Retrieving Angels

By Sandra Cimadori

Where do you find the perfect boy, the boy all the girls on the radio sing about, the boy who will be better than God?

Gina Fontana knows.

After surviving a terrifying attack at the age of ten, Gina is haunted by paralyzing fears. Her mother laments that she is ruined. It becomes the big family problem and the big family secret.

Gina copes by immersing herself in a dream world filled with the music of The Beatles. She becomes obsessed with Paul McCartney. He becomes her imaginary protector, her shining knight, and the boy who keeps all the bad thoughts away... until the day when a real flesh and blood boy comes along and intrudes on her comfortable fantasy.

The stories of Gina and her friends weave together to form a startling tapestry during the Summer of Love.

>>>Set in Miami in the 1960s and filled with characters as diverse, exuberant, and colorful as the South Florida landscape, RETRIEVING ANGELS is sometimes poignant, sometimes gritty, irreverent, funny, and sexy.

>>>RETRIEVING ANGELS moves as fast as a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon, as fast as that magical night when you first knew love and your whole world changed forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483559384

Book preview

1968

Part One: Gina, 1962-66

Miami – Summer, 1962

The witch is always home.

She never leaves her house or yard. Her sole visitor arrives only after sundown. Strange music can be heard late, late into the night and singing…. singing that sounds like the wails of the dead. If the witch wants something, all she has to do is wave her broom in the air to make it happen.

Magic.

At least that’s what all the neighborhood kids say.

A hedge of wild, bright crotons and chicken wire fencing rings the property of Alma Hankins. Ten-year-old Gina Fontana stands on the burning sidewalk and strains on her best ballet tiptoe, trying to peek over it. This is the first time she has come to the witch’s house since Manny moved away, and the only time she has ever come alone. It is three whole blocks from her house! If her mother knew where she was, she would be so mad she would scream her head off. Mom screams a lot.

The air is humid and Gina feels sticky, sticky, sticky. She fans her legs with the skirt of her thin cotton dress. It is red plaid with cap sleeves and a white Peter Pan collar, and it was her favorite school dress until her mother carelessly splattered it with Clorox when she was trying to do the laundry after drinking too much wine. Overhead, a black cloud threatens a drenching tropical storm. Gina lifts her long, heavy chestnut brown ponytail that has slid down her neck and rewinds a rubber band around it. Then she wiggles around as she digs lacey, pink nylon panties out of her damp butt crack and sings the song Daddy always sings to her, Regina Angelina, Gina Lina, Angel Gina.

The chicken wire fence keeps out the children Miss Hankins hates. The old witch only likes cats. Cats, cats, cats… Gina counts more than a dozen sprawled on the porch of the tiny yellow bungalow that is perched on cinderblocks. Manny told her Miss Hankins can turn herself into a bird, and she can turn children into tasty little mice for her beloved cats to torture and eat.

Manny said, If you hear a crow screech, it is the witch getting ready to swoop down on you!

Gina misses Manny so much. He had been her neighbor since they were in the first grade. She thinks about him a lot. And lately whenever she hears Johnny Angel on the radio she has dreamy, kissy thoughts about him as if her were her boyfriend or something. But it was never like that when he was around. God, he was so bossy! He thought he knew it all. Gina liked ignoring him and making him mad because even though Manny was a year older than her, they were in the same grade at school – he had been left back a year when his family came from Cuba and he didn’t know any English.

Manny Becerra has a baby brother named Carlito who looks like a fat little angel with golden ringlets all over his head and a sweet, heavenly expression on his face. Gina has never heard him cry. He just smiles and laughs and is the happiest baby on earth. Last weekend Gina, her parents, and her brother Frankie went to visit the Becerras at their new house in the next county. She spent the afternoon playing with Manny in the celestial blue swimming pool in his backyard. Sometimes Gina wishes she and Manny were married and Carlito was their baby. She wonders what Manny would say about that. He would probably throw back his head and laugh, his teeth shining white against his tanned skin.

A hand comes down on Gina’s shoulder; she jumps and lets out a startled cry.

I didn’t mean to scare you, baby doll, a strange man says, but I found this hungry kitty, and I thought it might be yours.

The stranger is tall, taller than Daddy or even Frankie who is really tall for a sixteen-year-old. But the man’s face is sickly white, almost green, and his cheeks are pitted and scarred. Yuck! His hair is black and greasy. And Gina doesn’t like the way he looks at her, like he’s hungry… like the way the wolf looks at Little Red Riding Hood in one of her fairy tale books.

But at least he’s not the witch!

I put the kitty in my car so it wouldn’t get hurt, the man says. His voice has a singsong quality, what Mom calls a southern accent. He points to a long blue car with a rusted top parked on the grassy swale of the road; the passenger door is open wide, like a gapping mouth.

Come look, he says.

Gina loves kittens and puppies and bunnies and chicks. That’s why she came to the witch’s house because there are always kittens wandering around, and if she finds one she knows Daddy will let her keep it. She steps closer to look.

Closer.

The man yanks her up by the collar, and her feet dangle off the ground for a minute before he flings her into the car. She skids on her nose across the seat. Vile, rotten smell… Gina chokes, a scream caught in her throat. The stranger pins her ankles down and pushes up her skirt. He tears off her panties.

What is happening?

Then he pokes her hard from behind, pushing something into her, ripping her. It burns like fire and Gina cries, but no sound comes out of her mouth.

He licks her ear. I told you there was a sweet little pussy in here, he whispers, gasping and jerking.

Sweet dream baby…

Roy Orbison sings on the radio, and in that instance his voice forever melds with the voice of the man in the blue car.

Whiney.

Needy.

He presses down on her, and she can’t breathe.

I’m drowning.

Gina sees herself at the bottom of Manny’s celestial blue pool, looking up – Carlito is floating at the top, so still and peaceful, an angel smiling down on her from heaven.

A screech fills the air and a swooshing sound like the beating of wings, a sharp crack followed by the man’s enraged scream. A moment later Gina is dragged from the car by the skirt of her dress; she lands on her knees in the dirt as the blue car speeds away, its passenger door still open and hungry.

Old Miss Hankins towers over Gina with black, fearless crow eyes and a sharp, cruel nose, a shotgun lifted to the sky like a wing. Get away! she screams. And don’t you ever let me catch you here again, you dirty, wicked little hussy!

A bolt of lightening, a thunderclap, the clouds split open and pour a torrent of rain on Gina as she runs home, her mouth a mute O… her panties lost forever.

Friday, August 17, 1962

Article from the Miami News:

THIRD CHILD SLAIN

Police are asking parents living in the neighborhoods bordering the Interstate 95 Airport Extension construction zones to warn their children about the hazards of talking to strangers. This after the body of a third child, Elizabeth Luca, 10, was found late last night buried in a shallow grave along the unfinished highway near N.W. 12th Avenue.

On June 20th the body of Ann Marie Benedetto, 9, was found, and on July 16th the body of Christina Stridner, 10, was discovered, both in the same general vicinity. All victims were asphyxiated and sexually molested.

Detective Warren O’Neal, City of Miami Police Department, has an urgent message for mothers during these last hot weeks of summer before school resumes: While it may be tempting to shoo the kids outside while you sit back and watch your favorite soap operas, it is your duty to be vigilant. Your daughters are disappearing from the sidewalks near their homes, and not one housewife interviewed has yet to report anything to help our investigation. It astonishes me! You would think we were living on the streets of New York City.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the City of Miami Police Department.

Friday, November 22, 1963

Gina likes school and always feels safe there. It doesn’t matter that they regularly have to hide under their desks for air raid drills, or that three times last week they had to stand outside for hours and hours because of bomb threats – their school has been integrated and some people don’t like that. These things don’t scare Gina because to her they are make-believe.

Miss Lisa Jacobson, her sixth grade teacher, says, When you hear the siren, crouch under your desk and cover your head. Remember, children, we must protect our heads.

Peter Miller, a stupid redheaded boy with huge freckles, raises his hand. Gina looks at Patsy Black and rolls her eyes.

Miss Jacobson sighs. Yes, Peter.

What if you have just one teensy part of your body sticking out from under your desk like your elbow or a finger or a toe, would you die instantly if the A-bomb hit?

Be quiet, Peter, and follow directions. Remember to protect your head because a head cannot be replaced, and you can’t very well get along without it like you can an arm or a foot.

These are games to Gina, dumb games.

On their knees under the desks, Gina says to Peter, Just what is so terrible about being blown up? It’s probably like falling asleep real quick.

But Peter insists that it’s horrible and involves fire and radiation poisoning. "I know because my father ordered Hiroshima from the Book-of-the-Month-Club, and he let me read it."

You’re stupid, Peter, and your book is stupid. I’m not afraid of an atomic bomb.

The commies are out to get us, Peter says. My father was in the Air Force, he was a Second Lieutenant and he knows all about the Red Threat!

Your father is a bullshitter. So are you. Fidel Castro and Khrushchev are bullshitters, too. I have seen a real monster, and if the Russians drop the bomb on us I’ll be glad because he will be dead.

Peter wants to know all about this monster, but Gina has sworn secrecy: her mother made her promise never to tell anyone about that day.

That day!

That day when the monster breathed on her and got inside her and made her dirty. He killed three little girls, but he was never caught. During that bad summer, she would hear her parents and Frankie whisper about what was in the newspaper. Once the story came on the six o’clock news when they were having dinner, and Gina threw up all over the table.

She believes he is always watching her, always waiting for just the right moment to snatch her off the street and drive away with her in his cruddy blue car. In her nightmares he cruises by her house, waves her lacy pink panties in the air, and puts them to his nose. Sometimes she is face down in the front seat of his car, he presses down on her, she smells that awful smell, and she stops breathing.

***

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Jacobson’s sixth grade class is having their weekly meeting. President Peter Miller is seated up front, facing the class. During the first week of the school year, Peter became the class president by nominating himself. Patsy Black nominated Karen DePascual. All the girls voted for Karen and all the boys voted for Peter, but since there were more boys that girls in the class Peter won.

Does anyone have new business? Peter says.

Miss Jacobson has taught them all about parliamentary procedure and the democratic process.

Patsy Black raises her hand. Gina knows she wants to talk about the class Christmas party, but the principal’s voice over the intercom interrupts the meeting.

Teachers and students, I have a very important announcement. Mrs. Drake’s voice cracks. Then she coughs. Peter fidgets in his chair. Soon the principal regains the dry, unemotional manner she uses for all announcements.

Students… teachers, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated today in Dallas, Texas. Our president is dead. School is dismissed. Please leave the building in an orderly fashion.

What was JFK doing in Dallas? Peter screams. The president is supposed to stay in the White House!

Children run out of the classroom in terror, crying, Kennedy is dead!

The world is coming to an end! Gina thinks.

She hides under her desk and buries her face in her skirt while the screams of children echo through the Spanish monastery style passageways of the elementary school. Peter is still in front of the classroom, his freckles shining like smashed raisins all over his blanched face.

Cuba will drop the A-bomb on Miami tonight! he proclaims before running out.

But Gina does not believe in the atomic bomb. Her only reality is the man in the blue car, and all of this chaos will give him the perfect opportunity, the opportunity he has been waiting for… to come get her.

***

Roy Orbison is singing in her ear.

Sweet dream baby…

She can smell the putrid car seat, and she can feel his pointy thing tearing at her bottom.

I am dying…

Gina opens her eyes and sees Miss Jacobson propped against the classroom door, weeping hysterically. Then she slides down to the floor where she ends up in a crumpled heap; violent sobs send tremors through her delicate frame.

It was just last week in assembly when they watched a movie of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy showing off the White House and explaining in her wispy, rich lady voice which president sat in which chair and ate off which table. Every piece of furniture, every item in the house had a story attached to it, a story about someone who was dead… a ghost story.

The White House must be the most crowded haunted house in the country.

And it had just received one more spirit. Gina wonders what Jackie is doing now. If she were Italian, she would be crying and screaming, pulling out her hair and gouging her breasts with her nails. Then she would throw herself down a flight of stairs the way Aunt Connie did when she got the telegram regretting to inform her that Theo, her young husband and sweetheart since they were thirteen years old, had been killed at Iwo Jima. It was a story Gina had heard time and again, and always to explain why her aunt still lives with Grandma in the old neighborhood in Brooklyn and never goes outside.

And what about Caroline and John John?

Gina thinks about the stack of Life and Look magazines that kept her company on the days when she couldn’t go to school because she was feverish with dread, nauseated by the memory of the man in the blue car. Those happy pictures of the Kennedy children transported her far from her anxieties: John John crawling under his father’s desk in the Oval Office, Caroline riding her pony Macaroni. How will she ever look at those pictures again knowing even perfect lives are not safe from monsters?

Gina crawls across the classroom to where her teacher sits crying and leans against her. They had practiced for bomb threats, air raids, fires, and tornadoes but they had not practiced for this. They didn’t even have a siren to warn them. Miss Jacobson puts her arm around Gina, and they are still on the floor when Frankie appears at the door.

You okay, angel? he says.

Gina scrambles to her feet, throws her arms around him, kisses the collar of his blue Oxford shirt, and drinks in his comforting scent of Aqua Velva and Tareytons. He gives Gina a tight squeeze then looks over at Miss Jacobson.

I’ll walk you to your car, he offers. Things are crazy out on the streets.

Gina imagines people running all over the place, screaming like the kids did when Mrs. Drake dismissed school. Miss Jacobson gathers up her things and closes the classroom door. While walking behind them, Gina notices how grownup Frankie seems and how young her teacher really is.

I campaigned for him while I was in college even though I couldn’t vote yet, Miss Jacobson says. I wish I could have voted for him – I was going to in the next election.

It don’t matter, Frankie says. We were all for him, that’s what’s important. But things are gonna be different now. It won’t ever be like it was.

Or like it could have been, Miss Jacobson says.

Frankie opens the door of Miss Jacobson’s little red car, and she ducks her head as she folds herself into the tiny bug. She cranks the engine, the car rolls back a little before lurching forward and out of the nearly empty school parking lot. Then Gina climbs into her brother’s silver Mercury Marauder and sits on her knees. Frankie pulls a cigarette out of his shirt pocket as he gets in the car; Gina grabs the matches from the dashboard and lights it for him.

"Hey, you’re getting pretty good at that but I don’t ever want to see you smoking. Capisci?" Frankie says.

Yeah, yeah.

I ain’t fooling, Gina. You especially can’t afford to do nothing that makes you look cheap.

What do you mean?

Frankie looks at her sadly. Nothing, angel. I don’t mean nothing. Just don’t ever let me catch you smoking.

Gina shrinks back into her seat.

The ride home is so strange. Gina expected crowds running and crying, but no… people have stopped their cars in the middle of the streets, some are slumped over steering wheels, others have pulled over and are listening to the news on their car radios, many are standing on the sidewalks dazed and crying. All the people: young and old, black and white, men and women… everyone is lost.

Then Gina realizes that dumb ol’ Peter Miller got something right. The A-bomb did fall today. It blew a huge crater in everyone’s soul; the mushroom cloud is raining poison that will last a uranium lifetime.

And amid all the confusion, not one person remembered to cover their heads.

Monday, December 2, 1963

Gina gazes at the state flag of Florida. She really likes it. It features a Seminole princess on a background of pure white with red and yellow stripes as bright as arrows in the sunshine. She feels better every time she looks at it.

Miss Jacobson is standing next to the flag and speaking in her most earnest voice. When we write, children, it helps us put things in order and then we can better deal with difficulties. It can be any form of writing: a poem, letter, story, or essay. It can even be just a list of things.

It is their first day back at school after the assassination of President Kennedy, and everything in the room seems different, touched somehow by the loss, except for the Seminole princess standing in an ancient Florida of Everglades and clear blue skies.

Peter Miller raises his hand. Miss Jacob sighs, Yes, Peter.

Can I write down a list of things I hate? Like number one, I hate all communists. Number two: I hate all Russians. Three, I hate Lee Harvey Oswald and I’m glad he’s dead!

Miss Jacobson shakes her head. Think about what you are saying, Peter. Hate is a very strong word, and the emotion of hate blots out all reason. Do you really hate all Russians? Are all Russians communists? Why, of course not! Perhaps you mean you don’t like those Russians who are communists. I want you to think, children. Think clearly and fairly.

Gina doesn’t want to think, and she doesn’t want to write. Her stomach hurts and she is dizzy. She wants only to dream about being a Seminole princess, maybe sitting in a canoe with a boy. Gina’s head slips to her desk.

His back is to her as he propels the canoe through the dark waters with a single oar. His hair is blue-black, the color of a raven’s wing glinting in the sun. They are surrounded by water, grass, sky…

Are you okay, Gina? Miss Jacobson says as she touches her shoulder.

Gina shrugs, sits up, and takes a pencil and paper out of her desk. She rubs her eyes and stares at the blank page.

During the week of the president’s funeral, Gina did not move far from in front of the television set and neither did her brother or father. Her mother spent most of the time in the kitchen drinking Chianti and making pan after pan of lasagna. She sent some to the neighbors, and Daddy took several pans to the priests and nuns at Corpus Christie Catholic Church. Every hour or so Daddy would go into the kitchen and explain the latest developments to Mom. Gina would move closer to Frankie on the couch and huddle under the protective wing of his arm.

"Porco Dio!" Gina heard Mom scream.

What is she saying? Gina asked Frankie.

It means God is a pig. He takes the best for himself and leaves us with shit. Italians are a pretty cynical bunch.

What is cynical?

It’s when you see the bad more than the good in stuff.

Gina nodded. She understood perfectly. Yes, I’m cynical too. And as far as God being a pig, that made a whole lot of sense to Gina. She had been pretty mad at God because of what had happened to her, and now she was madder.

Mom yelled again. Porco Dio!

Don’t say that, Valeria, Daddy said. You’ll bring bad luck.

How much more bad luck can there be? Mom said.

You should be saying a rosary for our dead president instead of cursing God.

"Rosaries are for ignorant peasants, nonnas in black veils. It lulls their minds so they don’t think. It makes them believe they have some control – no one has any control."

Then she sent Frankie to the Italian store with a list of the things she needed to make another lasagna. While she waited for him to return, Mom retreated into her dark bedroom, turned the wall unit air conditioner up full blast, laid on her bed, and smoked Pall Malls.

"Too much vino," Daddy explained to Gina.

During those four days in November, Gina’s entire reality flickered on the black and white TV screen. It was as if she was there when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. And when the president’s caisson rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, she marveled as Jackie followed on foot, walking such a long way, so determined, so angry. Gina felt the thrum of the march pulsate through her blood, imagined cold rain freezing tears, the numbness, the bitter taste in her mouth, the impotent rage… the fury. She had been angry so long it was what Gina understood best.

Now Gina stares at her blank paper. She looks at Peter Miller who is writing at a manic pace. His list is very, very long and she thinks, you ugly, smelly turd. He is nothing like the perfect boy Gina dreams about, the boy who will make all the bad thoughts go away. She sighs, picks up her pencil and begins:

Dear Caroline Kennedy,

I am so sorry about what happened to your father, our President. My whole family cried and cried. He was our favorite President because we are Catholics, too.

I am glad that Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. My brother Frankie said that shooting was too good for him that he should have been tortured and died a slow, horrible death. I think that all bad men should get the electric chair.

How is your pony Macaroni? Give him a big hug for me!

Yours truly,

Regina Angelina Fontana

When she finishes writing, Gina feels very tired so she puts her head down on the desk. A moment later… there is a long road in front of her and dark clouds overhead. Rain is coming. A blue car appears. The man, it’s the man! He gets out of the car and opens the door wide, wide. The door is an open mouth. Trying to run, feet are stuck, the mouth is swallowing her, can’t breathe. Dying, dying – dead.

Gina screams.

Wake up! Miss Jacobson is shaking her.

But Gina keeps screaming. She can’t stop. Patsy Black gets scared and starts to cry. Karen DePascual runs to get the school nurse.

Will she bring a straitjacket? Peter asks.

Shut up, Peter! Miss Jacobson says.

The school nurse appears wearing a crisp white uniform, white stockings, and