Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
I get a lot of visitors. My mother comes by every morning, and when she leaves, Me-me and Pop-pop show up, and my father’s family visits in the afternoons, and then my mother comes by again after work. I guess someone negotiated visiting times to avoid World War III.
My uncles give me presents, as usual. Uncle Nunzio brings me some fancy silk slippers with rabbit-fur trim and a matching silk robe. Uncle Ralphie brings me a box of pecan cookies, and Uncle Paulie gives me some Archie comic books, which I don’t like very much, but they’re better than nothing. All Betty and Veronica ever do is worry about dating stupid Archie and Reggie. My biggest present is a radio from Uncle Sally, so that I won’t miss any of the ball games. All the uncles visit, except for Uncle Dominic, who’s the one I want to see most of all. Maybe he’s scared to come to the hospital after what happened with my mother.
Frankie can come whenever he wants, even when visiting hours are over. The nurses think he’s sweet because he gave them a big bunch of flowers. Red roses.
“Where’d you get them?” I ask him.
“Stole ’em from a dead lady upstairs,” he tells me.
“You stole flowers from a dead lady?”
“It ain’t like she needed them,” he says, and eyes my arm. “Guess I’m gonna have to find a new shortstop.”
“Frankie,” I say.
“Sorry. Hey, it ain’t all bad. We can get into ball games for free now!” He grins at me. “Wait’ll the policemen get a look at your arm! You’re better than that crippled kid!”
I just shake my head at him.
“What happened to all the money in Nonny’s basement? Grandpa’s treasure?”
Frankie’s face falls. “Uncle Nunzio said it’ll be used to pay for your hospital bill.”
“It’s gonna be some bill,” I say.
It’s not so bad, once you get past the boring part. I have a pretty busy schedule. Someone’s always waking me to take my temperature or to change the bandages on my arm, or to put on clean sheets or feed me lunch, so by the end of the day I’m beat and I haven’t done anything except lie in bed.
The other kids are okay—not that I can be choosy or anything. We’re all in the same boat. Since I have a radio, I’m pretty popular. The nurses wheel the kids into a circle around my bed, and we sit and listen to the programs. They even let the girl with cancer get out of bed. They wheel her over but won’t let the poison ivy kid sit near her.
We listen to The Shadow and The Lone Ranger. Somehow, hearing all the familiar voices makes things seem not so bad. We’re like a regular family. We fight over what programs to listen to, and if someone talks, we tell him to be quiet.
When we’re all laughing and shouting, I almost forget where I am.
“How are you feeling?” my mother asks when she arrives in the morning.
What she’s really asking is if my arm is working, because Dr. Goldstein said if it doesn’t move in the next few weeks, then it probably never will. It’ll just hang there for the rest of my life, like a roll of salami. But each day when I try to move my fingers, nothing happens. Some days I don’t even think it’s part of me.
“The same,” I say. “I guess we won’t be going to Lake George.”
“No, we won’t,” she agrees. “I spoke with Aunt Francine, and she said that Lou Ellen was very upset when she heard you wouldn’t be coming.”
I’ll just bet she was. She’ll have to find someone else to torture.
She places a tin on my bedside table. “Me-me’s oatmeal-raisin cookies. Maybe you can share them with the other kids.”
“Mother, the other kids are trying to get better, not sicker.”
She gives me a reluctant smile. Even though I’m the patient, I spend most of my time trying to make Mother feel better about things.
“Did you find the lucky bean?” I ask.
My mother nods and opens her handbag and then places the bean on the sheet.
“We tore the house apart looking for it,” she says.
I pick it up with my good hand and give it a squeeze. I figure I need all the luck I can get now.
After my mother leaves, Me-me and Pop-pop arrive. Me-me bustles about, straightening up my things, pouring me water, brushing my hair, while Pop-pop clomps around complaining about everything that’s wrong with this place. He talks to anyone who will listen to him—the doctors, the nurses, you name it.
“I tell you what,” he says loudly. “You should have your own room.”
“They’re for the really sick kids,” I say.
“What? You’re sick! Look at that arm of yours! Doesn’t that count for anything? They want you to catch the plague?”
I sigh, and Pop-pop settles himself in the chair next to my bed. Next he’ll start in on all the injured people he saw during the war.
“You know, when I was in Europe, I saw things that would make your insides turn purple,” he says.
I yawn.
“There was this fella who had all his fingers blown right off. What do you think of that?”
The boy who got bit by the dog says, “Hey, if he didn’t have any fingers, could he still pick his nose?”
Pop-pop scowls. “’Course he couldn’t pick his nose. But he wasn’t half as bad as this other fella, who got this fungus and his skin started to fall off.”
The kid with the poison ivy pulls his sheet up higher.
“Enough with all that ghoulish talk,” Me-me says to Pop-pop. “Go take a walk.”
“What?” he says. “What?”
“I said, stop scaring Penny with all those awful stories,” she says loudly.
“True stories is what they are,” he grumbles, but he hobbles off with his cane.
“Here,” Me-me says, placing a plate in front of me. “I brought you some meat loaf.”
The hospital food is pretty awful, but Me-me’s got it beat.
“The nurses’ll be mad if I eat it,” I lie, trying to look grave.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she says. “Turn away a nutritious meal?”
“They only want me eating what’s on the trays. Doctors’ orders.”
She purses her lips and marches over to the nurses’ station, and a few moments later she comes marching back with a satisfied expression on her face.
“Well, we don’t have to worry about those pesky doctors’ orders anymore,” Me-me says, and beams. “That lovely nurse says you can eat whatever I bring you.”
I groan before I can stop myself.
“Penny, dear, is your arm paining you?” Me-me asks.
“It sure is,” I say.
Not to mention my stomach.
After lunch, Me-me and Pop-pop leave and my father’s family starts showing up.
First is Uncle Paulie. He brings Aunt Gina and Nonny, who, of course, bursts into tears the minute she sees me.
“Hi, Nonny,” I say.
“How ya doin’, doll?” Aunt Gina asks.
“Still alive,” I say.
“You look great,” Uncle Paulie says, which is what he always says. “Don’t she look great, Gina?”
Aunt Gina smiles at me. “I was thinking maybe we could go to New York City and see a show at Radio City when you get out of this joint.”
“Really?” I ask.
She winks. “Sure, doll. I think you’ve earned a little fun.”
Uncle Nunzio and Aunt Rosa show up next, and then come Uncle Sally and Uncle Ralphie. It’s hard work being in the hospital. I never knew how much socializing was involved.
All my visitors want to know how I’m feeling, if the food’s okay, if the bed’s comfortable. Nobody will come right out and talk about my arm, even though it’s hard to miss, kind of like Uncle Dominic living in the car.
Except Frankie, of course. He talks about my arm all the time.
“They gonna chop your arm off if it don’t work?” he asks. “You know, amputate it?”
“How would I know?” I say. “They don’t tell me anything.”
“Why don’
“Ask him yourself,” I say.
Frankie goes right up to Dr. Goldstein. “Say, you gonna chop Penny’s arm off if it don’t get better?” he asks.
“Why do you want to know, young man?”
Frankie lowers his voice and says, “My uncle owns a butcher shop, and fresh arms get good money.”
Dr. Goldstein grabs Frankie’s arm and studies it. “In that case, I’m sure you’d be able to make some money on this specimen. I believe we have an operating room already prepared.”
“Hey,” Frankie says, yanking his arm back. “You even got a license?”
Dr. Goldstein winks at me, and I laugh.
After Frankie leaves, I have dinner, and then Mother stops by, and then it’s lights-out. The nice nurse with the big laugh, Miss Simkins, comes over and makes sure we’re okay. All the kids on the ward like her better than Miss Lombardo, who’s kind of stern.
This is the rottenest part of the day. When the ward is bright and sunny and the nurses are rushing about and visitors are coming and going, it’s easy to be brave, to believe that everything’s going to be okay after all. It’s harder at night, when the ward is dark and quiet. I miss home. I miss Mother’s voice and Pop-pop’s burping, and I sort of miss Me-me’s cooking. I even miss the toilet leaking on my bed.
“You still awake, Penny?” the boy in the bed next to me whispers. He’s the one who got bit by the dog. His name is Jonathan.
“Yeah,” I say. “My back itches and I can’t scratch it.”
“I hate it here,” he says. “Food’s terrible.”
“You haven’t eaten at my house,” I say.
“I hate it here too,” another kid whispers farther down.
“Me too!” says another.
Pretty soon we’re all complaining about the place, like we have any say in it at all. Maybe we can start a club: the Dumb and Unlucky Kids.
I lie there and think of all the things I may never get to do. I’ll never be able to drive a car or put both my arms around Jack Teitelzweig’s back while he whispers in my ear that I’m the most beautiful girl in the room, which I won’t be. I’ll be the girl that mothers point out to their children, the dumb one who doesn’t have any sense. Like a character from one of Frankie’s comics.
The One-Armed Girl.
“I’m sorry, Penny,” my movie-star doctor says. “But there’s no avoiding it.”
The doctors had been waiting to see if the skin under my armpit would get better. But it got ground up pretty good by the wringer, and now they say I have to have a skin graft, which means an operation. The doctors are gonna borrow some skin from my thigh and put it under my arm. It sounds terrible to me. Mother’s not very happy about this either, but Frankie’s eyes practically bug out when I tell him.
“Holy Toledo!” he says. “They’re gonna carve skin off you and sew it under your arm?”
“That’s what they’re saying,” I say.
“You’re gonna look like Frankenstein!”
“Thanks a lot, Frankie,” I say.
“Nah, it’s great!” he says. “Now I just gotta get a camera.”
“What for?”
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “So I can take pictures, of course! People pay to see gruesome things like that!”
The next morning when they come to take me in for the operation, I’m feeling pretty scared. What if I end up like Cora Lamb, in the cemetery being visited by her mother? What if I die? What then?
Mother kisses me on the forehead.
“I love you, Bunny,” she says.
“I’ll take good care of her, Eleanor,” Dr. Goldstein tells my mother as they wheel me out.
The operating room is a buzz of activity. I look up and see my movie-star doctor staring down at me on the table.
“Did you know that your mother and I started at the hospital at the same time, Penny?” Dr. Goldstein asks.
“Mother told me,” I say. “Did you know my father?”
He hesitates and then says, “No. But your mother was my favorite nurse.” He winks. “Didn’t listen to a thing I said, but she always laughed at my jokes.”
“Tell me one,” I say.
“How do you stop a nose from running?” Dr. Goldstein asks.
“I don’t know. How?”
“Trip it,” he says, and grins.
I manage a smile. “You’re better than Pop-pop.”
“I’ll tell you another one when you wake up.”
Then a different doctor holds a mask over my nose and says, “Now take deep breaths.”
The last thing I hear is Frankie’s voice and one of the doctors saying: “I don’t care if you’re the president of the United States, kid. No pictures allowed. Now scram!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Last Person on Earth
I decide that when it comes right down to it, people like a good tragedy.
Like my father dying. One day he was writing for the newspaper, eating my mother’s roast chicken, and the next day he was sick. He died, they buried him, and everyone was real sad.
But me they don’t know what to do with anymore. The operation was successful, but my arm still doesn’t work. My visitors always seem confused about how to act. It’s pretty clear I’m not going to die, but they don’t know how upset to be. After all, you can’t hold a funeral for a dead arm or visit it in Shady Grove Cemetery.
All the kids who were here when I came in are gone, except the cancer girl, who’s hanging on longer than anyone thought. We hear about a new boy on the isolation ward who’s got polio. The nurses talk about him, how he’s in an iron lung. They’re even saying that his mother thinks he got it from the pool.
When Frankie comes by to visit, we play gin rummy.
I’m feeling cranky. I’m sick of this place. But that isn’t the only thing that’s bothering me. I keep expecting Uncle Dominic to show up, but he doesn’t. He hasn’t visited me once the whole time I’ve been in here. Even some of the girls from school who don’t talk to me sent a card.
“Stop losing on purpose,” I say after I win the fourth game in a row.
“What?” Frankie says with an innocent look.
“Why won’t Uncle Dominic visit me?” I ask. “Is he all right?”
“I dunno.”
“Frankie,” I say.
He holds up his hands. “I don’t. Nobody knows where he is. He’s disappeared. Took his car and nobody’s seen him since the day you got hurt.”
“You gotta find out where he went,” I say.
The next morning when Frankie comes in, he’s wearing a triumphant smile.
“I got the goods, all right,” he announces.
“Well?” I demand.
“He’s in Florida,” he says.
“Florida?”
“I think he’s a ruthless killer now,” Frankie says.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
He lowers his voice. “It explains everything. You know, why he lives in his car and all that. Killers can’t have a permanent address.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Around.”
“Frankie, you gotta stop reading those crime comics,” I tell him.
He leaves, and I lie in bed holding the lucky bean in my one good hand, trying to picture Uncle Dominic standing on the beach in Florida, staring out at the ocean. No matter how I look at it, I just don’t understand.
How can one of the most important people in your life disappear like he was never really there?
I watch my mother talking to the doctors in the hallway.
My Gregory Peck doctor says something and her shoulders slump. She doesn’t say a word when she comes over to my bed, but I see it in her eyes. It looks like she’s trying to hold back tears. That’s when I know it’s all over, that my arm is never gonna work.
Just like that.
“You can have my bike,” I tell Frankie when he comes by later that day.
“I can?” he ask
“Nah,” he says. “What’d I want a girls’ bike for, anyway? You’ll be riding it in no time, you watch.”
I look away from him, out the window.
“Come on,” he says, picking up the pudding from my lunch tray and starting in on it. “Knock it off with the sour puss.”
Frankie eats the rest of my lunch and tries to get me to laugh at some stupid joke he heard, but I don’t, and finally he gives up and leaves.
“You feeling okay, hon?” Miss Simkins asks, putting her hand on my forehead.
“Can I have a pain pill, please?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
When the fuzzy feeling hits my blood, I close my eyes and block out the sounds of the ward. I imagine I’m someone else, some other girl who has a regular life, who has two working arms.
The girl I used to be.
They move the cancer girl’s bed next to mine so she can have a friend. Which is just what I need, seeing as how she’s going to die any day now.
She’s only eight, and her name is Gwendolyn, but she says to call her Gwennie. Gwennie has this sad-looking nearly bald doll that she calls Annabelle and keeps in bed with her.
“You sure got a lot of family,” Gwennie says after a pack of the uncles leaves one afternoon. She just has a mother and father who visit her.
“Yeah.”
“You Italian?” she asks.
“Half,” I say.
“I like pizza,” she says. “But my mother says we can only have it as a treat.”
After that, I give her all the food that the relatives bring, and for a girl who’s dying, she sure has a healthy appetite.
“When you get out of here, you should go over to my Nonny’s house. She’d love you,” I tell her.
“How come?”
“You’re a good eater,” I say.
“I’m not getting out,” Gwennie says.
I don’t say anything to that.
“Your arm,” she asks. “Is it gonna work again?”
And what’s the point of lying?
“No,” I say.
She dies two days later.