Streets of Gold (13 page)

I told him I was eleven going on twelve, I would be twelve in October, and he said I was a big girl for my age, that in China the girls are smaller, but that in China when a girl was twelve years old, she was already married, that his wife had wrote to him last week saying she thought his daughter would be getting married soon. He was telling me all this in his funny way of talking, I could hardly understand anything he said, I think he
must
have been smoking dope because he really had this very stupid look on his face, I can’t describe it, it was just
stupid
-looking. So I said wouldn’t he like to have some of the lichee nuts, too, and he said no, he didn’t care for none and then he put his hand on my knee and said I was a nice little girl. I didn’t think it was nothing, his putting his hand on my knee, because he had a little girl my own age back home in China, and this wasn’t like a stranger or nothing, this was Charlie in his shop, even though I know they smoke a lot of dope. I didn’t think nothing of it until he put his hand under my skirt, and then I tried to get up off the bed, and slipped and fell, and he picked me up off the floor, and said shhh, shhh, don’t be afraid, and put me on the bed and put his hand on my eyes, just put his hand on my eyes and when I looked again he had no pants on and I saw his heinie and everything and I got scared I would have a baby like Angelina, so I ran out of there and came upstairs and when Mama found me crying in the toilet and wanted to know what happened I couldn’t tell her but I feel better now.

STELLA: They didn’t believe me, none of them. They were my own family except for my father’s friend Pino.
He
was there, too, and my grandfather, may he rest in peace, and I told them what happened with that lousy Chinaman downstairs in his shop, and none of them believed me. Am I a liar or something, have I ever lied to you, Iggie? That they shouldn’t believe me? My own family, and I was telling them what that man did to me, and I could see my mother didn’t believe it — well, she was a
lady
, you know, I guess she never dreamt in her entire life that anything like that could happen. That was for movies and books, you know, some Chinese dope fiend fooling around with her daughter. My grandfather yelled at her in Italian — you never met him, Iggie, he died before you were born, may he rest in peace. I was his darling, he liked me better than any of the other kids, even Cristina who was very pretty when she was a girl; it was my grandfather who took up for me. He said to my mother in Italian, what do you think she’s doing, making this whole thing up? She just came from downstairs, you found her crying in the toilet, you think she could invent a thing like this? My mother said Charlie seems like such a nice man, I can’t believe he would do something like this, and my father said Stella, are you sure you’re telling us the truth? You didn’t make this up, did you, because this is very serious.

I said I didn’t make it up, I saw him naked. You should have seen him, Iggie, he was the hairiest thing. I always thought Chinks were supposed to be practically hairless like albinos, isn’t that true? Well, who knows? And those dirty pictures he had on the wall over the bed. He had this one picture of a dark-haired woman with her blouse unbuttoned, four buttons of her blouse, the top four buttons. I don’t know what
she
was supposed to be, maybe one of those Chinese concubines, you know, like in
The Good Earth
; that was a really good movie. I also read the book, don’t forget. They have six or seven wives, those Chinamen, you’d think it would be against the law. I don’t think Charlie Shoe had more than one wife, but those pictures on the wall were of concubines or maybe Chinese actresses. All I can remember is the one who had her blouse open and showing everything, and practically naked except for high-button shoes.

It was a good thing I had the presence of mind to get out of there. I was only eleven, Iggie, well, almost twelve, and there he was babbling some kind of crazy English, I’m American, don’t forget, I was speaking English from the day I was born, so how was I supposed to understand what he was saying. I was lucky, I’ll tell you. Lying to me about his daughter, I’ll bet he didn’t even
have
a daughter, that was just his way of getting around me, you know? Putting me off my guard. He was doped up, Iggie, I’m sure of that, I don’t want you ever, if anybody
ever
offers you anything, a cigarette, anything, I don’t want you to
touch
it, do you hear me? You just say no, I’m sorry, I don’t smoke, or tell them your father’s a cop, make up any kind of story, but don’t touch anything. I read in the
Journal-American
the other day that there’s a lot of marijuana going around the city, that’s how they get you, they could take you to China for all you know.

Maybe he would have done that to me, that’s possible when you think of it. How would you like your mother to be dressed like a Chink in Hong Kong someplace or Shanghai and Paul Muni comes in with his slanty eyes and says here’s your dope, Stella, smoke all your pipe like a nice little girl. How do I know even those lichee nuts weren’t doped up, he was feeding me enough of them. He could have gone to jail for fifty years, do you know that? Fooling around with a little girl? That’s very serious, Iggie, they would’ve thrown away the key. Don’t you ever fool around with any young girls, you hear me? I mean, when you grow up. What happened with Tina in the closet when we were still living in Harlem don’t mean nothing, you were both little kids. But don’t you ever touch no little girls, he could have ruined my life, that man. And for what? So he could put his hand under my skirt? I don’t know what he expected to find under there, I was only eleven. But of course, who knows where it would have stopped?

They had Dr. Mastroiani come up to examine me — that was my
mother’s
idea, naturally, because she didn’t believe her own daughter, she’d rather believe that nice little Chink downstairs — and Dr. Mastroiani didn’t find nothing because he hadn’t
done
nothing to me, of course, not that way. You don’t know about these things yet, thank God, but it could have been very serious, he could have, well, penetrated me which Dr. Mastroiani said he didn’t do, and which of course I knew he didn’t do. All he done was put his hand on my leg and under my skirt, which was
plenty
. And then he put his hand over my eyes, and I think he warned me not to tell anybody about this because God would strike me dead. I guess that was why he put his hand over my eyes, that was like Chinese for you didn’t see nothing, Stella. I’ll
bet
that was it. Sure.

When you were born, you know, everybody said it was the Evil Eye, that when the Chinaman put his hand over my eyes like that it was some kind of curse, a Chinese curse, and that’s what happened when you were born, though if that was the case, why didn’t it happen to Tony? He was my firstborn, right? Anyway, I don’t believe in that greaseball stuff. I’m American, don’t forget.

After the doctor got finished with me, the priest came upstairs, and I told him what had happened and he made me swear to God on the crucifix that I was telling the truth, and then I guess my mother finally believed me, and she looked at my father, and my father nodded, and then all the men went in the front room, my father and my grandfather and Pino, and then they went to get some other men — Mr. Bardoni who was also from Fiormonte, and Mr. Agnelli from the ice station, though I don’t know why they bothered to call
him
, he was probably in his office behind the icehouse, who knows
where
he was? And also my cousin Ralphie, do you remember Ralphie, Iggie? He used to play accordion, he was a very good musician, you should get in touch with him now that you’re doing so good with the piano. They all of them went downstairs to see the Chinaman, and what happened served him right.

Francesco Di Lorenzo, father to Stella, grandfather to Ike, in the intensive care unit of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital on the morning of June 17, 1973. He is ninety-two years, eleven months and ten days old. He will die at 11:50
A.M.
Ike has been alone in the room with him since ten minutes to ten the night before. His grandfather is in a semicomatose state, and much of his speech is incoherent. Ike, too, has been talking. Together and separately, they are trying to understand something. They do not always hear each other because sometimes they are talking simultaneously. But now, as his grandfather tells his version of what happened with the Chinese laundryman, Ike is silent.

FRANCESCO: He lives like a pig, this China man, come
un porco vero, capisci, Ignazio?
We go down, we come in the store, he say hello, hello, I say what you do my daughter? He’s sweat, Ignazio, he’s work in the back when we come inside, he look at us, he does no understand. I say my daughter, my daughter, what you do? And Ralphie, he’s big man, he takes the China man, he throws him in back through the curtain, and we go in. This is my daughter, no? I must believe, no? She swears to the priest, she puts her hand on the cross and she swears this China man he does things to her. But in the back, where is the bed? No bed, Ignazio. On the floor is a straw...
come si dice?
Mat? Mattress?
Come vuol’ dire?
No bed. Only this skinny straw on the floor near where he irons the clothes. And Stella, she says there’s movie pictures on the wall, pictures of girls, but where? No pictures on the wall. And a calendar where? No calendar with a Chinese lady, no thing like that. So where she gets this in her head? She makes it up? Or he hides everything when she runs away? He hides the bed, he hides the pictures, he hides the calendar? Ralphie says what you do to Stella? He says I bandage her finger. Ralphie says 
I
give you finger, and push him against the wall, and the China man he’s very scare, he looks at me, he looks at Pino and Giovanni and my father-law. I say
aspetta
, wait a minute, Ralph.

Because, Ignazio, tell me the true. If there is no bed and no pictures and no calendar, then maybe also there was no touch, eh? Maybe Stella don’t lie, I don’t think she lie, but maybe she think it happen what did not happen. So I sit down with the China man, and I say was my daughter here? My Stella? And he says yes.

And I say what you do to her, mister?

And he says I bandage her finger.

You touch her? I say. You put hand under her dress? You cover her eye?

He says no. He shake his head. He says no again.

Ralphie says you a no-good lying bast, and he hit the man.

Then everybody is hit him, me too. And we go upstairs.

Ignazio, I don’t know. I get very sick in my heart. I think, what is this America? A man’s daughter is no safe two doors away? And to beat a poor man like myself? When maybe he is tell the true, but she swears on the cross? I decide to go home. This time I go home. This time I take Pino and his baby with me, there is no thing here for them, not no more, this time we go. I am thirta-four years old, it is enough. I promise you, Ignazio, this time I go home because I have been no more I wish to have this terrible things that happen, where in Italy, no, it does not, I will go home. I will tell Tessie, I will tell you grandma, I will say
no,
Tessie, we go home, you hear me, Tessie, I take you home now, I leave here, this place, we go home
now
, we
go
.

Grandpa, you might have made it. You just might have made it. If only the whole damn world hadn’t decided to go to war the following week.

It is to be remembered, by those who choose to ponder the ironies of alliances, that Italy was on the side of God (
our
side) in World War I. Japan was, too. And so was Russia, that dear good friend with whom we joined hands in a common cause again, less than thirty years later. War may be hell, and stupid besides, but that’s not the point of this book, so let’s not belabor the obvious. My grandfather recognized it as idiotic from the very beginning; as far as he was concerned, the world was conspiring to keep him from going home. When Italy entered the war in 1915, he shook his head in disgust and spat on the sidewalk outside the tailor shop.

But if Stella was undeniably American to begin with, she became even more so during World War I. It’s easy for a girl entering puberty to become excited about all sorts of things, but war is the biggest thing going for pubescent girls and boys of all ages in
any
age, and World War I was the hugest spectacle that had come along in a long while, certainly the most extravagant (and onliest) since Stella’s birth. For Stella, everything following World War I was simply old hat. Word War II? So what? (Until she lost her eldest son in it, which senseless murder she justified with the words “He died for America.” You poor stupid woman, he died for
nothing
. And he was killed by a fucking wop; how did that sit with you, Mom? Did it make you feel even more American and less Italian?) Korea? Bush-league antics, and besides, they were killing Chinks, which served them right. Vietnam? Who ever heard of Vietnam before everybody started making such a stink about it? As wars go, Stella lived through the very best of them,