Sixth-sense Kid

Josie was the youngest of ten brothers and sisters. Always full of fun. The only child born in the U.S. All the others considered “damn D.P.’s from Czechoslovakia,” according to my grandfather, Albert, her oldest sister, Anna’s husband.

Our aunt was different than the rest in many ways. She always came under fire from the family for being lazy. She lived with her widowed father, Carl, who only spoke Czech. Her job, in lieu of free rent, should have been to care for him. Because she always slept until at least noon and stayed out late, doing whatever women did at four in the morning during the 1950’s, her older sisters were forced to assume the caretaking we were told. Resentful was an understatement.

Josie played baseball for the Huron Street Dollies, a Chicago women’s team, during World War Two. We didn’t know much about her except she had a uniform, could pitch, and even swear, which is something the Skokan girls never did. She was also the only woman we knew who could drive a car in 1956. Once she drove my sister, my mother, my grandma and me from Louisville, Kentucky to Chicago to get away from my dad, who had just knocked my mother’s teeth out for no good reason. As if there could ever be a good reason for a man to harm his wife, but it was the 50’s.

I remember Josie pausing at the railroad tracks and yelling, “Do you really want to do this, Alice? It’s a long way to Chicago but you’ll be free.”
My mother answered between her swollen lips, “For Christ’s sake, you drove all the way here from Chicago to save us, didn’t you? Step on it, Josie!” Away we went. We could always depend on Josie when it counted most.

I thought we would be free at last from my dad, but of course, life doesn’t always work out the way you hope. Three days after we arrived and were safe at my grandmother’s house on 41st Street in Chicago, “Sonny” arrived to drag us back. Apparently, our mom couldn’t resist the “Gateway to the South.”
Josie was dead to us after the “episode.” We eventually were hauled across the country to California. On Halloween in 1961, I remember being dressed as a Hobo because we couldn’t afford a costume. Too tired from trick-or-treating to change into pajamas, I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up screaming after a nightmare yelling, “Aunt Josie is dead.” My mother said, “It just means she needs your prayers. So, pray. Everything will look better in the morning.”

I washed all the make-up off my face, brushed my teeth and changed into my pajamas. Then went back to sleep on the couch so as not to wake my sister in our shared room. At midnight the phone rang. I knew what had happened before my mother told me. I had always been a sixth-sense kid.

Aunt Josie was dead. She had Leukemia and nobody knew. “Must have accounted for her always sleeping in,” my grandma said. The late nights her sisters had accused her of keeping weren’t true at all. She was just tired.
Once everybody learned the truth about Josie, they felt bad about everything they had said. I learned late night phone calls never bring good news.

— Mugsy