The King of Mulberry Street (14 page)

“I couldn't get you on that ship. The security is tight. Everyone told me it's impossible. The only way on that ship is with a ticket. So it doesn't matter whether you were late last night or not. Keep the orange.”

“It's for you.” I handed it to him. He tried to hand it back. “Eat it,” I said. “We're friends.”

“Friends.” He tossed the orange from hand to hand. “This is just 'cause we're friends?”

I smiled. “Well, it's for helping me get on the next ship, too.”

“Oh. Look,” said Gaetano softly. “There's something else.”

“What?”

“Maybe with a lot of bribing you could have gotten on
that ship without a ticket—or if not that ship, another one. I don't know. It's not likely.”

“What do you mean, it's not likely? Another ship will be different,” I said. “They can't all be so hard.”

“I don't know, Dom. Maybe bribing would work. Only …”

“Only what?”

“The guy I talked to said you needed documents to get on a ship—any ship—because if you get caught, the crew member gets in trouble. And the penalty for letting someone sneak on is worse if the stowaway doesn't have documents.”

I practically laughed in relief. “I've got documents.”

“No, you don't.”

I reached into my pocket. But the folded papers the translator on Ellis Island had given me were gone. I stopped and stared at Gaetano. He looked down. His temples pulsed. “You knew they were gone. You stole them!”

“Don't talk so loud.” Gaetano took me by the arm.

I pulled free. “Give them back.”

“I can't.”

“Give them back!” I shouted.

“I sold them.”

“Then just go unsell them! Right now!”

“Be quiet, will you?” Gaetano looked around, then took a step toward me. “I can't,” he said in a loud whisper. “I sold them Saturday. I tried to get them back yesterday, but the guy had already sold them to someone else.”

“No. That's not possible.”

Gaetano bounced the orange against his chest and stared at the ground.

I couldn't believe what an idiot I was. Here I'd been worried about guarding my shoes, when those papers were so much more important, and I hadn't even checked on them since Friday night. If I had checked on Saturday, I would have guessed that Gaetano had taken them. I could have gone to him and made him get them back before the other guy sold them. What a brainless mook. I hadn't even noticed that they were gone when I washed off in the park. Or when I put the oranges in my pockets. I should have, I should have, I should have. I stamped my feet and turned in a circle.

Now I couldn't get on any ship. Ever. “You're a thief. You're a dirty thief after all.” I ran along the sidewalk, clutching the package with the potatoes.

Gaetano ran beside me.

I wanted to hurl the potatoes at him—knock him into the street. Maybe a carriage would run him over. I turned and swung the package hard.

Gaetano pinned me against a wall.

“Help!” I screamed. “Thief!”

“Shut up a second.” He panted in my face. “Look, I thought you were some rich kid from the Bronx. I didn't even know what the papers were. Not till the guy who bought them told me. I'd never seen documents before. They're hard to come by. I didn't know you were alone. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. I swear.”

“Thief.”

“We weren't friends yet.”

“We aren't friends.”

“Yes, we are,” said Gaetano.

“You don't know what a friend is.”

Gaetano jerked his head back as though I'd punched him. He put the orange in my free hand. “I didn't have to tell you,” he said. “I didn't have to say anything about the documents. You'd have thought you lost them in that barrel you sleep in every night.” He turned and walked off slowly.

I wanted to throw the orange at his head. He couldn't make me feel sorry for what I'd said just because he'd told the truth. And because he knew where I slept and he hadn't stolen my shoes. He was the one who had done something rotten, not me. And I was the one who was stuck here. “Give me the money you got from selling them,” I called.

Gaetano stopped and stood there, his back to me.

I had no choice but to catch up.

“I spent it.” He turned to face me. “On a steak lunch.”

“So I'm stuck here now. I'm stuck here and it's your fault.”

Gaetano spread his hands, palms up. His eyes were solemn. “I'll let people know I want documents. Maybe someone will sell me some soon.”

“They're hard to come by,” I said. “Guess who told me?”

Gaetano's temples pulsed. “I'm your friend. I'll never do anything bad to you again.”

What was left for him to do to me? Nothing would seem bad in comparison. All at once, I was too tired to argue.

He fell into step beside me. “Look.”

I dragged my feet. I wasn't even hungry anymore.

He cleared his throat. “I'm sorry, Dom.”

His apology caught me. I didn't want it to. I wanted to hate him. It wasn't fair, what he had done.

But what was?

Napoletano boys didn't apologize. That sorry cost Gae-tano. He wanted my friendship a lot.

How come? What was his story, anyway? The other day he'd said he stayed alone, but he'd told me not to ask where he slept. And later, when I wondered if he had a mother, he'd told me never to ask about his family. He'd said it as though it was a sacred rule: don't ask. How did he get here? What happened to his parents? Why didn't he have a
padrone
, at least? Don't ask, don't ask.

I stopped and looked around. I was either with Gae-tano or totally alone. “Do you really think you could buy more documents?”

“I can try,” said Gaetano. “It'd probably cost a lot.”

At least he was telling the truth now. I tossed him the orange. He caught it.

We walked up the street in silence.

When we got to the corner of Mott, Gaetano asked, “Where are you going? I hate this street.”

“Then don't come. I didn't ask you to.”

“Wherever you're going, I'm going,” said Gaetano. “You're only nine.”

“How'd you find that out? From my documents? Don't do me any favors. I'm fine on my own.”

“Then I'm coming because we're friends.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

We turned onto Mott Street.

“You shouldn't go here,” said Gaetano. “The Chinese have been moving in.”

“What's wrong with the Chinese?”

“They're tricky. You should see. They get jobs all over
the place rolling cigars. I've heard they make as much as twenty-five dollars a week. An Italian laborer gets a dollar a day. The lowest of anyone.”

“What do you mean, the lowest of anyone?”

“Whites get a dollar and twenty-five cents a day. Negroes get a dollar and fifteen cents a day. Italians get a dollar.”

“For the same work?”

“Yeah.”

“What do the Chinese get for a day's labor?”

“No one hires them for day work. They're too skinny. But Italians are strong and still they get paid bad. And if there's any difference in the types of jobs, Italians are allowed only at the worst ones. They can't collect the piles of garbage, they can only shovel it off barges into the sea.”

“So you're jealous of the Chinese.”

“I'm not jealous,” said Gaetano. “That's ridiculous. You should hear the Chinese talk English. They're horrible. Everyone makes fun of them.”

“Yeah, you're jealous,” I said. “Here we are.” We went into the tenement and up two flights. There were three doors. “Which one do I knock on?”

“Who are you looking for?”

“The Cassone family.”

A little girl was coming down the stairs. She pointed. “At the front.”

“I could have told you,” said Gaetano. “They hang out the window at night and watch the action on Canal Street. I told you. I know all of Five Points.”

I knocked.

The door opened. A woman with puffy lips and white
hair pulled back tight into a bun looked at us in a daze. A younger man gently moved her aside. He glared. “What do you want?” His breath was rancid.

I handed him the potatoes. “Grandinetti told me to bring you these.”

The old woman took the package from the man. “I'll make potato and fried egg sandwiches for breakfast,” she said. “Your favorite.”

The man said, “Thanks,” and shut the door.

We went downstairs. The smell of potatoes sizzling in oil already wafted past our noses. And rosemary. And pepper. It was heavenly. Gaetano rolled that orange in his hands. I bet he hadn't had any breakfast, either.

But he'd had a steak lunch two days before. On me.

Still, hunger came every day.

“Go ahead and eat the orange,” I said. “I've got two more. One for me and one for Tin Pan Alley. I'm going to the corner where he works.” I looked at him with a dare in my eyes. “Come if you want.”

“Nah, I'll see you later.”

“What about all that stuff you said before—all that stuff about coming because you're my friend?”

“You know the way,” said Gaetano. “Besides, I don't like that mook.”

“You're the mook, you know that, Gaetano?”

“Hey, I said I was sorry about the documents.”

“That's not what I'm talking about. You speak every dialect of Italian, and then you're afraid of English. So you live your whole life in just these few blocks. I've seen more of this city than you have. What a stupid way to live. You're the biggest rabbit I've ever known.”

“I'm no rabbit. I'm afraid of nothing.”

“You're afraid to go with me to see Tin Pan Alley.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Prove it.”

We walked fast all the way to Tin Pan Alley's corner, eating our oranges.

“Hey,” I said, and handed Tin Pan Alley the orange.

“What's this?” he said.

“What do you think?” I said. “Eat it.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I can't believe it's so hard to give away oranges. What's with you two?”

“Don't throw me in the same category as this mook,” said Gaetano. “I had a reason for not taking mine. He's just dumb.”

“I have a reason,” said Tin Pan Alley. “If this is really mine, I'm selling it. This is Wall Street. The people who work down here don't know the value of money. They get big salaries. I can get five cents for this orange. Yo u don't believe me, but it's true. The big guys spend as much as fifty cents for a sandwich here, and it's small.”

“Fifty cents? That's a fortune,” said Gaetano. “How do you know?”

“I heard someone say it.”

“In English?” asked Gaetano. “Maybe you didn't understand right.”

Tin Pan Alley smirked. “I understood.”

“It's not your orange,” I said. I took it back.

Tin Pan Alley didn't look surprised. “So what,” he said, and turned his back to me. He wasn't going to fight. I
wanted to shake him. I knew how to fight back better than him when I was five years old.

I peeled the orange and broke it into sections. Then I walked around to the front of him. “You can't sell it now. So you might as well eat it.”

“That was dumb,” said Tin Pan Alley. But even as he spoke, his hand reached out. He put an orange section in his mouth. His eyelids half closed as he chewed.

So far that day I'd eaten only rock candy and one orange. I couldn't risk looking at the orange sections in my hand, or I might gobble them up.

Tin Pan Alley smiled. “Now and then dumb makes sense.” He ate another section. “Five cents lost. But, oh …” He ate another and another.

“Five cents is nothing compared to fifty,” I said.

“Fifty?” Tin Pan Alley's eyes sharpened. His cheeks pinched, as though he was sure I was about to pull a fast one on him.

“You're going to be eating a lot of oranges from now on.” I put the rest of the orange in his hand.

“What are you talking about?”

“I've got an idea.” And it was a beauty, all right. I could hear Mamma in my head, telling me to be my own boss. “Come on, Gaetano, hurry.”

Gaetano had been watching me this whole time as though he couldn't figure me out. But now he flinched to attention. “Why?”

I was already racing toward Five Points. “Can you get your hands on some clean paper?”

“What for?”

“That brown paper the ice cream man uses—that would do.”

“Yeah. I can get some. What for?”

“And can you get a knife?”

“A knife? Whoa. Tell me what for or I don't want any part of it.”

“Forget the knife. I bet Grandinetti has a knife I can use. Just get the paper.”

By this time, we were at the corner of Park Street. Gae-tano grabbed my arm. “What's going on?”

“I'm going to make money, Gaetano. Lots. And Tin Pan Alley is going to help me. You can be part of it, unless you're too much of a rabbit.”

“You think I'm stupid enough to do something just because you call me names?” he said. “I do what I want to do. And I don't hurt anyone. No knives.”

“We won't hurt a soul. I'm going to earn enough money for a ticket home and new documents. You want something, that's for sure. You're always hungry. Except when you're eating steak. So are you in?”

“All I have to do is get brown paper?”

“Yeah. Four big pieces.”

“What about that knife?” he said.

“Just get the paper and meet me at Grandinetti's.”

“Where?”

“The produce store. And if I'm not there, wait for me, 'cause I'll be coming.”

I ran to Grandinetti's. He was standing behind the weighing counter, reading the paper. “Please,” I said.

Grandinetti looked over the edge of the paper at me. “Please what?”

The words burst out of me. “I need to borrow twenty-five cents. Only for a couple of hours.”

“I'm not a bank.” He clapped his hands together in front of his chest as though he was praying and shook them at me. “Small as you are, you're a good worker. You keep it up and I'll be square with you. But I'm no chump.”

“Here.” I took off my shoes. “You can keep them if I don't pay you back by the end of the day.”

Grandinetti frowned. “Your folks will be angry if you come home without your shoes.”

“I'll have my shoes at the end of the day—and you'll have your twenty-five cents. Please.”

“I don't want to face your angry father.”

“I don't have a father.”

Grandinetti blinked. “Your shoes are worth more than twenty-five cents—but twenty-five cents is all I'll lend you.”