Free Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories by Arlette Lees Page B

now.
    “Someday I planned to change my name from Frances to Rosemary but there wasn’t much point anymore so I gave the name to you. Then I sat on the couch, gave you your bottle and gained one hundred and fifty pounds,” like giving me my baby bottle was what did it.
    A flash of lightning x-rayed the bones of the cannery across the tracks. The TV crackled and went dark. “Now look what’s happened?” said Mama. The rain fell steadily, silvering the rails in the light from the factories south of the crossing. She fiddled with the knobs on the front of the t.v. ‘Son-of-a-bitch!”
    I couldn’t help smiling. I shouldn’t be hard on Mama. Between Eddie, Old Da and Father Henry what could you expect? At least she’d escaped the Irish disease when most of her family had gone the way of the drink and the smokes, their livers pale and spongy, lungs plugged up like tenement plumbing. After the autopsy Dr. McBane said he could have tarred the interstate with the sludge in Old Da’s lungs. Sometimes at night I sit by my bedroom window watching the green neon shamrock flicker in the window of The Tammany, expecting Old Da to push through the double doors, the cinder of his Lucky Strike burning like a red eye in the darkness, his pockets full of the night’s receipts. He was always a happy man no matter what and when he died a light went out on Lower Division. The good times were done.
    A freight rumbled through on the far side of our lot and the jelly jars rattled in the kitchen cupboard. Decades of vibrations had loosened the joists beneath my feet, a nail or two pushing through the linoleum to catch a toe. I watched the red lights of the caboose until the train rolled through the almond orchards on the outskirts of town and disappeared around a curve.
    “I love the sound of that old train,” said Mama. Yesterday she’d hated it, forever vacillating between praise and disdain at our location. “Reminds me we live on the right side of the tracks. Yes Ma’am, the last house on the right side of the tracks,” like our house with its chipped paint and sagging porch was a notch above the other rotting structures on Lower Division. “These buildings are all historical. Pretty soon they’ll be on the National Register.”
    Sally’s mom hadn’t seen it that way. Sally who said she’d be my best friend forever and ever. The last time she came to my house her mom had a cat fit.
    “I don’t want you hanging around that Bulger girl. That neighborhood has gone to the dogs. Have you seen what’s become of Frances?” THAT GIRL! THAT NEIGHBORHOOD! FAT PIG! TUB OF LARD!
    Sally pretends she doesn’t know me. If I sit at the same table in the cafeteria she leaves. She thinks she’s better than me even though I’m smarter and get better grades. I could knock her down a peg or two if I thought it was all her fault, tell her that her mom is in bed with Jimmy O’Toole on the nights she’s supposed to play Bingo at the church. But then I’d make trouble for Jimmy whose wife already causes him enough grief.
    Because of Sally’s mom I don’t let people come here anymore. No sleep-overs, no birthday parties, no studying with friends. It’s the Rosemary at school I want people to know. The smart girl. The best speller in the class of ’56.
    Another clap of thunder and the lights go the way of the TV. “Why does this always happen to us?” says Mama.
    Of course the lights are out in the whole neighborhood, even at the cannery until the generators kick in. Mama hoists herself off the couch and goes to her room. I light a candle and study my words late into the night...consanguinity...tourniquet...circumjacent....
    On Saturday morning Mama robbed the cookie jar and we took the cross-town to Robert Hall’s in the new strip mall. I held several dresses up to the mirror. When I saw the ruby red dress with the full skirt and puff sleeves next to my dark hair I knew it was the one. At twelve dollars and fifty cents plus tax it was