On the Day I Died (18 page)

Duh!
“Yeah,” I went.

“I’m your aunt Viola,” she said. “I guess you’ll have to come in.” She pushed open the screen door a few more inches, just enough for me and my overnight bag to slip in sideways.

“Whoa!” I went. “No way!”

Her house was packed to the gills. Actually, packed to the gills doesn’t begin to describe it. Imagine the entire contents of a town dump squeezed into a five-room bungalow on Chicago’s North Side. Now do you catch my drift? The whole place was a mess of empty pizza boxes, rumpled magazines, sun-faded lawn chairs, stained clothes, tattered stuffed animals, buckets and boxes of screws and strings, towers of newspapers, wind chimes, dented lamp shades, busted umbrellas. You name it, she’d saved it. Piled floor-to-ceiling. More, more, more. Room after room after room.

“No way!” I said again.

Aunt Viola ignored me. “I suppose I have to feed you something,” she said all martyr-like. “I have hot dogs.” She paused. “And sherbet. I have some orange sherbet.”

“Whatever.” I was too busy looking around to think about food.

“I’ll have more variety day after tomorrow. That’s when the delivery boy leaves my groceries on the front step,” she said. “I don’t go out, and I don’t let people in, so hot dogs’ll have to do until then.”

As she waddled down a narrow canyon that’d been cleared through the mountains of debris, her mammoth hips bumped into a wooden sled propped precariously
against a rusted bedspring. The sled fell, knocking into a tower of twine-tied shoe boxes, which brought down an avalanche of soda cans, board games, paperback books and a bowling ball.

“This house is a friggin’ booby trap!” I shouted, covering my head and plowing through the junk.

Aunt Viola didn’t even flinch.

“Why don’t you throw some of this junk out?”

She snorted. “You young people nowadays think everything’s disposable.”

I noticed a laundry basket full of, like, a hundred used margarine tubs. “Some things
are
disposable.”

Aunt Viola just kept waddling.

I followed along behind her, being real careful not to bump into anything. The deeper we went into the house, the stronger that dirty scalp stink got. It reminded me of something dark, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

We reached the kitchen. Every surface was piled high, and every one of the cabinet doors hung open, their insides a ceramic jigsaw puzzle of mugs and bowls and plates and platters. And all of a sudden I got this itch to play Ker Plunk. You know that game? It’s the one where you try to pull out a stick without letting all the marbles tumble. Except in this case, I wanted to see if I could slip out a saucer without causing a clattering tidal wave of china.

Aunt Viola took a cleared pathway to the refrigerator, and I winced even before I saw inside. If the sink
and countertops looked like this, I could only imagine what science experiments were growing in there—loaves of once-white bread fuzzy with blue mold; black slime floating on the surface of an open can of fruit cocktail.

But the fridge’s insides were surprisingly white and empty, the cleanest place in the house, probably because food was the only thing that didn’t get saved around here. I mean, it was pretty obvious Aunt Viola enjoyed her groceries.

She took a pack of hot dogs out of the meat tray and sidled down the path toward the stove. Only one of the burners was clear of debris. The rest of the stovetop was buried and the oven door hung open, stuffed too full of baking pans and casserole dishes to ever be closed. Or used. Her thick fingers dropped two hot dogs into a saucepan of water. She turned the stove’s dial.

I took a closer look at her. She was padded everywhere—belly, back, shoulders, thighs. Even her ankles and elbows were soft. Blubber bulged behind her knees. Blubber had filled out the wrinkles and sags in her face, too, leaving her looking like some weird oversized porcelain doll complete with grayish-blond finger curls and these crazy eyebrows she’d penciled in above her cold blue eyes.

She can’t be in
my
family, can she? “How are we related, again?” I asked.

The water boiled. “I’m your great-aunt. Your mother’s mother’s sister.”

I tried to work this out in my head as she forked two steaming hot dogs onto a paper plate and handed me a half-empty mustard bottle.

What, no bun?

She sat me at the only cleared space at the table. It was sticky and sprinkled with what looked like cracker crumbs, although in this place, one could never tell. I took a closer look, made sure it wasn’t maggots. Then I squirted a splotch of mustard onto my plate, picked up a hot dog carefully so I didn’t burn my fingers and dipped it into the mustard like it was a French fry or something.
Bon appétit
, right?

“So,” she said, crossing her big arms across her bigger belly, “let’s get acquainted, shall we?”

I started on the second dog. “What do you want to know?” You nosy, hoarding cow.

She leaned down until her china-doll face was just inches from mine. “It’s what I want
you
to know,” she said. Her voice sounded like a wasp in a glass jar—angry and trapped. “I’m doing this—letting you stay here—against my better judgment. I don’t like people in my house. I don’t trust people in my house.”

I arched my right eyebrow, a sarcastic gesture I’d been practicing forever. “So why’d you say yes? I mean, it’s not like we’re some lovey-dovey family or anything like that. Heck, I never even knew I had a great-aunt until yesterday.”

She arched her right eyebrow even more sarcastically
than me. “I thought I’d get in trouble with the authorities if I said no. The last thing I want is any trouble with the authorities.”

“What, you murder somebody or something?”

“Sherbet?” She waddled up the path to the refrigerator, pulled out a pint carton and worked her way back to the table. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up a spoon, maybe from one of the half dozen drawers that were hanging out like dogs’ tongues. She peeled the sticky lid off the pint, then dropped the sherbet and the spoon in front of me.

First no buns, and now no bowl. Yeah, this place was first-class.

“So what’s your mother in jail for this time?” she asked. “Stealing some guy’s wallet? Public brawling?”

I paused, pretending to be on the emotional edge. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m too … overwrought.” I stroked that last word, giving it just the right amount of angst. I even quivered my lower lip a little like I was about to burst into tears, you know? It was a great performance—got the social workers every time.

But it didn’t work on fat Aunt Viola. “You’re here just until your mother makes bail. And during that time, you’re going to do exactly as I say.”

She was starting to freak me out, not like the “there’s a zombie around the corner” kind of freak-out, but the “you better not mess with me” kind of freak-out. So I said, “I’ve got a razor blade taped to my thigh.” It was a
lie. I was unarmed. But it sounded good. Authentic, you know, like I was a real delinquent. I made myself look right into those cold blue eyes of hers, met her gaze, bluffing.

Aunt Viola didn’t even blink. “Done with that?” She pointed to the melting pint of sherbet in front of me. Without knowing it, I’d stabbed the spoon into its softening orange innards over and over again. I pushed it away.

We left the sherbet melting on the table—why was I not surprised?—and I followed her around the house. We took the cleared trails. There was no other way unless you were a mountain goat, and it dawned on me that each trail led someplace necessary—bed, fridge, john. The whole place reeked of that dirty scalp smell, and everything was covered with a gritty white film, like the house had a bad case of dry skin. It was pretty obvious the place was falling apart. The floors slanted, and there were lightning-bolt cracks all over the ceiling. It was like the house was collapsing in on itself, buckling under the weight of all that stuff.

For a second I changed my mind about staying there. Then I thought of the ESC, with its rows of torture cots, and its pathetic little kids crying all night for their mommies because they hadn’t figured out the score yet, and those oh-so-sincere social workers who were constantly in my face, trying to quote, “break through your emotional walls,” unquote. And you know what? Aunt Viola’s didn’t seem so bad after all.

But it would have been even better if I’d had a razor blade, you know?

We came to a fork in the trail.

“I sleep in there,” Aunt Viola said. She pointed to the right, where the trail cut through a wall of cardboard boxes and into a bedroom. Through the growing darkness, I could see a double bed, its sheets a tangled knot, half of it hiding under a jumble of cookie boxes and catalogs.

“What about me?” I asked.

She pointed to the left. “There’s a sofa in the living room,” she said. “In the corner there. You’ll need to clear it off.”

“What’s that?” I asked. There was a door in the hallway, strangely clear of debris. It had a heavy, industrial-strength padlock on it.

“That’s off-limits,” she said. “The stairs to the attic.”

“Why off-limits?”

“You ask too many questions.”

I reached out and tested the lock just to rattle her chain. “Ooh, nice and tight,” I said. “So what do you keep up there? The family jewels?” Or just more broken typewriters and rusty sinks?

She grabbed my arm, her fat hand squeezing with an anaconda grip. “Listen, girly.” Yeah, she actually said “girly.” “You just mind your own business. Understand?”

I shook her off. “Jeez, I was only teasing. Can’t you take a joke?”

“I never joke,” she said, and her eyes looked dead and flat. “Never.”

“Oh,” I went. The minute I said it, I wanted to kick myself. Like, really, what kind of snappy comeback was “Oh”?

“Off-limits,” Aunt Viola hissed again.

“All right, already,” I said.

Aunt Viola stood there glowering, her hands on her elephant hips, and watched as I squeezed into the living room and over to a sofa that was buried beneath two feet of books, papers and magazines. I looked around. No sheets or pillows, just an ancient lap robe that looked like it had been crocheted by Martha Washington. I pushed everything into a heap on the floor, then sat cross-legged on the gritty cushions.

“Comfortable?” Aunt Viola called out.

Was she joking?

“Cozy as a coffin,” I called back.

I heard the floorboards creak under her weight as she headed toward her bed, and then I was alone. I sighed. It couldn’t have been later than ten p.m. Too early for bed. Besides, I was still feeling a little ambushed by the day. This place. Her. I knew I couldn’t possibly fall asleep yet. Halfheartedly, I looked around for a television, but knew I wouldn’t find one. Bummer. I could have used a little
Chico and the Man
distraction right about then.

Bored, I pushed around the heap of books and papers with my foot. A liver-spotted copy of
Life
magazine
surfaced, a picture of Frank Sinatra on its cover. There was an empty album sleeve from some band called the Tijuana Brass, a tattered composition book, a bent postcard of the John Hancock Building, and …

What’s this?

I reached down and snagged a scrapbook—water-stained, its edges curling—out of the mess. A ghostly puff of dust rose as I opened it. It was all newspaper clippings. Page after page of yellowing old newspaper clippings. All of them were from the 1920s. And they were all about Aunt Viola.

I read the scrapbook from beginning to end. Every clipping on every page. And pretty soon, all those bits and pieces came together to form a story—the Story of Aunt Viola. And man, was it a crazy one.

She was born Viola O’Hara, and she began her life of crime as a petty thief in a bad neighborhood on the near North Side called Little Hell. By the time she was in her twenties, she was a small-time racketeer who paid for her fancy dresses (made to accommodate the three guns she usually carried) and her florist business (a cover for what she
really
did) by running booze from Canada. Twice the Genna family, believing she was muscling in on their territory, tried to gun her down—the first time in front of a thousand people on opening night after a show outside the LaSalle Theatre; the second time while dancing the Charleston at the Aragon Ballroom. But Viola was a better shot. She made headlines. Her picture was in every
paper. Reporters dubbed her the doll-faced moll. The Genna family dubbed her a menace. And Al Capone—the most famous gangster of all—called her sweetheart. That is, of course, until the day he tried slapping her around her apartment. That was when Viola pulled a four-inch knife from her garter belt and turned Al into Scarface. Needless to say, he never called her sweetheart again.

According to a long article in the
Chicago Tribune
, Viola did fall in love with this guy named Pete Winters, a war hero who worked in her florist shop. Pete was on the up-and-up, as straight an arrow as they came. Viola had never known such a hardworking, decent guy. He somehow managed to touch the few tender chords inside her. She decided to give up her life of crime, move away to Colorado with Pete, become a respectable married dame. But she needed money. So she swallowed her pride, cinched up her courage and went to the richest man she knew—Al Capone. I guess she was willing to risk it all for love, you know?

So what happened next? I got the rest of the gory details straight from this old-time pulp-fact magazine called
True Crime
. The facts seemed to me like they might have been a little dicey, but the story was a juicy one. According to
True Crime
, this is how things went down:

“What do you say we let bygones be bygones?” Viola says to Capone. “I’m here to do you a favor and sell you my portion of the Canadian whiskey business.”

“How much?” asks Capone through gritted teeth.

“I’m a reasonable woman,” replies Viola. “And we’ve known each other a long time.”

Capone smiles a tight little smile.

“How does fifty thousand dollars sound?” asks Viola. “Fair?”

“Done,” says Al. He writes Viola an IOU. Tells her it’s good to see her again. Kisses her cheek goodbye. Maybe he even touches the scar on his face.