Lost In Yonkers

Arty writes to his father, describing the many “really, really bad” things that have happened and asking Eddie to return (104). Jay and Arty discuss Bella, who disappeared after the disastrous dinner two days earlier. Aunt Gert reveals that Bella is staying with her but asks that the boys keep this a secret from Grandma. For the past two days, she explains, Bella has done nothing but cry. Bella still plans to meet with Johnny and discuss their wedding. The boys notice that Aunt Gert struggles to talk and ask whether they should fetch a doctor. Aunt Gert tells them the issue is only a concern when she returns to her childhood home. She gives them her telephone number and leaves.

Grandma enters the living room. She suggests that Arty and Jay go out for a walk. Jay shares that Eddie’s health has improved and that he will return in eight months. The boys promise to visit their grandmother after they leave. Grandma suggests that she may not be around when they visit because she might sell the candy store. She sends them away, insisting that she can care for herself. Bella enters with a suitcase in one hand and a cake in the other. The boys want to talk to her, but Grandma sends them away.

Alone, Bella and Grandma talk. Bella acknowledges that her mother is angry. She says she cannot cry anymore and feels empty inside. She imagines this is how her mother feels. Grandma denies this, but Bella demands to know whether her mother believes her to be, as she puts it, “crazy.” Grandma says she believes Bella is a child. Bella may not be sick, Grandma explains, but the doctors have said she will never develop the mental faculties of an adult. Bella should accept how God has made her.

Bella asks how she can feel like a woman if the doctors say that she is just a child. Dolls do not satisfy her, she says, as they would a child. Bella believes that some children are more intelligent than adults, as some adults are not very intelligent at all. Further, she says, adults can be mean. When Grandma tries to dismiss Bella’s argument, Bella admits that, since adolescence, she has had many sexual encounters with men because she “needed someone to touch [her]” (112). She knows Johnny truly loves her because of the contrast between him and these other men. She removes $5,000 from her bag.

Assuming Bella stole the money from her secret hiding place, Grandma hurls a cup of tea in her daughter’s face. If Bella is so desperate to leave, Grandma says, she should go. Bella says that Louie gave her the money, adding that Grandma’s children are nothing but thieves and “sick little girls” (113). They were not made this way by God, Bella says, but by Grandma. Grandma is responsible for her children’s failures. The children who died, Aaron and Rose, were lucky. Grandma confesses Aaron and Rose’s deaths broke something inside her. She stopped feeling anything to avoid the pain if any of her other children died. Shocked at her mother’s vulnerability, Bella confesses that Johnny does not share her desire for marriage. She tells her mother that she still intends to get married and have children nonetheless; she then exits to her room.

Nine months later, in the same clothes they wore when they first arrived at Grandma’s house, Jay and Arty wait in the living room while Eddie talks to Grandma offstage. The boys provide an update on Louie, who joined the military and was shipped out to the South Pacific. Bella enters with gifts for her nephews: a basketball and a football. As the boys toss the football around, Eddie and Grandma enter. The boys stop and bid farewell to Grandma. She tells them that despite their efforts to hide it, she knows that they have been searching for her hidden money. They should have looked “behind the malted machine” (119), she tells them. Eddie and the boys leave. Bella tunes the radio to a station playing a Bing Crosby song. She tells Grandma she is going out to meet a new female friend whose brother is a librarian. She plans to invite them over for dinner sometime.