The King of Mulberry Street (23 page)

How stupid I'd been to say that. If anything could have protected me, it was a
padrone
. “I have a boss.”

“A boss, huh?” He pointed at me. “Well, your boss broke the rules. He stole my boy. He owes me.” He stuck out his bottom lip. “He owes me you. And with training, I think you'll make a good worker.” He lunged and grabbed me by the shoulder that was still throbbing, holding me at arm's length. With the other hand he took the whip and lashed. My back was aflame. He struck again and again, till I was hanging from his hand. Then he dragged me to the wall and dropped me facedown and bound my wrist to an iron ring. “The rest of the lesson will have to wait. The boys will be home soon. I have to go pick up their supper. You'll wait for me.” And he left, locking the door behind him.

My mouth was open in the scream I never let out. It was easier to breathe that way. There was no limit to my pain, fire all over my back. I knew I was bleeding, and bad. The tatters of my shirt stuck to me, even on my belly.

Gaetano had been right. I almost wished I was dead.

The boy rolled over toward me. His face was flushed and feverish.

I forced myself onto my side and pushed my bound arm as close to him as I could. “Can you help me? With your free hand and mine, we can untie the rope.”

“He'll catch you. Then it'll be worse.”

“He won't catch me. Help me. Please.”

“If you get away, he'll kill me.”

“Come with me.”

“I don't want to.”

“Okay,” I said in desperation. “Okay, you can say I had a knife. You can say I cut myself loose.”

“Do you have a knife?”

“No.”

The boy shut his eyes.

“Where's Pietro?” I asked.

“How do you know him?”

I worked my pocket open. The orange was still there. “This is for him.” I put it on the floor in front of the boy's nose. “He's my friend.”

The boy struggled to a sitting position. “He's my friend, too.” He bit the orange that was for Pietro, chewing the peel and all. “There's a knife in the top drawer of the bureau.” He took another bite. “If we get you free, you have to cut the rope and put the knife back. Then the padrone will believe me that you had a knife.”

“Okay.”

“You swear on the Virgin Mary?”

The Virgin Mary wasn't anyone to me. But I would do what the boy said. “I swear.”

“Say it. Say ‘I swear on the Virgin Mary.’ ”

“I swear on the Virgin Mary.”

We worked at that knot. The boy's fingers were better
at it—stronger—mine trembled so. The knot came loose at last. “Thank you.”

I crawled across the floor to the bureau, pulled open the top drawer, crawled back with the knife, and cut the rope.

The boy looked beyond me and his face showed horror.

I looked, too. A telltale trail of blood ran to the bureau and back. Even the knife was bloody. Everything I had touched was bloody. I got to my feet with difficulty and took a shirt off the top of the pile of clothes in the open crate.

A shoe tumbled to the floor. One of Pietro's shoes. I looked at the boy, tears already dropping hot on my hands.

“He's dead,” he said. “My
padrone
beat him till he died.”

Something inside me creaked high and thin, as though I was coming apart. “Come with me,” I managed.

“I can't.”

“You have to.”

“My brother is here. If I leave, my brother will pay.”

Caught and good as dead.

I used the shirt to wipe the blood off the handle of the knife, then put the knife back in the bureau and shut the drawer and wiped the bureau. Then I mopped up the trail of blood.

I searched in the crate for Pietro's other shoe. Got it. “Where's his body?”

“I don't know,” said the boy. “But there are two rivers.”

I couldn't manage the stairs holding those shoes. So I threw them down a flight. Then I clung to the rickety banister. The world kept getting dark. There was no window in the hall, but I knew it was more than that—I was fighting
to stay conscious. Down a flight. I picked up the shoes and threw them before me again. Down another flight. I threw the shoes the last flight, and as they left my hand, I fell, tumbling head over heels, my back blazing.

I lay at the bottom of the stairwell and looked toward the door to the street. It was only a body's length away. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't.

Survive.

Mamma's first rule.

Simply survive.

I rolled onto my stomach and pulled my arms in under my chest and tried to push myself to sitting. I couldn't.

Pietro's shoes had landed off to the side. He had loved those shoes as much as I loved mine. But it would take so much energy to get them.

Survive.

I dragged myself to the door. With every last bit of strength I had, I grabbed the knob and pulled myself to my feet, and I fell through the door as it opened, out onto the sidewalk.

That's when I heard them. “Dom!” they were yelling. “Dom! Dom, where are you?” And then, “Look! That's him.” And the sound of running. Shoes running. Tw o sets. I wanted to see them, both of them. I wanted to tell them to save Pietro's shoes. But I blacked out.

Gaetano once said that a few days alone was enough to make a kid grow up. I didn't know if that was true. But that night in the
padrone
's room, I grew up for sure.

Grandinetti reported the
padrone
to the police, but no one expected anything to come of it. Boys disappeared all the time. There were way too many cases for the police to follow up on. Boys were dispensable.

The worst thing was, it was my fault Pietro died. I was the one who came up with the idea of his escape. Gaetano helped against his better judgment. Grandinetti and Signora Esposito were pulled in out of decency. But I started it.

Gaetano never reproached me. Grandinetti and Signora Esposito never reproached me.

And Pietro—I couldn't imagine Pietro ever reproaching me for anything.

Friends forgave.

How terrible it was to need such forgiveness.

I stayed at home for days while Gaetano and Grandi-netti ran the business. They took Pietro's death as hard as I did. But I was the one with the ripped-up back. Signora Esposito bought ice to glide over my back and neck. All I could do was lie there and think. I hadn't saved Pietro's shoes. If I could have done it all over again, I'd have grabbed them. I'd have found the energy somehow.

But now there was nothing I could do for him. I couldn't even write to his aunt to tell her he had died. I knew the street—Vico Sedil Capuano—but I had never found out Pietro's last name. And maybe the aunt had a different last name, anyway. There was nothing I could do for his spirit.

As soon as I could put a shirt on without gasping in pain, I went out to Baxter Street, to Witold, the Polish butcher.

He greeted me with a big smile. “Welcome back, my friend,” he said in halting English. “You went missing.”

Guilt stabbed me. I hadn't asked Gaetano anything about the business since the night the
padrone
had whipped me. “No one came to buy beef from you?”

“Oh, yes, yes, my friend. Another boy comes. Every day.”

I let out my breath in relief. Good old Gaetano. I could imagine his hating every moment of it. But he did it. For the business.

“In fact, he has already come today. I am sorry you wasted your time coming here.”

“I came for a different reason. I want to go to synagogue with you.”

Witold laced his fingers together on his belly. “You understand Hebrew?”

“I remember some.”

He looked at me for a full minute, I was sure. Then he nodded gravely. “You are just what America needs—just what has been lacking—an Italian Jew.”

I blinked.

He laughed. “Come back at six. You can eat with my family beforehand.”

Oh, it was Friday. I hadn't even realized. I'd come in time for the Sabbath. As I walked out, I reached up and touched the
mezuzah
. I was tall enough now to do it without a boost.

That evening Witold's family ate sour cabbage. I had to fight to keep my nose from wrinkling. They spoke fast, with so many harsh sounds in a row.

“Polish must be a hard language,” I said.

They laughed. “That wasn't Polish,” said Witold. “That was Yiddish—what Eastern European Jews speak. Some just call it Jewish.”

I felt stupid. Italian Jews didn't speak Yiddish. I couldn't begin to mimic them. What was I doing there?

But then Witold's wife draped an old sweater over my shoulders and told me I could keep it. And Witold put a yarmulke on my head. And everything was right again. I felt small. Like before Mamma put me on that cargo ship. Safe.

Witold wrapped himself in his prayer shawl and the family walked east on Canal Street to the synagogue on
Eldridge Street. With every step I could feel the new scabs on my back crack open, setting me on fire all over again. But I kept my eyes on the white tassels of that prayer shawl and tried to listen as Witold told me about the history of the synagogue. It was new, built only in 1887. Anyone was welcome, but, really, it was an Eastern European synagogue. The rabbi spoke Yiddish, after all.

The service was long, and my back hurt so much I could barely listen to the Hebrew. I hardly knew Hebrew, anyway. But I was there, in the Most Powerful One's house. I was begging His forgiveness, His mercy on my wretchedness. I cried, the way I'd cried when I found Pietro's shoe at the
padrone
's, silently.

Over the next week, day by day, my strength came back. I kept that yarmulke in my pocket and the following Friday afternoon I went back to Witold with a bottle of Falanghina—wine from Napoli.

Witold put the bottle on one end of his butcher counter. I tilted my head in question. “I do not drink,” he said. “But it makes good decoration. An Italian gift from my Italian friend.”

I set the yarmulke on my head and ate stinky food with his chattering family and went off to synagogue with Poles and Russians. I didn't understand much of anything.

Beniamino—Dom—it didn't matter what I was called. I was Napoletano, and I didn't belong at an Eastern European service. I couldn't just worm my way into Witold's world and the comfort of his community. I couldn't pretend that all this was mine.

It wasn't a synagogue that made a Jew, anyway. It wasn't a yarmulke or a
mezuzah
. I was Jewish inside. In my head.
I had to use that head like Mamma said, to find my own way to be loyal to everything that mattered to me. That was the only way to survive, and Survive was her first rule.

When I explained to Witold, he put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Shalom, my friend.”

Shalom. Peace.

I hadn't thought of myself as being in a battle. But Witold was right—war raged inside me. I wanted to scream half the time.

I wanted to scream because the idea of going back to Napoli had died. I no longer yearned for it, though I still spent the last hour before falling asleep trying to smell the scents of every corner of our home in Napoli, trying to feel every swatch of material, to taste every sauce in every pot. This was my private treasure.

But maybe the lion statues at the Piazza dei Martiri weren't as large as I remembered. Maybe Palazzo Sessa, the synagogue, wasn't that high. Maybe Mamma wasn't sitting in a window crying for me.

It didn't matter anyway, because I wasn't going back.

In December I'd turn ten. I'd have a little celebration with Gaetano and Grandinetti and Signora Esposito, and maybe even some of the boys who worked for us at the cart. They'd say, “
Cent'anni
,” wishing me one hundred years of healthy life. One hundred years away from Napoli. One hundred years without Mamma.

That made me want to scream, because so long as I planned to return to Napoli, I had something to work for.

I didn't belong in Napoli anymore.

Mamma didn't want me there. It hurt so bad to know
that. But I couldn't stop the knowing anymore. Gaetano had helped me to know. My friend Gaetano.

And my friend Pietro, he had helped me, too. He had said something that last time we were together. He'd said he could have found out the price of a passage—but he didn't want to. He was more afraid of being alone than of his
padrone
. He was a liar. Like me.

I remembered Mamma's words to Franco. I had lied to myself about that. I remembered them exactly, because I'd stood there that morning and wanted to ask her why she kept talking about my going—why she hadn't talked about our going.

Mamma put me on that ship alone on purpose. My mamma did that terrible thing to me. I couldn't pretend I didn't know anymore.

And now I belonged here.

I remembered Uncle Aurelio saying a true Napoletano couldn't stay away forever. That was why when the Jews were sent out of Napoli, they kept sneaking back. But I could. I could stay in Five Points forever.

I had a life here, and a family of sorts. It wasn't the family I was born into. But I loved them. No one in this new family had betrayed me. I belonged with them—that was what going to Witold's synagogue had taught me. My family was that comfort I needed.

Pietro was wrong: I wasn't any braver than he was. I couldn't face what Mamma had done on my own. It took my new family to help me.

And the business, too. That kept me working and feeling useful. By now the brothers who had worked for our
cart all summer had left us to go to school. Their family didn't send them to parochial school, even though they were Catholic, because the Irish ran those schools and no Italians wanted their children acting like the Irish. So they went to Public School 23 over on City Hall Place. I'd see them walking there in the morning. It wasn't far. I knew, because I followed them once. It was just between Duane and Pearl streets.

So we had been hiring other boys—older ones who had already dropped out of school. Some were new immigrants who had tried school, but because they couldn't speak English, they were put in the primary grades. They hated being with babies and being forced to speak English badly in front of their classmates. Plenty of them weren't fresh off the boat, though. They had come to America really young and stayed in school through the second grade, at least. But even as little guys, they couldn't take being made fun of for their English. So they quit.