The King of Mulberry Street (19 page)

I clenched my teeth to keep from making a noise. Poor Gaetano. Had he come to America with his father, and then had his father died on him? But I could never ask him. I stared at the floor.

“Let me get this straight. You boys are on your own? Neither one of you has family or a
padrone
here?”

We didn't say anything.

“Where do you sleep?”

“I used to have a barrel,” I said. “But now I sleep in the park.”

Grandinetti looked at Gaetano. “And you?”

“I take care of myself.”

Grandinetti shook his head in disgust. “There's too much of this going on. Too many kids on their own.” He put the money back in Gaetano's hand. “Here's what you do. Cross the street and go to number forty-four, one flight up. Rent a room from Signora Esposito.”

“How much does a room cost?” I asked.

“It's not a real boardinghouse. She has one extra room.
Tiny. Offer her two dollars a week per person, with dinner included.”

“We can't afford that,” said Gaetano.

“Did you really earn this money?”

“Yes.”

“Are you planning on earning more?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you talking about? It's half the price of even the cheapest boardinghouses.” Grandinetti handed us each a plum. “Now get out of here. I'm going to stand in this doorway and watch. Go to the widow's. I mean it. If you sleep outdoors with money in your pockets, you'll wake with empty pockets—if you have any clothes on at all, that is.”

We walked up Mulberry, reading the numbers.

Gaetano checked over his shoulder. “Grandinetti's still watching us.”

“It doesn't matter whether he watches or not,” I said. “He's right. We're going to keep earning money. We need a safe place at night. A home.”

“Wherever I am is my home.”

“That's what you say. I saw the policeman chasing you.”

Gaetano looked stung. “What I have is a lot better than the park.”

“I hope so.” Here it was: number forty-four. I opened the door.

Gaetano stopped on the sidewalk.

Signora Esposito had an apartment one flight up. Was she young? As young as Mamma? Her hair was bound to be black. But was it wavy or curly? Did her hands rest easy or was she always crocheting or chopping vegetables? Was
she fat? Thin? Tall? Short? Were there other people there? Children? Did they have things to play with?

It felt like forever since I'd been in a real home. I had to see this one. And she had to take us in. “Come on.”

“I'll look. One quick look. That's all.” Gaetano followed me up the stairs.

I knocked on the first door. No one answered.

“There's another door,” said Gaetano.

So we went to the second door and knocked.

“Who's there?” came a high voice. It wavered, like a singer's. I imagined her willowy and graceful.

“Dom and Gaetano,” I said. “Grandinetti—the fruit vendor—he sent us.”

The sound of a chain being unlatched came from the other side of the door. I held my breath.

And there she was: the widow I'd seen in Grandinetti's last Monday morning—the one who had watched him like a hawk, as though he was going to cheat her. She had on a robe and her face wasn't powdered, but she still looked scary, like a ghost. “What do you want?” said the hag.

I couldn't speak. Gaetano gave me a little punch in the kidneys. “
Aiii
,” burst from me. “Grandinetti said you might have a room for rent.”

She examined Gaetano from head to toe. Then me. When she got to my shoes, she nodded. “My children are grown. There's three beds in the room.” She stepped back. “Well, are you going to come in or not?” She patted her hair nervously. It was black with gray streaks and it looked hard and dry as straw.

The door opened into her kitchen. A pot of bones simmered on the stove. I wondered if she'd collected them
from garbage cans. We followed her across a dark, cluttered living room and down to the end of a narrow hall. She opened a door.

It was a sunny room with a set of drawers, three beds, a tattered rug. The mirror was chipped. The sheets were patched. The wallpaper hung free in one corner. There was no extra space anywhere. Everything in the room felt old and well used and homey. You could sleep in that room without wondering what might crawl over you in the night.

“We'll take it,” said Gaetano. “A dollar fifty a week, with dinner.”

I glared at Gaetano. He'd seen the pot of bones, too. He knew she was poor.

She pulled on a limp lock of hair. “A dollar fifty won't pay for dinner every night.”

“Two dollars,” I said. “Each.”

She pursed her lips and now her eyes grew shrewd. “That's still not much.”

“And we'll do odd jobs.” I pointed at the wallpaper. “You could use extra hands around here.”

She put out her palm. “Four dollars total, then. Due every Tuesday.”

Gaetano stepped in front of me. “Is dinner ready?”

“What do you think I am, a fortune-teller? I had no idea you'd be coming tonight. There's barely enough for me.”

“Then we'll pay tomorrow night,” said Gaetano. “At dinner. And we'll pay less this time because we're getting one meal less. We'll pay three dollars.”

Signora Esposito sucked in her breath. I could see in her eyes she was trying to figure out if she was getting cheated.

“Three fifty,” I said.

“Very well.”

So that night I stretched out in a bed. Back in Napoli I'd slept on two chairs pushed together. Since then I'd slept in all kinds of places: the floor under Eduardo's bunk on the cargo ship, the top deck of the
Città di Napoli
, the barrel, Central Park.

A bed. My own bed. I put my shirt and pants neatly in a drawer, careful to keep my underthings on—Mamma had said, “Don't undress with anyone around”—and slid beween the clean sheets.

We had plenty of money to start out our business day in the morning. Lunch the next day would be a sandwich. And dinner would be whatever Signora Esposito made, which was bound to be something different from a Pierano sandwich.

“Everything's going our way,” I whispered into the night air.

Gaetano didn't answer. I could tell from his breathing that he wasn't asleep. But if he wanted to pretend, that was okay with me. Maybe I'd spooked him. After all, you could invite bad fortune merely by thinking life was good.

I rolled on my side. The mattress yielded, like the stuffing in the chairs back in Napoli. The bed frame creaked. Had the chairs creaked when I rolled back home? I couldn't remember. How could that be?

Panic made my throat narrow. I had trouble breathing. I sat up in the dark to try to get more air. I should still remember everything about Napoli. Every detail. How long had I been gone? Was it two months? I could remember if I tried hard enough.

Okay, I'd start with Nonna's proverbs. I imagined her sitting at the kitchen table, crocheting, her tiny hands moving so fast, saying, “
O cane mozzeca 'o stracciato
”—The dog bites whoever dresses in rags. I lay on my stomach and reached under my pillow to rest my hands on my shoes. These shoes kept me from looking like I was dressed in rags. Signora Esposito had given us the room because of them. One more way these shoes had paved my path.

A recipe now, I could remember a recipe for sure. Spaghetti puttanesca. Aunt Sara made it best. She put tomatoes in a bowl and poured boiling water over them. In another bowl she put our secret ingredient—a couple of handfuls of raisins, with boiling water over them, too. She pitted black olives and sliced them. And chopped a few cloves of garlic. Then put olive oil in the pan and crushed in a couple of dried red peppers. When the pepper smoke made us cough, she added anchovy fillets, smushing them with the back of a spoon till they came apart in the oil. Then the olives and garlic and a spoonful of capers. She peeled the tomatoes—the skin came off easy after they'd been sitting in the hot water—and cut them into the pan with a pinch of salt. She drained the raisins and threw them in. And it was done. Ready to pour over spaghetti with chopped parsley on top.

I was remembering everything. Breath came easy now. I could remember.

I could see Uncle Vittorio, tall and thin and sallow. I could feel the thick calluses on the scoop of palm between his thumb and first finger on both hands, from holding that broom he swept the streets with every night. I could
smell horse in Uncle Aurelio's hair and see the burn scars from the smithy fire on his knuckles. I could see Aunt Rebecca tucking my cousins into bed, and Luigi and Ernesto protesting—“Just one more story!” She'd sit on the edge of the bed, her jutting jaw moving slowly as she told about a silly man who saw the reflection of the moon in a pond and thought the moon itself was in the water. The whole of her wide girth would jiggle when she laughed.

And, at last, I saw Mamma. The inside of my nose prickled with held-back tears. Mamma in front of a window, light flooding around her. She was beautiful and warm and soft and strong and anise-sweet. And she was crying.

I had to work hard and earn my ticket fast. One thousand sandwiches. That wasn't so far away now—not at this rate. And I had to spend the last hour of every day going over everything I could remember from Napoli so that I'd recognize it all when I finally got home. That way it would be just as though I'd never been gone at all.

She'd be proud of me when I got home, proud to know I'd been my own boss.

I pressed the heels of my hands on my eyelids.

“You okay?” Gaetano sat up now.

I didn't answer.

“What you told Grandinetti, about having a mother back in Napoli, well … I figured she was dead. You know, died on the ship over. A lot of women do.” He went silent.

“She's not dead. She paid my passage on a cargo ship.”

“Cargo ships don't take passengers. Oh! You mean you were a stowaway. She put you as a stowaway, all alone! What kind of mother would do a thing like that?”

“What are you saying? That's not how it was. She was supposed to come with me, but this bad guy on the cargo ship wouldn't let her.”

“What'd he do to her?”

“I don't know. He told me to go hide and he said he'd hide her someplace else. And then she was gone.”

“Sounds like she wanted you to go alone.”

“Don't say that!”

“You said it yourself.”

“I did not. Yo u stinker!”

“You said she paid your passage. She didn't pay her own passage.”

“That's not true! Shut up!” My heart was beating so hard, I couldn't hear anything else. I dropped back on my pillow and listened to the drum in my head.

After a long time, Gaetano said, “Yeah, what do I know?” He lay down on his side. “Good night, Dom.”

My head was finally quiet.

Why did I tell Gaetano that Mamma had paid for my passage instead of saying our passage? Was that really what I'd heard her tell Franco when she was arguing with him? I couldn't remember.

I went over that last morning in Italy. Mamma dressed me in my Sabbath clothes, with my new socks and shoes. Like a traveler. She wore an ordinary dress. And she carried nothing extra. No bundle of treasures, none of the things that the immigrants at Ellis Island carried.

But I was her treasure. I was all she needed.

She didn't mean for me to go alone. No one would think a nine-year-old could make it on his own. Sure, Rosaria, Tonino's oldest daughter, was taking care of her four
younger brothers while he made his fortune in America— and she was my age. But Rosaria had neighbors and relatives who looked in on her. I was alone. Mamma would never have stowed me away alone.

The smell of a citronella candle came through the open window. And I remembered Mamma crying. She had cried for three nights in a row. I was going to ask her why, but each morning when we woke, I'd forget.

The heels of my hands pressed so hard on my eyeballs, I saw white inside my head.

“
Chi tene mamma, nun chiagne
”—Whoever has a mother doesn't cry. One of Nonna's proverbs.

I had a mother. And she hadn't put me on the boat alone on purpose. She wouldn't have. She couldn't have.

She loved me. Mamma loved me.

I got out of bed and shut the window.

I woke up early and staggered in the dark through the apartment door to the bathroom out in the hall. I felt like a king on a throne—ha! The king of Mulberry Street, doing my business in the right kind of place again. No more hiding behind bushes.

The door opened while I was finishing up.

“What? Who's there? What do you think you're doing here?” A man swiped me on the shoulder, knocking me to the floor. My cheek hit something sharp. “Get out of here, you ruffian!” He kicked me in the side. He grabbed me by the elbow and threw me out in the hall.

“Help!” I screamed.

“Out, out, out!” He pulled me up by the hair and dragged me to the top of the steps.

“Stop!” Signora Esposito came running and blocked the stairwell. “Let go of him!”

“He was in the bathroom. A hoodlum in our bathroom!”

“That's no hoodlum. That's Dom. Let go!”

“Dom?”

“He's renting a room from me. Dom. And his friend, Gaetano.”

The man let go of my hair. “My mistake.” He brushed off his hands as though I'd gotten him dirty. “Next time, let a person know when there's someone new around.”

“Next time ask before you beat someone senseless.” Si-gnora Esposito took me by the hand and pulled me inside.

She roughly washed the cut on my cheek and tsked. “Look at that.”

“It doesn't hurt,” I lied. It had been a long time since anyone had fussed over me, even gruffly. If she kept it up, I might cry.

She took out a bottle of red-brown tincture and smeared it on me.

I tensed up. But it didn't even sting.

“When's the last time you cleaned yourself?”

I shrugged.

“Tonight after dinner take a sponge bath in the kitchen sink.”

“Thank you. I might do that.”

“You will do that,” she said.

When Gaetano finally woke, he took one look at my face and let out a low whistle.

So I told him the whole story, maybe exaggerating a bit
for sympathy. I held the darkening bruise on my elbow under his nose.