Hit and Nun by Peg Cochran

morning at Rocky’s Pizza Parlor had worn her out. She stifled a yawn as she picked through a bunch of tomatoes. They were as hard as bocce balls. How was a person supposed to make a decent meal for their family when that was all they could find?
    She’d been upset with the way Flo was talking, but now she thought maybe she understood it. Flo didn’t want to have to rush home from work every night to cook dinner and look after a husband. The way things were now she could do what she wanted, get take-out, microwave one of them frozen dinners—although they didn’t look as if they would feed a bird, let alone a grown woman—or skip dinner altogether and spend the evening watching television and painting her nails.
    Still, when you got in bed at night, sometimes them sheets were awful cold—it was nice to have a warm body to snuggle up to.
    Lucille walked farther down the produce aisle and checked out the eggplants—nice and firm, and the stems were fresh-looking and green. She’d make some eggplant rollatini. It was one of Frankie’s favorites.
    The baby was crying when Lucille walked into the house. Bernadette was in the kitchen with her, trying to get her to nurse. Lucy’s little face was all scrunched up and she was as red as a beet from crying.
    “I don’t know what’s wrong.” Bernadette looked at her daughter helplessly.
    “See how she’s drawing her legs up?” Lucille pointed at the baby.
    “Yeah.” Bernadette looked doubtful.
    “She’s probably got gas. I’ll make her some fennel tea.”
    “What on earth is that?”
    “You boil some fennel seeds in water, strain it, add a bit of sugar and then let it cool. It’ll help with the gas.”
    Bernadette continued to look doubtful.
    “Look, my mother gave it to me, I gave it to you, so there’s no reason not to give it to little Lucy.” Lucille stood with her hands on her hips. “And by the way, missy, when is the baby going to be baptized, huh? I was raised in the church, you was raised in the church and so was Tony. So what’s all this about not wanting her to have a christening?”
    Bernadette stood with the baby in her arms, rocking back and forth. “I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?”
    Lucille opened her mouth, but just then the phone rang. She glared at Bernadette and grabbed it from the hook.
    “Yeah? I mean, hello.”
    “Is this Mrs. Mazzarella?”
    “Yes.” The voice wasn’t familiar. Was this one of them sales calls? Lucille wondered. She didn’t need no magazine subscriptions, and she and Frankie didn’t want to change their cable service or lower their credit card rate.
    “This is Dr. Rosendrantz’s office.”
    Lucille felt a strange sensation in her stomach. The same kind of feeling she got when something didn’t agree with her.
    “The doctor has reviewed the report from your recent mammogram,” the woman continued, “and she wants to do some further testing. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”
    Like hell it wasn’t, Lucille thought.
    “She’s ordered some more views of your left breast. Just to rule anything out. Can you be at the radiology clinic for an appointment at ten a.m. tomorrow morning?”
    “Yeah, sure.” Lucille couldn’t remember if she was scheduled to work or not, but it didn’t matter. She had to get this done with right away or she would go crazy.
    “Please don’t worry. It’s just routine. In ninety percent of cases like this it turns out that nothing is wrong.”
    Ninety percent? Lucille thought. How about one hundred percent? She hung up the phone and started to cry. She had cancer and would die before ever seeing little Lucy baptized.

Chapter 8
     
    Lucille was almost too upset to eat her dinner. She could tell Frankie knew something was wrong by the way he kept looking at her.
    “Aren’t you going to finish that?” He pointed his fork at the piece of eggplant left on Lucille’s plate.
    She pushed the dish away. “I’m not so hungry tonight. I don’t know