Worn Masks Read Online Free Page A

always sounded like he was singing to her from a deep
tunnel that pulled the words in long sounds that echoed and comforted her.
    Mary Grace’s desire grew to know more about Uncle Paul. “Why does
Uncle Paul go up the steps over my head?”
    “Oh, just be still. I don’t even know what you are trying to say
when there is nothing to say,” her mother warned against her inquiries about
Uncle Paul living above them.
    A few years later she and Uncle Paul encountered each other on the
house staircase again, as he was going up the stairs. She had climbed over the
rail and tucked herself into the cavity where the bottom of the attic steps met
the doorway of Aunt Maggie’s apartment.
    Aunt Maggie had on previous occasions found Mary Grace in her
cubby and made her promise to stay put while she screamed for her brother,
Luigi, to come with a ladder. Mary Grace’s mother gave her a few good whacks
with the wooden spoon for giving Aunt Maggie a scare.
    They hadn’t let Mary Grace inch her way out, bringing her right
foot onto the stairwell between two posts, then swinging herself up, and
wrapping her arms around the banister; finally completing the descent by
swinging her leg over the top of the banister and quickly sliding down to the
bottom. Mary Grace knew the connected steps she would take to complete the
move, if they hadn’t interfered.
    On this occasion, when Uncle Paul caught her in the cubby, he
hesitated for just a moment, looked into her eyes, nodded, and then continued
up the steps. She heard him then, above her head, going up the tight and curved
steps of the attic.
    Later that night Mary Grace asked her dad if Uncle Paul could eat
with them. She watched as her mom turned from the stove and looked, eyebrows
raised, at her father. He began to say something about how his brother ate
downstairs with Aunt Maggie, but her mom interrupted, “He doesn’t eat at my
table.” Her mom’s voice was like the last lick of an ice cream pop when your
tongue scrapes against the wooden stick, rough and gritty, the sweetness gone.
    Mary Grace wasn’t certain about how much English Uncle Paul spoke, or if it was just that the two
broth ers, her dad and Uncle Paul, liked to converse in the fast and hand
enhanced Italian. Mary Grace wondered if her mother comprehended all that they
were saying, as she never joined their conversations. 
    When Mary Grace sat on the porch with Uncle Paul he would take her
arm and in a sing-song, while he lightly moved his fingers from her wrist to
elbow say: “ uno, due, tre; quattro, cinque, sei; sette, otto, nove , and
a ticklea unda here.” This concluded with smiling eyes and a delicate
scratching by her arm pit as she giggled. When Aunt Maggie came out onto the
porch, Uncle Paul pulled out his cigarettes and went to smoke, pacing back and
forth in front of the screened-in porch.
    Early in the autumn, soon after Mary Grace started school, Aunt
Maggie told her when she returned home from her day in fifth grade, “You must
be quiet.” Wasn’t she always quiet? Then she was told “no piano,” which s he often did play in Aunt Maggie’s living room. No
pi ano because that was where Uncle Paul would be convalescing. Aunt
Maggie, sad and shaking more then usual, said, “ Zi Paol ha cavita salute ,”
reverting back to Italian, as they all did
around Mary Grace when any thing was out of the ordinary.
    Aunt Maggie knew her place, that of an old maid, living in the home of her parents, and then her
broth ers. She never found a suitor that would give her security. She
answered to her brothers after both her parents passed. She was always shaking
her head and shoulders, saying, “Oh, hush, hush. Stata gitt .” Mary
Grace’s mom said she had a bit of a nervous condition. This command to stay out
of Aunt Maggie’s living room, and that Uncle Paul would not be going up to his
room shook Mary Grace with uncertainty.
     
    Some weeks later Mary Grace peeked through the bars of the
banister at the top