“Mamma, do I have to?”
“Say it, Christmas.”
“Because I’m American.”
“Good boy!” And Cetta laughed. “Yes, you American.”
And to be a real American he had to go to school. So the following year, Cetta enrolled him in the neighborhood school. “From now on, you a man,” she told him. She bought him a primer, three notebooks, two pens, a bottle of black ink and a bottle of red, a pencil sharpener and an eraser. And at the end of that first year — in which Christmas proved to be a model student, restless and curious, quick to learn — she gave him a book.
They would sit on a bench in Battery Park, next to one another, and Christmas would read aloud to her — first sounding out each syllable with difficulty, then more and more smoothly as he went on — the adventures of White Fang. One page a day.
“This our story,” Cetta told him the day they finished the book, almost a year later. “When we come here to New York, we like White Fang, like wolves. We strong and we wild. And we meet bad people who make us more wild, savage. And they kill us if we let them, eh? But we not just wild. We strong, too. Always you remember that, Christmas. And when we meet good person, or if we have some good luck, then our strength make us like White Fang. Americans. No more wild. That what book mean.”
“I like the wolves better than the dogs,” said Christmas.
Cetta stroked his fair hair. “You a wolf, my baby. And wolf inside you make you strong, more strong, when you big. But like White Fang, you listen when you hear voice of love. If you no pay attention when you hear, then you get like all those bad boys in neighborhood, those delinquenti, they not wild wolf, they mad dogs.”
“Is Sal in jail for being a mad dog, mamma?”
“No, angel,” Cetta smiled. “Sal in jail because he a brave wolf too. But his fate not like White Fang, is different. He more like old wolf pack leader — blind in one eye, wise on side he can see and ferocious where he not see.”
“Then are you White Fang’s mamma? You make dogs fall in love an’ then you take ’em in the woods where the wolves rip ’em to pieces?”
Cetta looked at him tenderly. “No, I just your mamma, angel. I’m like pages in that book. Where some day you write you own story and …”
“And be an American, I know,” Christmas interrupted, laughing and standing up. “Let’s go home, mamma, I’m hungry. Americans eat too, don’t they?”
Sal told her he’d be getting out of prison July 17, 1916. In two weeks, thought Cetta.
She was twenty-two now, Christmas was eight.
Cetta was counting the days, with a constant feeling of excitement and fear, joy and dread. And she thought continually about the Sundays she’d spent with Sal, as if she were trying to get used to his presence even before he returned. When she went to visit him in prison she reminded him about them, too, almost to reassure herself that he’d be back.
After those solitary and stable years in which she took care only of Christmas, Cetta was restless. She couldn’t be still for a single moment. It was unbearable to stay in the basement apartment. Especially on Sundays.
“We go out,” she told Christmas, hurrying him through the streets. She didn’t know where to go. And it didn’t matter at all. Walking was a distraction for her. Every step was another second she’d lived through. A second closer to the moment when she’d see Sal on the New York Penitentiary Department boat. A second closer to when she and Sal would look at each other. Both of them free.
As they were walking through the streets of the Lower East Side, Cetta noticed a knot of people. And American flags fluttering in the air. “Come, we go see,” she told Christmas. She came closer and saw a short burly man who was thanking the inhabitants of the Lower East Side from a wooden platform festooned with bunting. He had a sunny face, filled with energy. Cetta thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t think why. “Who is that?” she asked one of the neighbor women standing nearby.
“He represent us in Congress,” the woman said. “Fiorello … something. A funny name, like your Christmas.”
And then suddenly her heart leaped, and Cetta knew who the man on the improvised stage was. She waited till the politician had finished his speech, then made her way through the crowd and reached him, moved by intense emotion. “Mister LaGuardia!” she called out as loudly as she could. “Mister LaGuardia!”
The man turned towards her. Two heavyset bodyguards quickly stepped between him and Cetta.
“Take good look, Christmas,” said Cetta. She slipped between the two gorillas, reached out to the man in front of her. She took his hand between her own and kissed it. Then she pushed Christmas towards him. “This my son, Christmas,” she said. “It was you, you give him American name.”
Fiorello LaGuardia peered at her, embarrassed, not understanding.
“Almost eight year ago,” Cetta went on, excited, “we come to Ellis Island. You, you were there. Only one who speak Italian … inspector, he not understand, and you say … he, my son, his name Natale … and you say …”
“Christmas?” Fiorello LaGuardia asked, amused.
“Christmas Luminita, sì,” said Cetta, proud and moved. “And now he American … ” and her eyes filled with tears. “You touch, please. Put hand on his head.”
Fiorello LaGuardia reached down awkwardly and laid a chubby hand on Christmas’ head.
Cetta flung herself at him and embraced him. She pulled back at once, “Scusi, I’m so sorry … I … I’m-a …” she didn’t know what else to say. “I’m–a vote for you always,” she said emphatically. “Always.”
Fiorello LaGuardia smiled. “Well, then we’d better hurry up and give women the vote,” he said.
The men around him laughed. Cetta didn’t understand, and blushed. She looked down and was starting to leave when Fiorello LaGuardia lifted one of Christmas’ arms and held it in the air.
“I’m going to Washington to fight for the future of these young Americans!” he said loudly, so that everyone in the crowd could hear him. “For these new champions!”
Cetta looked at Christmas and told herself, “Don’t cry, cretina.” But a second later her sight was blurred and tears were pouring down her face. As Fiorello La Guardia went off through his applauding supporters, Cetta hugged her son tightly. “You hear what he say?” she repeated to him, almost shouting. “Young American! A champion! You see, Christmas? He the man who give you a name … is like White Fang and Judge Scott. You American, even Fiorello LaGuardia say so.”
When Sal came out of prison the following week, Ma’am let Cetta take the day off. And all evening, Cetta told Sal about meeting Fiorello LaGuardia. Excited and happy.
“He got big,” said Sal, now late at night, looking at Christmas who was sleeping. Then he lit a cigar, turned towards Cetta, giving her a hard look. “I think ya got somethin’ else ta tell me, doncha?”
The next night Cetta didn’t go to work either. That morning Sal had brought her a silk dress. Blue. With a little pearly white collar and a matching belt. And dark stockings and shiny black shoes with a rounded toe. “We’re goin’ out t’night. I’m comin’ ta getcha at seven-thirty,” he told her coldly.
Cetta had told him all there was to say about Andrew. “But it’s over,” she said. Sal hadn’t uttered a single word. He had finished his cigar, gotten up from the throne, and gone away. Cetta didn’t know where. And she didn’t know if he’d come back.
But he reappeared the next morning, with the dress, the shoes, and the stockings. And at seven-thirty he came back to pick her up with the car.
“Where we go?” Cetta asked him.
“Madison Square Garden,” Sal answered. Nothing else. He was wearing a dark suit, gleaming and elegant. Perhaps it was one size too small for him. And a black cashmere overcoat. In his right coat pocket a long narrow package wrapped in flowered paper. “Front row, no pigeon roost,” he said as they came into the Garden.
Cetta gasped. Her legs were trembling with emotion.
> A blonde girl showed them to their seats. The lights were aimed at an elevated square space with a rope around it. Inside the square were two men in shorts and boxing gloves waiting to fight as the referee looked at a watch.
“This is all they got tonight,” said Sal in his deep voice.
“Who strongest?” asked Cetta. “Who win?”
“The negro,” said Sal.
“But both of them negro.”
“You got it.”
Cetta was silent for a moment, and then burst into laughter. And when the gong sounded and the two pugilists began raining punches on each other, she clung to his arm. “I love you,” she murmured into his ear.
Sal didn’t reply. He slipped his hand into his overcoat pocket, took out the flowery package and handed it to Cetta without looking. “I learned woodworkin’ in there,” he said. “I made ya somethin’.”
Cetta kissed Sal’s cheek, laughing happily, and eagerly opened the package. And when she had unwrapped it she saw that it was a wooden penis.
“The next time ya feel like spreadin’ ya legs, use dis,” Sal told her. He stood up. “I forgot my cigar,” he said, still not looking at her, and walked away, just as one of the fighters took a violent uppercut and a spray of sweat stained Cetta’s new dress.
Sal climbed up the bleachers, went into the men’s room and locked the door. He pressed his palms against the pitted wall, clenching his jaw, his eyes shut. Then an obscene sound vibrating from inside began to shake him, and Sal wept all the tears that he hadn’t wanted Cetta to see.
“Sal Tropea’s burnt out now. I ain’t puttin’ him on the street no more,” said the boss Vince Salemme to his lieutenants. Then he called Sal in. “When all that shit with the Irishmen happened, I had to make an example. They found Silver hangin’ from a Irish flag, yeah — he had it comin’. Full of shit Judas. But I was waitin’ for you to come out so I could make another example.” To demonstrate his gratitude for Sal’s not having talked and for all the years in prison, he gave him a building at 320 Monroe Street. “You pay me fifty percent of the rent, Sal, and it’s you what pays for repairs and maintainin’ it,” Vince Salemme told him. “In fifteen years the place belongs ta you. But you’re still in the family, and don’t you forget it. If I need you, you come runnin’.”
The first thing Sal did was to go look at the building. The façade was scrofulous and the stairs were worse. The tenants were all Italians and Jews. A lot of them didn’t speak American and they were living like animals, ten of them crammed into two rooms. There were seven to nine apartments on each floor, and there were five stories, plus a basement that had eight windowless rooms. On the ground floor there were four apartments with baths. In the back, in the yard adorned with a spider web of clotheslines where washing was perpetually hung out to dry, there was a kind of cube with no windows but with three doors in glass and metal, divided into three rooms with a common latrine. In the first room was a shoemaker. In the second, a carpenter. In the third one, a blacksmith. And all three of these artisans lived in their shops along with their families. Sal calculated that he had fifty-two potential tenants. But in reality every tenant was subletting his own apartment to the persons he shared it with.
Within a month, never mentioning it to Cetta, Sal cleaned out the tenants who were far behind in their rent. Then he established an exorbitant surcharge for anyone who had sub-let to other tenants. By the end of another month almost all the tenants had gotten rid of their sub-letters. At that point Sal engaged a group of Italian builders, promising them that every two families would have an apartment in exchange for working to fix up the building. They wouldn’t have to pay rent for two years and they would get a thirty percent reduction in return for upkeep on the building. The following year Sal brought in electricity and water and sewage pipes to every apartment, using materials he stole after dark. When he eliminated the two common bathrooms on each floor, he managed to make additional apartments, thus raising the number of total apartments from fifty-two to fifty-seven.
Now that the building looked decent, Sal took a second floor apartment for his office.
He had someone steal a walnut desk from an antique dealer, along with a chair whose back and seat were padded leather. He put a bed in the back room even though he had no intention of giving up his place in Bensonhurst. Next, he furnished the adjoining apartment. In one room he put a big bed; in the kitchen he put a square table, three chairs and a cot; and in the front room a sofa, a rug and an armchair. Finally he went to the basement room that had belonged to Tonia and Vito Fraina.
“Mark today on the calendar,” he began, bursting with pride, and then stopped.
Cetta was kneeling in front of Christmas, cleaning the blood off his bare chest.
“What the hell did you do, pisser?” asked Sal.
Christmas didn’t answer. He kept his lips and his fists tightly closed while Cetta disinfected the knife wound on his chest. A cut that wasn’t deep, but sharply incised.
“They do it to him at school,” said Cetta.
Sal could feel the blood rising to his head as Cetta told him about the big strong boy who had teased Christmas about the work his mother did, and then had marked him with a knife.
“Is a ‘P’,” she said, looking at Sal. “Puttana.”
“But you don’t do those bad things, do you, mamma?”
Before Cetta could put her arms around Christmas Sal had grabbed his hand and was rushing him out of the apartment. Without saying a word he hurried furiously to the schoolyard. “Who done it?” he asked, glaring darkly at the boys coming out of the building.
Christmas didn’t answer him.
“Who done that to ya?” Sal repeated angrily.
“I’m like you,” said Christmas, his eyes veiled with tears. “I’m no canary.”
Sal shook his head, and they turned back towards the apartment.
“When it ain’t you, it’s the pisser what knows how to spoil things,” Sal growled, stuffing Cetta’s things into a suitcase. He hustled them into the car and brought them to 320 Monroe Street. “This here is your new house,” he said roughly, pointing a grimy finger at a second floor window. He shoved Christmas through the entry door and grabbed the suitcase away from Cetta. “Get movin’,” he told her. Once in front of the apartment door, he took a key from his pocket and gave it to Cetta. “Open up, what are you waitin’ for? This is your house.”
Cetta was speechless. She opened the door and found herself in the kitchen. On the right was a room with a big bed. On the left, a parlor. “Is a house . . ” she managed to say.
“You figured that out fast, huh? Was that so hard?” said Sal. “Now don’t start makin’ a fuss, ‘cause I’m goin’ to my office. I’ll be right next door.”
Cetta flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Sal thrust her away. “Not in front of the pisser, for God’s sake. You want him to end up a fairy?” he said as he left.
The next day Sal arrived holding a brass plaque. He screwed it to their apartment’s front door while Cetta was at work.
“How’s the cut, pisser?” he asked Christmas.
“I ain’t goin’ back t’ school,” said Christmas.
“Work it out with your mother,” said Sal brusquely. He pointed a finger at the brass oval. “O.K., what’s it say here?”
Christmas stood on tiptoes. “Mrs. Cetta Luminita,” he read.
“Missus. Ya got that straight?”
28
Dearborn-Detroit, 1923-1924
The rooms for rent were all alike. The rules were always the same: payment in advance, no women in the room. Bill had moved four times since he’d arrived in Wayne County. He didn’t care. If he moved to another room, it only meant that he’d found one closer to the River Rouge plant. The factory where they made Fords. Model Ts.
But it was all very different from how Bill had imagined it when they hired him. The plant was under construction. A huge area. Thousands of workers. One single, insignificant,
anonymous part for each worker. Not a whole car. They gave Bill a piece of the bodywork. He had to tighten three metal collars around three bolts. That was it. That was his contribution to the Model T. The whole thing.
His first day on the job there’d been a newspaper article posted at the entrance to his section. The headline said MORE TIN LIZZIES THAN BATHTUBS ON U.S. FARMS. The reporter wrote that the Model T had given Americans from rural areas the possibility to travel more than twelve miles away from their farms that being the distance they normally covered on horseback. With the Model T, the city was within reach. And as he researched his article, the writer noticed that there was a Model T in almost every farm, but often there was no bathtub. When he tried to get an explanation from one farm wife, she answered, “You can’t go to town in a bathtub.”
Bill had laughed delightedly. The floor manager struck him on the shoulder and put a finger to his lips. Bill learned that the factory was ruled by what the workers called the “Ford whisper.” A murmur. It was strongly forbidden to lean on the machines, sit down, talk, sing, or even whistle or smile. Therefore the workers had learned to communicate without moving their lips to outwit the manager’s surveillance. The murmur.
What the journalist didn’t say in his article was that the Model T had launched a new kind of behavior. Now boys went to pick up girls from their houses, coaxing them out of the porch swing, taking them out for a drive. And then they banged her on the back seat. The guys who installed the seats told their colleagues they could already smell the naked girl butt. One day — after the top guys decided they could enforce morality by making the back seats narrower — some of the workers managed to steal one of the new seats. Out behind an unfinished hangar they tested it to see if Ford would really be able to discourage the new fad.
Bill was among them. He didn’t laugh like the others, he stood off to one side; but still, he was enjoying it. One of the girls who had offered to assume every possible position on the seat, a provocative blonde, took him by the hand. “C’mon, show me what you can do,” she said loudly, laughing. Bill felt seared by all those eyes on him, as if he were in a cage. The girl laughed, pulling him towards the seat. Her overalls were tight across her generous breasts. So Bill twisted her arm violently, forcing her to turn. Then he pushed her onto the seat and mounted her from behind, gripping her hair.
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 24