The Price of Eternal Youth

By Rosemarie DiCristo

I was only seven when Aunt Toni tried to find her own fountain of youth, so some of the technical details are a little fuzzy. For instance, I can’t remember the name of the anti-aging cream Helena Rubenstein made, but I know that this once-great cosmetics company sold it for big bucks since it was reputed to restore your skin to that of a newborn babe.

It certainly intrigued my Aunt Toni, who was turning forty-nine in April 1968. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties, but she wanted to look even younger. However, she refused to pay seventeen dollars for Helena Rubenstein’s cream. Instead, Aunt Toni turned to supernatural means.

That meant contacting Clara Henn, an elderly neighbor who had lived across the hall from Grandma and our family on Claremont Parkway in the South Bronx.

Everyone knew Mrs. Henn had powers. She said once, about the roaches infesting the building, “Don’t worry; by tomorrow they’ll be gone.” And they were. Never to be seen again.

She despised Lucky, Stella Raggio’s dog, because he howled all night, every night. Late one evening, Mom saw Mrs. Henn point her finger at the mutt, who was chained in the back alley, and—Mom swears—Lucky seemed to evaporate.

The unlucky pup was never seen again, either.

Then came the day in 1958 when Mrs. Henn saw Grandma and heartily cried out, “Congratulations, Rosie, I hear your Mary’s having a baby!” Two days later Aunt Mary called to give Grandma the good news. Mrs. Henn never left the Bronx, and Aunt Mary by that time lived way out in Commack, so how could she possibly have known before Grandma did?

There was also the weird chanting that sometimes came from the Henn apartment, the strange black leatherbound book she often read, and the fact that Mrs. Henn never looked a day older than she did in 1926 when Grandma first moved in.

It’s this same-age thing that started the whole mess. Mrs. Henn declared her youthful skin was the result of her special elixir, and that’s why Aunt Toni took two buses all the way back to Claremont Parkway to purchase it. It cost thirty dollars—thirteen dollars more than Helena Rubinstein’s cream, if you’re paying attention.

Aunt Toni triumphantly brought the jar home, and, peering into her bathroom mirror, started to open it so she could slap on a copious amount. We all gathered around to watch.

“That stuff never works, Toni,” Uncle Angelo protested. “It’s a gimmick. Besides, I love you as you are. Why pay thirty bucks for a jar of goop?”

“Five,” Aunt Toni corrected with a dimply smile.

We gaped at her.

She stopped twisting the jar lid. “Bread is twenty-two cents a loaf. My new transistor radio? Five ninety-five. Revlon lipstick? One dollar. Clara Henn’s lucky to get the five spot.”

Uncle Angelo shot Grandma a worried look, and I knew what it meant. Grandma was a true believer in the dark side of Mrs. Henn’s powers.

She wrung her hands, saying, “Toni, please, remember what happened to your grandmother when she refused to pay Lidia la Strega?”

Everyone knew the story. My great-grandmother, when she and Grandma still lived in Italy, kept putting off paying an elderly village lady, Lidia la Strega—yes, literally “Lidia the witch”—for some piecework Lidia had done for her. One night, Lidia made a “final” request for the money, and my great-grandmother told her she’d be paid next week. That night, a sudden and fierce difficulty in breathing woke Great Grandmother up, and it didn’t pass until she choked out, “Lidia, I promise, I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

Mom always quipped, “But Mama, didn’t Nonna have serious asthma? When could she ever breath right?”

Now Aunt Toni’s lips curled scornfully. “Is this like the time you thought that knotted shoelace Mrs. Ruggiero left under your sofa cushion caused your knee to lock up? Ever hear of arthritis, Mama?”

Grandma frowned at her. “I ask one question: how did a knotted shoelace get under my sofa cushion, if Carmela Ruggiero didn’t do it? And wasn’t she jealous that my pizza recipe won the Bronx House bake-off?”

Aunt Toni laughed humorlessly. “That’s two questions.”

Grandma snorted. “But I see you can’t answer either one.”

“Mama.” Aunt Toni’s voice was firm. “No one pays thirty dollars for face cream, no matter how good it is. Besides, Mrs. Henn’s practically my godmother. She’ll understand.”

“All the more reason to honor that relationship.”

Aunt Toni shook her head, twisted off the lid, stuck two fingers into the jar, and smeared a dollop of Mrs. Henn’s magic elixir across her forehead.

A ping rang out and a puff of smoke filled the air. The bottle clanked to the floor; Aunt Toni couldn’t hold it in her hands anymore because she was now approximately six months old. Clothing hanging down around her now-tiny frame. Drool dripping from her now-toothless mouth. Well, at least her skin was finally as young as a newborn babe.

As we stared dumbfounded, Grandma strode to Aunt Toni’s purse and extracted twenty-five dollars. “Frank!” she called to Grandpa. “Drive me to Claremont Parkway. Now.”

They must have hit traffic. It took nearly an hour for the second ping and puff of smoke restoring Aunt Toni to her adult body.

Apparently, Mrs. Henn had a wicked sense of humor and a peculiar definition of reckoning, because alas, Aunt Toni’s skin had suddenly aged more than it was before, making her look every bit like the forty-nine-year-old she was.

“I hope you learned your lesson,” Grandma thundered.

“Oh, yes, Mama. Totally.”

Lesson? Or something else? I never saw Aunt Toni use face cream again, but up until the day she died in 2006, Aunt Toni didn’t look one bit older than forty-nine, and until the day she died in 1973, Mrs. Henn was proudly seen cavorting along the streets of the South Bronx wearing Aunt Toni’s massive twelve-diamond cocktail ring and its matching necklace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Most of the events in this story really happened, but Rosemarie DiCristo leaves it to Havok readers to figure out which ones are true and which are highly fictionalized. She gives a shout out the to librarians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Fashion Institute of Technology for directing her to the databases that provided info on prices of cosmetics in the 1960s.

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