The mother sat at the round kitchen table. She rested her head on her hand, hiding her face. When Octavia came with the cups she said, still shielding her face, “See. A little girl knows the truth and we laugh.” She caressed her daughter, her fingers full of hatred, hurting the tender flesh. “Listen to the children in the future. We old people are animals. Animals.”
“Ah,” Zia Louche crooned, “coffee. Hot coffee. Calm yourself.” The baby continued to wail.
The mother sat still. Octavia saw that a terrible rage at the world, at fate, made her unable to speak. Lucia Santa, her sallow skin darkening, held back her tears by pressing her fingers in her eyes.
Zia Louche, too frightened to speak to the mother, scolded the infant. “Come, weep,” she said. “Ah, how good it feels. How easy it is, eh? You have the right. Ah, how fine. Louder. Louder.” But then the child became still, laughing at that toothless, wrinkled face mirrored from the other side of time.
The old crone shouted in mock anger, “Finished so soon? Come. Weep.” She shook the baby gently, but Vincent laughed, his toothless gums a mockery of hers.
Then the old woman said slowly, in a sad, singsong voice, “Miserabile, miserabile. Your father died before you were born.”
At these words the mother’s control broke. She pressed her nails tightly into the flesh of her face, and the great streaming tears mingled with the blood of the two long gashes she made in her cheeks. The old crone chirped, “Come, Lucia, some coffee now.” There was no answer. After a long time the mother lifted her dark face. She raised her black-clad arm to the stained ceiling and said in a deadly earnest voice filled with venom and hate, “I curse God.”
Caught in that moment of satanic pride, Octavia loved her mother. But even now, so many years later, she remembered with shame the scene that followed. Lucia Santa had lost all dignity. She cursed. Zia Louche said, “Shh—shh—think of the little girl who listens.” But the mother rushed out of the apartment and down the four flights of stairs, screaming obscenities at the kind neighbors, who immediately locked the doors she pounded on.
She screamed in Italian, “Fiends. Whores. Murderers of children.” She ran up and down the stairs, and out of her mouth came a filth she had never known she knew, that the invisible listeners would eat the tripe of their parents, that they committed the foulest acts of animals. She raved. Zia Louche gave baby Vincent into Octavia’s arms and went down the stairs. She grabbed Lucia Santa by her long black hair and dragged her back to her home. And though the younger woman was much stronger, she let herself descend into howls of pain, collapsing helplessly by the table.
Soon enough she took coffee; soon enough she calmed and composed herself. There was too much work to do. She caressed Octavia, murmuring, “But how did you know, a child to understand such evil?”
Yet when Octavia had told her not to marry again, saying, “Remember I was right about Filomena stealing Vinnie,” her mother only laughed. Then she stopped laughing and said, “Don’t fear. I’m your mother. No one can harm my children. Not while I live.”
Her mother held the scales of power and justice; the family could never be corrupted. Safe, invulnerable, Octavia fell asleep, the last image flickering: her mother, baby Vincent in her arms returning from Filomena’s, raging, triumphant, yet showing guilty shame for ever having let him go.
LARRY ANGELUZZI (ONLY his mother called him Lorenzo) thought of himself as a full-grown man at seventeen. And with justice. He was very broad of shoulder, medium tall, and had great brawny forearms.
At thirteen he had quit school to drive a horse and wagon for the West Side Wet Wash. He had complete responsibility for the collection of money, the care of the horse, and the good will of the customers. He carried the heavy sacks of wash up four flights of stairs without loss of breath. Everyone thought him at least sixteen. And the married women whose husbands had already gone to work were delighted with him.
He lost his virginity on one of these deliveries, cheerfully, with good will, friendly as always, thinking nothing of it; another little detail of the job, like greasing the wagon wheels, half duty, half pleasure, since the women were not young.
The job of dummy boy, riding a horse and leading a train through the city streets, appealed to his heroic sense; and the money was good, the work easy, and advancement to brakeman or switchman possible—these were excellent jobs for a lifetime. Larry was ambitious; he wanted to be a boss.
Already he had the mature charm of the natural-born lady-killer. His teeth flashed pearly white when he smiled. He had strong, heavy, regular features, jet-black hair, and long black eyebrows and eyelashes. He was naturally friendly, always assuming that everyone thought well of him.
A good son, he always gave his mother the pay he earned. True, he now kept some money for himself, stashed it; but after all, he was seventeen and a young man in America, not Italy.
He was not vain, but he loved riding up Tenth Avenue on his black horse, with the freight train coiling slowly behind him while he swung a red lantern to warn the world of danger. There was always a surge of joy when he rode under the iron and wooden bridge at 30th Street and entered his own neighborhood village, making his horse prance for the children who waited for him and for the engine with its white cloud of steam. Sometimes he would halt his horse near the curb and the young people would gather round, begging for a ride, especially the girls. His brother Gino always looked up like a connoisseur admiring a picture—not too near, one foot in front of the other, head slightly back, leaning away, admiration shining in his eyes; he was so worshipful of his brother riding a horse that he never even spoke.
And yet, though Larry was hard-working, quite responsible for such a young man, he had one fault. He took advantage of the young girls. They were too easy for him. Angry mothers brought daughters to Lucia Santa and made ugly scenes, shouting that he kept the girls out too late, that he had promised to marry them. La la. Famous for his conquests, he was the neighborhood Romeo, yet popular with all the old ladies of the Avenue. For he had Respect. He was like a young man brought up in Italy. His good manners, which were as natural as his pleasantness, made him always ready to help in the countless mild distresses of the poor: he would borrow a truck to help someone move to a new tenement, visit for a few moments when an elderly aunt was in Bellevue Hospital. But most important of all, he took part with a real zest in all the events of communal life—marriages, funerals, christenings, death watches, Communions and Confirmations; those sacred tribal customs sneered at by young Americans. The old women of Tenth Avenue gave him their highest praise; they said of him that he always knew which things were really important. In fact, he had been offered an honor that no Italian could remember being given to so young a man before. He was asked to stand godfather to the son of the Guargios, distant cousins. Lucia Santa forbade it. He was too young for such a responsibility; the honor would turn his head.
LARRY HEARD GINO screaming “Burn the city,” watched him run, saw the people disappear from the street into the tenements. He trotted his horse up the Avenue to the stable on 35th Street, then galloped, catching in his ears the rushing wind, the great clatter of hoofs on cobblestones. The stableman was asleep, so Larry took care of the horse and then he was free.
He went directly to the Le Cinglata home, a short block away on 36th Street. Signora Le Cinglata served the anisette and wine in her kitchen, charging by the glass and doling out her wit to the customers who drank the most. There were never more than five or six of these at a time; they were always Italian laborers, and bachelors or men whose wives had never joined them from Italy.
Mr. Le Cinglata was finishing up one of those thirty-day sentences that were a risk of his trade. “Ah, the police,” Signora Le Cinglata always said on these occasions. “They have put my husband on the cross.” She was religious.
When Larry entered the apartment there were only three men. One of them, a dark Sicilian, encouraged by the knowledge that her husband was in jail, badgered the signora, holdi
ng her skirt as she went by, singing suggestive Italian songs. There was in his actions only the innocent lechery, the childish malice, of a primitive man. Larry sat down at their table. He enjoyed a chat in Italian with older men. He returned the signora’s smile of welcome, and his ready assumption of equality offended the Sicilian.
Raising his great, heavy brows in mock astonishment, he shouted in Italian, “Signora Le Cinglata, do you serve children here? Must I drink my glass of wine with suckling infants?” The woman put down a cherry soda for Larry and the Sicilian gave all a look of excruciating slyness. “Oh, excuse me,” he said in a deferential, broken English. “Itsa your son? Youra nepha-ew? He protecta you when youra husband is ina his little hideout. Oh, excusa me.” He roared until he choked.
The signora, plump, handsome, and tough, was not amused. “Enough,” she said. “Cease or find another place to drink. And pray I do not tell my husband of your pretty behavior.”
The Sicilian said with abrupt seriousness, “Thank God if nobody tells your husband of your pretty behavior. Why don’t you try a man instead of a child?” And he struck his chest with both hands, like a singer at the opera.
Signora Le Cinglata, in no way shamed but out of patience, said curtly, “Lorenzo, throw him down the stairs.”
The phrase was extravagant and meant only that the man should be persuaded to leave, as they all knew. Larry started to say something conciliatory, a friendly smile on his face. But the Sicilian, his honor affronted, stood up and roared in broken English, “You little shitta American cockasickle. You throw me down the stairs? I eat you up whole anda whole.”
The man’s broad, bearded face was lined with authoritative rage. Larry felt a quick surge of childish terror, as if it would be parricidal to strike this man. The Sicilian loomed, and Larry threw a straight right into that huge dark face. The Sicilian fell to the kitchen floor. Suddenly Larry’s fear was gone and he felt only pity and guilt for the man’s humiliation.
For the man could not use his hands and had not meant him real harm. He had come like a hugging bear to chastise a child, grotesque, human without being cruel. Larry helped him to a chair, gave him a glass of anisette to drink, murmured words of conciliation. The man struck the glass out of his hand and walked out of the flat.
THE NIGHT WORE on. Men came in, others left. Some played Brisk with an old dirty deck of cards, a convenience of the establishment.
Larry sat in the corner, subdued by his adventure. Then his feelings changed. He felt pride. People would think of him with respect, as a man to be wary of, yet not mean or vicious. He was the hero in the cowboy pictures, like Ken Maynard, who never struck a man on the floor. He grew drowsy, blissful, and then Signora Le Cinglata was talking to him in her strange, flirting way, in Italian, and his blood leaped awake. The time had come.
Signora Le Cinglata excused herself, saying she must fetch another gallon of wine and another bottle of anisette. She went out of the kitchen, through the rooms of the long railroad flat, and to the farthest bedroom. She had a door there. Larry followed her, mumbling that he would help her carry the bottles, as if she would be surprised or angry at his youthful presumption. But when she heard him lock the door behind them, she bent over to take a huge purple-colored gallon jug from among the many standing against the wall. As she did so, Larry gathered up her dress and petticoats in both his hands. She turned in her enormous pink bloomers, her belly bare, and gave a laughing protest: “Eh, giovanetto.” The large cloth buttons of her dress slipped from their holes and she lay on her back on the bed, the long, sloping, big-nippled breasts hanging out, the loose bloomers pulled aside. In a few great blind savage strokes Larry finished and lay on the bed, lighting a cigarette. The signora, buttoned up and respectable, took the purple jug in one hand and the clear, slender bottle of anisette in the other and together they returned to the customers.
In the kitchen, Signora Le Cinglata poured wine and touched glasses with the same hands that had fondled him. She brought Larry a fresh glass of cherry soda, but finicky that she had not washed, he would not drink.
Larry got ready to leave. Signora Le Cinglata followed him to the door and whispered, “Stay, stay for the night.” He gave her his big smile and whispered back, “Hey, my mother would ask for stories.” He played this role, the helpless dutiful son, when it pleased him to escape.
He did not go home. He went around the corner and back to the stable. He made his bed on straw and a horse blanket, using his saddle for a pillow. The restless moving of the horses in their stalls was soothing to him; the horses could not disorient his dreams.
Lying so, he reviewed his future, as he did many nights, as all young men do. He felt a great power. He felt himself, knew himself, as one destined for success and glory. In the world he lived in he was the strongest of the boys his age, the handsomest, the most successful with girls. Even a grown woman was his slave. And tonight he had beaten a grown man. He was only seventeen, and in his youthful mind the world would remain static. He would not become weaker, or the world stronger.
He would be powerful. He would make his family rich. He dreamed of wealthy young American girls with automobiles and large houses who married him and loved his family. Tomorrow before work he would go up to Central Park on his horse and ride along the bridle paths.
He saw himself coming down Tenth Avenue, a rich girl on his arm and everyone looking at him with admiration. The girl would love his family. He was not snobbish. He never thought they could be looked down upon, his family, his mother and sister, his friends. For he considered them all extraordinary, since they were really part of him. He had a truly innocent mind, and, sleeping in the smelly stable, cowboylike on a prairie of stone, fresh from his conquests of man and woman, Larry Angeluzzi never doubted his happy destiny. He slept in peace.
IN THE ANGELUZZI-Corbo family only the children—Vincent, Gino, and Sal, tangled together in the one bed—dreamed real dreams.
CHAPTER 3
IN THE MORNING Octavia rose as the last freshness of the night air burned away before the rising August sun. She washed in the kitchen sink, and, walking back through the corridor of rooms, saw that her stepfather was not in bed. But he slept little and was an early riser. The other empty bedroom proved she had been right; Larry had not come home at all. Sal and Gino were uncovered, their sexual parts showing through the BVD underwear. Octavia covered them with the rumpled bed sheet.
Dressing for work, she felt the familiar despair and hopelessness. She choked on the warm summer air, on the closeness of the sweet warm odor of sleeping bodies. The morning light too clearly showed the cheap battered furniture, the faded wallpaper, the linoleum with black patches where its colored skin had worn through.
At such times she felt doomed: she was afraid that one day she would wake on a warm summer morning as old as her mother, in a bed and home like this, her children living in squalor, unending days of laundry, cooking, dishwashing before her. Octavia suffered. She suffered because life was not elegant, human beings not completely separate. And it sprang from a few dark moments in a marriage bed. She shook her head angrily, yet fearfully, knowing how vulnerable she was, knowing that one day she must lie on that bed.
CURLY BLACK HAIR combed, wearing a cheap blue and white frock, Octavia left the tenement and stepped onto the blue-slate sidewalk of Tenth Avenue. She walked the already burning pavement to her dressmaking shop on Seventh Avenue and 36th Street, going past the Le Cinglatas’ out of curiosity perhaps to see her brother.
Lucia Santa woke shortly afterward, and her first realization was that her husband had not come home. She rose instantly and checked the closet. His twenty-dollar shoes were there. He would be back.
She went through the other bedroom to the kitchen. Bravo. Lorenzo had not come home. Lucia Santa’s face was grim. She made coffee and her plans for the day. Vincenzo started to work in the bakery, good. Gino would have to help her with the janitor work, good. A punishment for his father, who shirked. She went to the hall and pi
cked up the bottles of milk and the great loaf of Italian bread thick as her thigh, tall as a child. She sliced off heavy chunks and spread one with butter for herself. She let the children sleep.
It was another time of day she loved. The morning still fresh, the children about to waken and everyone else out of the house, herself strong for the duties of living.
“QUE BELLA INSALATA”—what beautiful salad—the words rose up to the sleeping children at their moment of awakening. They all sprang out of bed, and Gino looked out the window. Below was the hawker, standing on the seat of his wagon as he held up to the sky and the watching windows a pearly green lettuce in each outstretched hand. “Que bella insalata,” he said again, not asking anyone to buy, only asking the world to look at beauty. Pride, not cajolement, in his voice, he repeated his cry each time his horse took a mincing step along the Avenue. In his wagon were boxes of onions dazzling white, great brown potatoes, bushels of apples, bouquets of scallions, leeks, and parsley sprigs. His voice rose rich with helpless admiration, disinterested, a call to lovers. “What beautiful salad.”
At breakfast Lucia Santa instructed her children. “Listen,” she said, “your father has gone away for a little time. Until he comes back you must help. Vincenzo works in the panetteria. So you, Gino, will help me wash the stairs of the building today. Get me the clean pails of water, and wring the mop, and sweep if you prove not to be stupid. Salvatore, you can dust the bannisters, and Lena also.” She smiled at the two little children.
Vincenzo hung his head, sullen. But Gino looked at her with cool, speculative defiance. “I’m busy today, Ma,” he said.
Lucia Santa bowed her head to him politely. “Ah,” she said, “you are busy every day. But I’m busy too.” She was amused.