ICING IT
by
Cindy Rosmus
It’s an Italian thing. But other
groups have them, too.
Like about mirrors. How breaking one
gives you years of shit luck. They say seven, but who knows? Who counts? And
who are “they,” anyway?
After Nonna and Nonno died, Aunt Marie
and Vince, her boyfriend the prankster, with tar-black, curly hair, wanted that
oval mirror. As they carried it outside, the mirror cracked, broke clean in
two. Each holding half, they shared a horrified look, then saw teenaged me
watching.
“I give them six months,” Mom
said. Daddy rolled his eyes.
Within six months, they split up, got back
together, got married, and
on that last day, Aunt Marie fell down the stairs, making “Uncle Vince” a
widower.
“One of his pranks,” Daddy guessed,
“gone wrong.”
“Now what?” Mom wailed. “Who’ll
take off the malocchio?”
The Evil Eye. In each family, at least one
person could remove it. In
ours, it was Nonna, Aunt Marie . . .
Mom rubbed her eyes, squeezed her face. “I
can feel it already,
Giulietta,” she said, “this pounding, blinding . . . headache!”
. . . And me. But no one knew.
When I was little, Nonna wrote down the prayer.
Phonetically, ‘cos
I didn’t speak Italian. “You shouldn’t write it down,” she said
conspiratorially.
Or else? I wondered.
“Memorize it . . . and don’t
forget it.”
Of course I forgot it. For years, till Daddy
got sick and died. Mom’s
headaches got so bad, suddenly I sprang into action. The prayer came back to
me.
“Now, Giulietta,” Nonna said,
stirring oil in boiling water. “You
have the power. For good. Or for . . .”
If I could remove the Evil Eye, that meant
. . .
Nonna smiled. And taught me much more.
I can’t recall when I went bad. Probably
the late 80s. You know . .
. After Uncle Vince, greasier and graying by then, had thrown me down on the
couch.
“You’ll like this!” One
hand over my mouth. The other forced himself
into me. “They all do!” I fought like hell till it was over.
Would I ever get past this?
I tried to black it out. Like that prayer
Nonna had taught me.
Was it guilt? You asked for
it, he might say. ‘Cos I dressed
like a slut. Had wild, big hair. Hung out at Scratch’s.
I couldn’t tell Mom, or anyone. Even
months later, after he tumbled
down those same stairs as Aunt Marie and cracked his skull.
I
froze up. Like that
iceberg the Titanic had crashed into. It felt great feeling nothing.
Then, suddenly, the flip side.
Out of nowhere.
One look at Rich, and I melted.
Paul Stanley from KISS, he looked like. A
dead ringer. Long-haired,
with that sculpted eyebrow, and pouty, pretty mouth. (“You always like
the pretty ones,” Uncle
Vince had told me, before the rape.)
My type. Scratch’s brand-new bartender.
But, since when? I’d just
been there, the night before! Crotchety old Butchie was working, his face all
gray. Like death took a beach day.
“Heart attack.” Rich wiped spilled
beer off the bar. “That fast.” He
looked at me, finally. “Sorry. Were you guys friends?”
Friends? I thought, cruelly.
With an old creep like that?
Who shared his sandwiches with me. Gave me
freebies when I couldn’t
pay my tab.
“Nah.” I couldn’t get enough
of this guy. Muscled arms, hairy
chest, that face.
Names! What was mine?
Why couldn’t I think straight?
What was it about him?
“Gi-Giulietta,” I stammered.
“That’s my real name. Everybody calls
me “Gee.”
Then I saw her. Before the smug face
and big tits, I saw
that hand, squeezing his arm, possessively. Long nails, painted red, with fake
jewels attached.
“What’re you drinking?”
Blood. My mouth filled with it, though I
hadn’t bit my tongue. Maybe
I was dreaming but still awake. I stared at that girl, without blinking, till
my eyes ached. Maybe they bled, too. ‘Cos I couldn’t stop staring! Harder, and
harder.
First, she yawned. A cute, little yawn. Then
a deeper one. She let
go of his arm to cover her mouth.
“They’ll keep yawning,”
Nonna had said, “to try to break the curse.”
“Giulietta?” Rich said.
I kept staring. Now it was beyond yawning.
The girl covered her
eyes, which had to be hurting. I thought of how bad Mom’s headaches got.
For the first time ever, I made
someone hurt.
The girl’s eyes, then her whole head.
The pain had to be
excruciating. So bad, she was crying. Oblivious to her, Rich’s eyes were on me.
I felt them stroke me.
Her head was down on the bar.
“Gee?” Rich said, now. He leaned
over, touched my shoulder.
I smiled. “Shot of Jack.”
I won. That bitch was gone,
as fast as Butchie, though she didn’t die. Or maybe
she did.
Nonna never said she wouldn’t.
Rich was mine, now. Maybe it was too
good to be true: how he
just showed up, and was so my type, seemed magical. I didn’t deserve a guy this
hot.
Nonna never said I could get this lucky.
Every chance I got, I jumped on it.
And I mean, jumped. Slid onto it,
clenched my thighs around
it, and enjoyed it. Lost in that chest, that long hair wrapped around me.
Laying down or standing. Wherever the mood hit. I was lucky I could walk, after
all that raw, frenzied fucking.
We
rarely talked. At
least, not about anything real. We never even went to Scratch's together.
We just stayed in and fucked. For days. No,
weeks. I called in sick
so many times to my crappy office job, I was in deep shit.
My friends backed off. Sometimes Mom called.
“Giuiletta!” the
messages said. “My head hurts.” I never called her back. Maybe she thought I
was dead.
It was worth it.
Still, sometimes, during sex, I sensed laughter.
Far away, like in
a dream. Was it coming from deep inside me?
Or from him?
Then one day: “What’s up your
ass?” He sounded pissed off.
“Maybe her,” I said. “With
the jeweled nails.” He stiffened.
It all came out. Things I couldn’t
face. A distance I sensed. A female
smell on him. That far-off laughter. I couldn’t shut up!
“You’re crazy.”
That was him laughing. ‘Cos
this was a joke. Or a trick. Wave
a magic wand, create an illusion.
Like Uncle Vince’s pranks. He’d
hide under the bed, jump out of
closets, nearly scare Aunt Marie to death. She never knew when it was coming.
What he’d do next. The day she fell down the stairs . . .
Suddenly, I felt like I was falling. Here
in my house! Like there
was no couch beneath me.
Rich clapped his hand over my mouth. Smiling
like I had it coming.
“You asked for it,” he whispered
in my ear.
This time it hurt bad. I’d never fought
back before. I never wanted
to.
Afterward, I was all bruised, mostly my throat.
He’d squeezed it
like he hated me.
“I could kill you,” he said.
The door slammed shut behind him.
“Put him on ice,” Nonna told
Aunt Marie, years back. “You know
how.”
I was so small, I hid under the kitchen table,
usually tickling
people’s feet.
But that day I was listening . . .
The quart of Jack was close by, as I cut
out a small square of
paper. “RICH,” I scrawled drunkenly, in black magic marker.
But . . . what was his last name?
Aside from those rock god’s good looks,
he had no identity. No
substance. Was he even real?
Real enough to kill me.
I folded the paper, stuck it in the freezer,
behind the breakfast
sausages and Italian ices.
“Will he die?” Aunt Marie asked
Nonna.
I eyed Nonna’s gnarled feet in sandals.
“He’ll get what’s coming to
him.”
I must’ve dozed off. When I looked
up, Rich was back, pouring a double-shot.
He took a small sip, smiled. Like he hadn’t
squeezed my throat
hours ago.
“How long will it take?” Aunt
Marie asked.
Nonna
sighed. “It depends.
But whatever happens . . .” The silence got heavier. “You’re stuck with it.”
He swirled the booze around in the glass.
“You forgot,” he said, “I
like it on ice.”
I jumped up. “I’ll get it!”
He grabbed my wrist, forced me back down.
Then headed for the
fridge.
Three clunks I heard, one for each cube.
My heart raced as he put
the tray back in the freezer. A few seconds felt like an hour. I heard a light
rustle of paper.
Without smiling, he handed it back to me.
“That’s not my real name.”
I scrunched back in the chair, like I could
hide from him.
“But this is yours.”
On a yellowed paper square, damp, like it
was in there a while, “GIULIETTA”
was written in a fancy script. Like you’d see in centuries-old books.
The hand clutching this one looked different
now, like it belonged
to an older guy. Right in front of me he was changing. He looked greasy, and
graying, like somebody equally disgusting . . .
The prankster rapist.
Who I had shoved down the stairs. “You
bastard!” I screamed, as his
skull cracked like a giant egg.
“This time,” he said now, “The
joke’s on you.”
THE END
