I’m not exactly sure how we ended up in their kitchen. Perhaps we were brought there, just a few doors down from my father’s apartment, by one of the twin sisters who happened to be watching my sister and me for the afternoon.
Philadelphia summers are hot, but their kitchen was spotless and cool. I remember it feeling shiny. There was a porcelain plate with a picture of the Pope on it above the small table that was placed along a wall where we sat. I remember glancing at it several times during our visit. I don’t know how long we were there. But I do remember the voice of the twins’ mother. I had only heard a sound similar to it in movies or on television. I recognized English words, but he accent turned her sentences into a song made up of foreign-sounding syllables. I recall my father saying that their family was Irish…only Irish lived on that side of the street (Italians lived on the other side of the street). I noticed that the twins, when they spoke with their mother, their voice changed. It too took on the rhythm of a song. I remember how pretty I thought the twins were, and now, the songs that they “spoke” enhanced their beauty.
Queen Wintergreen dredged up this memory…one that may have lasted only a few moments, from more than 40 years ago. Irish accents emerged from the pages. Sing-songy sentences uttered in an Irish-American kitchen decades ago found their way out of my memories and married themselves to Fulton’s story.
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