The King of Mulberry Street (10 page)

A boy stood on a corner with a tin cup on the ground. He played a small harp. I went up to him. “Where are the factories that Italians work in?”

He turned his back to me. Red welts showed under the collar of his shirt. I stepped away in a hurry, praying his
padrone
hadn't seen me, that I hadn't gotten him in trouble.

I hurried to Mulberry Street and went up the block, past the hanging sides of beef and pork in front of the butcher's, past the pharmacy, past the ratcatcher who stood by a wall, holding out a string with dead rats attached by the tail. He was good! I hurried along listening for someone I could talk to, anyone who could explain how I could earn money.

And he appeared, the boy who had thrown the dog turd at me the night before. He stepped out of an alley into my path, legs planted. “I told you to get out of here.”

“I'm glad the policeman didn't catch you,” I said.

“How'd you know about the policeman?”

I shrugged. “I need to find a factory with Italian workers so I can earn money.”

“That why you were in Chatham Square?”

“How'd you know I was there?”

He crossed his arms on his chest. “Even if you weren't a little squirt, you couldn't get a job there. Chatham Square factory managers don't hire from this neighborhood. They think they're too good for Five Points people. Italians can only work laying bricks or breaking stones or digging ditches.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don't know anything, do you?” The tough guy walked around me. “Where'd you get those shoes?”

“My mother bought them for me.”

“Where's your mother?”

“At home.”

“Where's home?”

I shrugged.

“I bet you live in Brooklyn, and you got lost in the city, right? So now you want to do some piddling errand so you can make enough money to take the streetcar home. Or, no, you live in the Bronx, that's it, right? The Italians in the Bronx make good. That's how your mamma got money for those shoes.” He smirked. “That, or she works at home.”

“Of course she works at home,” I said. “She helps Aunt Sara with laundry and mending.”

He laughed. “You really know nothing. That's not what ‘working at home’ means. You want to know how to get a job?” He leaned toward me and beckoned with a curled finger.

I stepped forward.

“Turn Irish,” he whispered.

“Irish? How?”

He laughed again. “You don't. You can't turn white just by wishing. Irish boys get all the bootblack jobs. They deliver all the newspapers. There's no way an Italian boy like you can get a penny without begging or stealing. And if you beg around here, the
padroni
will beat you to a pulp. They own every street corner worth begging on. And if you steal, you have to give half of everything to me.”

“I don't steal. And I'd never beg. And why would I have to give you half, anyway?”

“So I wouldn't turn you in. That's how it works.”

My stomach hurt. “I'm hungry.”

“Who isn't? Give me your shoes and I'll give you fare for the streetcar.”

I knew what a streetcar was. They were building one in Milano, up in the north of Italy. Uncle Aurelio had talked about it.

“My shoes wouldn't fit you,” I said.

“You think I'd want to wear them? I'd sell them in a second.”

“If I wanted to ride a streetcar, I'd sell them myself,” I said.

“You don't know who to sell them to,” said the boy. “I do.”

I walked around him. I passed a shoemaker and a barbershop and a candy maker, and from each of their doorways I heard Italian. So that boy was wrong. Italians could get jobs—at least on Mulberry Street.

A produce vendor was taking oranges from a bushel
basket and arranging them in piles on a low table outside his shop. “Want me to do that for you?” I asked.

He glanced at me. “Go home.”

I stepped closer. “It'll only cost you an orange.”

“Didn't you hear me? Don't bother me. Don't bother my customers.” He didn't speak Napoletano, but I could understand him pretty well. And his tone wasn't mean, just wary.

“You've got better things to do,” I said. “And I can do it perfect.”

“Perfect?” He looked at me again, amused.

I made a circle of my thumb and index finger and drew my hand across the air in front of my chest in the gesture that meant
perfect
.

Was he almost smiling?

I lifted my chin and looked straight into his eyes, hopeful.

“What do you know about stacking fruit, a little kid like you?”

“If you don't like the job I do, you don't pay me.”

“If I turn around and you run off with an orange in each hand, I'll come after you and make you sorry you were ever born.”

“I don't steal.”

He pushed the bushel of oranges toward me. “You get a tomato, not an orange,” he said.

So I stacked the oranges, the way I stacked Nonna's yarn balls at home. I was careful; not a single orange rolled away. I imagined Nonna watching me, saying some proverb—maybe the one about how the eye had to have its part in everything. That was why it was worth it to make
even the smallest thing beautiful, even a plate of food that would be eaten in an instant. I stacked the oranges for Nonna's sake.

The man was standing behind me when I finished. “Do these tomatoes and the zucchini and the onions, and I'll give you two tomatoes.”

Amazed, I stacked them just right. “Can I come back tomorrow?”

“Sure, but it's Sunday. I'll be closed. Here.” He handed me a bruised orange, as well as two tomatoes.

“I wonder, do you know a widower named Tonino?”

The man shook his head.

I put the food in my pocket and walked back to the mouth of the alley. I knew the tough guy would show up sooner or later.

It was sooner.

Before he could speak, I handed him a tomato—a tomato my own mouth was watering to eat.

“That's right,” he said. “Half of everything.”

“I didn't steal them,” I said. “And I didn't give you one because you said I should. I gave you one 'cause I wanted to.”

He looked me up and down. Then he leaned over and bit his tomato. Juice squirted out and landed on my shoe.

“Watch it!” I pushed him away, squatted, and wiped off the mess with the hem of my shirt.

When I stood again, he stuffed the rest of the tomato in his mouth and grinned as he chewed. “I knew it. You wouldn't sell those shoes no matter what. What were they, a birthday present?”

I ate my tomato.

“So why'd you want to give me a tomato, then?”

I thought of how Nonna had made me bring the bowl of meatballs to the Rossi family next door the night before I left home. “You get, you give.”

“
Magari
. What gave you such an idea? Look at you: the king of Mulberry Street, just giving things out right and left. Well, listen good. In this neighborhood it's everybody for himself.”

Magari
. I had to shut my eyes hard against the surge of longing; I could see Nonna sitting at the kitchen table sighing, “
Magari
.” I could smell her garlic hands, see the thick knobs of her knuckles. And now I realized I'd given this guy the tomato for another reason, too. Mamma said survive. This guy could be an ally. As Nonna's proverb went: “
A chi me dà pane io 'o chiamme pate
”—Anyone who feeds me is like a father to me.

I took out the orange and peeled it. It smelled like flowers. The boy watched me closely. Before I had a chance to think, I gave him half and ate a section of my half. It tasted wonderful. Juicy.

He ate his orange fast. “So you think you're a big guy 'cause some jerk from Calabria paid you, huh? Big deal, tomatoes cost next to nothing. And that orange was too bruised to sell. Yo u still don't have your streetcar fare.”

I finished my part of the orange and licked my fingers. This guy was older than me, but he wasn't that tough. The way he devoured the food told me that. Really tough guys were never that hungry—not in Napoli. A bad guy would have simply knocked me down and stolen my shoes. “I don't want money. I just want enough food to last me two days.”

“Two days. I'm supposed to put up with you for two days?”

My heart banged; I could stay with him. “Yeah. Where do you sleep?”

“Whoa. You're not sleeping anywhere near me. And don't ask where I sleep. Look. I like being alone. There are gangs of boys around here—but they're always noticed, so they're always getting in trouble. I stay alone, and I don't stay in one place too long, so no one hassles me. The most I'll do is look out for you. But if you want my protection, you're going to have to show you're worth it.”

“How?” I said.

“In the next block Pasquale Cuneo runs a salami shop. Go do a chore for him, and bring me back prosciutto—the raw kind.”

Prosciutto was pig meat. “No.”

“Don't make me mad, kid.”

That was the last thing I wanted to do. “What's your name?” I asked.

“What's yours?”

“Dom.”

“Mine's Gaetano.”

“I can do lots of work, Gaetano. But not in a shop that sells pig meat.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged.

“If you don't do what I say, you'll be alone. You can't make it alone. Not in Five Points.”

I was sick of being alone. It couldn't be that bad to be around pig meat, so long as I didn't eat it. “I'll do it.”

“You bet you will. You're lucky it's a slow day, or I wouldn't pay any attention to you at all. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

Gaetano rubbed his mouth in thought. “Okay. I got a better idea. On Park Street there's a big store run by Luigi Pierano. He's got every kind of Italian food.” He slapped me on the back. “Go work for him and bring me four pennies.”

I wanted to ask him to show me a penny, so I'd be sure to bring him what he wanted. But then he'd know I wasn't from that place he said—the Bronx. I felt safer having him think I had a mother close by who might show up on a streetcar at any minute.

I turned around and went back to Park Street. There were lots of stores with writing on the windows. None of them had the name Luigi Pierano. But one was bigger than most. I went in.

Rows of shelves from floor to ceiling brimmed over with food. A line of bins held spices. I stood over the one with the seeds I knew so well—anise—and breathed deeply. Mamma's scent. For an instant the room swirled and my head went light.

A woman clamped a hand around my upper arm and steadied me. She said something in English, then in some Italian dialect, “Are you ill?” I smiled to reassure her. She walked on.

A man behind the counter was making gigantic sandwiches. A card taped to the front of the counter read 25¢. Twenty-five cents? Was it a lot?

“Can I do a chore for you?” I asked the sandwich maker.

“Get out of here.” He didn't even look at me. His tone was final.

I went outside. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the next street. I crossed Park and worked my way between the adults to the inside of the circle. An organ grinder played music and a monkey on a chain took off his cap to people in the crowds.

The woman beside me put a coin in the monkey's cap. The monkey's tiny, long fingers clasped around her thumb for a shake. She gasped. The monkey chattered, showing sharp teeth. His eyes darted around with a quick intelligence that made my stomach sick. He knew he was a prisoner and he hated all these people; I could have sworn it.

Everyone took out coins; they all wanted to shake the monkey's hand.

I pushed my way back through the people, bursting free onto the street, and ran the path I'd already traveled twice that day, back toward the boy with the triangle. He was still on the corner. “How much have you gotten?” I asked.

He turned his back to me.

I moved around in front of him. “I asked how much you've gotten.”

“So what.”

“Listen, Tin Pan Alley, I'll do it. I'll play the triangle.”

Tin Pan Alley put his hand in his pocket and counted the coins. “Thirty-two cents,” he said. “You have to make sixty-eight more. Then we split the last twenty. Promise?”

“I promise.” I took off my shoes; then I suddenly clutched them to my chest. “If you run off with my shoes, I'll catch you,” I said. “I'm fast.”

“If you run off with my triangle,” he said, “my padrone will catch you. You can't hide from him.”

“I don't steal,” I said for the third time that morning.

“You think I do?” Tin Pan Alley stiffened.

I shook my head. He was too proud to steal. I handed him my shoes.

He handed me the triangle. “You smell like oranges.” His face looked wistful for a moment. “Play.”

I tapped the little metal rod against the triangle. Most people walked by quickly, not looking at me. But whenever someone looked, I smiled big, and, more often than not, they dropped a coin in the tin cup.

Tin Pan Alley sat with his back against the nearest lamppost and kept an eye out. If he saw his
padrone
coming, he was going to jump up, throw me my shoes, and grab the triangle. I was supposed to run as fast as I could. And if the
padrone
caught me, I was supposed to tell him I worked for someone else; no padrone would beat a boy who belonged to another. Instead, he'd take whatever I had and send me on my way with a warning.

The very idea of his
padrone
made me queasy. But I didn't want to be alone again that night, and I didn't see any other way of getting four pennies for Gaetano.

Every so often Tin Pan Alley came over and emptied the tin cup. It had to stay close to empty or no one would give.

People ate as they walked along—ugly meat sticks that Tin Pan Alley called wienerwursts—German food. Sometimes the meat was covered in a stinking rotten cabbage. And they ate sandwiches, much smaller than the ones back in the store on Park Street.

The tomato and the orange half had made me hungrier. The sun was hot. The rumble of horses and carts hammered in my head. I felt woozy and smiled weakly at everyone, whether they looked at me or not.

Tin Pan Alley jiggled his cup in my face. “Ninety-eight cents already. You're good at this, and you don't even whistle. Usually it's slow on Saturdays.”

Saturday. It was Saturday. The Sabbath. Jews didn't work on the Sabbath.