I\u2008Love Lucy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cOh no, Father,\u201d her mom said. \u201cNothing like that. We only want Him to lend us a little support, that\u2019s all. You should hear the way her grandmother goes off when I bring it up\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenny couldn\u2019t help but chuckle at how her mom got Mama Antonia\u2019s fractured English and quick little hand gestures just right. \u201cGod make\u2019a da nose. She born with it, she die with it. She Abruzzi!\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Zyhowski seemed perplexed. \u201cI\u2019m not sure I understand. What exactly is it you want God to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want God to do anything, Father. We want you to have a little talk with Mama Antonia, that\u2019s all. Just tell her that plastic surgery is not a sin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Zyhowski frowned, his countenance very grave. \u201cIt may not be a mortal sin, my child, but false pride can lead to the deadliest of the seven deadly sins\u2026the sin of vanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mom gasped. \u201cYou\u2019re not saying it\u2019s a sin for Jenny to want to be normal, are you Father?\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Zyhowski peered at her mom through his horn-rimmed glasses, let out a heavy sigh, then turned and faced Jenny directly, his lips pursing tight, his face crinkling up like used aluminum foil. As he leaned close to her she smelled some kind of alcohol on his breath, and when he laid his icy hands on top of hers it gave her the shivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lord works in mysterious ways, my child,\u201d he intoned as he poked his bony finger in her face. \u201cVanity is the root of pride, and false pride has led many of God\u2019s children into the arms of Satan, and to the eternal damnation of the immortal soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mom leaped out of her chair. \u201cBut Father\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
His hand shot up like a traffic cop\u2019s, right in her mom\u2019s face. \u201cI know your intentions are good, and you only want what is best for your daughter. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. It is not for us to question the will of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Zyhowski seemed to think that settled the matter; he looked at his watch and straightened up as if he expected them to accept his answer as God\u2019s will and leave.<\/p>\n
Her mom would not let it go. \u201cBut Father\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Zyhowski slumped back, resigned to being quizzed on the distinction between deadly sins and mortal sins and whether a simple nose-job in Pittsburgh was any different than fixing a cleft palate in Nigeria or a clubfoot in Bolivia. Back and forth they went, her mom never winning, yet never quite giving in. Jenny had seen her argue with the good Father before about the nature of sin. He was well-practiced in the art of telling his flock what they didn\u2019t want to hear, and he always seemed to win in the end. Despite her mom\u2019s logic and heartfelt pleas, the good Father declined to intercede with Mama Antonia on behalf of a nose-job.<\/p>\n
Jenny and her mom bundled up tight and put on their gloves. Father Zyhowski held the door as they grabbed the railing and started carefully down the snow-covered stairs. \u201cWatch your step\u2026it\u2019s slippy,\u201d said the good Father.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd remember, my children\u2014God made His creations with a purpose. False pride is the root of vanity, which is the deadliest sin of all.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they trudged up the sidewalk in the new-fallen snow Jenny wiped back a tear. \u201cFather Zyhowski isn\u2019t going to help us, is he, Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mom stopped, put her arm around Jenny\u2019s shoulder, pulled her tight and said, \u201cNo, dear, I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes that mean God doesn\u2019t want me to have a normal nose?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFather Zyhowski didn\u2019t say that, Jennifer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he said it was a sin to want one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo\u2026not exactly. If you listened very carefully, what he really said was that it\u2019s only a sin if you become too prideful. You wouldn\u2019t be like that, would you, Jennifer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, no, Mom. I would never be prideful, I swear. Never. Cross my heart and hope to die.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we\u2019ll have a talk with a psychologist and see what he says.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA psychologist? But aren\u2019t they for crazy people?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot always, dear. Sometimes they\u2019re for normal people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few weeks later she and her mom took the trolley downtown for an appointment. Jenny\u2019s ears popped as an elderly black man in a red uniform whooshed them up in the polished-copper elevator to the thirty-fifth floor of the forty-four story Gulf Oil Building, which all of Pittsburgh knew was the tallest structure between New York and Chicago. The waiting room overlooked what in colonial times was known as \u201cthe forks of the Ohio,\u201d the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers where they join to form the Ohio. The early French explorers thought the Ohio to be the most beautiful river in the world, calling it \u201cLa Belle Rivi\u00e9re.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a sight, so high up! The hazy disc of the late afternoon sun glowed just above the horizon, bathing the snow-covered hills in the day\u2019s last light like a pale orange blanket the color of children\u2019s aspirin. It was the end of January, and it had been a very cold winter; not a single barge or boat was moving on the frozen rivers. The weatherman on TV had been warning of flooding next spring if rain melted the snow-pack in the mountains before the ice-dams broke up.<\/p>\n
Her mom had promised a psychologist like Dr. Westcott would be very scientific and would not have the same concern for her immortal soul as had Father Zyhowski. He certainly looked and sounded like every psychologist she\u2019d ever seen in the movies: curly-haired with flecks of gray, glasses, pipe, goatee. He told her to stand in the middle of the room while he appraised her, circling, staring while thoughtfully pulling on his goatee, going hmmm\u2026hmmm. \u201cYes, there\u2019s no question that an operation would vastly improve your daughter\u2019s appearance, Mrs. Abruzzi, no question at all. That, in turn, will raise her self-esteem, regardless of what else may be troubling her. Is there anything else wrong, Jennifer? Anything you\u2019d like to talk about?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh no, Dr. Westcott.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you absolutely certain?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yes, Dr. Westcott. Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that was that. As to the problem with Mama Antonia, the wise Dr. Westcott proposed a simple solution. \u201cWhy get into a fight with your mother-in-law? Don\u2019t tell her, just do it. Make it a fait accompli. She\u2019ll be mad for a while, but in time, since she loves her granddaughter, she\u2019ll come to accept that it\u2019s for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armed with the opinion of a Doctor of Psychology, they took the elevator down twelve floors to keep an appointment her mom had made with Dr. Emery, a famous plastic surgeon. Jenny felt comforted as the doctor used his long, slender fingers to probe all over her face as he explained the procedure, called a \u201crhinoplasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
That night Jenny looked up the new word in her Webster\u2019s; she looked everything up. Rhinoplasty came from the Greek: rhino meant \u201cof or pertaining to the nose,\u201d and plasty was \u201cthe act or means of forming.\u201d Using her French textbook and her English\/French dictionary, she figured out that in English \u201cfait accompli\u201d meant \u201caccomplished fact,\u201d a done deed that was too late to change.<\/p>\n
Dr. Emery\u2019s nurse lent them a book with photos of hundreds of possible noses to choose from. Jenny suggested that the best place to hide it was under her mom\u2019s panties and bras, the only place her father and brothers would never dare to look. Her mom agreed, and every night at bedtime for the next week they thumbed through the nose-book like they were shopping for the perfect gift in a Gimbel\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t easy choosing which nose would turn out to be the best\u2014Dr. Emery promised she would learn to \u201cgrow into it,\u201d no matter which one she chose. In the end, they decided she couldn\u2019t go wrong with a nose just like her mom\u2019s, since it was only bad luck that she\u2019d gotten her dad\u2019s nose instead of her mom\u2019s in the first place.<\/p>\n
They planned everything as if it were a C.I.A. spy operation, scheduling the procedure for late August, so Jenny wouldn\u2019t miss a whole summer of swimming. That way, her bandages would come off just in time for a fresh start in junior high school. She had trouble sleeping from keeping the secret for so long and wondering how her life would change. When the day finally came, she packed a suitcase like she was going to Camp Tioshango for a week, just like she had done for the last two years. It was a perfect alibi. Nobody suspected anything.<\/p>\n
She was only in the hospital for a night, and when she left her nose was bandaged up like a mummy. Grampy Jim and Grammy Liz let her hide out in her mom\u2019s old room at their house up in Beaver Falls. Nobody but the four of them knew she wasn\u2019t at Camp Tioshango.<\/p>\n
Grampy Jim bought her a Made-in-Japan transistor radio so she could listen to her own music, while Grammy Liz took her to the library, where she checked out Gone With the Wind, Little Women, and Black Beauty. She tried to check out Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover and Peyton Place, but Grammy Liz wouldn\u2019t hear of it.<\/p>\n
Jenny spent her time recuperating by reading and listening to the Pirates\u2019 pennant-drive on the radio with Grampy Jim as the Bucs kept winning on their way to the World Series. At dusk, she caught lightning bugs in a mayonnaise jar, and when the stars came out and reception got good, she tuned in stations from Boston to Chicago as \u201cThe Twist,\u201d \u201cChain Gang,\u201d and \u201cItsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini\u201d battled for Number One on the Top 40 countdowns. She watched the Olympics on TV, and was captivated by the women\u2019s diving. She loved going off the high dive\u2014all the Pittsburgh pools had one\u2014but she had never seen a competition with judges holding up scorecards and the divers trying for a perfect ten. If she couldn\u2019t play in Little League because she was a girl, she would be a diver instead.<\/p>\n
The entire Abruzzi clan was at Mama Antonia\u2019s big table for Sunday dinner when Jenny and her mom came in, a little late, just back from \u201ccamp.\u201d As Jenny took her usual seat all the Abruzzis froze in place like concrete cinder blocks, gaping in astonishment. Mama Antonia squinted from across the table, shuddered, and burst into tears.<\/p>\n
To everybody\u2019s surprise, Papa Carlo leaped up and wagged his finger in Mama Antonia\u2019s face. \u201cHush\u2019a you up, woman. It a good thing, a good thing.\u201d He leaned close to his wife and touched his finger to the tip of his own giant schnozzola. \u201cWhad\u2019a you know? You no gotta see in da mirror. You think I marry you if you gotta da nose? Ha!\u201d<\/p>\n
Papa Carlo, having taken charge, came around the table, smiling and spreading his arms wide. He took Jenny by the shoulders, planted two big old-country kisses on her cheeks, and gave her a grandfatherly hug. \u201cNow you bella, mia cara. Molto bella!\u201d<\/p>\n
______________________<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The previous September, Arthur Bolton McGill III, called \u201cArthur\u201d by his parents and \u201cArt\u201d or \u201cMcGill\u201d by everybody else, had been in the sixth grade at Calvin Coolidge Elementary School in Milltowne, an industrial city of about 30,000 an hour\u2019s drive outside of Pittsburgh. It was a hot September day, just two weeks into the school year, when he began his first serious day-dreaming about girls.The teachers assembled the boys from the sixth-grade classes in the gym and the girls in the cafeteria. They showed each group the same educational film about the birds and the bees. McGill was astonished by the amazing journey of the sperm, which leaped from the gonads through the vas deferens and burst into the vagina, where they struggled upstream, like migrating salmon, fighting their way into the womb. Millions of the squiggly little suckers engaged in an epic battle, fighting it out, winner-take-all, over the single female egg that coyly dropped down from the ovary.<\/p>\n
McGill learned a lot from that movie. All those fancy anatomical words were new to him. He had never heard of a penis; his mom insisted he had a \u201cweeser,\u201d although the guys called theirs \u201ccocks,\u201d \u201cdicks,\u201d or \u201cpeckers,\u201d and their testicles were \u201cballs\u201d or \u201cnuts.\u201d The boys called the girls\u2019 most secret parts \u201cpussies,\u201d \u201ccunts,\u201d \u201ctwats\u201d or \u201cbeavers.\u2019\u2019 Some girls loved shooting \u201cbeaver shots,\u201d nonchalantly spreading their legs so you could see all the way up to the whites of their panties as they pretended to work on arithmetic problems before they clamped their knees shut and snatched your heart away.<\/p>\n
In addition to shooting beavers, accidentally or not, most girls, once they got to junior high, acquired another anatomical feature\u2014breasts. Of course the guys never called them that, instead calling them \u201ctitties,\u201d \u201cbazooms,\u201d and \u201cknockers,\u201d while the girls who didn\u2019t develop as quickly were snickered at for being \u201cflat.\u201d McGill never did learn what terms his mom would have thought appropriate to describe a girl\u2019s hidden body parts, as she preferred to never talk about hidden body parts at all. Vaginas and breasts might have been acceptable, but his mom would never have approved of pussies, cunts, twats or beavers.<\/p>\n
Before then, McGill had not thought about girls\u2019 anatomies very much, but once he started getting a few pubes on his crotch he thought about very little else. It started in earnest in that fall of 1959, a year and a half after the Russkies sent up Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. That enemy triumph freaked out the American military-industrial establishment, which proceeded to enlist the nation\u2019s schools to help win the Cold War. Working together, the generals and the principals came up with a crash program to get more science into the schools and keep America safe. The call went out: America needed rocket scientists to close the missile gap!
\nAt Coolidge Elementary, this meant duck-and-cover drills to keep the future scientists safe. The entire school would scramble under their desks when the air raid siren blared, and everybody made sure to cover their faces so they\u2019d be safe from flying glass when the shock wave from the H-bombs hitting Pittsburgh blew out their windows. Everyone knew the tune to the corny song in the TV cartoon from the Civil Defense Administration starring Bert the Turtle: \u201cDuck\u2026and cover, duck\u2026and cover,\u201d which had instantly been changed by the older guys to \u201cFuck\u2026your mother, fuck\u2026your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
All over town, even more bomb-shelter signs\u2014three black triangles on a yellow background\u2014popped up on brick and stone buildings such as churches and schools to let people know they had a safe refuge when the H-bombs started falling. The Sputnik threat also meant that a science lab was installed in one of Coolidge\u2019s sixth-grade classrooms.<\/p>\n
McGill\u2019s teacher, Miss Deale, just two years out of college, had the boys in her class enthralled in a collective crush\u2026and boy did she ever seem to enjoy it. \u201cBuilt like a brick shit-house,\u201d was the highly-complimentary term for her anatomy.<\/p>\n
One day, Miss Deale was sitting on the top of the teacher\u2019s desk facing the class, her legs carefully crossed. It was only her second year, and she was already called \u201cSexy Mary.\u201d Perched on her desk, knees at eye-level, the lucky guys in the middle aisles had the best seats when she parted her legs; everyone knew she did it on purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll be glad to know,\u201d Miss Deale said, \u201cthat we get two hours a week in the new science lab. Since our turn is tomorrow, after lunch we\u2019ll trade classrooms with Miss Williams class and she will give you a tour of the new lab, so we won\u2019t have recess today.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGill raised his hand and complained, \u201cIt isn\u2019t fair to cut out recess, Miss Deale. Let\u2019s cut out arithmetic instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t do any good, and after lunch Miss Deale led the class down the halls, the girls in one line, the boys in another, short to tall, and left them at the mercy of \u201cWitch\u201d Williams.<\/p>\n
McGill took the seat he always tried to get in every class, way in the back of the room, as far away from the teacher as he could get. Because he was tall, it usually worked. But the first thing Witch Williams did was point to him and say, \u201cYou, Arthur, there in the back. Come up here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t even had a chance to do anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cHold out your hand,\u201d she ordered. Then, with a fat eighteen-inch wooden ruler, she gave him a stinging RAP across his palm. \u201cThat\u2019s just to let you know I\u2019ve heard all about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Witch Williams gave the class a pep talk about how everyone was to take turns exploring the lab, get to know it well, because they would be there every Friday afternoon for the rest of the year. McGill was still mad they\u2019d stolen recess, so he hogged one of the microscopes, checking out the legs, wings, and compound-eyes of a dead fly.<\/p>\n
After a while, some of the girls were buzzing around a microscope, giggling and pleading for Candy Riley, who was looking through the eyepiece, to hurry\u2013hurry\u2013hurry up. They were making a lot of noise, and nobody made noise in Witch Williams\u2019 class. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on over there?\u201d cackled Witch Williams.<\/p>\n
The girls went instantly quiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing, Miss Williams,\u201d one finally answered.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what has you all riled up?\u201d<\/p>\n
The room was hushed; nobody said a word. Everybody was frozen, except for Candy, who was still looking through the eyepiece, oblivious to everything around her. Witch Williams said, \u201cCandy, what are you looking at?\u201d
\nCandy glanced up for an instant, ignored the question, and put her eye back down to the lens.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandy!\u201d shouted Witch Williams. \u201cAnswer me! What are you looking at?\u201d<\/p>\n
Candy blurted out, \u201cSammy Duncan\u2019s sperms! Want to come see? They\u2019re really cute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Witch Williams turned pale and sat slowly down in her seat. She\u2019d probably never come so close to any live sperm before.<\/p>\n
Candy, who still had her eye to the lens, asked, \u201cMiss Williams, why are all the sperms swimming in circles? The movie said they always swim in the same direction, like salmon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Witch Williams could only manage a gasp as Candy answered her own question. \u201cIs it because they don\u2019t have any place to go? Is that right, Miss Williams?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sammy was older than everyone else in the class, almost fourteen, and he hadn\u2019t flunked two whole grades for nothing. He was smiling like a football hero as the girls giggled and grinned when he strutted to his seat after his three-day suspension.<\/p>\n
______________________<\/p>\n
Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These are the audio and text versions of\u00a0Chapter One of the novel, Luck of the Draw, by William Scott Morrison. Narration by the author. Luck of the Draw William Scott Morrison Chapter One Nicknames Pittsburgh, 1959 Jenny was one of only two girls in her sixth-grade class to get stuck with a
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