Princess of Passyunk Read online

  Ganny blushed furiously in the darkness. “No I’m not.”

  Nick just laughed, and Ganny thought how much it sounded like Da’s laugh, suddenly.

  “So...so what did you tell Da, to make him not yell so much?”

  “Pretty much what I told you. I was at church with Annie and we talked for a long time. And I was late because I had to walk her home. And then her Mama invited me in for milk and cookies. Oh, and we talked to Father Z for a while, too.”

  “You did? What about?”

  “Go to sleep, Ganny.” Nick turned on one side, his back to his little brother.

  Subject closed.

  Ganady stared at his brother’s lumpy shape for some time before rolling over to face the window, through which he could still see moonlight falling upon the sill.

  “I’m not too young,” he mumbled to the moon. Then he closed his eyes and tried to call the Princess Svetlana to mind.

  Nine: Princess Cockroach and the Mitzvot

  It was a funny thing about The Cockroach. She was always there when Ganady looked, and never there when anyone else did. At least, Nick hadn’t said anything about a giant cockroach, and neither Mama nor Baba Irina had kvitched about a giant cockroach while cleaning his room, and Da didn’t much come into the boys’ room at all. So there she sat on The Baseball, next to the Virgin Mother for over a week, and waited for God knew what.

  Ganady considered asking Mr. Ouspensky about it, he having more experience with magic than most people. At the very least, Ganady knew he wouldn’t laugh. How could a man who watched ghost baseball games laugh at a boy who had followed a magic baseball to a Cockroach Princess and then dreamed of a girl so beautiful that she had to be a princess herself? At most he might observe that between Baba Irina’s folktales and Nikolai’s romantic notions, Ganady had princesses on the brain. He would be right.

  “Oy!”

  Ganady lifted his head from the funnies.

  “Oy!” The cry was followed this time by a chain of Yiddish exclamations, some of which Ganny was certain he’d never heard before, all delivered in Baba’s voice.

  Curiosity propelled Ganny out of his chair and up the stairs. On the landing, curiosity was overcome by something much stronger: the flurry of Yiddish was coming from his room.

  He reached the doorway and peered around the corner to see Baba Irina hovering before his dresser like a large bluebird in quest of a worm. Her hands fluttered around the ball, pecking at it, trying to pick it up without touching its gleaming, black passenger.

  Ganady opened his mouth to say something, but Baba Irina was quick; before he’d even piped wind to his throat, she had snatched up the ball in one hand and flung open the window with the other.

  He found his voice. “Baba! No!”

  She turned, expression incredulous. “No—what? Do you see this? Do you see this?” She shook the ball in his direction, Cockroach uppermost. “This-this creature?”

  The “creature” did not budge. Baba pushed the window sash further up.

  Ganady’s mind raced. “Baba, it’s sabes!”

  “What?”

  “Well, what about the laws? The—the mitzvot!”

  She took her hand from the window sash and rested it on her hip; it was a gesture his mother had inherited. “And what do you know about the mitzvot?”

  Ganady came into the room, his eyes on the ball. “I know... um...you’re not supposed to carry anything—especially not outside.”

  It was usually amusing to see Baba’s eyes smiling while her mouth was trying not to. Just now, Ganady felt he dared not take his eyes off The Baseball. The Cockroach waved its antennae at him.

  “So well you know the mitzvot, do you?”

  Ganady could honestly say he didn’t think he knew the mitzvot at all, and was immensely surprised that anything resembling a mitzvah had come out of his mouth. He looked at her now and smiled. “Well, I remembered that one.”

  She pursed her lips, her eyes going from the imperturbable insect to her grandson’s face. “This is that ball, is it? I remember the day you brought it home. This is a very special baseball, em?”

  Ganny felt an urge to tell her it was a Magic Baseball, but he did not.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps you are right about the carrying laws, and perhaps you are wrong. I suppose I shall have to ask Rabbi Andrukh if throwing out a dirty old baseball is breaking a mitzvah. So next time, I’ll know for certain. For now, perhaps I shall just get rid of this cockroach.”

  She turned to the window again and Ganady, galvanized, shot forward and snatched the ball from her hand.

  “It’s okay, Baba. I really don’t want you to break the sabes because of this.”

  She cocked her head to give him a long bemused look. “You’re a good boy, Ganny,” she said at last, and left him to deal with The Cockroach.

  He was in a quandary: he really couldn’t just put the ball and its peculiar occupant back on the dresser. Next time, Baba might not feel inclined to be so merciful. Or worse—it might be his mother who found The Cockroach. The Church had no mitzvot about carrying cockroaches on the Sabbath; he doubted it was even a venial sin. He couldn’t put the thing in his dresser drawer. Who knew where the bug might end up: In a sock? In a shirt pocket? Right where Mama would put his freshly-washed underwear?

  At length, he decided that perhaps he might coax it into a matchbox. He had not yet stopped to ask himself why. This cockroach couldn’t be his bride. Not really. After all, a man couldn’t marry a cockroach, and besides, he was only sixteen.

  The thing had been sitting on the ball for days, but surely it couldn’t stay there for years. He wondered how it had managed to remain on the ball without anyone but Baba Irina noticing. He thought of asking his brother if he’d seen it, but he doubted Nikolai noted much of anything that took place in their room, for it had nothing to do with Princess Annie.

  And most certainly it would not do to mention cockroaches to Mama.

  He created a small lean-to over the ball on his side of the dresser using his marble box and the Virgin Mary (with humble apologies) to prop up the baseball glove. The makeshift hiding place complete, Ganady went downstairs in search of a matchbox, but he didn’t find one. He didn’t get the chance, for Yevgeny arrived at their front door with tickets to a Saturday matinee of Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy.

  oOo

  Ganady had not been long gone when Baba Irina poked her head tentatively into the boys’ room. She did not see the baseball at first, but shortly noticed the odd mitt tent atop the dresser.

  It took only a tap to knock the glove askew. The ball was beneath it, but the cockroach was gone.

  Irina’s eyes darted about, seeking the insect. “Don’t try to hide from me,” she told it. “I’m an old woman, maybe, but I can still thread a needle. If I can thread a needle, I can find you. And there are no mitzvot about chasing cockroaches.”

  The sharp eyes swept the dresser and noted that the Catholic saint (a graven image, in Irina’s opinion) had sprouted a fine pair of antennae.

  “Ah, there you are! You see? I told you I had good eyes. Now, out with you. Out where I can see you.”

  The antennae slowly lengthened; a head appeared, then a gleaming black-cherry carapace. At last the entire cockroach sat exposed atop Saint Mary’s head.

  “How do you do?” Irina inquired. “You see? I’m not afraid of a cockroach. Not even one as impressive as you. You startled me before,” she added by way of explanation.

  The insect sat placidly atop the ceramic saint, seeming to be equally unafraid of an old Jewish woman.

  Irina peered at the creature, tilting her head this way and that. At last, she moved the statue to the front of the dresser, careful to avoid picking it up, and tilted it—the better to study its passenger.

  “Why is my Ganady so concerned about a cockroach, eh?”

  The antennae waved amiably.

  “You are an impressive creature,” sh
e told it. “God’s handiwork is always to be admired. But you are also vermin and you do not belong in my grandsons’ room. Now, it’s sabes today, as you know, so I can’t throw you out. And you cannot speak, so I suppose there’s no knowing how you came to be here. But when the sun sets, the sabes is done, and then may heaven protect you.”

  Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed to Irina that the cockroach shifted ever so slightly in the direction of the window.

  “Of course, if you were to leave of your own accord...”

  Irina shrugged, tipped the icon upright and gave the insect one last tilted look.

  “I’ll leave the window open for you. There are no mitzvot about opening windows.”

  She did open the window, lifting the sash only enough to allow something the size of a cockroach to slip through. She afforded the dresser one last glance, noting that the insect had now oriented itself entirely toward the window.

  “Four hours to sunset, I think,” she confided, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Her daughter stood in the hall, a puzzled expression on her face. “Who were you talking to, Mamma?”

  “Talking? Who should I be talking to?”

  “Well...no one,” said Rebecca. “The boys are both out.”

  “Perhaps I was talking to God.”

  Rebecca looked skeptical. “In the boys’ room?”

  “Ravke Kutshinska! Can you imagine a place on this earth where one cannot talk to God?” She let those be her parting words and took herself off to her own room, her straight back an exclamation point.

  oOo

  The hiding place he’d so carefully constructed had been disassembled; the Virgin stood now at the edge of his dresser; The Baseball had rolled up against the box of marbles.

  The Cockroach was gone.

  A subtle sound from the window made him turn to find the sash up and the window ever-so-slightly ajar.

  Had Baba violated the mitzvot after all?

  He was supposed to practice his clarinet, but instead he pocketed The Baseball and went looking for his Baba, feeling a certain strange guilt.

  She was in the little garden behind the house, sitting on a wooden bench his Da had built. She had a sweater about her shoulders and was sipping a cup of tea. Mama was with her, carefully potting herbs on a workbench her husband had lovingly crafted from wood scraps he’d collected from the machine shop where he now worked as a warehouse manager.

  Ganady hesitated. How could he ask after The Cockroach with Mama here?

  He started to withdraw back into the house, but he had been seen.

  “I don’t hear music,” his Mama said, swiping hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “Why is it I don’t hear music?”

  “I...uh...I needed to ask Baba...”

  Baba looked at him out of the corner of her eye, the teacup half raised to her lips. “Yes?”

  “Uh, my dresser. There was something sitting on it and the window was open and I was afraid that...I mean, I wondered if the something might have blown off...maybe.”

  “This may have happened,” Baba Irina said. “I opened the window to air the room out, but I didn’t throw any of your things away, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are mitzvot, you know.”

  He relaxed a bit. Perhaps The Cockroach had left on its own. And if it had done that, then...

  Then what? He didn’t have to marry it?

  Ganady swallowed a giggle.

  “This thing you’ve lost,” Baba said, gazing into her teacup. “How did you come by it?”

  “Oh, I, uh...I found it. In an alley.” He shrugged. “It...it sort of ended up stuck to my baseball. Sort of.”

  Baba’s eyes were full on him now, her expression somewhere between amusement and bewilderment. “So you brought it home, this thing?”

  “Um...yeah. Silly, huh?”

  Mama looked up from her herbs. “What are you talking about, you two?”

  Ganny felt as if his throat had frozen shut. “Oh, uh... It was...”

  “A baseball card,” Baba finished. “A filthy thing, but special to the boy, you know? I thought perhaps, he should throw it away. I was going to throw it away, but he reminded me, my good boychik, of the carrying mitzvah.”

  Rebecca Puzdrovsky smiled at him crookedly, a tumble of dark curls falling over one eye. “Well, our good boychik should forget just now about lost baseball cards and practice his clarinet.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Ganady said and fled the garden in a warm tingle of relief.

  Ten: Communion and Confession

  Spring progressed, weather warming, the neighborhood coming to life like one of those wildlife habitats Ganady had studied at school.

  The Cockroach did not reappear. Ganny tried not to believe it was because he kept the Waitkus Baseball in the pocket of the new denim jacket his parents had purchased for his birthday in June but given him early because, his mother said, she wanted to see him get some use out of it before he outgrew it.

  He carried the ball with him everywhere and dreamed of batting fifth in the Phillies lineup and playing second base. He carried it with him everywhere, that is, until the Saturday night that marked the cusp between spring and summer. The Saturday night after the last Friday of school.

  That Saturday night, the entire Puzdrovsky family was on its way out the door to go to a special showing of The African Queen, when Rebecca Puzdrovsky noticed the peculiar bulge in her son’s jacket.

  “What is this?” she asked, patting at it. “A baseball? Tsk. Ganny, you can’t leave this at home?”

  “Well,” he began, and Da said, “Leave it home, Ganny. We’re going to a movie, not a baseball game.”

  So he left the ball behind on his dresser.

  After the movie, they went out for ice cream and Ganady all but forgot about The Baseball in the laughter and chatter, as they recounted their favorite parts of the film.

  “I liked the leeches,” said Nikolai, putting his face next to Marija’s. “Didn’t you like the leeches, Mari?”

  And little Marija, on cue, squeaked and shivered and screwed up her pretty face. “I hated the leeches!”

  “What?” asked Nick in mock surprise. “You don’t want leech-flavored ice cream?”

  “Eeeuuw!”

  “How about Swamp Surprise Sundae?”

  “Eeeuuw,” said Marija again, rewarding her oldest brother with a great rolling of dark eyes.

  Mama, of course, had liked the love story. Especially the ship-deck wedding ceremony. Romantic, she said, no doubt thinking of her own shipboard romance.

  Da just smiled and said it was a very fine film.

  Ganady, for his part, had liked the adventure of it best of all. The heroism. It was a different kind of heroism than they portrayed in most of the other wartime movies he’d seen, but it was heroism nonetheless.

  It was like baseball, he supposed. There were the home-run hitters and there were the guys who threw out the opponents’ runner at the plate, who stole bases quietly and without a big fuss, who executed double plays as if they could do it in their sleep. Charlie Arnott was that kind of hero, Ganny thought. And that was not such a bad kind of hero to be.

  He climbed the stairs to his room thinking these things and stopped unaccountably on the threshold, reluctant to enter. He was reluctant, he realized, because of what he feared he might find on his dresser.

  He scoffed at himself. What—did he think that just because the Waitkus Baseball was back on his dresser, the cockroach would come back to the ball?

  “What’s the matter, kid? Fall asleep on your feet?” Nikolai shoved past him into the room, flicking on the light as he went in.

  Ignoring his brother’s use of the humiliating word, Ganny made himself step across the threshold—made himself walk to the dresser and look.

  The Baseball sat there, next to his box of marbles. Empty. Not a cockroach in sight.

  He relaxed, laughing at himself and wondering if he’d inherited his imagination from
Baba Irina or if she’d merely fed it up with her stories.

  oOo

  Summer began and the days settled into a pattern of chores and movies and clarinet practice and ballgames usually attended by Ganady, Nikolai, and Yevgeny, occasionally by Mr. Ouspensky and less frequently by their Da. Since Vitaly Puzdrovsky had assumed a manager’s role at the machine shop, he seemed to have less time these Saturdays to spend on such things as baseball games.

  If his attendance at mass was any standard, Nikolai would soon be eligible for sainthood, or at least beatification. He had gotten on well enough with Mrs. Guercino, but Mr. Guercino never spoke a word to him except to grunt when he said hello. Stefano continued to hate his guts.

  Nothing much came of this hatred for some time, for Nikolai was careful in his attentions to Annie, timing them to her brother’s absences. But, inevitably, there came another evening upon which Nick hadn’t arrived home by the time his younger brother was abed, and the household was filled with a tense but hopeful dread.

  When Ganady awoke in the morning to see the familiar and comforting lump in his brother’s bed, he was relieved. But relief quickly turned to curiosity and curiosity to frustration. While Nikolai snored beneath his covers, Ganady burned to know where he’d been so late and if anything had been said when he arrived home.

  As he debated whether to wake his brother, their mother called up the stairs that breakfast would be on the table in a matter of minutes.

  The lump that was Nikolai stirred and mumbled.

  “Nikki!” Ganady called.

  “Yeah?” came muffled from beneath the covers.

  “What time did you get home?”

  “Late.”

  “How late?”

  “I don’t know...around midnight.”

  “Why? Where were you?”

  “At the movies.”

  “Until midnight?”

  “I took Annie home.”

  “Until midnight?” Ganady’s voice squeaked.

  “On the way home, I had a long talk with her brother.”

  Ganny sat up. “A talk? What did he say?”

  “That he hates my guts and doesn’t want me around his sister.”