The Boy

Rosie's story (3)

Destiny walks in to Vern’s Deli and sits down at the counter.

“Hi Vern!” “What’s the special today?”
“Well hey girl! I made your favorite today, Baked Ham and Sweet Potatoes.” Vern said.
“Alright! Fix me up a plate, would ya?”

Vern fixed up two plates of the special and sits down next to her at the counter.
“So how ya been girly? I ain’t seen ya around in a while.”
“Oh, I’ve been alright, I guess. Just busy, that’s all.” Destiny’s eyes fall to the plate that Vern put in front of her. “How’ve you been?”
“Good…great actually! My baby sister’s comin’ to town!” He grins.
“Rosie? That’s great, Vern! I can’t wait to actually meet her! You talk so much about her!”
“Yeah,” Vern blushes a little. “She’s everything to me, Destiny.”

Destiny looks up and sees a faraway gaze filling his eyes. “What?” she says.
“Oh nothin’. Just thinkin’ about when me an’ Rosie was kids.”
“You two were close, weren’t ya?”
“Yeah.”

And Vern began to tell Destiny all about growing up in Rochester.

Mama never would let me get upset with Rosie, never mind how she coddled me or followed me every time I went anywhere, even when I went down the street to Jimmy Vittali’s place, and he always was mean to her.
“Take ‘er with ya boy! What’s it gonna hurt?” She’d say.
One day we was walkin’ down past Old Man Faully’s place and that big dog he’s got, Bull Mastiff or somethin’ I think, comes chargin’ towards Baby Rosie, slobber drippin’ all off his face, and sends her cryin’ the whole seven houses back to our brownstone, bringin’ Mama out o’ the kitchen with flour still caked on her hands from the pasta she was makin’, bellowin’ out at me,
“Vernon Michael! You better come’a runnin’ boy!”
And I knew I was in for a strappin’. It didn’t matter that it was the dog that scared her, I shoulda known better than walkin’ that close to Old Man Faully’s place with Rosie in tow.

And then, one Saturday in the summer of ’57, she was barely 5 and I was a whole 8 and a half. We went down to the park they put up across from the diner and was ridin’ our bikes, I remember she’d just got them learnin’ wheels off two weeks before. We was playin’ Follow-the-Leader when Rosie all of the sudden spotted a caterpillar crawlin’ on the little alder next to the sidewalk, when she stopped short to hop off and take a look.

Now, when you play Follow-the-Leader you have to stay pretty close so you’re ready for the next move, but I wasn’t ready for that one. I tried to back-peddle to stop before I hit her, but I forgot that Pops just splurged on me and got me one o’ them new bikes with brake levers up by your hands. So there I went, pedals flyin’ backwards and me and my bike right up over the top o’ poor Rosie and her pretty little pink bike with the tassels danglin’ off the handlebars, and no more learnin’ wheels.
I tried to calm her down some while we was walkin’ back to the house, but the blood shown through her little white tights on the left knee where most o’ me landed and the tears left streaks in the dusty layer on her cheeks. I could already hear Mama’s voice thunderin’ in my head before we even got to our street.

So I always knew no matter what Baby Rosie did, I was responsible for keepin’ her safe and away from harm.
So when we started goin’ to different schools, I was scared. How was I goin’ to keep her safe when we was three and a half miles apart? Those first weeks was the hardest. I’d walk all the way to school just so’s I could walk Rosie to school m’self. And I’d be there waitin’ for her when the bell rang precisely at 3:25 in the afternoon, even if it meant runnin’ all the way if I was held up by Mr. Stokes after class.
She’d always laugh hard at me when I’d be there with my T-shirt stickin’ to my back, wet and on the verge of drippy where my knapsack was, and me, with my cheeks aglowin’ like I’d been into Mama’s rouge.

One day she asked me why I didn’t let her walk partway down Barrington Street, then I wouldn’t have to be too stinky and tired to carry her home on my back. She boasted on about how she was already 8 now, and that was really half grown. Then she looked up at me, and those big brown eyes looked like they’d just had a coat o’ stardust painted on ‘em, and I knew there wasn’t no way I could ever tell her no for long, even if it meant gettin’ it from Mama when she found out. So we agreed that we’d meet the next day, Wednesday, at the front of Finnagan’s Deli at 3:30. She whined and carried on that that was only two blocks from her school, really only one and a half, and that was hardly treating her like a big girl and on and on, but I wasn’t budgin’, yet anyway. The next two months continued on about the same, Rosie would plead until I would give in and by the week before Thanksgiving break she was walking all the way to Jonestown Park, which was barely four blocks away but she didn’t complain because we would always play at the playground for a few minutes before walking the rest of the way home. One day I got to the park and waited. Rosie was always there right after me. So I started to panic when she didn’t come and began to walk towards her school, what was I goin’ to tell Mama? Where could she be? But before I could worry too much I could see her little brown curls bouncin’ up and down as she was runnin’ toward me, full speed with the biggest Cheshire cat grin I’d ever seen. Breathin’ so hard she could barely talk, “Look… found… schoolyard…” and there in her little hand was the biggest, most perfect four-leaf clover I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen many, actually it was my first.

“It’s for you.” She finally said after she caught her breath.
“For me? Don’t you want to keep it?” I asked. “It is your very first four-leaf clover ever, after all.”
“No. You might need it someday.” And she looks up at me with a smile that could melt Greenland.
So I took the clover in one hand and my knapsack in the other and she clambored up onto my back and we walked the rest of the way home.

Vern paused and looked Destiny in the eyes with such intensity she thought he could see every thought she’d ever had.
“What’s the matter, Vern?”
He finished mopping up the last of his sweet potatoes with his roll and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“Well, it’s just that that next spring was when it happened.”

As his nervousness increased his hands found the depths of his pockets, reaching, fiddling, until finally comfort was found as they wrapped themselves around the edges of the silver dollar he always kept there. Gently caressing the smooth bumps on the front of the coin: cheekbone, jaw, and brow. Running the tip of of his index finger along the ridges that define the edge, and finally the back, with the smoothness of plastic, forever protecting the clover there.

He looks Destiny square in the eyes and begins the story.

The day she gave me the four-leaf clover I put it on the back of my silver dollar that Pops gave me for helpin’ him put up all them Christmas lights and carried it with me everyday. By that spring, me and Rosie had gotten pretty used to our routine. She’d meet me at the park, and after we’d played for a bit I’d carry her home on my back. So when she didn’t show up at the park that day in late March I didn’t think too much of it. I thought maybe she was just lookin’ for another four-leaf clover or stopped to watch a caterpillar turn into a butterfly or some other crazy kid thing. So I kept walkin’ toward the school expectin’ to see her at any minute. When I got all the way back to her school and still hadn’t found her, I suddenly got the taste of my heart in the back of my throat.

I went in to see if the teacher had kept her after or somethin’ and when no one had seen her since the bell rang I didn’t know what to think. I walked back toward the park, tryin’ to think like Rosie. I walked real slow-like and stopped at every pretty flower or tree where I thought some cute little bug mighta been, clutching the coin, with the clover she gave me, tight in my hand. When I got all the way back to the park and hadn’t seen anything, I knew I better get home and tell Mama.

I thought I was in for the beatin’ of my life, but instead she grabbed me hard and just cried and cried. I promised her no matter what it took I’d find her. I didn’t sleep that night and as soon as the sun came up I went lookin’. Even though I knew the police were out doin’ what they could, I knew it was really up to me, ain’t nobody that knew my baby sister like I did. So for two days I barely slept and was out from mornin’ til night walkin’ back and forth from our house to her school lookin’ for anything that would show me where my Rosie was. On the third day she’d been missin’, I found it.

I turned the dollar in my pocket faster and faster as I came up on the one thing I’d walked past two days now. How would she ever forgive me for not seein’ what she left me sooner? I bent over and picked up her shoe. She’d managed to slip it off just at the edge of the driveway to the empty house just in the right spot for it to fall into a bush hiding it from view. I ran all the way down the street to Finnagan’s and told Mr. Leaman to call the police and I gave him the address where Rosie was at. When he asked me how I knew I just said, “ ‘Cause I’m her big brother.”
The police showed up and I watched as they brought Rosie out in their arms. She twisted and turned and was about ready to bite the officer that was holdin’ her ‘til they finally put her down and she ran straight into my arms.


“I knew you would find me.” She said. But the look in her eyes said I just wish it’d been sooner.