is so proud, with cheeks rubbery smiling and eyes shining crinkly.

  Signora Divino studies the little boy Jake. “Is Zola’s brother! I know this in a dot!”

  Aha! I think. Zola cannot be angel if so many peoples see her and she has a brother, right?

  Jake, who is young like Josef, wrapples his arms around Zola’s knees and buries his face in her skirt. She kneels down and squishes him in hugs. “Jakey, Jakey, Jakey,” she says. “I missed you, Jickey-Jakey boy.”

  Aha! Zola cannot be angel! Angels do not squish peoples and tell peoples they miss them, right?

  Nosy Signora Divino says to Mrs. Pomodoro, “Why so late? Why you no come before?”

  Mrs. Pomodoro—Eugenia—looks like a bigger version of Zola, with chippy-choppy hair and swirly colorful skirts and scarf. She takes in the sight of the childrens draped over the steps between her and the casa.

  Nicola says, “Be nice to me! I mean it!”

  Mrs. Pomodoro turns to her husband. “I—but—is she talking to me?”

  Signora Divino says, apparently to the air, “See? I knew there was a mama.”

  And then, in a surprise blipping, Mrs. Pomodoro begins speaking in zoomzoomzoom Italian to Signora Divino, who is so shockfulled that she has to sit down on the stone wall.

  “No!” says Signora Divino. “No!”

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Pomodoro. “Swiss!”

  “The niece of the daughter of Signor Pita? The Pitas who lived down the road? Those Pitas?”

  “Those Pitas.”

  Signora Divino crosses herself. “And Bedenia Pita, bless her soul, that was your aunt?”

  “Yes, Auntie Bedenia. We lived up north. We visited here.”

  Signora Divino taps her ears. “I remember! You were young—like Zola—yes? And now you are owning the building and making a school there?”

  Mrs. Pomodoro takes a big bulp of air. “Ah, well, that…”

  And in her hesitation I see something. I am reminded of Signora Divino, when her son’s plane was bip-bipping in the sky, and how, afterward, she became like the egg. Maybe something like this happened to Mrs. Pomodoro, and now she is trying to be strong on the outside, but inside is fragile. She wants her family to be safe in this new place, but she is worried, too. She is a mama.

  While I am thinking of the nature of mamas, I hear in the air a summons. Signor Rubini of the blue socks needs me. He is having distressment, and so I go to him.

  Several hours later when I return to the casa, I see Eugenia Pomodoro unwrapping two small pickets from her suitcase. She takes them to the mantel. There she places a picture of her husband and one of Zola next to the ones of her and Jake. She presses a finger to each one, even her own.

  These pictures have many fingerprints on them.

  I am no sooner back on my tower balcony than clip-clop comes Zola. I am not knowing too much what is happening, but I am having some guesses.

  “So,” I say, “your mother’s name is Eugenia.”

  Zola does the teeth smile and winks. “Eugenia Bedenia.”

  “So, she is your mother?”

  Zola gives a horse nod, a slow down and up of her head.

  “Then you are not an orphan?”

  “Not today.”

  “Are you an angel today?”

  Zola taps her chinny, thinking. “You are a good angel.”

  “I am?” I am so shockful that I nearly fall through the trippy-trap door. No one has said this to me ever. A good angel? But no, no, I don’
t want to get lost in the words. “Zola, you are not an angel, right?”

  Zola leans against the balcony wall and stares out at the beautiful mountain, so tall and strong. She says, as if to the mountain, “Am I an angel?”

  Arf, arf, arf, arf—

  “Oh, no,” says Zola.

  Zola’s brother is running toward the arf ing dog.

  Arf, arf, arf, arf—

  “Jakey, be careful!” Swiftly, Zola clambers down through the trippy-trap door.

  I am there in a swiftness.

  Arf, arf, oof, eef, rrmm—

  The arf ing il beasto has rolled over onto his back and is letting Jake rub his pancia—pancho—what you call it?—stomaco? Rrmm—rmm—

  Signora Divino appears at the gate and sees Jake patting il beasto’s pancho-stomaco. She says, “Jake-o, you—you are un angelo! An angel!”

  Zola turns to me and gives me the many-teeth-smalling smile.

  My head, it has flown off to the moon. Is everyone an angel?

  Pigeons

  THAT NIGHT I am flinging here and there on the balcony, all mixed up about peoples and angels. In the morning, though, while Mr. Pomodoro is showing his wife the progressing of the school building, I see all the childrens in the house, and I am knowing that the talking and touching and seeing each other is what peoples do, not angels.

  I am having a sad feeling.

  Paolo and Zola are helping the other childrens make pretty eggs—like Easter eggs, except it is not Easter. It is August. Where do childrens find these ideas? Soon they have wax and crayons and string and so many things on the table that it is a bigga mess.

  And then when Zola and Paolo are in the kitchen getting more eggs, Zola’s little brother Jake smashes his egg on the table in the room of dining and Josef does the same, and then they smoosh the crumbling pieces of egg and shell into the tiny cracks of the table because it looks pretty, those yellow and white tracks, and then Nicola smashes her egg, and Rosetta does the same.

  Jake is intrigueful of his crumbly egg and tries some on his face and Josef does the same and then puts some in his hairs. Nicola tries some in her ear while Rosetta puts some nicely on her feets. Zola and Paolo return from the kitchen and stand there with their mouths stuck in open position.

  “Jake!” Zola says. “Nicola! Rosetta! Josef!”

  The childrens beam, so surpleased with their smooshed eggs, and Zola says, “If you weren’t so squishy cute and rosy cheeky, I would kick each of you in your rumpy!”

  In the early evening when Zola arrives through the trippy-trap door on the balcony of the tower, she says, “Angel, I will tell you something.”

  At first I think she is going to tell me something else I have to do, but instead she tells me about when her brother, Jake, was born.

  “It was such a night as this,” Zola says, “this kind of sky, this kind of warm air, but no mountains. Jake came way too early—two months!”

  “I have seen babies like that, Zola. In such a hurry…”

  “We were afraid.”

  “Yes, Zola, peoples get afraid when—”

  Zola makes a rubber mouth like her father. “Angel, please. Let me just tell this, okay?”

  Well! I was only trying to be a good hearing aid and contribute something now and then to show the sympathy.

  “Angel, we were afraid for Jake, such a tiny, tiny baby. When finally I got to see him, he was in an incubator: a tiny, shriveled bird no bigger than this”—Zola cups her hands together—“with wires poking here and there, such a skinny puny pitiful thing.”

  Zola pauses, but I am not sure if I can talk yet, so I say nothing.

  “Angel, on the top of the incubator, just above Jake’s shriveled head, someone had fastened a miniature golden angel, maybe from a necklace or something. The angel was gazing down into the incubator.”

  Zola glances at me in the expecting way, and so I think it is my turn. “Oh,” I say, “that is a nice thing, that angel on the incubator.”

  “But, wait,” Zola says. “While I am standing there, an eerie glow of blue-white light appears in the corner of the room, and the glow comes closer and closer to the incubator, and then it moves up to the ceiling and hovers there.”

  “You didn’t see any frogs?”

  “What? Frogs? No, I did not see any frogs, Angel! Just listen—”

  “Hokay, hokay.”

  Zola is leaning on the balcony wall. “While I am watching shriveled Jake, the blue-white light comes and soon it takes shape. I rub my eyes. It appears—now don’t get mad, Angel….”

  “Why would I get mad? I won’t get mad.”

  “Angel, the blue-white light became—well, it looked like—a pigeon.”

  “A pigeon?”

  “Yes.”

  “A pigeon?”

  “Yes. It was still fuzzy around the edges and still all blue-white, but it gave off a very comforting feeling, and I knew it was an angel.”

  “An angel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Zola, a pigeon is not an angel.”

  “Well, yes, it might seem that way, but this angel—”

  “Zola, angels are not pigeons!”

  “I knew you would get mad.”

  “I am not mad.”

  “You are.”

  “Not.” But I am mad. How can peoples go around thinking angels are pigeons, or pigeons are angels?

  “Do you want to hear more?” Zola asks.

  What I really want is to float up into the mountains to see the goats and stop from hearing the nonsense about the pigeons, but I am a polite angel most of the time and so I say, “Of course. Go on talking.”

  “So we did not know if shriveled Jake would live, not for this minute or this hour or this night or that day. Every minute, every day we are watching his tiny chest go up and down, and in our heads we are saying, ‘Don’t stop, keep going,’ and always there is the blue-white pigeon—”

  “Do you have to call it a pigeon?”

  “But that’s what it looked like to me. Remember, I was only six years old—”

  “Couldn’t you call it maybe just ‘the light’?”

  “Angel! Try not to be so bothered by the pigeon. To me it looked like a pigeon, a fuzzy one, with a beautiful halo of light all around it. And every day and every night, the pigeon—the pigeon—was there, and I felt it was protecting Jake and that it was an angel—”

  “But a pigeon is not—”

  “Just listen, please! I felt that this thing—this light—this pigeon—was an angel and it was protecting Jake, and I was so glad it was there, especially when I could not be there. And then one day, the wires and monitors were removed and Jake was breathing all on his own and opening his eyes and taking a bottle and waving his fingers, and that’s when the blue light left.”

  “The pigeon.”

  “Yes.”

  “The pigeon went away.”

  “Yes.”

  I cannot help myself. I have to ask Zola one more question. “Zola? Do you think I look like a pigeon?”

  Lizards

  SPRING AND SUMMER is lizard time here in the mountains. The lizards are small and narrow, like green worms with feets and tails. No, cuter than that. Tiny heads that turn this way and that, watching, listening. Tiny feets, so dainty. Slender tails, so wispy. The lizards sun themselves on the rock walls, dartling into slim crevices when peoples or animals near. Zip. Zip. Freeze. Zip.

  In the middle of the night, Paolo summons Zola.

  “Rosetta ate a lizard.”

  “She did what?”

  “She ate a lizard.”

  Rosetta is curled in a ball on her bed, sobbing. “I die, I die.”

  “Now, now,” says Zola. “You won’t die. What happened?”

  Manuel kicks the side of Rosetta’s bed. “She ate a lizard. They going to cut her open to get it out.”

  Rosetta shrieks.

  Zola says, “Rosetta, did you truly eat a lizard?”

  Manuel answers for her. “She did,
and they going to cut her open to get it out.”

  Rosetta shrieks and sobs.

  Zola scoots onto the bed and cuddles Rosetta. “Rosetta, tell me. Why did you eat a lizard?”

  “Not whole lizard,” Rosetta says between sobs. “Just tail.”

  Manuel feels it necessary to explain to Franz and Terese, who have been awakened by the noise, that Rosetta has eaten a lizard and will have to have her stomach cut open.

  “Really?” they say.

  Rosetta sobs.

  “Rosetta, please tell me. Why did you eat the lizard?”

  “Not whole lizard. Just tail. Because it was so cute and little.”

  “They cut your stomach open,” Manuel insists.

  Zola says, “Nonsense. A little lizard tail won’t hurt anyone.”

  Terese leans over and throws up on the orange rug.

  Zola says, “Did you eat some lizard, too?”

  Terese is gagging. She cannot answer.

  “Anyone else in here eat lizard?” Zola asks.

  Franz puts his hand to his stomach. “I ate some wax.”

  Josef has crawled out of bed to see what is happening. “I ate a spider once.”

  I retreat to my balcony. It’s just a normal night with childrens.

  The Mayor

  TODAY EVERYONE—ZOLA and her family and the childrens and the villagers—gather at the old Pita building, which soon will be the School of Pomodoro. In each room, peoples are painting or cleaning or hammering, and there is much clanging and banging and whooping.

  Vinny has brought his drums. “Entertainment!” he says, but I think maybe he doesn’t want to work. He only wants to play the drums. Rosetta, the lizard eater, hangs by his side, tapping her fingers on the windowsill.

  Signora Divino, with a jauntly pink scarf around her neckle and a blue ribbon on her wrist, is slinging pits and pots in the new kitchen of the school, and while she is slanging and clattering, she is telling Zola’s mother in zoomzoom Italian that the Pomodoros should talk with her son, Massimo, and his wife, Bette, and all of them should open the school together, and that way Vinny and Massimo and Bette could stay right here.