In the first months of living in the house, we had solved the problem of feeding the family. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I sent all four children to Luigi’s Restaurant at the corner of Prince and Sullivan streets, where Luigi’s wife would take care of them. The restaurant was a dark long room with banquettes on both sides. In front there was a bar, and around 5:00 P.M., it was always filled with workers having a drink before heading home. Most nights the children ate pasta, meatballs, and salad. Jimmy and I ate sandwiches in the living room. The other two days and on weekends, I cooked in the fireplace. I used a hibachi, a small Japanese barbeque set in the hearth. In fact, I became quite an expert on cooking in the fireplace. We had lived in Italy, in Umbria, where cooking in the fireplace was common place. For example, veal chops were marinated in a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and herbs for a couple of hours, then grilled over hot coals. I also learned what vegetables would cook easily and quickly. Eggplant, thinly sliced and brushed with olive oil, cooked in a few minutes as did fresh shiitake or portobello mushrooms. Grated carrots tossed with lemony vinaigrette made a delicious salad, and frozen, tiny green peas could be heated in the microwave. That month, we ate a lot of hamburgers, pork chops, and veal chops.
Slowly, the house started to take shape. On weekends, Jimmy and I both worked side by side with Toothless. I painted the children’s bathroom, learned how to tape plasterboard, and removed linoleum with a blow torch. The children’s room was finally finished, and they all moved to the top floor.
One Saturday, I sanded the front door and painted it with glossy black paint. To my horror, the next morning the front door was all scratched and my work was destroyed. I was very upset and decided to repaint it and try to catch who had done it. But since I could not work until the following weekend, I had to wait. Jimmy and I now slept alone in the living room. One night, unable to sleep, still quite upset by the front door incident, I got up and walked toward the window, looking at the street, silent and empty. Suddenly I saw a young boy running toward our house, a rag in his hand. He climbed the stoop, lit the rag with a match, and was about to run down when, in an instant, I was outside in my nightgown and grabbed him by the hair. I pushed away the furiously burning rag soaked with gasoline and started screaming, shaking him like a leaf.
“Who are you? What’s your name? Who sent you? Answer…. I’ll call the police…”
A few minutes later, I found myself surrounded by about ten women. Still holding the boy by the hair, I screamed, “Who’s your mother? Where is she? Where do you live? What’s your name? Answer or I will call the police.”
The boy slowly pointed to one of the women standing by.
I dragged the child in front of her.
“Is he yours?”
She whispered, “Yes.”
For a second, I did not know what to do. Should I call the police? I was still in my nightgown, so I made a quick decision.
“Take him home. If I see him within ten feet from my house, I will file a complaint. Now tell me where you live?”
“Two houses down,” she answered, taking the boy by the arm. “Don’t worry; it won’t happen again.”
The next morning I told Toothless what had happened. He sat me down and said, “Let me tell you about the street. This is Mafia territory. You have invaded their turf, and they don’t know who you are. They are very good people, family people; they just don’t want someone not Italian living here.”
As I was about to protest that we were also a hardworking family, he shook his head and continued: “Freddie, who is so nice to you, collects the money for the number games. Do you see the black limousine on Friday nights parked in the street? They come to collect it. Willie takes down the numbers, collects the money, and gives it to Freddie. You know the social club down the street? This is where they gather and discuss their affairs. You are intruding. Give them time. The best thing you did was not to call the police.”
The next day on my way home from work, I stopped at the social club and sat down at one of the empty tables. A few men were playing cards; they looked baffled to see me there. A fat, middle age man stood up and walked toward me. He must be the owner, I thought, and so I asked him for a coffee.
“We don’t serve coffee.”
“A glass of juice, any kind of juice?”
“No juice! We serve nothing.”
This was clearly not Freddie’s Luncheonette. No one here was going to acknowledge my presence, let alone accommodate me. The man walked away, and so I sat there silently; then I started to talk.
“I am the new owner of 114…. I am French, and we have four children…. I work as a teacher, and my husband is an architect…”
No answer, no sign that anyone was listening.
“I work hard, so does he. We are not rich…. I chose this neighborhood because I had an Italian ballia (wet nurse)…. My first words were Italian.” Still no reaction. “And I love our house. We feel so safe…like in a village. I want my children to grow up here.”
As I got no reaction, I stood up and left, saddened.
That night I told Jimmy what I did and how I had failed.
“Don’t worry. You know what Toothless said; they will get used to us.”
For the next few weeks, nothing happened. Our bedroom was finished, so we moved to our floor. Now we had two bathrooms and no need to bother our friends. The next task was to create a kitchen out of the former outhouse. Toothless had found an old Italian tile setter in the neighborhood, and so Jimmy ordered a ton of sand for the dining room and kitchen.
A few days later, at 7:00 A.M., the front door bell rang. I ran to open the door and faced a man holding papers.
“Rossant? I have your sand. Please sign here.”
Once I signed, I saw the truck turn around and dump one ton of sand on the sidewalk.
“But you can’t do that. It has to be in bags! How will we bring it in?”
“Lady, this is not my problem, but a word of advice—if you don’t want a ticket start bringing it in right away.”
I woke up Jimmy, the three girls, and Gladys and told them to take pots and pans, and together we would bring in the sand through the basement door.
We must have been a sight! The three little girls in their pajamas, Thomas jumping on the sand, me in my dressing gown, Gladys in a short nightie, and Jimmy, the only one half-dressed. We formed a line. I filled the pots, Jimmy at the other end emptied them; in between, the others passed the pots and pans.
Within ten minutes, we were surrounded by muscled young men from the neighborhood lugging enormous containers, and in a half hour, the sand was in the house. I made coffee for everyone, realizing that my speech at the social club had worked. We were now part of the street scene and accepted by the neighborhood.
One morning in June, after we had been in the house six months, I saw that the street was crossed by high-illuminated arches every ten feet. I asked Willy what they were for.
“Don’t you know? It is for St. Anthony’s Fair. It lasts two weeks, with stands selling sausages, zeppole, and pizza, and there is gambling and games like throwing baseballs or catching small fish. Officially, the fair is run by the church, but really it’s run by Mike. You will see him around collecting the fees for the church. You can’t miss him; he is always screaming at everybody. Then on the last day of the fair, there is a procession with a statue of the Virgin paraded up and down the street, her dress pinned with dollar bills. There is lots of music and a live band. You will love it!”
A few days later, we saw a truck pulling an immense stand and stopping in front of our house. The first one to set up his stand in front of our house was a man who sold sausages, sweetbreads, and beer. Although he would appear with the fair for the next thirty years, I never learned his name, but he was by far the most popular vendor in the fair. Short, skinny, and adorned with a swooping white mustache, a white chef’s hat perched on his bald head, a red handkerchief around his neck, all day long and all night til two in the morning, he c
alled people to his stand, through a loudspeaker, making jokes and telling the crowds how wonderful his sausages were. Every morning his assistant, a fat, older man, sat on a chair near our house peeling a mountain of onions while the sausage man prepared his sweet breads and sausages. The street was full of stinking garbage. No one seemed to sweep, and by the second day, I was incensed. After work, I went to him to complain about the garbage all over the street and our stoop. He offered me a sausage sandwich. I was going to refuse, but the sausage sandwich looked tempting, so I accepted. I bit into the hot sweet sausage with great pleasure. I had to admit that it was excellent. I smiled and asked again if, at the end of the day, he could sweep all around his stand and my stoop? He promised he would do his best. But at the end of the first weekend, the garbage was worse; people sat on our stoop eating, dropping greasy onions on the steps. I hosed it down every morning, cursing the fair and everyone around. One day I decided to put sawdust on the steps, hoping that people would not sit on the stoop. I was wrong. Nothing could stop them from sitting there. I called St. Anthony’s Church and spoke to the Father in charge of the fair. Father R. promised to help. However, after two days, the garbage was overflowing and despite my begging the stands in front of our house to sweep every night, the garbage kept on accumulating.
A week after the fair was over, I went around the private houses on Sullivan and MacDougal streets and invited the owners to come and discuss the fair over a drink in our empty living room. I asked Father R. to also join us. My guests that night were Herbert Ferber, the sculptor, and his wife, Edith, with whom we would become very good friends; the Brods, a young real estate man who, with his wife, had bought the house at the corner of Prince; and finally a couple who lived further down on Sullivan Street. Everyone accepted and came. We talked about the fair, the garbage, and the loud music. Father R. promised that the fair would be cleaner the following year. He would ask the Sanitation Department for more garbage cans, and he would see that each stand swept around itself. But I wanted more. I wanted the fair to move somewhere else.
A few days later as I entered our local liquor store, the owner, Andrew, a middle-age man who, Willy told me, still lived with his mother and swept the church’s steps every morning before attending mass, asked me to follow him to a small room behind the counter. He offered me a chair, and he stood over me.
“You have to stop trying to move the fair or making trouble. You will be hurt. People here love the fair. It has been here for fifty years. Who are you, and who gives you the right to make trouble?”
I sat there speechless. I loved the street, and I could not fathom that the other people living on the street liked the fair. I looked up at Andrew. He was looking at me seriously, not smiling. I got up and left without a word.
Upset and worried, I went home and decided not to tell Jimmy about the lecture. The next morning I saw a letter stuck in the front door. It was written in bad English, and the gist of it was: If I continued trying to move the fair, they would break my legs and set the house on fire. I will never know who they were. It could have been Andrew or some other people from the social club down the street. The warning was strong enough for me to cease and desist. I would have to live with the fair.
The following year, our children decided to have a stand in front of the house and serve French crêpes with sugar or jam. Jimmy built them a small stand. I got a small electric hot plate and pan and made the batter. Marianne, Juliette, and Cecile spent the weekend making crêpes. They were so successful selling crêpes that Mike came around and told me I had to pay for the right to have a stand. I was incensed. I called Father R. and said that I refused to pay for using my own sidewalk! We finally agreed that I would not pay Mike, but I would make a donation to the church. The following weekend, Calvin Trillin, our friend, passing by the fair, saw my three adorable little girls selling crêpes. He did not realize that they were our children, and the following week, he had a story about them in The New Yorker.
As the years went by, I started to like the fair. It was like a small village fair filled with children screaming up and down the street, eating candy, and playing games. On the weekend, I gave our children some money to eat and play at the fair. Sometimes after work, I would walk through the fair and could not resist picking up a couple of zeppole, the round, fried dough rolled in sugar. They were hot, greasy, crunchy, and delicious. On weekends, I would invite friends for dinner and order zeppole from a fat lady at the corner of Sullivan and Spring streets to serve my guests as dessert. Yes, I was softening, but I still hated the fair’s garbage. I continued fighting with the Church for thirty years. The year we sold our house, the church, realizing that the street had changed and that the Italians had moved out to be replaced with more upscale people, decided to eliminate the fair! I was astonished and somewhat sad and nostalgic. One more tradition that had made Sullivan Street so wonderful, disappearing just as we were moving out!
When the house was finally finished, we decided to give a big party to celebrate. We did not have furniture or any money to buy some. So Jimmy had a brilliant idea: cover the windows and the round ornate plaster rosaces on the ceiling with Christmas lights and leave the place empty like the ballroom it resembled. We hired a three-piece Greek band and sent some 300 invitations. For the invitations, he made a picture showing the front of the whole house opening with the empty rooms of the house behind. Was it because of Jimmy’s drawing or because people were curious about the house, that every one said yes? Jimmy was worried: Would the living room floor hold so many people dancing?
I had another worry: What to serve three-hundred people? I went to see Catherine, the butcher, for advice. She suggested serving cotechino, a large fat sausage, with lentils. She would make me about twenty cotechinos. “You can cook them in advance, slice them when cold, and heat them the night of the party in the oven. Very easy.” Jimmy and I were still faced with the problem of what else to serve. We had very little money and so many guests!
“I know,” Jimmy said, “let’s go to the Bronx Terminal market two days before the party.”
We got up a five in the morning and drove to the terminal market, which was located near the Yankee Stadium. The market was clogged with enormous trucks loading and unloading. We parked and walked around. I saw cases of sweet peppers, red, orange and green. So we bought a case to make a tri-color salad in lemony vinaigrette. Further down, we found a case of endive to glaze with sugar. Then I saw crates of tangerines and thought that they would make a great dessert by placing the tangerines in a large bowl in the center of the table. With our shopping done, it was now 7:30 A.M., and we were famished. We stopped at a diner. It was packed with workers from South America eating eggs, sausages, rice, and beans. We ordered the same with a strong black Cuban coffee and had the best breakfast ever.
One day before the party, I also made Cairo-style babaghanou and tarama salad. I planned to place four different types of olives everywhere and thin slices of Italian salamis and mozzarella from Joe’s store. I also made an enormous green salad. Catherine had suggested that I serve tiny cannoli and that she would talk to Bruno, the owner of the bakery down the street. She was sure he would give me a special price. I rented a few chairs for older people, dishes, forks, knives, plates, napkins, and a table for the wine and soda. I found an unemployed actor who agreed to serve the drinks.
Jimmy had decided that I should wear a Greek outfit, so we had gone shopping in a Greek store, near Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street. We chose a long dress in off-white cotton with lace around the waist. Jimmy also bought me a necklace and long earrings. A few days in advance of the party, I told the neighborhood that we were having a very large party to celebrate the end of the construction. Willy spread the word, and on the night of the party, there were no cars parked on the street so that guests could park easily. For the first hour, no one came, and I got very nervous. The bartender tried to calm me down. “You are in Manhattan,” he said with a little smile. “People feel they have to be fashi
onably late.” And as the Greek band played with gusto, I, in my Greek long dress, stood waiting, thinking no one will come down to this neighborhood!
Was I wrong! They arrived, it seemed to me, all at once. I greeted people, some I did not even know. We danced, and at 10:00 P.M., I called people over to eat. And they ate and ate, as Jimmy and I, still worrying about the floor, refilled the platters. We danced again, chatted, drank, and had a great time. The party ended at three o’clock in the morning. No one on the street complained. Years later, I would meet people whom I did not know who would insist they knew us. “I was at a party at your house years ago. It was great, and the food was fantastic!”
MUSSELS WITH HOT TOMATO SAUCE
Wash and clean 4 pints of mussels. Set aside. In a heavy saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add ½ cup of chopped parsley; 1 medium onion, finely chopped; 1 small carrot, scraped and finely chopped. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes, then add 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped, along with 1 cup of chopped fresh basil. Mix well and cook for 4 minutes. Then add a 14-ounce can of whole tomatoes with the juice, a pinch of salt, and ½ teaspoon of hot pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 40 minutes or until the sauce has thickened. Set aside.
In a large saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. When the butter is hot, add 2 garlic cloves, minced, along with 5 tablespoons of chopped parsley. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the mussels, mix well, cover, and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until the mussels are all open. Then pour in the tomato sauce, mix well, and serve with thick slices of warm Italian bread.
Serves 4.
BROILED VEAL CHOPS
Place 4 1-inch thick veal chops in a pan. In a bowl, mix together the juice of 1 lemon with 4 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper, 1 tablespoon of rosemary, 1 tablespoon of thyme, and 1 tablespoon of sage. Mix well. Pour over the veal chops and refrigerate for 1 hour, turning the veal chops several times.
The World in My Kitchen Page 10