My sweet friend Melanie Kelleher could not believe I had found the diary. When I told her, we had just met at the Broadway T Station in South Boston. I said, “Yeah. It was in my Aunt’s attic.” Melanie blinked. I said, “Come on.”
I pounded up the escalator, shouldering my way past the lollygaggers and deadbeats, who grasped the rail and let the thing carry them up. When I got to the top, I turned. Melanie lagged behind, stuck behind a fat guy. “Hurry up!” I said. The fat guy noticed and stood aside. Melanie scampered up the rest of the way.
Today she was wearing a little blue skirt and pink tee. On her legs she wore knee-high striped socks. On her feet, saddle-shoe style sneakers. Her brown hair was in pigtails and utterly darling. As she ran, seeming totally oblivious to anything around her, all the perverts in the station took a nice long look.
Including me. I stared at her bare thighs, the place between her skirt and socks. I ran my eyes over her skinny tummy up to her little round breasts.
I smiled. Here I was at age sixteen, already a pervy lezzie looking at younger girls. At least this particular younger girl was only one year younger than me. And she was my longest, bestest friend.
I straightened out my own thick, wooly skirt and pulled down my baggy gray sweatshirt, which served to hide my much larger breasts.
The perverts seldom gawked at me, which was fine. I only wanted Melanie, and she got to see me plenty.
She arrived. Together we charged outside into the cool autumn day. I crossed Broadway directly, dodging oncoming traffic. Horns honked. When I got across, I looked back. Melanie waited on the edge of the street with wide, fearful eyes. Cars rushed past.
I crossed my arms and tapped my foot. After a bit she got up her courage and dashed across the street.
“Where we going?” she asked, huffing.
“Here. Sushi.” I motioned to a little hole-in-the-wall sushi joint that was right there.
“Aw! I hate that place. The tables are sticky.”
“Come on.” I went in. She followed.
Soon we were sitting at a table while a little fat Japanese girl took our order.
“I’ll have the sushi combo,” I said. “And a mango smoothie.”
The waitress nodded. She turned to Melanie. “You?”
Melanie lifted her fingers from the table and made a disgusted face. “I’m not hungry,” she said.
The waitress blinked. Then she spun around and headed to the kitchen.
I leaned down to my backpack, which sat on the floor against my leg, and pulled out the diary. I set it on the table. Then I opened it to a marked page and slid it over to Melanie.
It was hard to slide. The table was sticky.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Just read it. It’s from right after grandma-grandma died.”
She read slowly. Her brown eyes darted back and forth over the lines. Her finger scrolled down the yellowed pages. She bit her lip and seemed to concentrate. Then, when she reached the place in the text, the big deal, her eyes grew wide. She looked up, right at me.
“Yep,” I said.
“Where’s the house?” she asked.
“Dunno. At least, not for sure. But I think it must be their old house in Dorchester.”
“Really?”
I shrugged.
She put her hands down flat on the table and leaned to me. “We have to find it.”
I smiled.
The diary was my great-great-grandfather’s, Daniel Moran. But we didn’t care about him. We cared about his wife, Emma Kendall Moran. Family rumor said that Emma had been a witch — a real witch.
Melanie and I were witches too. At least, we played at it. We stayed up late and drew pentagrams. We lit candles and uttered strange spells. Melanie even had a ratty old black cat she named Cove. Anyway, it was all bullshit. The spells never worked. But Melanie never gave up, she read and dreamed and watched the stars from my balcony. I just liked to be alone with her late into the night.
After sushi we crossed over to Athens Street, a narrow one-way lane sided by looming triple-deckers. We passed fences with tiny yards and small parking lots that seemed to hold more cars than was possible. At one point I turned and saw that Melanie had fallen behind. She stood by a fence with a big black dog and a hydrangea plant. The dog scratched at the wooden planks. Melanie held a big red flower to her nose and sniffed.
“Come on,” I said.
She turned to me and giggled.
Soon we arrived at our building, three floors, her family on the first, mine on the third. Both families had lived here since before we were born. We bounded up the front stairs and entered. Inside was a dank foyer with her front door, and stairs that led to the apartments above.
“Can I keep the diary?” she asked. “Just for tonight.”
“Sure. As long as you want.”
She would probably have the whole thing read by morning. “Thanks,” she said.
She turned to her door. I put my hand on her shoulder and turned her back to me.
“Can I have a kiss?” I asked.
She nodded. I pulled her to me and kissed her mouth. Her eyes clamped shut. She put her arms around me and squeezed. I grabbed her bottom and pulled up her skirt.
“No!” She pushed me away. She had a frightened look and glanced at her door. I held on to her arm.
“Come on, Mel,” I said, “just a quick feel.”
I reached around her again, but again she pushed me away. “I’m not ready for that.”
“Fine!” I stepped back.
“Sorry, Veronica.”
We heard the old wooden floor creak, footsteps coming this way. She reached for the door handle. I backed up to the foot of the stairs. We looked at each other.
“We’ll find out where the house was,” she said. “And then — ”
She raised her eyebrows.
And then? And then what? I had wanted to sleep with her for a very long time. I was tired of waiting.
From inside her apartment a voice called out, “Mel! Is that you girl?” It was her dad.
“Gotta go,” she said. Then she opened the door and ducked inside. After it banged shut, I ran up the stairs.
I had found the diary in my great-aunt’s attic in Providence. On the train ride back, I read through as much as I could, trying to find those bits about Grandma Emma. She had died August 11, 1950. I found that page easily. Daniel Moran, her husband, wrote of his loss, how she had seemed so healthy, and how sudden it was. I scanned through the following days. Until I found the thing!
He mentioned how most of her belongings had been passed on to “friends,” which I assumed were other women — other witches? There were many books and artifacts given away. But there was one book he kept. It was special, she had told him. And there was an artifact. That also was special, even if he did not describe it. These two things were precious to the family. They must be passed down to a daughter, if there ever was another daughter.
Daniel and Emma had only one child, a son, my great-grandfather Jack Moran. In turn Jack had only sons — two sons. One was my grandfather Michael. He also had only sons. One was my father Jonnie Moran. He had a daughter.
Me. Veronica Moran.
So, on that one particular page, the one that so excited Melanie, Aug 27, 1950, my great-great-grandfather described how he hid that book and artifact behind the brick wall of his cellar, to be kept secret until such time as a girl-child claimed them.
Had nobody read that until me? Had no other girl claimed our birthright? There had been other daughters of the other sons, a few scattered in the family tree.
But probably not. The rest of the family laughed at the stories about Emma being a witch.
During dinner I asked, “Dad, did you ever visit your Grandpa Daniel’s house in Dorchester?”
Dad was sitting across from me in his gray lounge chair. On his lap was a plate of chicken and rice. Next to him, on a little folding table, were four beer cans, three empties and one half full.
I sat on the couch next to Mom. We also had plates, which rested on the coffee table in front of us. I had a can of Pepsi. Mom, a glass of wine.
Dad took a swig of beer and then set down the can. “Well, let’s see.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “If I did, I was too young to remember. I’m sure your grandpa remembers.”
Dad smiled and drank, but I didn’t think it was funny. My Grandpa Michael didn’t remember much anymore. After his mind went a few years back, Mom and Dad put him into a nice rest home in Framingham. Since Dad lost his job, Grandpa had been kicked out of there and bumped around among a bunch of very horrible places. These days he was in a shabby old folk’s home out in Brookline. Social Security paid for it. Mostly.
Mom set down her fork. “Why do you ask, dear?”
I shrugged. “I found his diary in Aunt Molly’s attic. Anyway, it talked about the house.”
Mother took a bite of chicken. Then she looked at me as if she were waiting for me to go on.
“So — I’m just curious about the place — y’know, what it looked like.”
“Don’t you dare go down there!” Dad said. “That’s not a safe area.”
I chewed and looked at him. Some parts of Dorchester were nice. Others, not so much.
After I swallowed my chicken, I said, “So, you do know where it is?”
“I know about. Like, the area. It isn’t nice. You know — a girl like you — ”
What he meant to say, but would not say, was that it was a black area. Mom gave him a sour look. She hated when he said racist things.
Then again, I knew what he meant. A girl like me. Walking in a place like that.
He looked away and drank. I leaned forward and took a gulp of Pepsi.
“Sweetie,” Mom said, “you could just look at it on the Internet, right? That would be safe.”
“Sure. Safe as houses.” I took another drink. I cut off another piece of chicken and stabbed it with my fork. “If I knew where it was.”
Later that night I put on a warm, baggy sweater and stepped out onto our balcony. The air was crisp and steady. I sat in a creaky wooden chair and sipped tea from fine china. Around me, the neighborhood buzzed. Sound carried far on a night like this.
Next door the Collins brothers, Jimmie and Jamie, were in their yard with some girls. I heard the pop of beer cans and the low murmur of voices. I saw little flashes of light as they lit a bong — the smell of that was quite clear. Every so often one of the girls laughed, which boded well for the Collins brothers.
From one of the buildings on the next block, just across our tiny backyards, I heard the hum and crash of a loud video game system, no doubt that new yuppie guy who had just moved in. He had some high paying job in Cambridge and seemed to buy every giant, loud, and obnoxious electronic thing a person could buy. We had no idea why he wanted to live around here, but Dad hated him for it.
From the first floor I heard Melanie’s parents fighting. I couldn’t make out the words.
I went to the railing on the side of the balcony and leaned out. Beneath me was Melanie’s window. Her light was on. No doubt she was reading into the night, devouring the diary, searching for clues.
She wanted so much for magic to be real. I finished my tea, went inside, and stumbled to bed.
Next morning I trotted down the back stairwell and knocked just once on Melanie’s kitchen door. Then I poked in my head.
“Hi,” I said.
Melanie’s mom turned around from the sink where she was standing. “Oh! Hey, Veronica. Come on in.”
I stepped in. “Is Mel up?”
“Nah. I think she’s still sleeping. She was up pretty late last night.”
Melanie’s mom was wearing denim shorts and a halter top. She was covered with tattoos, about two-dozen of them: hearts, flowers — in every color — dice, skulls, all kinds of crazy stuff. That was her business. She and Melanie’s dad ran a tattoo parlor over on Broadway.
Today there were no marks or bruises on her face, so last night’s fight couldn’t have been too bad.
I closed the door behind me. “I’m gonna go wake her up, okay?”
“Sure, sweetie.” She turned back to the sink.
I crept into Melanie’s room and closed her door behind me. As soon as I got inside, I felt a chill. Her windows were open. The cold of the night still clung to everything. She must be freezing, I thought. She was splayed out on the bed among tangled sheets with bare skin showing: a leg, an arm, the left side of her hips and waist. I could see that she was wearing cottony blue panties.
On a little nightstand next to her bed, the diary lay open face down. Her cat, Cove, lay curled against her bare right leg.
I came over and stroked Cove. “Hey cutie, is mommy warm?”
He stretched out his feet as far as a cat could stretch. Then he rolled over and looked up at me. I rubbed his soft tummy.
“Lucky cat,” I said. He curled his arms and legs around my hand and pretended to bite. I scratched his ears with my other hand.
Then I turned my attention to Melanie. Slowly, I slipped my hand beneath the sheet and caressed her bottom.
“Wake up, darling,” I whispered into her ear.
Her eyes opened. I removed my hand from her butt.
“Rise and shine, beautiful.”
“Mmm.” She shoved me lightly. Then she struggled to free her arms from the sheets and grab her pillow. When she got hold of it, she pulled it over her head. “Lemme sleep.”
I crawled up next to her and nuzzled my face beneath the pillow too. “Don’t you wanna search for the house?”
“I already found it.”
I yanked the pillow away. “Really?”
Her face was creased from sleeping, but still, she was beautiful. She ran her fingers down my arm. “Yeah. It was easy.”
“Where? How?”
She sat up. “Hand me the diary.”
She must have really read the whole thing, for the clue she found was smack in the middle and not near any date that seemed to matter.
I handed it to her. She checked the page and then handed it back to me. “Just read.”
It concerned a package delivered to the house and opened by Emma Kendall Moran. But it was not for Emma. It was for Gladys Turnberry, some lady who lived down the way. The diary mentioned how angry and suspicious the Turnberrys were when Daniel brought the package over, and how his explanation of its incorrect delivery was given again and again. But no! Emma should not have opened it, the Turnberrys insisted.
The mixup: the package was addressed to 235 Tonawanda Street in Dorchester. It had been delivered to 253, my great-great-grandfather’s house!
“That’s amazing,” I said. “Can we find it on the Internet?”
Melanie smiled and pointed to her computer. “Just turn on the screen.”
I went over and sat by the computer. After I flipped the switch and cleared the screensaver, a house appeared.
It was a lovely place, a maroon gabled triple-decker on a shady street. But still, it appeared a black street. The cars parked in front were beat-up. The yards were tangled with weeds. Tall fences surrounded everything.
“You wanna go down today and look?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Do you think we’ll sneak in?”
I scrolled the image around on the computer screen and checked out the neighborhood, the other houses, the arrangement of the streets.
“Let’s just get a look today. We’ll play it by ear.”
“Okay.”
“Can you print out this map?”
She came up behind me and put her arms around me. Then she pointed at a little stack of papers on the desk by the computer.
“Already did.”
I ran upstairs and changed into something appropriate. I put on sneakers, sweatpants, and a sports bra. Over that I wore a girl-sized Bruins jersey, all in case we needed to run or fight. When I got downstairs, Melanie wore a little skirt and tee.
“We might need to run,” I said.
She shrugged and lifted her foot. At least she wore sneakers.
When we got outside, the Collins brothers were in the yard working on a rusty camaro. They had a portable stereo playing hip-hop. Tools were scattered all over the grass. Their hands were covered with grease.
When he saw us, Jamie set down his wrench and trotted over to the fence. “Hey, Mel!” he said with a toothy smile.
He rubbed his hands on his jeans. She wandered to the fence.
“Mel, come on,” I said.
She smiled and said, “Hey, Jamie.”
I crossed my arms and tapped my foot. Jamie glanced at me, then back to Melanie. “Where you two going today?”
She rocked her shoulders back and forth. “Dorchester.”
“Why the fuck you going there?” he asked.
She shrugged. At least she didn’t tell him.
“Come on, Mel!” I said.
He cast me a sharp glance. “Chill out, Veronica.” Then he turned back to Melanie. “Why don’t we hang out today? We almost have the car running. We could take a drive up the coast.”
His older brother Jimmie wiped his hands and then tossed aside the greasy rag. He stepped over. “Yeah, I could pick up some beer. Or wine or something.”
Jimmie was twenty-one and more or less based his social life on buying beer for high-school girls. He looked back and forth between Melanie and me, seemed to decide that Jamie had claim on Mel, and then fixed me with his gaze.
“How ’bout it, V? Wouldn’t mind sucking those tits.”
He looked at me with a big, stupid grin. I put my hands on my hips. “Fuck off, Jimmie.”
He shrugged and said, “Well, we could fuck too, if you’d rather.”
His brother let out a small laugh. Melanie looked around confusedly.
Asshole!, I thought. No point in saying it, though. “Come on, Mel. Let’s get going.”
“See’ya Jamie,” she said. Then she jogged over to me and we walked away holding hands.
One end of Tonawanda Street was real close to the Field’s Corner T station, but the house itself was about a quarter mile down. The street was actually quite pretty. Along its length were wood-framed buildings, brightly painted, with elaborate turrets and gables, all left over from better days. Above us sprawling trees shaded the sidewalks. But for the beat-up cars and fences, and the barking dogs, we might have forgotten where we were. And except for the three boys who caught our trail as we walked along. They were maybe fourteen or fifteen, but they looked hard with b-ball jerseys and pants hanging low. I got worried. Fifteen was more than old enough to rape a girl.
This time, when Melanie stopped to sniff a flower, I took her arm and said, “Come on, sweetie, we have to keep moving.”
I glanced back at the boys. They put their hands in their pockets and kept approaching.
I wondered how fucked up it would be if we just ran for it now. Soon we reached the house.
“This is it,” Melanie said.
“Yeah, I know.”
The boys got close. There was a fence around the yard, but the gate to the driveway stood open. I grabbed Melanie’s arm and pulled her in behind me.
The boys got up to the fence. One of them said, “Yo! Hold up. You live here?”
I turned to face him. “Yeah, we do, just moved in.”
I kept backing up, still holding Melanie’s arm. He stepped forward onto the property. “Cool. What are your names?”
Still backing up. “Veronica. This is Mel.”
“Well, hi Veronica and Mel. I’m Lashawn.” He pointed at the others, who had just stepped onto the property behind him. “And these two are Jorell and Ray.”
Lashawn and Jorell were both smiling. They took another step forward. Ray held back and quietly studied us. Then he said in a flat, deep voice, “Come on, man. Leave them be.” He put his hand on Jorell’s shoulder. “Can’t you see they afraid?”
Lashawn didn’t take his eyes from us. “Nah. You ain’t afraid, are you, Veronica and Mel?”
Melanie stepped behind me. I studied Lashawn and his friends. I watched to see if they would surround us, or dart forth to grab us, or pull out gigantic knives.
Instead, they just stood there, relaxed.
After a few seconds my eyes dropped and I gave a sheepish smile. “Yeah. Actually, we were, a little bit.”
Lashawn’s eyes narrowed. “All right then. We’ll leave you alone.” He stepped back. “But tell you what — next time we meet, you’ll talk to us. A little. Maybe even say hi. All right?”
He waited for me to answer. I nodded. He went on, “And then, maybe in a few weeks, you won’t be afraid no more. Sound good?”
I nodded again. He and his friends smiled, turned, and then left.
When they were gone, Melanie stepped out from behind me. “They weren’t so bad,” she said.
Her dad would kill her — and me for bringing her here. I just shook my head. Then I turned around and looked at the house.
In person it looked much better than it had on the Internet. The lawn was trimmed, unlike the neighbors. The paint seemed newish. None of the windows were boarded up. Whoever the landlord was, he kept the place shipshape. Clearly he also cared enough to keep good tenants. In the drive there was a shiny new Volkswagen. On the front porch, potted plants.
This meant the locks would be in good shape.
Like most triple-deckers, there was an outside entrance to the cellar. For this building it was on the side, a door at the bottom of a short stairway dug beside the base of the house. Around the hollow was a small chain-link fence and a gate. The gate was locked. The door at the bottom appeared strong.
Melanie walked to the fence, held onto it, and peered down.
“Maybe there’s another way in,” I said. “Let’s try in back.”
Most large triple-deckers had two sets of stairs, a front set that was nice, and a set in back that had cellar access for carrying down trash and laundry. This particular building was no different. We crept around the building, climbed the steps to the back porch, passing carefully beneath the windows, and then tried the back door.
It was unlocked! It opened onto the rear stairwell. There were two doors. One clearly went to the first floor apartment. I tried the other. It also was unlocked. Indeed, it was the cellar stairway.
I flicked on the lights and began the descent. Quietly, Melanie followed.
The cellar was large, low-ceilinged, and dimly lit — only three light bulbs were visible, each hanging from a tattered cord. The place was divided up. Running down the middle was a set of wooden frames meant to hold washing machines. Of the three frames, only one was occupied, a beat up old washer and dryer that looked twenty years old. Either the tenants all shared, or some of them used a laundromat. I crept around behind the washing machines and looked into a long murky area with stacked boxes and crates. To my right was an even lower and more dilapidated place, the area beneath the stairs. Here was stored lawn maintenance equipment: shovels, rakes, a mower, a rusty old snow-blower. I doubted that it worked.
I came back into the washing machine area and found Melanie creeping to the other side of the place. When we got all the way, to what was the front of the building, we found that the wall was red-brick. The other walls were masoned stone.
“In the diary,” she said, “he said he hid it behind the brick wall.”
“Yeah.”
She ran her hands over the rough bricks, her fingers pressing into the mortared grooves. It was a big wall, stretching the width of the house, at least thirty feet.
“Where?” she asked.
I looked along the wall. I walked its length. No bricks seemed out of place or different. No bits of mortar seemed more chipped than any other. I touched one brick and pressed. I fitted my fingers around it, getting what grip I could, and pulled. It didn’t budge.
There were a lot of bricks.
“I don’t know where to start,” I said.
“So, let’s just start anywhere,” she said. She began tapping and tugging on the bricks in front of her. “It has to be a loose one, or something.”
I gazed at the wall again. It had been sixty years. If the brick was too loose or too obvious, it would have been discovered years ago. No, we had better hope this was not easy, not fast, and in no way straightforward. I also began to tap and tug on bricks.
“Maybe if the light was better,” I said.
She nodded and kept working.
I tried a few more with no success. Soon I said, “This is hopeless. I mean, we need a clue or something.”
She kept working. By then she was squatted down and trying the bricks along the floor.
I said, “It’s probably been mortared back up, like, secure. If we have to bust it out — well — we can’t bust out the whole wall.”
She stood and placed her hands flat against the wall. “It’s magic, right?” she said. “Maybe we’ll feel something.” She closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the surface. After doing that for a while, she began to mutter one of the sacred prayers we had learned from some bogus witchcraft book from the library.
I touched her shoulder. “Sweetie, maybe we can look through the diary more.”
When we had left her apartment, I slipped it into my backpack. Now I pulled it out. “Come on, you read it more than me. Let’s see if there is a clue.”
She took the diary from me.
Just then we heard a door open and then slam closed. Next we heard footsteps scamper down the stairs. They approached fast.
We were too surprised to hide. A young girl, maybe seven or eight in a darling pink dress, appeared at the foot of the stairs. At first she didn’t notice us. Who can blame her? Nobody expects strangers to be in their cellar. But soon enough she looked up and we were there in plain sight.
Her jaw dropped. Her eyes opened wide.
I put on my biggest smile and stepped toward her. “Hey sweetie, I’m Veronica. What’s your name?”
She took one look at me. Then she turned and pounded back up the stairs. I heard her call out, “Mama! They’s two white girls in the cellar.”
I looked back and forth between the two exits: one was the side door with the locked fence; the other was the stairs, where we had come down, and where the girl had just run up. I heard a cry and a clatter from that way.
Melanie slumped back against the wall.
Fuck!