The Witch of Little Italy Read Online Free

Eleanor thought she could remember holding onto those metal bars, the coppery smell of sweaty little girl hands when she let go—but then—then it was gone. The building looked surprisingly lovely coated in the fine, sparkling December snow, with warm lights pouring out. Eleanor almost wanted to go in.
    Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” came floating out of a window, propped open just a crack. The building in front of her bustled. Eleanor’s artist eyes saw a moving still life; a work of performance art. The majority of activity streamed out in sound bites of laughter and clinking glasses from the window on Eleanor’s right. The colored lights from the Christmas tree pooled out through the window and bled onto the white ground in a jewel-toned watercolor wash. The apartment to her left was colder. The light, austere. The inside of the front room was devoid of curtains making the shabby room clearly visible.
    Peeping Tom Eleanor always had a love of walking around at night. Especially in New Haven. She’d walk around and peer into the houses. Watch the families gathered together making dinner. Watching television. Being normal, whatever that meant.
    Eleanor tipped her head up to get a view of the windows on the second floor. One dark, like a black eye. The other dim, but she could see a figure. It moved, the shadow, and Eleanor knew where it was going. Snow fell in her eyes.
    She gave the snow an annoyed kick and crossed her arms as she sat on the front stoop of the building. “Crap! I’m not ready for this!” she yelled at the snow.
    The large front doors opened and people poured out like bugs. A priest and some old ladies, all laughing and saying goodnight. Someone brushed against her and said, “Excuse me.” Eleanor didn’t move. She sat still on the stoop.
    Her grandmother, Mimi, stood in the doorway, handing out Tupperware containers of food and saying broad good-byes to her guests. Only when they were gone did she turn her attention to her granddaughter. “Babygirl, you’ve been out here a long time. It’s getting cold now. Come in, won’t you? I’m so excited to catch up.”
    Eleanor craned her neck to look at her grandmother. Mimi looked exactly as she remembered. Short and round. Black hair set against an old face. Old but kind. Eleanor felt torn between the solidness of the stoop and the liquid happy that wanted her to fly into Mimi’s warm arms. Why am I so determined to love it here? she wondered for the six hundredth time that night.
    Babygirl. The name made her heart sing. That’s what they’d called her. Eleanor shook her head “no” hard enough to send a layer of snow flying. It was all too much. Carmen was afraid of this place, and Eleanor was increasingly convinced that she was going insane, so she didn’t know what to think, or who to trust. A part of her, the sane part, weighed the options. It was either the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel, or the Rabbit Hole from Alice in Wonderland. Either way, it was dangerous.
    “Okay,” said Mimi. “But the door is unlocked. I’ll be cleaning up. You come in when you’re ready.”
    One of the front windows screamed open. Aunt Fee poked her head out and yelled to her, “Get inside! You’ll freeze your skinny legs off!” Eleanor sat still. Fee can’t hear well  … She remembered.
    Stubborn and staring at the snow she marveled over how each individual crystal was different from the next. She remembered reading somewhere that Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. Eleanor wished there were a hundred ways to say her name. She thought, maybe, if her name was howled from all the corners of the world, in a million different voices, that she might explode into a cloud of snow. Light and separate, her parts floating down onto the world in a series of beautiful crystalline moments.
    “You know somethin’? The Eskimos have a hundred words for snow,” said Anthony sitting next to her.
    His voice rumbled like low