The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  Each night he began to experiment in the kitchen, with Mrs. Dinello and the grandsons and me as his assistants, helping to concoct and boil down syrups, mixing, taste-testing. Each flavor gave the confections a different consistency. Each flavor had to be blended differently, with greater delicacy or speed. Some ingredients made the mixture thicken faster or separate too easily or crystallize. One day Mr. Dinello added gelatin to the gelato, which he had heard would make it bind more smoothly. He added cocoa. Chestnut puree. Chopped cherries. Peaches. Marsala wine.

  It was hard to remain petulant in his kitchen: I tasted everything.

  Flora, in the meantime, was growing thinner. With each passing week, I noticed violet smudges deepening beneath my sister’s eyes. Her body trembling. A papery cough emanating from her throat. One week when I arrived on Allen Street, I found her sitting in the doorway of the funeral parlor instead of standing, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. “Oh, Malka,” she said when she saw me, smiling wanly. “I just feel so dizzy.”

  The next Friday, after selling a curtain pull and a box of paper clips to the Hungarian junk man, I didn’t wait. Springtime made the cooking smells in the Italian street markets intensify like perfume. I purchased a bag of arancini from a vendor right on the corner of Hester and Elizabeth. I bought a cube of hard, dry cheese and a piece of salami as I had seen Beatrice do. Any inkling I had about kosher laws was gone, and if Flora realized she was eating milk with meat, she didn’t seem to care. She fell upon the Italian food in a disturbing frenzy, biting off a piece of the salami, then pinching off a piece of the rice balls with her fingers and stuffing it into her mouth while she was still chewing the meat, then reaching for the cheese. I stood over her, watching, not daring to join her.

  “I’ll bring you more next time,” I said, kneeling down and touching the back of my hand to her damp, bluish forehead. “I promise.”

  She blinked up at me, nearly unseeing, and nodded.

  In the pit of my stomach, I sensed something terrible, something urgent. She was so sad, my sister, so wan with misery and hunger. Nothing I brought her could cheer her up for long. Meat and potatoes, she needed. Good food every day, for weeks. Food, somehow, like pasta and pickled herring—a whole barrel’s worth—that might last. I needed something big to sell, something far greater than the bric-a-brac I stole, which fetched a few pennies at a time. What was worth at least a quarter, or a fifty-cent piece—a dollar, even?

  Sidling through the apartments on Mulberry Street, I tried to act casual as I inventoried the neighbors’ belongings. Each apartment had its one precious china figurine, its statues of saints, its single pair of pewter wine cups or brass candlesticks from the old country. In the Dinellos’ parlor, my gaze fell upon the stack of records enshrined on the tiny credenza. But these, too, I knew, would be too difficult to take. Records back then were weighty and thick and packaged in flat cardboard boxes. They were nothing I could slip beneath my skirt unnoticed or even hold with just one hand.

  Mrs. Dinello and Beatrice were downstairs working in the storefront as I hobbled in; their presence was dismaying, though they seemed to take no notice of me. I went back into the little office and sat down despairingly on my bench. I glanced around. From the adjoining kitchen, I could hear the clatter of pots and the rhythmic thwacking of Mrs. Dinello’s knife against the cutting board as she sliced lemon after lemon, chatting all the while to Beatrice.

  Glancing around the office, I spied a row of instruments arranged neatly on a piece of oilcloth spread out atop the desk: a stunted spoon with a polished wooden handle, two small ladles, and what looked like a trowel. Ice cream utensils. Mrs. Dinello had no doubt purchased these for her husband to scoop ices and gelato quickly and neatly. The implements looked brand-new; certainly I had never seen them before, and the metal was shiny and mirrorlike. Perhaps, I thought, they were made of silver. Silver could sell for dollars, I imagined. And there were four of them. Perhaps, the Dinellos wouldn’t notice if only one went missing.

  The floorboards overhead squeaked as Luigi and Vincenzo tromped around upstairs, preparing for their evening shift in the tunnel. Rocco and his brothers were out in the street causing a ruckus, though they could dash in at any minute. Mr. Dinello was not yet back with his wagon, though he would be returning imminently. In the kitchen Beatrice was standing with her back to me, chattering away to Mrs. Dinello, their heads bowed over their cutting boards, thoroughly absorbed in their conversation. The opportunity was there, but for only an instant.

  Swiftly, I grabbed the utensil closest to me—one of the ice cream scoops—and jammed it beneath the blanket on my bench. I was surprised by how heavy it was.

  “Ninella,” Mrs. Dinello called out.

  I froze, certain she’d seen me. There was no door, after all, between the office alcove and the kitchen.

  “Si, Senora Dinello?” I said, stepping out from the shadows.

  “As soon as Vittorio comes in, tell him to bring a pail of water from the pump, si?” Mrs. Dinello said, barely glancing up from the cutting board, pointing the tip of her knife in the direction of the sink. “The faucet, she is broken again.”

  It seemed to take forever for her and Beatrice to finish slicing up the lemons and vacate the kitchen, leaving it for me to clean up. And it wasn’t until everyone had gone to bed that night that I was certain I was alone. My fingers, my whole body trembled. Removing the floorboard beside my bench, I realized that the ice cream scoop was too big to hide in that little space. For a moment I panicked, wondering what to do. I decided to sleep with it under my pillow, where it jutted into my cheek.

  Slipping the scoop into my little school satchel, I prayed that the Dinellos would not go into the office before I left nor notice entirely that one of their utensils was missing. All day long, I kept peeking into my school bag to make sure the ice cream scoop was still there, my heart pounding furiously with its secret. I kept speculating how much money I could get for it. After school, I knew, I had to hurry. As quickly as I could, I limped through the schoolyard, down Baxter onto Hester Street, and searched for the junk man. When I finally found him, I was nearly beside myself with excitement. “Look,” I said proudly, unsheathing the ice cream scoop from its burlap. “How much?”

  The Hungarian picked it up carefully and studied it.

  “It’s silver!” I said. “It must be worth fifty or a hundred dollars!”

  The Hungarian turned it over and frowned. “It is not silver,” he said. “It is maybe tin.”

  “But it is brand-new,” I said.

  “Yes, I see,” said the Hungarian noncommittally. “Where you get this?”

  Before I could answer, he nodded wryly. “Yes, yes, I know. You won it at cards.” He bent down to look me squarely in the eyes. “You know, kislány, you might want to tell your papa if he comes here himself, he may get better price.”

  I shifted a little on my good leg. “So how much?” I said evenly.

  He tilted his head. “I give you twenty cents.”

  “Twenty cents? But it’s brand-new!”

  “It won’t be when I sell it.”

  I suppose he could see my desperation, my eyes filling with tears, because he said, “All right. A quarter.”

  “No, I need more. I need a dollar!”

  The man laughed. His teeth, I noticed, were covered in grime.

  “Brand-new this is not a dollar.”

  “I need food!” I cried. “It’s for my sister.” And for the first time in my life, I was not pretending to weep before a peddler. “There’s no food, and they put Mama in the hospital, and it’s my fault—”

  The junk man looked exasperated. “I run a business, not a charity,” he said.

  Yet when I would not stop weeping, he exhaled. “Gyermek, brand-new this cost fifty cents, maybe fifty-five. I give you forty. If I am lucky, I can sell it for that. But no more. Best I can do.”

  Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I nodded. The junk man dug into his pockets and counted out a quart
er, a dime, and a nickel into my hand. “Go feed your sister,” he said irritably.

  Forty cents! Forty cents! For Flora that was more than a full day’s wages at Metusowich’s factory! I wished I could run; I wished I could fly across Allen Street. Imagining Flora’s face when I presented her with the three coins, picturing her elation and relief, and how we would buy pickles and knishes and rice balls—barrels of herring and garlands of salamis—sacks of flour and oats and rice to eat for weeks. Perhaps even American chocolate candy bars wrapped in paper. The three coins—silver-colored coins, no less—not copper! I held them so tightly in my left fist that the edges embossed little crescents in my palm, and the streetcars and carriages and shoppers and vendors all whisked past me in a smear of color and ecstatic velocity.

  Flora wasn’t there yet when I arrived at the doorway of the funeral parlor. I watched the streetcars rumble by, their bells chiming, and the wagon wheels turning on the carriages. I counted the different colors of the horses and watched the sea of hats bobbing up and down beneath the grimy steel latticework of the Elevated. I looked up at the rooftops. I made myself count to twenty in my head—the highest I had learned to go in English, then to thirty in Italian. A tinge of lavender bled into the sky. Stores along Allen Street began rolling down their grates and locking their doors.

  Still Flora did not come.

  It was Friday, wasn’t it? I stopped and asked a passerby; she nodded at me strangely. Perhaps Flora had forgotten? Finally I headed down Grand Street. On Orchard Street the last of the peddlers were packing up. A small crowd in black was gathering before the synagogue at the end of the block. A few men milled about outside the saloon, but otherwise most of the stoops had cleared.

  I struggled up the staircase. Mrs. Lefkowitz would be furious to have me appear before her door again. But I couldn’t help it. I knocked once, then more vehemently. From behind the door, finally, I heard an urgent exchange of whispers in Yiddish, then silence.

  I banged again.

  “Please, Mrs. Lefkowitz. It’s Malka,” I said.

  Someone murmured. There were footsteps. Slowly, the door creaked open. A small man I had never seen before stood facing me. He was balding, with a waxy, sallow face and thick black beard, wearing a mottled overcoat two sizes too big. Behind him, in the kitchen, a petite, fearful-looking woman eyed me, clad in a gray dress and a moth-eaten shawl. Two little girls, dressed in miniature versions of her own threadbare clothes, cowered behind her. An older boy in a cap stood with his legs spread and his arms crossed defiantly amid a pile of bundles. Except for the pale yellow curtain on the window overlooking the air shaft, the kitchen was completely empty. Only one light burned, and the stove was cold. A small pan sat on it.

  “Yes, please. Can I help you?” the man said nervously in Yiddish.

  “Where’s Mr. Lefkowitz?” I said. “Is Flora here?”

  The man looked at me helplessly. “I am sorry?”

  Behind him I noticed a pair of empty candlesticks and a small loaf of challah arranged atop an old steamer trunk.

  “Where are the Lefkowitzes?”

  The man shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  “This is their house. Mrs. Lefkowitz and the babies. Flora—”

  The man shrugged. “We arrive only yesterday. The apartment, it is empty.”

  “But where is my sister?” I cried.

  The man began to say something, but I turned and stumbled down the stairs. I banged on one door, then the other, yelling, “Flora! Flora, where are you?”

  “Ai, ai, ai!” somebody shouted. “Don’t interrupt! We’re saying the berakhot!”

  “Flora!”

  I knocked and knocked, one floor, then the next. Finally a door opened. It was Mr. Tomashevski—the old Ukrainian man whom Flora and I used to help with his bunions for a nickel. “Yes?” he said shakily. He looked past me to the hallway, his blue eyes milky and unfocused.

  “Mr. Tomashevski, it’s me, Malka,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Tomashevski, do you know where Flora is, and the Lefkowitzes?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you realize it’s the Sabbath? You should not be disturbing people,” said a plump woman in a soup-stained apron, stepping up behind him. Lines extended from the corners of her mouth to her chin. “Go back inside, Baba,” she said to Mr. Tomashevski. “What are you doing here at this hour?” she said to me.

  “I’m looking for my sister,” I said. “Flora. And the Lefkowitzes.”

  The woman frowned. “Gone,” she said. “Evicted Monday. Hadn’t paid their rent in two weeks and too many boarders.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “What about Flora? Do you know if she went with them?”

  The woman shrugged. “The little blond girl? I assume so. I guess so. Why wouldn’t she? I’m sorry.” She sighed. “They were nice enough people.” As she moved to close the door, she paused. “Do you have someplace to go, kindeleh?” she said. “It’s the Sabbath, you know.”

  But already I was struggling down the stairs.

  I sat on a stoop, I recall, staring down at the coins in my hand, then up at the inky, impossible New York sky, the vast blue-black sea of it, illuminated by bursts of orange fumes from the tanneries and forges near the waterfront and the electric lights blazing from the skyscrapers and bridges farther downtown, the greater city roaring all around me indifferently, even during the hush of the Sabbath. My leg hurt, my stomach hurt; I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my coat. “Mama!” I sobbed aloud. “Flora!”

  A gang of boys appeared at the end of the block. I could see their silhouettes in the lamplight. They seemed to be picking bits of debris out of the gutter and hurling them at street signs, cheering every time they hit their target and the metallic sproing of the strike echoed down the block. I grabbed my cane and moved away as quickly as I could. I hobbled up one street, then another, avoiding the rats and the garbage, not really seeing where I was going at all. It was like chanting, but with my feet—the good and the damaged one together. A rhythm took over; I became a part of it, breathing into it, moving without thinking. I suddenly found myself back on Grand Street, then Chrystie. I had no idea how late it was. I stood there for a while, frightened to cross. But eventually I suppose I did, because I found myself again on the Italian side of the avenue. Slowly, in a fog of devastation and fatigue, I made my way back to the Dinellos. I realized I had nowhere else to go.

  When I arrived at the storefront, all the lights were blazing, which was unusual, and both Mr. and Mrs. Dinello were sitting in the kitchen, which surprised me. Then I saw that Mrs. Salucci and Mrs. DiPietro were there as well, speaking in low tones over in the corner by the window. As soon as I hobbled in, Mrs. DiPietro touched her hand to her forehead and chest, then to each of her shoulders: “See, I told you, Generosa.” Mrs. Salucci shot me a vicious look. With a little harrumph, she and Mrs. DiPietro swept past me and mounted the stairs. “How many times do I tell them?” she said loudly.

  “Ninella,” Mr. Dinello said. He leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, regarding me with horrible resignation. His look was not cruel, or even angry, but one of such terrible disappointment I felt as if I had been kicked. He fixed his eyes on mine for a long, heavy moment, then glanced sadly toward the countertop.

  There, like the damning pieces of evidence they were, were the remaining three items I had hidden beneath the floorboards.

  I realized instantly that I was in a great deal of trouble.

  “Now you come back?” Mrs. Dinello shouted at me, leaping to her feet. “We feed you. We treat you like a daughter? And this—this is the thanks we get?”

  “Generosa,” Mr. Dinello said evenly, making a staying motion with his hand.

  “You disappear. You steal our tools. You even steal our rosary?” She yanked open the candy tin and dangled the string of wooden beads before me. “What are you doing with this?”

  I blinked
back my tears. “I just like to wear it sometimes,” I said barely audibly.

  “You wear it? This is not jewelry. This is not a toy. This, she does not belong to you—”

  “I was careful,” I pleaded. “I didn’t break it.”

  “Ai!” Mrs. Dinello cried. Throwing up her hands, she looked at Mr. Dinello with exasperation.

  “The scoop, Ninella,” said Mr. Dinello, “that you took this morning? Where is it?”

  This I could not bear to answer. I looked down at the floorboards, my face flushing with shame.

  “You did take it, si?” he said.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I nodded.

  “So where is it?” Mrs. Dinello demanded.

  Even with my head down, I could feel their gaze on me, waiting, and yet I could not find a voice. Finally I whispered, “I sold it.”

  “You sold it?”

  I nodded. There was nothing left to lie for, of course. And then, carefully, I unfurled my palm. All this time I had been clutching the three coins. They were now embedded in my skin, sticking to it and turning it dark green. Unbending my fingers was painful.

  Mrs. Dinello stared at my proffered palm. “Forty cents? You sold it for forty cents?”

  Mr. Dinello gave her a look of mild, bitter surprise. “At least she make a profit.”

  I started to cry.

  All the air seemed to go out of Mrs. Dinello then. “Why? Why you do all this? Ninella. Why you disrespect us so?”

  This time the question was a statement not of anger, but despair. She genuinely seemed to want to know. I sniffled and choked on my sobs. All I longed to do, of course, was to drop to my knees and beg them not to put me out on the street or send me to the asylum. All I wanted to do was promise I’d be better, promise I’d be good. But I understood that this was no longer enough. The Dinellos were positioned before me like judge and jury. I had to make a compelling case for myself. Otherwise they were finished with me. They were exhausted. They were done.