The Porter's Muse Read online

  Chapter 7

  “Too Crazy for Jail,” Judge Rules

  Dateline: January 31, 1957: Judge Stanley Roseman rules ‘mad bomber’ too crazy for jail, Monday. The hearing was held after the man completed a nine-day stint at Bellevue, where a team of psychiatrists probed this demented mind. “He’s psychotic,” according to our source. No jail time, but the 52-year-old Connecticut man will likely spend years locked up in a mental institution. Sentencing scheduled for next Wednesday.

 

  Janira Cruz was a slender woman with shapely legs and petite hands. Her hands were particularly lovely. I remember them most for the way she waved Daddy to her door before we’d leave her porch steps, musically, her fingers flowing palmward then sliding downward and gliding back up, like a violinist about her strings in concert. One day she’d come down with an untended wound on one of those lovely fingers of hers. I made an offer to clean and bandage it up for her, which she accepted, graciously. But she didn’t invite me inside her apartment. Instead, ran upstairs and collected peroxide and a roll of gauze and brought it back down. Right there on Janira’s steps, I tended her wound with such precision Daddy bragged I’d make a brilliant doctor one day. Hearing Daddy say those words meant everything to me. A brilliant doctor, I said to myself every morning before school to remind myself to get excellent grades.

  Janira Cruz had a pretty voice, too, deep but not masculine, though not particularly seductive, just sweet. I would’ve never known her name had it not been for the loose mail, half hanging from the mail slot at her door. Never heard Daddy say it, nor had she ever introduced herself to me. But she was definitely Janira Cruz. And, apparently, she knew Mother. I’m putting all this together with hindsight.

  “Jan” Cruz was a teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School, where mother taught Senior English. The women were lunch mates. I’m sure of this because mother always said she’d have “Jan Cruz, a lovely friend from work” over as soon as she’d helped her find a man. All skirts had to have their own man to get invited to our home. Mother’s rule. I remember she set something up with Daddy to introduce Jan to one of his friends from the Brotherhood. The hook-up didn’t work out, so Ms. Cruz never got that invitation. Well, I guess things did work out for Daddy.

  Yeah, I wonder what Ms. Cruz would think of “Azuquita Pa’l Cafe.”