Kalayla

SUMMER 1999

LENA MANERO BARZETTI

THAT GIRL

Never let it be said that I’m one of those old biddies who spend their time watching other folks instead of minding their own business. But there are some people it is impossible to ignore, in spite of good intentions, and that girl Kalayla was one of them.

The first time I got a look at her was mid-June last year when I was walking back from Mickey’s Market a couple blocks from where I live. You know, one of those perfect sunny days when you actually might believe you could live happily ever after. The National Scoop headline went right along with that by announcing Princess Diana’s Death Revealed as Hoax.

Kalayla was ahead of me, half swaggering, half strutting in a way that was so familiar I felt like I must know her. I puzzled over it, and finally it came to me: the girl walked the same way my twins did when they were showing off. Which was pretty much from the minute they got up ’til the minute they went to bed.

How many times had those two boys been in front of me swaggering, strutting, taunting each other? Mikie daring Jimmy, Bet it takes you more than 20 seconds to shimmy up that streetlight. And Jimmy giving it back, Bet you can’t get five bucks panhandling between here and home.

And off they’d be, running and laughing, shoving and punching. Their laughter echoed back through the years, making me grateful for some good memories.

A horn blast jolted me out of my daydreaming, stopping me short or I’d have bumped right into the girl. She was staring into the window of Hanson’s Book Store. Her huge green eyes glanced my way. I pegged her for one of those Cambridge street kids scraping her way from one meal to the next, an old hand at trash picking and layering up with everything she found, at least three layers on top with a mess of colors and designs. She must have dressed in the dark and not bothered to look in a mirror. That is, if she had a mirror, or a place to sleep inside.

She was maybe an inch or two shorter than my own 5’3". I couldn’t tell how old she was, but most girls in their teens are interested in showing off to their best advantage, which she definitely was not. So she must be younger, maybe around 10 or 11.

Her baggy pants might have been shorts on the right-sized person. If somebody cared to tug on the rope holding them up, I expect we would have been treated to a show of skinny brown butt and legs. Her kinky orange-brown curls were squashed down with a beat-up blue-and-red baseball cap, brim turned backward.

Her hair, light chocolate skin, and saucer-size green eyes were bright, shiny, and clearly her own.

After that, it seemed like everywhere I went, the girl was someplace nearby. She was always by herself and I got to wondering why, and I have to say it bothered me. The only way my four boys were ever alone was if they were going to or coming from someplace where other kids were hanging out. Even my boy Mark, who was always getting in fights, had plenty of friends. If I was that girl’s mama, her being alone so much would sure have made me worry.

On Saturday morning about two weeks later, I was coming back from buying milk, eggs, and my favorite raisin bread when I saw the girl across the street in front of Eddie’s Eatery. Eddie’s was right across from my apartment building, so I stopped by sometimes in the afternoon for a coffee or snack. The girl was talking to Maureen, the red-headed woman who’d been waiting tables there for the past year or so. Maureen was always friendly and seemed cheerful, even though she didn’t fall all over herself blabbing personal stuff the way some folks do. Eddie was the one who told me she was a widow with a daughter.

Maureen kissed the girl on the forehead and then went into Eddie’s. That explained it. She had to be the daughter with the same huge green eyes and fine sculptured features. But her skin tone was darker, and her hair a mass of unruly curls. That got me to wondering what her daddy looked like.

As I stood there watching, the girl crossed the street and went into my building. You can believe I hurried up to see where she was going, but by the time I got there, she had disappeared.

Now, I had lived in that building a long time, and the fact was I didn’t just live there. I owned the place, and I knew all the tenants. Off-hand I couldn’t think of a single person the girl might be visiting. The apartment house and the building across the street where Eddie’s was located were the first properties my husband Joey and I bought when we got married, and our families solidified their business partnership by forming Manzetti Properties.

Joey didn’t turn out to be much of a husband, but his family knew all the angles when it came to rehab and construction, and my family knew all the angles of shrewd buying and marketing of real estate.

My job was to search for vacant buildings or ones where the owner might be interested in offloading the property fast. I kept my eye out for small local contractors, too. It was good public relations to involve local folks in any small tear down or rehab and leave the big jobs to Joey’s crews. My office was at our corporate headquarters, and I still worked one or two days a week.

I knew there was only one vacant apartment in the building, and that was across the hall from me. So far as I knew, nobody had moved in.

My brother Dominic was the financial wizard that handled all accounting and expenses. That man would likely work until the day he dropped dead. He’d supposedly been training his son and daughter to take over for about the last three years. Although Dom said that he was shifting the oversight of building maintenance and occupancy to them, the truth was he’d just added that on to his workload.

When I asked him if he knew anything about the girl and her mother he laughed, and said, Have you been walking around with your eyes closed, Lena? Those two moved in across the hall from you.

Well, I never! I must have been volunteering at Helping Hands Shelter for Women, or having supper at Dom’s or maybe one of my sisters, or out with my best friend Carlotta when they moved in. That girl didn’t come across like she was trying to keep a low profile, but voles hunkered down underground would have gotten my attention faster than those two did living right across the hall.

A few days later, I saw the girl on our landing, staring out the window like a lost soul, and I tell you, it wrenched my heart. I thought of all the times I looked out the window wishing I’d see Jimmy or Mikie strutting down the street. But no amount of wishing could bring them back from the dead.

And no amount of wishing changed the fact that girl reminded me of them. When we finally did speak, it was no surprise the first thing out of her mouth was a smart-assed comment just like one of those boys would have made.

Back when my boys were growing up, Carlotta was always telling me I should wash the twins’ mouths out with soap. ’Course Lotta never raised kids or she would have known you can’t go sticking a bar of soap into a child’s mouth, no matter how tempted you might be.

KALAYLA LEEROYCE

THE OLD LADY

That Crabby Old Lady would swear I never paid attention to a word she said, but she’d be wrong. Her name was Lena Barzetti, but I called her Crabby Old Lady because that’s what she was just about 100% of the time. Crabby and for sure the oldest person I ever met. I mean she was SEVENTY-TWO YEARS OLD and boy, did she look it. That summer, I was hanging out around the new neighborhood, or I probably never would’ve gotten to know her.

The best thing about summer was it stayed light for a long time, so I could be out on my own without flipping Mama out. Mass. Ave. had sidewalks, so I’d walk one side going and the other side coming back. I explored going toward Arlington, past Porter Square ’til I got bored and headed toward Harvard and Central Square. Our building was on the corner with a light, maybe halfway between.

Sometimes I walked around just so I could meet people out with their dogs. Pets weren’t allowed in our building, and when I told Mama it’d be real easy to sneak in a dog or cat, she freaked and started yelling about me not doing anything to get us kicked out.

There was plenty of good stuff within three or four blocks of our apartment like Second Time Clothes, White’s Fruits and Vegetables, or Carlson’s Beer and Wine. Mickey’s Market had just about everything. You could get your nails or toes done at Tammy’s Tips or your hair fixed at Creative Creations.

I tried hanging out at Shape Up, but they were too cheap to give me free workout tips. I told them I didn’t want to be around with a bunch of fat women anyway. The owners of Magneson’s Flower Shop were nice, but my favorite place was Clean Duds Laundromat.

Regulars knew better than to go on an errand and leave their laundry with nobody watching it, so I got a good business going. I could earn an easy buck or two for making sure nothing was stolen while they went for an errand. I’d sit with my feet propped up on the windowsill looking like I owned the place.

Even if I was reading a good book, I could keep a lookout for anybody giving the place the shifty eye. Like, say they came in with an empty basket or bag and stood around acting like they were lost while they checked the place out. I’d give them a big smile and say something like, You need help? That’s why I’m here. That cleared out the stealing types pretty quick.

Anyway, one day I was standing on the landing between the third and fourth floor of the apartment building staring out the window, planning my afternoon. I heard these slow footsteps coming up behind me. Wouldn’t you know, it was that Old Lady who dressed in black. I mean totally, completely in black, her dress, socks, shoes, all black. Like she worked at a funeral home.

She was half dragging a couple duffle bags. She was really dumb living on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator. She was probably gonna collapse any minute, and I’d be stuck dialing 911.

She stopped when she got to the landing, and I could see the bags were stuffed with black clothes. She must’ve come from Clean Duds, which proved she was dumber than dumb. Nobody smart that lived in a fourth-floor walk-up would wash everything they owned in one huge load.

If I felt like starting a conversation—which I didn’t—I might’ve pointed that out.

Anyway, she stood there staring at me, and finally she said, Little girl, if you don’t have anything to do, I can give you some work.

Dumber than dumb, right?

First thing is I’m not a little girl. I’m eleven years old. Second thing is, if it looks to you like I’m hanging here waiting for a job, you need glasses.

She stared at me long and hard, like she was thinking about saying something and then changed her mind.

Then she said, Well, maybe you want to be an architect, and you’re staring at those buildings to get ideas. Good view from up here.

I gotta say that was worth a laugh. Nah, I said, I’m just hanging out.

Then how about helping me carry this laundry?

My mama told me not to talk to strangers or carry laundry for them. Never can tell what might happen to a good lookin’ girl like me.

She stared at me again, even longer and harder this time. Anybody could see I wasn’t gonna get crowned queen of the apartment building even competing against people like her, but maybe her eyes really had gone bad.

Well, she said, I’m interested in your muscles, not your looks, and for sure not your mouth. I’ll give you a Coke for pay.

I don’t like Coke. I’ll take a root beer.

All kids like Coke, and I don’t have root beer. I have lemons and water and sugar to make lemonade. And I can throw in a few cookies. Will that satisfy you?

What kind of cookies?

She rolled her eyes like she couldn’t believe I’d ask that, but I wasn’t gonna lug laundry for plain old sugar cookies.

Peanut butter—fresh made.

Fine! I said, heaving one bag over each shoulder.

Her apartment was pretty much the same as ours, but had a whole lot less stuff. I mean, like it was practically empty. The walls were white and there was nothing, not one thing on them. The shades on her windows were white, and so was the rug in front of the sofa.

And get this: the living room sofa and big chair were both white! Mama says the problem with white is that you have to wash it or get it cleaned about every other day, so even I knew NOBODY but a rich person would buy a white sofa. The old lady sure didn’t act rich, so she must just be a real whacko.

Put the bags in the closet in the spare room.

At home that’d be my bedroom, but I couldn’t tell what it was for her. There were more white walls and white shades, a white rug in the middle of the room, plus a small wood table and a straight back chair near the window. Maybe she lived somewhere else and just came here so she could do her laundry at Clean Duds.

I dumped the bags on the floor in the closet, but it felt like I’d messed things up.

She was in the kitchen mixing up the lemonade, and I decided to ask her straight out. So, do you live in a monastery and you know, like just keep this place to store stuff?

I don’t think she appreciated that ’cause she gave me a big-time stare and said, That smart mouth must get you in a lot of trouble in school. What do you know about a monastery?

A lot. I read this book that said they have white walls, and you get a chair and a bed and an extra robe and pair of shoes plus a box to store them.

Is that a fact? So, you read books?

Yeah. What of it? You never met a kid who reads books?

Crazy old lady—why wasn’t she asking me the usual stupid adult questions like how I was doing in school and how many brothers and sisters I had?

That would be an example of the mouth I was talking about. I’ve got a lot of books you could look at if you wanted to.

She was crazy if she thought I’d want to borrow her crummy old books. It was my turn to do the staring thing, but I don’t think she even noticed. I was thinking about leaving until she brought out the peanut butter cookies to go with the lemonade. I tasted one and decided I’d stay long enough to have a few.

You can call me Lena, she said. And I suppose you have a name.

Did she think my parents named me Girl the way some jerks name their dog, Dog?

Sure I got a name. It’s Kalayla.

Ka lay la, she repeated slowly. That’s unusual. And pretty, too. Is that some kind of family name?

Naah. My mama thought it up. She’s smart about some things.

Sometimes that old lady annoyed me so much I wanted to spit, but she made good lemonade, and I drank a lot of it that summer ’cause she was asking me for help about every five minutes.

I didn’t really mind. Mama was working about 100 hours a week, and I didn’t see much of her. After we got a car last year she started cleaning houses before her shift at Eddie’s. If I stood on the landing between the third and fourth floor, I could see Mama serving customers or clearing tables. She worked the four-nine shift, and when I felt like it, I’d go over and hang out and talk to whoever was there.

Anyway, I was used to Mama being busy all the time. When Daddy was alive, she was always working on some kind of art project like painting or a collage or whatever. I learned to make out okay on my own and not bother her during one of her ‘creative inspirations.’ The only difference was now she was too busy working to spend time on art. Anyway, we didn’t have enough room for her to have a studio.

When summer came, she must’ve felt guilty being away so much ’cause she decided we should have Sunday Morning Talks. That was supposed to be our special time together when we’d sit at the kitchen table while she drank coffee, and I’d fix whatever I felt like eating.

Mostly she asked me questions and I tried not to lie too much when I answered. Like this morning she said, Are you going to the library today?

I never bothered telling her that the library was closed on Sundays during summer. She’d have got all nerved up about what I was gonna be doing all day and where I was gonna be going.

Haven’t made plans yet, Mama. Why? Is there something you want me to do?

Well, no, but if you’re going out, maybe you could put on something more … something less …

Cow turds! Like anybody cared what I wore ’cept her. Even the old lady didn’t bug me about how I dressed, and she bugged me about plenty of stuff. Sometime I might try going naked and see if Mama liked that better!

Just to keep her quiet, I went into my bedroom and dug into the pile of clothes in the closet ’til I found a blouse and shorts the Easter Bunny gave me. Yeah! As if I EVER believed in any stupid old Easter Bunny!

Sometimes in our Sunday talks, Mama would get going on how important family was. Which was kind of dumb because there wasn’t any family on her side. They all died in a gas explosion about the time Mama and Daddy got married. And then after Daddy died, Mama was always thinking up ways to avoid seeing his family. I decided she liked talking about family more than she liked being with it.

The only one Mama couldn’t avoid was Daddy’s asshole brother Clarence. After Daddy died Uncle Clarence thought he’d be doing us a big favor by checking on us. As if we needed him! Anyway, Mama started doing cleaning jobs because Clarence offered to find a car for us, ’cause one thing he knew about was what he called locating cars.

The Sunday morning Mama was telling me about his offer, she kept moving her coffee cup from one hand to the other the way she always did when she was nerved up. And she was always nerved up when it came to Clarence. Daddy used to call him, My brother the Flim-Flam Man. I just called him a jerk.

When she asked what I thought about the idea, I said, Yeah, his usual big talk. He’ll get us a car about the same time he gets a job.

Layla, I really do wish you wouldn’t say things like that about him.

It’s the truth, so why shouldn’t I say it?

Because he’s your uncle. You should be respectful.

I am respectful. I never called him an asshole to his face, did I?

Mama sighed one of those big sighs like she always did when she wished I’d shut my mouth, but she knew I wouldn’t.

Anyway, that time Clarence did what he said. He went over to Quality Cars and picked out a blue Ford with eighty thousand miles and not too many scrapes and dents. He was never gonna stop bragging about it, either. He went on and on about it having a fine American engine and how he detailed it himself.

That really pissed me off, so I said, Yeah? That must have been the first time you ever did any work!

I knew he’d wanna slap my face for that, so I took off before he could.

My grandparents lived in another part of Cambridge over near Inman Square, and after Daddy died, Grandma said we had to stay with them because, your daddy’s passing has exhausted your mama and she needs rest.

Yeah, right! Mama wasn’t exhausted. She went whacko and had a nervous breakdown, and Grandma knew it. And I knew it, and everybody else did, too.

I hated it at their house, mostly because they were always dragging me to church. I could’ve told Grandma she oughta be taking Uncle Clarence instead of me, but she would’ve said I was being rude and put it on her list of complaints about my behavior to take up with Mama after she got better.

When Mama finally got back to normal, we moved back home and she started working. She said we needed to move to a smaller apartment, and that meant she’d have to give up her art studio.

It’s okay, Layla. I don’t have time for art now, and once we move, I’ll get to decorate the new apartment and that’ll be my project, was what she told me. I knew it wasn’t really okay ’cause she loved doing art, and fixing up an apartment was no way the same thing.

It was kinda funny, but once we moved to the new apartment, the person I saw the most was the Old Lady. It turned out she liked Clean Duds, too. Just about every day she’d drop by carrying an iced coffee from Eddie’s. I guess life was pretty boring for anybody that old, and she must’ve been looking for something to do. Like take up all my valuable time with her talking.

She’d pull up a chair next to mine and say something like: Too hot to be out.

Now that was about the dumbest thing I ever heard ’cause it was just as hot inside as it was out. Clean Duds had a couple of those big standing fans chained to the wall, but they didn’t do much ’cept blow hot air around and make a lot of noise.

So, why are you wearing black? I asked her on one of those broiling days. By then I knew black was the ONLY color she ever wore.

She gave me her usual stare and said, I wear what I wear because I choose to, and why I wear it would be NO concern of yours!

Fine, let her fry! It would serve her right.

When the old lady wanted help carrying her stuff or had other chores for me, she’d always ask if I wanted to earn a Coke. That got to be a joke, and I’d say something like, I’ll have a vanilla Coke float with chocolate ice cream today, thanks.

I got used to the whiteness in her apartment. In a way, I kind of liked it. It was like a blank page you could decorate any way you wanted. A small bookcase in the corner had a bunch of books and a few photos, most of them some boys. Mama had photos of her and me and Daddy everywhere in the apartment, but the Old Lady’s place wasn’t normal like ours, and her photos kind of freaked me out.

One of ’em was of a woman standing barefoot at the beach with waves coming a little above her ankles. Her hair was real dark and sort of flowing around her shoulders. The wind was blowing her dress up so you could see her legs. She was real pretty. Two little boys that looked alike were making a sand fort or maybe a sand castle at the edge of the water in front of her.

The next time I was over there, I pointed at the photo and said, So who’s that, a friend of yours?

A friend? That’s me you’re looking at, Kalayla. In my younger days.

Right! I covered my mouth quick to keep from snorting. I almost said, Yeah! Like a couple hundred years ago? But I didn’t because she would’ve gone into her Being Polite Lecture and I had that memorized.

A few other photos showed the same woman with four boys. In one, she was holding the two little boys so they couldn’t squirm away. Two older boys were standing straight as statues on the other side of her.

Those your kids? How come I never see them here?

She didn’t say anything for so long I didn’t think she was gonna answer me, but finally she said, I had four sons and those pictures were taken a long, long time ago. You better be getting home, Kalayla. Your mama will be waiting.

LENA MANERO BARZETTI

THE MAMA

That girl was sticking her nose in places she shouldn’t, and no good was going to come of it. Like asking me about my boys. What good would come of me telling her about them? Two of them were dead. One—I hoped—was living, but who knew where, doing who knew what. The other was a big shot businessman who thought I was about as desirable a mother as a field of poison ivy would have been.

I decided it was about time I got to know that mother of Kalayla’s better. The fact I’d done a bad job raising my boys meant I could give her plenty of good advice on what not to do.

I loaded up with a batch of Carlotta’s cookies and took myself over to Maureen’s the next Sunday afternoon when I knew Kalayla would be off somewhere.

Maureen answered my knock and her smile was genuine, Lena! I’m so glad it’s you! Please come in. I hope you’ll like what I’ve done to the apartment. I’m an artist, you know, well, not a real artist … I mean, I’ve never earned any money with my art, but … Oh, do come in!

I walked into their apartment and stood there, blinking. Sweet Jesus, what a sight it was! There was color everywhere—wonderful, vibrant colors, and it made me think of photos of those tropical fish with all their brilliant colors.

Dom told me Maureen asked if she could choose wall colors and do the painting herself, and he’d said yes. Of course, he would say that. It didn’t matter that the business was thriving and had been for years and years. Dom was still pinching every penny, nickel, dime, and quarter, his knee-jerk reaction from the old days when we were starting out, and he had to scrounge funds for maintenance any place he could. The joke on him was that he didn’t know how much Maureen loved color! The whole apartment would have to be repainted when she moved out and he’d be on his high horse about that!

So … the kitchen was alternating walls of yellow and orange. I never would have dreamed of doing any such thing, but I sure did appreciate the result.

And the decorations—my goodness! All I could think was Maureen must have been playing around with designs in stripes and polka dots and geometric shapes just to see how they’d look. The chair cushions, curtains and wall decorations were a mixture of shapes in yellow, orange, green, and white.

The result, well, I have to say the result was … beautiful … and surprising. She used different colors in every room—some with the walls all one color, some with two—but each room was like a unique world of its own. My, oh my!

Maureen, this is … well now, I have to say I don’t know what to say except that what you’ve done is so full of life that it’s just plain wonderful!

Oh! I’m so relieved you like it. I mean, when Layla told me your apartment was all white, I was afraid you might ask us to paint everything over in white or, you know, at least tone it down and make it less, ahh, less ahhh …

Don’t you be taking the fact I got my place all white to mean I don’t like colors. My big old house used to be full of color—not that the colors were anything like yours here, but they were full of life too. You ought to be thinking about getting a job as a home decorator instead of waiting on tables and cleaning houses.

Oh, I would love that, I really would, but I need to work, and I don’t have time to go to school anymore—for training, you know. Anybody who hires you wants to know your experience, and I don’t have any, and I don’t have a degree. I mean, I started on one, but …

If Maureen had gone on talking instead of stopping mid-way, I would have found out right then about how life happened to her and how she had to adjust. Same way we all have to adjust to things we didn’t plan on and couldn’t change.

Once we finished touring the apartment, we settled in the living room with coffee mugs and Lotta’s cookies. When Maureen told me Kalayla was at the library on a Sunday afternoon in July, I knew I’d come just in time. She had no idea that girl was lying to her. I decided it’d be smarter if I got to know her some before getting into the fact her daughter was prone to altering the truth if it suited her. Anyway, I didn’t need to say anything about it right then because Maureen started in talking again.

I’m so glad you came over, Lena. I’ve been hoping we could talk, and even though you come into Eddie’s all the time, I can’t really chat when I’m working. I wouldn’t want Eddie to think I was wasting time.

Don’t you worry about Eddie. He’s a good guy. He’d cut you some slack. Is this your first job?

"Oh dear, is it really that obvious? I never had to work when Jamal was alive because, you