The King of Mulberry Street

by Donna Jo Napoli

  “Depends on how you look at it. A shark sees what there is for the taking and takes it. Sharks are smart.” Gaetano pointed at the doors we passed. “That watchmaker, he's a banker on the side. He takes in Italians' money and saves it for them until they've got enough to send for relatives back home. Or, for the really stupid ones, until they think they've made their fortune and decide to go back to Italy. But in the meantime, he gives them nothing—not a cent— and he has their money to use however he wants. He can spend it to start a business of his own. Or he can lend it to immigrants who want to start businesses. None of the real banks will lend them money. But a shark will. He does nothing—he just sits there and makes money off the hard work of the people he lends to. And he makes money off the savings of other people, see? That's a smart shark.” He pointed. “That wine store, it's the Banca Italiana. It has no license, nothing. The owner did nothing but say he was running a bank, and people gave him their money. That's what I'm going to do when I get it all together. I'll open a bank.”

  “And who's going to trust you with their money?” I said.

  “You. And mooks like you.”

  “I'm not a mook.”

  “Oh, right, you're a king, the way you gave Tin PanAlley the rest of your ice cream. Listen, mook. Half-wits like you can't protect yourselves. It's either give me your money or get robbed on the street.” Gaetano tilted his head at me. “You keep surprising me, Dom. You know less than the Baxter monkeys.”

  “I saw a monkey today,” I said.

  “You like monkeys? That figures. Come on.” Gaetano swaggered up the street like a big man—a shark—and I followed like a mook. He stopped midblock. “Here it is. The most famous monkey-training school in the city. A smart monkey goes for thirty dollars.” He grinned at me. “You'd go for maybe twenty.”

  There were curtains over the windows, so I couldn't see inside, thankfully. But I could hear monkey chatter from within. And I heard something else, too. Snaps. A whip?

  It was right then that my stomach cramped. I doubled over.

  Gaetano laughed. “The price of ice cream,” he said. “The Genovesi are pigs. They use dirty ingredients and dirty mixing bowls and they make dirty ice cream. But it tastes the best. If you stick around long enough, your guts'll get used to it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Church

  I knew Gaetano was following me. And he knew I knew. He didn't even try to hide. Every time I'd look back over my shoulder, he'd be there, a half block behind.

  I didn't go to him, though, no matter how much I wanted company. The ice cream had taught me a lesson. Anyone who would let me get that sick couldn't be trusted. Mamma was right—Eduardo was right—no one could be trusted.

  Except maybe Tin Pan Alley; Tin Pan Alley was a stand-up kind of guy. But he was off somewhere with his padrone.

  So I walked up and down alleys, relieving myself whenever the cramps from the ice cream were too great, never stopping for longer than that, trying to lose Gaetano.

  After a while, I stumbled the two blocks east to Elizabeth Street, where Gaetano told me the Siciliani lived. He followed. But when I went beyond that, he stopped and turned around.

  I got scared: was something awful east of Elizabeth Street? After all, Gaetano seemed to know everything. I turned back.

  And there he was, waiting for me. He followed. Four blocks west of Baxter he stopped again. So I turned back.

  Then I went south. Gaetano didn't cross Park. But I knew there was nothing dangerous south of Park, because I'd gone all the way to the wharves.

  That meant Gaetano was like the stray dogs back in Napoli. He had a territory. If I slept outside his territory, he couldn't bother me.

  But the only place I knew to sleep in was my barrel. I wandered south of Park, until I felt sure he'd given up. Then I snuck back to my barrel.

  Sunday morning announced itself with church bells. For a moment I thought I was home in Napoli. Those could have been the bells of San Domenico Maggiore or Cappella San Severo or the Duomo itself.

  I thought of that last morning in Napoli. Mamma's black hair, spread across my arm. The smell of meatballs and citronella candles. Sneaking out. I remembered other mornings, too. Her constant singing. Her hand on my cheek. How she lifted me to touch the mezuzah.

  I didn't cry, though. I didn't make any noise at all,nothing to let anyone know where I was. Napoli was a dreamworld. I was here. In America. In my barrel.

  I had to make sure Gaetano didn't see me getting out of the barrel. I peeked over the edge. An old woman with a sack thrown across her back rummaged at the opening of the alley, putting bones in the sack. When she saw me, she ran off.

  This area was filled with ragpickers. Most were women or boys who worked for a padrone, picking up junk. I'd seen them the day before.

  I jumped out of the barrel and ran all the way to the wharf.

  The top deck of the Bolivia was empty. The third-class passengers must have been taken to Ellis Island fast. Or maybe the Bolivia only had first and second class.

  I ran to the plank.

  A man came down, addressing me in English.

  “I need a job on your ship,” I said. “I can do anything and everything. I'll be the errand boy. Everyone's job will be easier with me around.”

  “Italian?” he said in English. Then he tried to shoo me away.

  I stood my ground.

  He said more things. Louder.

  I wouldn't leave.

  He waved over someone from across the street. A policeman.

  Okay, keep calm, I told myself. Walk, don't run. Like when a dog's coming at you. I walked along the wharf road without looking back.

  I crossed the road and went back up to the neighborhood Gaetano called Five Points.

  Gaetano appeared in my path almost immediately. I knew he would. He looked cleaner than usual. His hair was slicked down and the crust he'd had on his chin the day before was gone. “I've been looking for you. It's time to go to church.”

  “I don't go to church.”

  “Don't say that.” Gaetano hit me on the ear. “Don't ever say that.” He walked ahead up Mulberry Street. “Come on.”

  I didn't move.

  “Come on,” he said. “There's food.”

  “Why would you care if I get food?”

  “I'll get more if you're with me. Come on, don't be a mook.”

  I caught up to him.

  Gaetano looked down his nose at me. “Yesterday you told that mook we were friends. So are you my friend or not?”

  We walked.

  “Speak up. Are you my friend or my enemy?”

  “I'm not your enemy,” I said.

  He grinned. Gaetano was the biggest grinner I'd ever met. “Then when I say ‘Come,’ you come. Chi me vô bene ap-priesso me vene.”

  I knew that proverb—If you like me, you follow me. It seemed strange that someone as young as Gaetano would recite proverbs. He was trying to make himself seem important again. “How come you never leave this area?” I asked.

  He smirked. “You think you're smart. You think you're smarter than people who are a lot older than you.”

  I shrugged.

  “Like I said, you know nothing. You want to get sick on meat from a Polish butcher, huh? Or fish from a Yiddish fish peddler?”

  “What do Polish and Yiddish mean?”

  “Dirty. Polish people come from Poland. Yiddish people come from Germany and other places. Some of the Poles are Jews and all of the Yids are. If you go outside Five Points, who knows what they'll feed you. You'll get sick as a dog.”

  Jews, dirty? Never. “Sick as I got from that Italian ice cream?”

  “Don't be disloyal to Italians,” said Gaetano.

  That stung. Nonna had always prized loyalty. She said the worst thing you could do was leave someone you loved hanging in the wind.

  But I didn't want to give Gaetano the satisfaction of agreeing with him. “Yesterday you said the Genovesi were pigs.”

  �
�Between you and me, sure. Among the Napoletani, you can criticize the people from Genova all you want. But don't ever criticize them to people who aren't Italian. Loyalty is more important than anything else.”

  There was something about his voice that made him seem younger than he was. I felt bolder. “So you stay within Five Points so you won't get sick from Jewish food?” I said. “I don't believe you. I think you're afraid. You're a rabbit.”

  “Me, a rabbit? It has nothing to do with being afraid. Have you talked to anyone out there?”

  “I talked to a ship captain just this morning.” Maybe the man I talked to wasn't the captain, but it sounded good.

  “In Napoletano?”

  “Well, sure. I spoke Napoletano.”

  “What did he speak?”

  “English.”

  “How's your English?” asked Gaetano.

  “Which way Chatham Square?” I said in English. I expected him to laugh.

  He looked stricken. “Where'd you learn that? You go to school, huh? All the Italian kids in the Bronx go to school?”

  “Those are the only English words I know.”

  “You swear?”

  What was he all worked up about? “Of course.”

  “You better not be making fun of me.”

  “I'm not.”

  “Don't make fun of me ever.” Gaetano threw back his shoulders.

  “I don't make fun of anyone,” I said quietly.

  “If you're my friend, you don't make fun of me. Ever.”

  “I won't. Ever.”

  He looked around; then he turned back to me. “So that's all the English you know?”

  “That's it.”

  “Well, once you try to say other things, you'll see. Go outside Five Points and people laugh at how you talk.”

  “How do you know? You don't go outside.”

  “I hear the Five Points men complaining,” he said. “That's why they only work for other Italians.”

  “They can't work in Chatham Square because they don't learn English?”

  “That, and other things. Italians belong together anyway. Especially southern Italians.”

  I scratched dirt off my arm. “Let me get this straight. Immigrants who aren't Italian, they learn English?”

  “Yeah. You should hear the big, dumb Swedes speaking English in the factories in Chatham Square.”

  “Dumb like a fox,” I said. “The Italians are the dumb ones. It's better to learn English and get any job you want.”

  “What'd I tell you about being loyal?” said Gaetano. “Especially here, right now.”

  “Why especially here?” I asked.

  “Because of the Irish. Shut up, okay?” Gaetano stopped. “See that big building across Prince Street? That's Saint Patrick's Cathedral.”

  The bells rang as we stood there. People came from the north and went through the central front door with the pointed arch over it. People came from behind us on Mulberry Street and went around to the side. Gaetano walked toward the side entrance.

  “Why don't we go in the front door?” I asked.

  “Because we're not Irish. Shut up. I mean it.”

  We went down to the basement. Everyone crowded onto benches. I stared straight ahead at the neck of the woman in front of me. She reached a hand up under her black mantilla and a curl tumbled down. Her hair wasn't as dark as Mamma's. But that curl made my face prickle with pins and needles. She tucked it back under. It fell again.

  A priest came in. Everyone stood. For the next hour the priest spoke in an Italian that I could mostly understand and a Latin that I loved listening to. We stood and sat andkneeled and recited Latin. They passed around a basket. People put in coins. Not Gaetano.

  The priest read a part of the Bible about Saint Paul working hard. Then he talked about the virtue of persisting against the odds. He talked about the opportunities that lay within reach for hard workers. He said Italians could never be faulted for not working hard. The people murmured agreement. He said the possibilities were endless for us—for every last one of us. I thought of Uncle Au-relio and his lectures on le possibilità, Uncle Aurelio, who would be aghast to see me at a Catholic mass. My whole family would. I was.

  I stood up to leave, but Gaetano yanked me back into my seat. “Stay still,” he hissed. “The gospel is the most important part.”

  I looked at my hands and tried to close my ears to what was going on outside my head. It was my body in this church, not my heart and soul.

  Afterward, I asked Gaetano, “Why go to this church if the Irish make you sit in the basement? Aren't there Italian churches?”

  “Sure there are. But they're outside Five Points. Here there're only Irish churches—the Most Precious Blood Church and the Church of the Transfiguration and this one—Saint Patrick's. But Italians have to sit in the basement at the other churches, too. And the Transfiguration is on Mott Street; I hate Mott Street. Anyway, it's better than it used to be—they used to forbid the priests from using Italian.”

  He pulled me into a building a block away. Adultsdrank coffee and ate pastries. Kids ran around knocking into things. Gaetano stuffed a pastry in his mouth and filled a cup with coffee. I did the same. I didn't usually like coffee, but it was delicious at that moment. I hadn't had anything to eat since the ice cream Saturday afternoon.

  “I've seen you here before,” said a woman in an Italian dialect as she approached Gaetano. “But without your little brother. Where's your mother?”

  “She's sick,” said Gaetano, speaking her dialect—just like he'd spoken the ice cream vendor's Genovese the day before.

  “That's too bad.” She looked doubtful. “What's her name?”

  Gaetano backed toward the door.

  “Don't run off,” said the woman. She picked up two more pastries and handed us each one. “If your family joins, then when someone gets sick, we'll help out. And when someone dies, we'll pay the funeral costs. Tell your mother that.”

  “I will,” said Gaetano.

  “Or, better, let me tell her.” A little girl yanked on the woman's skirt. The woman picked her up without turning her eyes from us. “Where do you live?” One hand caressed the little girl's head. Mamma used to do that to me all the time. “I can bring your mother soup,” said the woman, her hand on the child's cheek.

  “We have to go.” Gaetano put down his cup and took my hand. “We're late.”

  “See you next week,” said the woman.

  Gaetano pulled me outside and we ate our pastries. “Next week I'll go to a different one.”

  “A different what?” I asked, forcing away the picture of the woman's hand on the child's cheek. “Are there always parties after church?”

  “It's not a party—it's a meeting of a mutual aid society. There are lots of them around here. Don't they have them in the Bronx?”

  I shrugged. “What dialect were you talking with her?”

  “Milanese. It's from the north of Italy.”

  “Do you speak every Italian dialect?” I asked.

  “Nah. Only the useful ones. To tell the truth, I hardly speak Milanese at all. Just enough to keep out of trouble for sneaking in.”

  “Why don't you go to a mutual aid society for people from Napoli?”

  Gaetano laughed. “There aren't any. It costs fifty cents a month to be a member. None of the southern Italians can afford that. And the northerners wouldn't let us join theirs anyway, even if we had the money.”

  “Why not?”

  “They look down on us. And we don't care. Who needs them? Look. It's like this, Dom. You're Napoletano. I'm Napoletano. We're our own group. We stick together. But the next best guy is someone from the south—except for Sicilia. Don't ever trust a Siciliano. But the Calabresi aren't too bad. There's lots of them on Mulberry Street. And the ones from Basilicata—they're dirt poor and they know nothing, but they're okay. And then, after that, there's northern Italians. The Piemontesi and Lombardi. They live west of Broadway.”

  “Then who?”
>
  “No one. After the Italians, there's no one you can trust.”

  “What else do these societies do beside help with funerals and take care of the sick?”

  “Sometimes they get jobs for people. And if they can't find anything in New York, they'll pay your fare to the coal mines in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Or, if you want to go farther, Colorado, or Wyoming, or Montana. But then you have to work with Slavs and Welshmen. Still, the mines will always hire Italians first.”

  Tonino had a job in a coal mine. He must be off in one of those places. “That's what you should do when you're older, Gaetano, start a mutual aid society for southern Italians, not some stupid bank.”

  “People who run mutual aid societies don't get rich. Bankers get rich.”

  Everything he said came out like the gospel of that priest—like a truth no one could argue with. “How do you know everything, Gaetano?”

  “I pay attention.”

  “No one pays attention that well,” I said.

  He grinned. “They would if they got paid for it.”

  “You get paid for paying attention?”

  “I see something someone would want to know—I hear something someone would want to know—and I sell the information.” Gaetano sat down on the steps of a building and stretched his legs in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He leaned his elbows back on a higher step.

  “How can you figure out what someone would want to know?”

  “People need information. All kinds of information. They pay me for the craziest things. You wouldn't believe it. And don't get any ideas about sticking around here andstealing my job. You'd never survive. You don't understand anything you see.”

  “Sticking around here is the last thing I want to do.” I sat beside him. Gaetano really did understand everything he saw. People wouldn't pay him for information if he couldn't be trusted. “Want another job, Gaetano?”

  “Who's offering? You? You've got nothing to pay with.”

  It killed me to say it—but what else did I have? “My shoes.”

  Gaetano sat up. “What's the job?”

  “Get me onto the ship that's down at the wharves. The Bolivia.”

  “You want to go on a ship? Where?”