Elizabeth Street (37 page)

HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY, 1985

“Nanny, why is Uncle Anthony called Cakey?”

“Because when he was a kid, he liked cake. Aren’t you hungry?”

As soon as I graduated college, ignoring my mother’s disbelief that I was moving back to the ghetto, I rented an apartment in Hoboken that Uncle Cakey helped me find. Uncle Cakey had also shown me the best places to shop, and now, five years later and a regular, I had visited each and every one to prepare the feast that was in the kitchen.

“I made shrimp scampi.” I put another tape in the video camera.

“How did you know how to do that? You don’t cook.”

“I used a recipe.”

“They have recipes for that?”

“Nanny, do you remember when I was about twelve, we were watching this movie and you got really upset. That’s the day you told me about the kidnapping.”

“Don’t put that down. I’ll make you stop.”

Although Nanny had begun to share memories, this was one topic that remained off-limits. I finally realized she was still afraid. I left the video camera and sat next to her on the couch. “They can’t get us, Nanny.”

“No, no, I don’t tell nobody. I don’t even tell my friends. You shouldn’t tell. That’s the way it is.”

“Nanny, I shut off the camera. I just need to know.”

“They were so mean and lazy. What they did was wrong. They shouldn’t have done that. I was just a little girl.”

I watched my grandmother transform before my eyes. The bossy eighty-year-old shrunk into her blouse. Her huge hands didn’t flail around excitedly anymore; they clutched at her sides or covered her mouth as she spoke. I could barely breathe as my grandmother talked about the kidnapping in detail for the first time. I would gently ask questions when she slowed down, but I avoided looking at her because I felt like she would snap out of what resembled a trance.

“…Our neighbor Limonata took me to her brother; he had a butcher store. Maybe it wasn’t her brother, I don’t know. Then she said she had to go to the dentist, and he took me to the kidnappers.”

“How did he get you there?”

“I was a smart little girl. I said to him, ‘This isn’t the way we came.’ We were going over the Brooklyn Bridge…”

“If I cried too much they would put this teddy bear at the window to the door and say, ‘You be quiet or il lupo will get you.’ I thought they were so stupid, because ‘lupo’ in Italian is ‘wolf,’ not ‘bear’…”

An hour later, she had recounted every detail of the ordeal including the color of the blind across the street.

“When I ran up those stairs, they were so happy to see me, everyone was crying, especially my mother. They disinfected me in a tub all night long. And for weeks they brought me toys, a doll, a carriage, a little piano…”

“Nanny, did they ever catch the guys who kidnapped you?”

“No! I told you, you couldn’t tell nobody. After I got back, the newspapers started to bother us. When I went out with my mother, sometimes a reporter would stand in front of us and say, ‘We heard your daughter was kidnapped by the Black Hand.’ My mother would yank my hand and we would run away. They would run after us and ask me questions: ‘Little girl, did bad men take you?’ My mother was so mad, she would yell at them to leave us alone. When we got home she would make me promise to never answer any questions from anyone. Never talk to strangers. Never to tell anyone.”

“So that was it? You don’t know what happened to the people who kidnapped you?”

“No, not the people who kept me. But my mother found Limonata in Brooklyn.”

“And?”

“Eh, what do you think? She nearly killed her. She kicked her and threw her down four flights of stairs.”

“Did Big Nanny tell you about that?”

“No, I told you, we never talked about it. My cousin Dominick told me. Dominick, bless his soul, was smart. He was tough too. When they found us again in Hoboken, he scared them away.”

“Who found you—what do you mean?”

“Eh, these were bad people. They didn’t stop even after I was returned. My brother Clement found a bomb before it went off outside our apartment on Elizabeth Street. So we moved to Hoboken. My parents and uncle opened our ice cream store in Hoboken, Siena’s French Ice Cream.”

“French!?”

“It sounded fancy. They tried to blackhand us again, but Dominick found the guy. He took the guy by the neck. I think he even cut him. Dominick had Hoboken friends by then. The names probably scared them, because that was the end of it. No more Black Hand. Let’s eat. If you made the scampi sit all this time it won’t be good.”

I dished out the pasta and brought the reheated pan of scampi to the table. When I put the pan on the table, Nanny scowled.

“That don’t look nice,” reprimanded Nanny, bringing it back to the kitchen.

I let her rummage around my kitchen for a serving bowl. My head was swirling with images of my great-grandmother accosting kidnappers, beating up Limonata, and running from reporters.

Putting the bowl on the table, she tasted the sauce with her finger. “The shrimp likes more garlic than this.”

When she finally sat down, I said, “Nanny, I wish I had known Big Nanny better.”

“My mother was a beautiful woman. Strong. Smart.”

“I remember her a little. I remember her skin was like silk. And she had strong hands like you. But I especially remember her eyes. There was a whole story in those eyes.”

Nanny passed me the grated parmiggiano. “Here, take some and we’ll say grace.”

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