Her grandfather drove them to the cabin and told Gabriella to take care of Angela, that he had an errand to run. As horrified as she was, as distraught and physically damaged as she was, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world to be safe at the cabin with her grandmother.
Gabriella cleaned her up, nursed her, had her shower, and gently asked questions. She gave Angela a tea that made her sleepy. Then she took Angela to their bedroom, to their bed, and tucked her in. Gabriella slept with her, holding her all night.
Vito had come home sometime during the night and slept on the fold-out bed in the couch in the living room. He slept there for the next few nights, where Angela usually slept when staying at the cabin, while Angela and Gabriella slept in the bed.
Angela loved being there with them both, being safe at the cabin. She didn’t ask where her grandfather had gone that night, or what he had done. She didn’t need to. All she needed to know was that her grandparents had rescued her.
Sally eventually said something in front of her father about her friend Frankie being missing. She cast a suspicious look at Vito. It was a wordless question. He said that he suspected Frankie had taken a shortcut to hell.
Sally didn’t know what he meant, but she was afraid of her father so she didn’t ask. Between the assistance checks she got from the state and the sex she provided for drug dealers and their friends, she was soon back into a suitable stupor. Sally was on to other men. Frankie was soon forgotten.
Angela never forgot him.
Since she was getting to be old enough to do a lot of things to take care of herself on her own, Angela was also gradually drawn into being her mother’s servant of sorts. On school nights when not staying with her grandparents, she did laundry and cooked and was always at her mother’s beck and call.
Sally would tell her friends, “Go get the girl in the moon. She’s in her room. Tell her I need her.” Or “Go tell the girl in the moon to run to the store and get us some cigarettes.” Or “Tell the girl in the moon to make us something to eat.” Or “Tell the girl in the moon to bring us some beers.”
Angela never knew why her mother called her the girl in the moon. She assumed it was mockery of some sort.
Angela knew that Sally was growing increasingly jealous of how her daughter was evolving into womanhood, becoming gracefully leggy and inescapably feminine, while Sally, who had once been a seductive beauty, had become skin and bones. The teeth she had left were horribly discolored and rotten. She had scabs and scars everywhere on her skin and needle tracks up her arms. While Sally was busy partying and getting high all the time, before she knew it, she had lost her looks and her sex appeal.
Angela was becoming everything her mother no longer was.
TEN
Even though Frankie was no longer around, Angela did her best to avoid being at home. She feared that one of the other weirdos would rape her. Some of them were scary guys and she didn’t like the way they increasingly leered at her. She knew what they wanted. They wanted the same thing Frankie had wanted.
While a few of the other guys who hung around had been reasonably decent, most, like Sally’s new boyfriend, a biker named Boska, were just plain psychos.
Worse, they frequently became violent when they drank. When Boska was drunk he sometimes argued with Angela’s mother, and then ended up beating her. That was always a frightening experience for Angela. After he was finished with Sally he would storm out. Angela would clean her mother up and put antibiotic and bandages on cuts. Her mother always refused to call the police. She said it was her fault, that Boska was a good man; then she would do a line or smoke some meth that he’d left for her.
More than once there were bloody fights between men drinking at their house. Those fights often spilled out into the street in front of their trailer. People would stand around and watch, but rarely try to break it up. Once it involved knives and one man was stabbed. It wasn’t uncommon for the police to be called by neighbors.
Angela spent as much time as possible staying with her grandparents. They were everything her mother wasn’t. They were protective, reasonable, safe.
When she was at home and there were people there partying, Angela went out as much as possible, walking the streets, wandering through stores, or sitting in secluded alleys watching the stars and the winos. Fortunately, her legs were getting long and she could easily outrun them if she had to.
Thankfully, sometimes her mother and her friends went out for the night. When they did, Angela did laundry, emptied ashtrays, picked up beer cans, and collected used needles. Sometimes they would be gone for a few days, leaving Angela to wonder if she would ever see her mother again, but she always returned, looking wasted.
After Frankie, Angela was thankfully with her grandparents as often as possible. Angela’s grandmother said she didn’t like Angela in the house when Sally was using drugs. Of course, since her mother was an addict, that was most of the time. Her mother was rarely sober for long. When she was, she was a bitch on wheels—argumentative and combative.
Sally didn’t especially like Angela staying with her parents. She viewed it as her parents’ direct denunciation of her and her way of life. When she was sober enough she would insist Angela stay home on school nights. Angela knew that it was out of spite.
Her grandparents talked about taking guardianship and having Angela live with them permanently. With as often as the police had been to the trailer, and as often as Sally had been arrested and Angela handed over to her grandparents until she sobered up or bonded out, Sally was certainly on shaky ground with Child Protective Services. Angela was excited about the idea of living with her grandparents permanently. Being with them made her fears evaporate.
She dearly loved Gabriella and she idolized Vito. After he was dressed in the morning but still in his stocking feet, he would let her come with him into the bathroom to watch him shave. It fascinated her the way he went about it, the way he spread on lather, the careful, measured way he stroked his jaw with the razor, the way he followed the same pattern every time.
Sometimes he would tell her funny stories about his job from before he’d retired. When he was done shaving he would splash on a little aftershave. Angela loved the way it smelled. It smelled like Grandpa and no one else.
She would then follow him into the bedroom and watch while he put on the big, heavy work boots with lugged soles that he always wore. She loved those boots, because they were part of who he was. They were the boots of someone who was strong and trustworthy.
Sometimes she would race into the bedroom ahead of him, slip her feet—shoes and all—into those big work boots, and clomp around the room, putting on a show, imitating him, making him laugh. He would sometimes tickle her to get them back, telling her never to grow up. Angela couldn’t imagine why her mother rolled her eyes when she mentioned Grandpa or Grandma.
One day they took her to a thrift store to get some clothes to wear at the cabin when they went fishing or climbing the surrounding mountains. While wandering the store, Angela spotted a pair of hardly used boots almost exactly like her grandfather’s. To her surprise, they were only a little big, but they fit her close enough to wear. She wanted those boots more than anything. Her grandmother told her they weren’t good shoes for a pretty young lady. Angela said they were perfect for the woods and the mountains. Her grandmother instead kept her busy looking for jeans and shirts and sweaters for school.
But before leaving the store, on their way to the checkout, Vito smiled at Gabriella and picked up the boots.