A Family Exorcism and My Uncle: The Pope of Park Slope
The droplets stung like gentle mosquito bites when he flung that little round ball, like a baby rattle, over our heads. Father Smolinski then bowed in front of each of us, all lined up in the green linoleum hallway, and dipped his thumb in the gold cup. He waved a wet sign of the cross on each of our foreheads.
Shelly cried quietly, Wayne looked like he was about to, Diane and Dotty had wide red eyes, Butchy looked over at me and giggled. I did too, but my hand was shaking and Butchy couldn’t stop tapping his left foot.
Father Smolinski mumbled something about dominoes, it wasn’t Polish. He boomed at me: “Joseph, I don’t care what you hear in there, you just keep leading a prayer here with the children.”
I knew the Hail Marys and Our Fathers backwards and could even do a few Acts of Contrition and Glory Be’s if needed because I used to ring the bells during 9 in the morning service. I’d be the one who held up Father Smolinski when he couldn’t make it up the altar steps after swigging too much from his plastic Our Lady of Lourdes flask.
“It’s our own little secret, between us, right Joseph?” he’d slur to me and I’d nod my head and look up at the wooden carving of Jesus looking down at us.
It was odd to see Father Smolinski putting on his purple vestements at our house. He blew his cheeks out like a fish and shuffled our parents to the back bedroom. My Dad and Uncle Walter were grim-faced and frowned at Butchy and me for goofing around. Aunt Julia was crying and her husband Uncle Jay followed. My Mom followed Uncle Jay, whispering something to him, and he turned back and stuck his long pointed nose in her hair as if to kiss her ear. We sat around the dining room table and twirled our fingers through the lace tablecloth. The procession of adults into the back bedroom ended with Babcia, in her black veil for church, her yellowed eyes almost closed up from puffiness.
Father Smolinski shut the door and nodded to me to begin the praying.
“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .” The others joined in.
We could hear Aunt Val groan. It was a deep, growling groan, like when anyone went down to the basement to see Shep without Uncle Walter. I prayed harder.
“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners . . .”
We heard Val spit. We heard hissing like a gas leak. We heard struggling and snapping and gasping. We heard Father Smolinski shout. We heard the nastiest swear words I ever heard all at one time. We heard some swear words I’d never heard before. I prayed louder.
“BLESSED ART THOU AMONG WOMEN AND BLESSED IS THE FRUIT OF THY WOMB JESUS . . . “
A chilling scream came from Val, giving us each a long goosebump shiver. I could swear the chandelier in the dining room tinkled. Wayne burst out into sobs, Shelly dove under the table, Dotty and Diane hugged a chair leg and I could feel a tear escaping down my nose. Butchy was looking down, I couldn’t see his face, but I think he was laughing, or maybe crying. That was his momma in there. He picked up the praying where I left off.
“Now and forever. Amen.”
•
Squealing metal jostled me out of my daze. “Seventeenth Street, next stop Prospect Avenue.” I gripped my two suitcases, drew as deep a breath as I could muster in the subterranean wind and exitted through the turnstile.
Walter didn’t seem to recognize me at first. I crossed the street and he whacked me on the back. “Let me take one of those, Jashu.”
I kept my grip on both suitcases. We turned left on Fifth Avenue, we passed the White Eagle Market where I’d pick up milk every Saturday after Catechism, we passed the Miljewiecz Mortuary where practically everyone in the family went when they died, and we passed Sammy’s Barber Shop — now Samuel’s Hair Salon — where Mom sent me with $2 bucks to get my John-John haircuts.
We turned left again at 21st Street. Up the block was the Greenwood Cemetery, down the block was the Statue of Liberty looking right up at us as Walter talked about my cousins (“all fine”), his vintage Oldsmobile (“still runs”), and his wife Val’s amazing recovery (“those damn doctors can’t explain it”). The last time I saw Aunt Val, she had only a few gray tufts on her head. She had pulled out the rest.
“Yeah, the old girl is doing fine now that Julia’s dead,” Walter said. “That bitch drove all of us crazy.” I winced and mumbled about missing Aunt Julia’s funeral two months before.
“Remember Jim French who lived right there, he’s dead. Called me up one afternoon and said, ‘Walter I’m dying, come on over here and take whatever you want before I go’ and I said ‘Ach Jim, take a seltzer and I’ll call you this afternoon’ and I should have backed a truck up to his door when I had the chance. I got nothing. The Zbkowski sisters over there went boom, boom, one after the other, about three years ago. Used to have me over every day helping them put in a new light bulb, adjusting their television, putting in new tiles. Every day. I’d do it for nothing, but sometimes they’d give me a little something here and there. They made good golumpkis, remember?”
We neared brownstone 241 with the twisted wrought iron gate around the stone stoop which marked my childhood playground. My stomach tightened.
“I’m retired, seventy-eight and look at me,” Walter said, hitting his chest. “I help people when I can. They call me the Pope around here because they think I look like him. I don’t know. Everyone calls me for help, they don’t never call nobody else.”
Val greeted us at the door, hefty as ever, but healthy. She had hair. She wrapped her pale rubbery arms around me. I avoided the side of her face that had the big black nickle-sized mole, just like I always did as a kid.
“How long’s it been? Twenty years?”
“Fifteen, Val,” I said. “Only fifteen.”
•
I remember how tight Uncle Walter grabbed me on the third step of the stoop, so tight my thin body couldn’t pull away no matter how hard I tried. I had bruises on both arms for a week. He held me until I looked him right in the eyes and he barked at me with his kielbasa breath.
“There are some things that stay in the family, boy,” he shouted, shaking me until I thought my neck would break. “There are some things that don’t leave this house — ever! Do y’hear?”
I thought it was funny, so did my friends, to hear Val gurgle and groan and cuss.
Dad gave me the tape recorder for my 14th birthday and I stashed it in the bedroom and turned it on before Father Smolinski went in and did his little ceremony. It sounded so much like an animal that most of my friends thought it was just Shep in the basement, but then they could also hear the adults praying and crying. It also sounded like they whacked something real hard. Then Val spit out these nasty words.
Butchy was mad at me for taping it, and none of the other cousins wanted to listen to it, but I played for everyone else on 21st Street, even for Jim French on the stoop next door. Each time I heard it, I got chills.
I think it was one of the Zbkowski sisters who heard us playing it under their window and called up to tell Uncle Walter, but they didn’t call until the tape was almost over.
“You don’t air your dirty laundry in the whole goddam neighborhood,” Uncle Walter fumed, still shaking me. I winced as tears poured down my cheeks and tried to look away from my friends who were staring through the wrought iron fence. They didn’t laugh, they were scared for me.
My Dad came out because of all the commotion and Walter let go. Dad had the tape recorder in his hands and dropped it in front of me. The cover of the recorder broke off and a few of the plastic buttons flew in different directions, and the four double-As rolled down the street. Dad slipped off his belt and I backed off the stoop.
“Get over here,” he told me as he doubled the belt in his hands. More kids gathered at the gate. I stood on the third step of the stoop and he pushed my face down over the railing. He cracked my behind with the belt so hard that I couldn’t even shout because the wind was knocked out of me. My friends howled with laughter and finally I caught my breath enough to begin sobbing, but I tried to make it look like I was laughing.
Jim French walked by and stopped to watch for a few whacks and then said, “Take it inside, Ignatz. Take it inside.”
My Dad stopped and let me run inside. I slipped on the green linoleum in the hallway, bawling hysterically, hearing my friends by the gate laughing.
•
Before I could muster walking up the steps again after fifteen years, I looked up to the window on the second floor from where Babcia watched the world go by a good portion of her life. I skipped the third step as I walked up, through the double doors, over the lime linoleum and into the kitchen full of a greasy kluski smell.
“I made you something, sit down, eat,” Val ordered. “Finally, you come back. Otherwise I’d never see you. I don’t go out no more. Why should I? I don’t need to. If no one comes to see me, I don’t never see no one.”
Walter looked at his watch, opened up a cap of pink pills, spilled out two, called Val over and popped them into her mouth. He slumped back in a chair and pushed his glasses up on his thick nose.
After a moment’s pause, he scrutinized me and bellowed a giant laugh, “You have a beard now!”
They carted out the wedding albums, one for each of their four children. I knew the “why-aren’t-you-married-yet-Joseph?” questions would be coming.
“And this is Dotty’s wedding, we did everything ourselves believe it or not,” Val said, taking a break from the stove. “Guess how much we spent on this, take a guess.”
I looked at the pictures of the party at the church hall, the three-tiered cake, the food, the flowers. “I don’t know, a few thousand dollars?”
“Twenty dollars!” Walter said, smacking the photo album with his opened hand. “Twenty dollars for all that.”
I shook my head again, but didn’t bother asking how because I knew the answer was coming.
“ ‘Member that bakery on Fifth and 17th where cousin Teddy was hit by the taxicab? Well, that was closing up and I was walking down to White Eagle and saw old man Behman packing up all his stuff. He had boxes everywhere, all the way into the street. He was throwing away all kinds of things, throwing them right into the garbage pail. Well, I was talking to him and I opened up some of the boxes out by the curb and I asked if I could have some of it and he said, ‘Take. Take it all.’ So, I got all these decorations and place settings and cups and plates, and right there in the middle of all the boxes was this big old wedding cake. It was just made, it was beautiful. So, I picked it up and used it for Dotty and Rusty’s wedding. It was for Tina and Randy, and I just scraped off the names.”
“Tina Ranieri? The girl who hung herself?” I asked. “You used a wedding cake that was meant for Tina Ranieri? Does Dotty know this?”
“Naah, ‘ course she don’t, and don’t you say nothing about it. So, I got the hall just after a funeral wake so we could use the same flowers and got some of the altar boys to donate their time as caterers and all it cost was $20 to rent the hall and that’s it.”
“Wasn’t the cake stale?” I asked.
“Well, not too bad. Rusty’ father paid for an open bar, and I was pushing the drinks, so everyone was so drunk by the end of the night that by the time we cut the cake no one could tell. People even complimented me about putting it all together.”
“I don’t believe it,” I mumbled.
“Isn’t he brilliant?” Val said. “Rusty’ father even offered to pay us for half. He wanted to hand us a $200 check, but Vladic here wouldn’t accept it. He could have made money on his daughter’s wedding if he wanted.”
I looked back down at the pictures of my cousin Dotty’s wedding and noticed the black and orange plastic plates, the cut-out hearts with arrows on the walls, the cups with green shamrocks and the silvery tinsel with red and green ribbons hanging from the lights.
“It must’ve been very colorful,” is all I could muster.
“We spent three days cutting off all the witches and bunnies and ‘Happy Birthdays’ from all the decorations,” Walter said.
“And the ‘Happy Hannukah’s,’ “ Val added. “We couldn’t have a ‘Happy Hannukah’ at our daughter’s wedding. God no.”
•
“I have a present for you to take back, I got it yesterday,” Walter said, as I raised my hand and started the you-shouldn’t-haves. “You like peanut butter? I have two for you. They gave them away at the church, you know, those giveaways for the poor people. I stood in line three times. It’s nice stuff, butter, cheese, bread, rice, five pounds of rice. All for nothing.”
“This is government rations? Isn’t this for families on welfare?”
“Ach, it’s from the government. Why shouldn’t it be for everybody? I pay taxes. Why shouldn’t I get some?”
I looked to Val and she nodded proudly, sucking her bottom lip into her toothless mouth as she stood over the purplish beet soup bubbling on the stove. “Brilliant, ain’t he? Stood in line six hours. It’s good stuff.”
“How could you go there three times, don’t they check?”
“I gave different names. I gave ’em your Dzia-Dzia’s name. He’s still on the list and he’s been dead for what, twenty-five years now?”
“Twenty two years,” Val said.
“You used Dzia-Dzia’s name to get free food?” I asked.
“Sure, it’s good peanut butter.”
•
Mom sounded like she was being beaten. She sounded like she was in pain, and I knew Dad was away, but I was too afraid to move. I could hear someone else in there, I was terrified. When my door creak opened, the only thing I could do was bury myself deep into the covers. The door closed and I rolled the covers back over my head but was still too afraid to open my eyes.
I felt my bed shake, a little bit at first, like when my foot shakes and the bed moves, but this time my whole bed was rocking. Then, I heard a moan, not a throat moan, but a stomach moan, so sad, so painful, it must’ve hurt. I can’t remember ever having the back-of-the-neck willies worse than that moment.
I was ready to jump out of bed when I saw a white figure. It was Aunt Val. Her hair was out and on end and I could tell she’d been pulling on it again. She had two tufts of hair in each hand.
“Aunt Val, what’d you want?”
She just stared at me. Her large brown eyes were opened as wide as they could possibly go. She didn’t say a word.
“Aunt Val, is something wrong?”
The moan came up again, this time shuddering her whole body until I thought she would explode right in front of me.
“Aunt Val, go back downstairs! MOM!”
I pulled the blankets back over my head, but she was still there, and I knew those vacant eyes were still staring down at me.
I could hear my Mom’s painful cries stop, and Val scampered out of my room. Then, another tall spindly figure entered my room. It was Uncle Jay. He came from Mom’s room.
“Hey buddy, you all right?”
“Uncle Jay, what’re you doing — Aunt Val was here, she scared me,” I mustered.
“Y’had a nightmare, buddy, go to sleep,” he said soothing.
“Is Aunt Julia and Wayne visiting?” I asked.
“No, no, I just came to see your Momma ’cause she misses your Dad in Vietnam,” he said. “So, listen, there’s no reason to tell anyone I was here, OK? Let’s just go back to sleep and forget about it.”
“Sure, Uncle Jay, sure.”
“G’night,” he said, and he leaned over to kiss me, but I pulled the covers over my head before he could. He went back into my Mom’s room.
•
Just like I always remembered, Val and Walter went to the 7:15 Polish mass. Father Smolinski was wheeled next to the altar by a nun who was assigned to him since he had his stroke and he just sat there sleeping as a visiting priest said mass. After, we walked up to the wheelchair and Val said, “Sister Bernice, maybe the Father will recognize Joey here, he was one of his favorite altar boys almost twenty years ago.”
I stood in front of the wheelchair and stared at the crumpled thin face and the empty eyes. A pearly white strand of drool dripped from his opened mouth and hung about three inches from his chin. I watched it, transfixed, until Sister Bernice wiped it away with a tissue. I didn’t look into Father Smolinski’s eyes, I didn’t want to know if he remembered me.
Aunt Val and I lit candles under the statue of St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes.
As we walked back up the street, Walter boasted, “I’ve taken good care of Valentina, haven’t I, she’s doing so much better now.”
“She looks a lot better,” I said.
A boy chasing after a runaway rubber ball crashed into us, almost knocking Val over. Walter grabbed the boy, about 8, and shook him.
“You imbecile, look where you’re going!” Walter screamed.
The startled boy couldn’t utter a sound.
“Don’t ever come near me again, y’hear!” Walter shouted. He lowered his voice and stuck his finger in the boy’s face. “If you do, I’ll have you killed.”
The boy darted away, but not without turning to Walter and calling him “Fuck face.”
I couldn’t say anything for a few dozen steps. Finally, I broke the silence.
“I lost so many rubber balls on this street, it’s so hard to catch them when they get away ’cause it’s so steep. I’d just watch them roll all the was held up by a bunch of rubber balls and someday I’d go out there and be able to get all of mine back.”
“Funny what imaginations children have,” Walter said stiffly.
“Walter do you remember that tape recorder I got for my 14th birthday. Do you remember where it went?”
“Tape recorder? Nah, I don’t remember.”
“Walter, I taped the exorcism that we had at the house for Val. Father Smolinski did it. I was just wondering if that tape was still around somewhere.”
Val giggled, “ What d’you talk, Jashu?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, that never happened here,” Walter said. “Never happened.”
“Walter, it’s my most vivid childhood memory! Don’t tell me it didn’t happen.”
Walter’s dark marble eyes pierced into mine. He smacked me on the back and smiled as we turned up 21st Street.
“Is this how you remember us, you’re gone for so long? What an imagination, eh Valentina?”
“Yeah, Vladic, that’s because his father kept him away from us so long. That’s what happens when you’re away for twenty years.”
“Fifteen,” my voice quivered. “Fifteen.”
•
I tiptoed down the forbidden musty basement steps and heard voices. Behind me, through the bottom of the stairs, I saw Uncle Walter uncapping a pill bottle and giving Val two white pills. She cowered back from him and he grabbed her hair and pulled it back hard. He threw a clump of her hair on the floor.
“Swallow? Show me.”
Her eyes winced with the anticipation of a smack as she opened her mouth and he slapped the side of her face, and then again, and then again. I started going back up. Shep growled and they all turned toward me.
“What do you want?” Walter said.
“I-I just came to say good-bye. We’re all packed.”
“We’re coming up to say good-bye. Get out of here.”
I turned to scurry back up the stairs and he called me back down.
“Wait, come here, you didn’t say good-bye to Shep. Come here and pet her.”
The fluffy brown mongrel who lived most of her life in the basement, except for the few times she escaped, was now fat with teats dragging the floor. No one knew how, but she was now pregnant and about to have a litter.
“Immaculate Conception, right here on 21st Street,” Uncle Walter told the neighbors.
Shep bit me twice and my Mom had three stitches from a bite after trying to come down the stairs without Walter. Aunt Julia was cornered by Shep in the basement for half a day.
“Pet her!”
I reached my hand over her head as Shep growled. I stuck one finger out and touched her head, then wiggled the back of her ear. She must have been calm because of her pregnant state. She didn’t bite, and finally licked me.
I looked over at the table where Walter had pink pills spilled out all over the table. He was breaking them up and replacing them with white pills. The white pills were aspirin. I looked over at Val who was still cowering in the corner. I looked up at Walter and he frowned at me.
“Get out of here,” he said. Val and I both scrambled up stairs. I stopped halfway.
“Promise you’ll send me a puppy Uncle Walter?”
“Of course, Jashu, the biggest cutest one of the litter,” Walter smiled.
Outside on the stoop sat the last of the boxes to go on the truck. Mom hadn’t packed the diorama that I finished in school. It was a project of a goldfish hanging in a shoe box, looking like it was floating. I spent a whole week painted the background like an aquarium and getting the paper mache fish just right. Mrs. Underhill gave me the best grade of the class.
“Where’re we going to pack it?” I asked.
“Um, Joey, I thought we’d leave it here, maybe you could give it to Uncle Walter?” Mom said.
My heart fell. I wanted to give it to Mom for our new house in Dalls. Tears just started coming out, I couldn’t help it.
My cousins came out to say good-bye, Babcia waved from her second floor window and even Shep was allowed out. From the window next door Jim French told me not to cry, that I’ll be back. Aunt Julia and Uncle Jay came over and kissed us all. Only then, Mom began to cry.
“I’ll send this when you get settled,” Walter said.
“Would you?” I asked. I really hoped he would.
“Special delivery,” he assured.
I gave Uncle Walter a big hug. I blew Babcia a kiss, and even from downstairs I could see her tears. Even Butchy cried when we hugged.
“Send the fish with the puppy,” I shouted out the taxi window.
“OK! Bye, Joey! Bye! See you soon.”
I turned around as the taxi chugged up 21st Street and I could see Babcia still waving from the second floor window. I saw Walter take the fish out of the box, and break the string from where it was hanging. He threw the fish at Shep and the dog pounced on it and in a flash chewed it to shreds.
•
The afternoon I was leaving, I walked into the front room, my footsteps making the weary floorboards creak. I watched Val staring out the window, rocking in her seat, twirling the sheer nylon curtain in her fingers, counting the cars going up the street, watching the people walk by, sitting in the same chair Babcia sat in all those years.
Walter rested in a high-backed green velvet chair. He looked peaceful.
It was hard to believe this was the same man my Aunt Julia accused of having mob connections and being able to have someone killed by making a phone call. He’s also the one Uncle Jay said threw Babcia down the stairs. My cousin Wayne accused him of practicing witchcraft, warning me not to leave my hairbrush out or he would take it and make little voodoo dolls out of my hair. His own daughter Dotty said she saw him strangle Shep before she had the litter of puppies.
My Dad always theorized that Walter purposely made Val crazy so he could be her legal guardian and keep Aunt Julia and my Dad from selling the brownstone and booting them out. When Babcia died, she willed the house to Val, but Walter became the guardian.
I never told my Dad what I saw in the basement the day we moved out of the brownstone. I never said anything.
“I know what you’ve heard about me, I know all the stories,” Walter mumbled from his chair. “It’s not worth bringing up, it’s all in the past. They’re all gone, what’s the point.”
The Zenith television blasted a wrestling match. It was in front of the old set where I first watched The Wizard of Oz with all my cousins years ago.
“I can’t believe that old thing still works,” I said.
I scratched my head and thought about how to confront him, once and for all, finally. So many questions. Was this true? Did that happen? Why? I looked out into 21st Street, down at the stoop and took a deep breath.
“Walter, it doesn’t matter that they’re gone, I’ve got to talk to you, for me. It’s not good to keep all these secrets. I need to know things — “
No answer. I turned around and faced his chair. Walter was curled in a ball, with his head back, quietly snoring. Val’s eyes were transfixed out the window in an unlockable daydream.
“Neighborhood’s changed since Babcia sat there, hasn’t it Val?”
Nothing. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, just staring.
“Val, Does he still hit you?”
Still nothing.
I looked back at Walter, and next to his chair was a framed picture of Pope John Paul II. Walter shifted slightly as he snored. I crossed my arms and stared down at this little round man with fat red cheeks, balding head and a few white wisps sticking up.
I looked again at the photograph of the pope. Yes, I decided, the resemblance was pretty uncanny.
THE END
Other Scary, Creepy Stories . . .
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The Stranger with Blue Eyes Visits Borneo
Other Family Based Stories . . .
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Car Karma: Los Angeles’ Car Obsession
