The Queen of the Big Time (5 page)

“I will,” I promise. I watch Assunta walk up the block. Once she is gone, I go into the school. How wide the corridors are! I walk down
the main hallway. The terrazzo floor, with its black, white, and gold flecks, has been waxed and almost glitters. I breathe in the smell of fresh pine and waxy wood and chalk. I can see the shadow of my reflection in the shiny pink tile on the walls. A series of doors that lead to classrooms line the sides of the hallway, and I peek in each one on my way to the office. How pristine every detail is—the clean chalkboards and the desks in neat rows.

“What are you looking for?” a man’s booming voice bellows.

I jump at the sound. “The office,” I stammer, turning around to face him. When I look up at the man, I realize that he’s a friend of Papa’s. I recognize his handlebar mustache from the hog killing. “Mr. Ricci?”

“You’re a Castelluca,” he says with obvious surprise.

“Yes, sir. I’m Nella.”

“Well, I’m the janitor here. Your pop never said one of you was coming to school here. Did you take the trolley?”

“We walked. My sister Assunta is working at the blouse factory on Front Street.”

“Walked! That’s almost three miles.”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“You have a long wait until the bell rings. Come with me.” Mr. Ricci takes me into the boiler room, where he has set up a small table and chairs. He pours some hot milk from one thermos and a splash of hot coffee from another into a cup for me. He puts two heaping tablespoons of sugar into the cup and stirs it. He gives me the cup and makes the same for himself, only with more coffee. I reach into my lunch pail and give him the box with the cream puff.

“From my papa,” I tell him. “He would want to thank you for looking out for me.” Mr. Ricci opens the box and smiles.

“We’ll share.” Mr. Ricci cuts the cream puff in two, giving me the larger piece. “I have a daughter about your age in school here. Concetta. We call her Chettie.”

“I’m in ninth grade, at least agewise. I went to seventh in Delabole.”

“Chettie will show you the ropes. You got a good teacher too. Miss Ciliberti.”

“She’s Italian?”

“Oh yes. You have four Italians teaching here. Too bad I didn’t bring Chettie out to the hog killing. You two could have gotten to know each other.”

“I’m sure she’ll be a good friend,” I say. He smiles at me just like Papa does when I say something that pleases him.

Mr. Ricci doesn’t say much more. He finishes his coffee and pastry, and then he goes about his chores. When the bell rings, I go to the office, where they sign me in. Mr. Ricci was right: I am sent to Miss Ciliberti’s class at the end of the hallway. As I walk in, the students are laughing and talking around their desks. I go to the teacher and give her the envelope from the office.

“Nella Castelluca?” Miss Ciliberti smiles, but it is not a warm smile like Miss Stoddard’s. It’s more businesslike. Her dark brown hair is bobbed close to her head. She is a small woman with a determined jaw.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, you’re skipping eighth grade?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m fourteen. But I’ve gone ahead and read all the required books through grade eight.”

“Such as?” she asks impatiently.

“Walden
by Henry David Thoreau.
The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas.
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen.
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë,
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë—”

“Fine. Enough.” She holds up her hand and smiles pleasantly. “We’ll see how you keep up.” She jots a few notes on the envelope. “Take the last seat in the second row.”

The girls sit in two rows on one side of the room, and the boys in
one row on the other. We outnumber them, but that’s to be expected. Most boys have to work in the quarry as soon as they are old enough. In all, there are about thirty of us in the ninth grade.

When I sit down, a round-faced girl with chin-length curly black hair taps me on the shoulder. “I’m Chettie.” She smiles. “My pop said you need a tour guide.”

I smile appreciatively at her. As I look around the room, I see that the kids are more polished than me. One girl wears a plaid wool jumper with a drop waist. I wear my best skirt and a white blouse, but as I survey the room, I see it’s not good enough. I’ll have to convince Papa to let me buy some tartan plaid to make myself a jumper. I am the only one with a lunch pail, which I quickly shove under my seat.

Miss Ciliberti begins the lessons with mathematics—not my strongest subject, but I do my best to follow the lesson. When the bell rings and Miss Ciliberti dismisses us for lunch, I am relieved. This school is much harder than Delabole, and Miss Ciliberti has very little patience. If someone doesn’t know an answer right away, she moves on to the next student without as much as a second glance. There will be no lemonade and tea cakes under the tree at recess. I doubt they even have recess here.

“Where are you having lunch?” Chettie asks.

“I could eat anywhere. Outside, I guess.”

“Outside? Nobody eats outside.”

“Where do they go?”

“Home.”

“Home? That’s three miles away for me.”

“Well, we all live a few blocks from here. You want to come home with me?”

“Sure. I won’t be any trouble. I have my lunch.” I show Chettie the pail.

“That looks like something Pop takes to the quarry. He works in the quarry all summer when school is out.”

“My pop uses this pail when
he
works in the quarry. He’s a farmer but goes in whenever we need the money.”

“I don’t like my father to work there.”

“Why not?”

“Have you ever seen the quarry? It’s the scariest thing, just this giant pit filled with black water, and the men have to get in these boxes and they’re lowered into the hole to work.”

“Papa doesn’t talk about it much. And he’s never taken us there.” Little does my new friend know, we haven’t gone anywhere, not even Allentown or Easton. We stay on the farm.

“Pop doesn’t say much about the quarry either,” Chettie admits. I can already tell we have lots in common. How lucky to meet her on my very first day of school. This will make everything so much easier.

As we walk to Chettie’s house, she takes time to introduce me to her friends, who are nice enough but look me up and down suspiciously.

When I mention this to Chettie, she replies, “They’ll get nicer when they know you better. After all, it’s not like you’re a Johnny Bull. You’re Italian too.”

Chettie takes a sharp turn onto a stoop on Dewey Street. “This is it. The Ricci palazzo.” She laughs. When she opens the screen door, she hollers for her mother, who yells back from the kitchen. The house has more furniture than ours, their settee is covered in burgundy velvet, and there are rugs that are old but clean. In an alcove hangs a cupboard with a small pine table underneath. A set of delicate teacups and saucers are arranged on the shelves, and on the table is a white ceramic bowl filled with green apples.

Chettie calls to me, “Come in here, Nella.”

I continue to the end of the hallway to a bright kitchen filled with children younger than we are. “I am the oldest of the brood,” Chettie says, grabbing a roll stuffed with salami. She sits down and helps her mother feed the little ones who sit around the table. I start to count them. “There’s six of us.” Chettie saves me the trouble. “A handful.”

“I need a maid,” Mrs. Ricci says ruefully. She is petite, with brown hair streaked with gray. She has soft brown eyes and a big smile, just like Chettie’s.

“Let me help.” I put my lunch pail down in the corner and sit next to a little boy. “Here.” I fill a spoon with pastina and direct it toward his mouth.

“Oreste hates to eat,” Chettie warns me.

“Is that true?” I ask him. The way I say it makes him smile. “Please? For me? I’m your new friend Nella.”

“Nay Nay?” he says.

“You can call me Nay Nay.”

“Hey, Ma, look, Oreste is eating.” Chettie points.

“Well, it’s a Monday miracle. Thank you, Nella. And welcome to our house.” I can tell Mrs. Ricci means it. I feel like I’m part of the family already. I knew I’d love school, but I had no idea lunch would be fun too.

When Assunta comes to pick me up, I try to tell her all about the school and my new friend Chettie, but she cuts me off when she’s heard enough. “When Alessandro comes, I want to live in a house on Dewey Street. I wouldn’t mind starting out in one half of a two-family home. There’s a red-brick one on the end of the street that’s pretty. It has green awnings and a shade tree.” She treats me to one of her rare smiles. “I could be happy there, I think.”

The walk seems much shorter going home, and I realize that I’m not the only Castelluca with dreams of living in town. I hope Alessandro Pagano is a good provider, because Assunta will want Oriental rugs and teacups and copper pots and pans. I’ll bet she’ll make him buy striped awnings so the front porch has shade when the sun is hot.

“Where do you go to Mass?” Chettie wants to know as we walk back to school from lunch. I’ve been helping her and her mom every day at lunch for a month now, and they are so grateful, they give me a hot meal, so I don’t have to carry a pail anymore. I much prefer Mrs.
Ricci’s hot minestrone soup and fresh bread to a cold sandwich. Chettie and I sprinkle grated cheese on our soup and dunk the bread into the broth. On Fridays, Mrs. Ricci lets us have birch beer, a sort of root beer soda, with our lunch. “Aren’t you Catholic?”

“Yes,” I tell her, blushing, because our family only makes it to church on Christmas and Easter. We can’t afford the trolley for the whole family, and besides, Sunday is a day of chores for us. “The cows don’t know it’s the Sabbath,” Papa says. “They still have to be milked.” How do I explain this to Chettie without making my family sound like a bunch of godless heathens? “We work on Sundays. Chores have to be done every day, rain or shine.”

“But you
have
to go to church. You have to make the time.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t you’ll go to hell, and I’m not visiting you in hell.” Chettie laughs. It’s a wonder to me that we have become such fast friends. Chettie could be friends with anyone though; she’s funny and everyone likes her. And while she has a cute smile, she’s not a great beauty. But being funny is much better than being beautiful; I can see that already. “Why don’t you come to my church?”

“The big one on the hill?” I ask her.

“Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It’s brand-new. They hung the bells in the tower last year.”

“It’s pretty,” I say, wishing I could go to church with Chettie, but I don’t have a dress coat and a felt hat to wear to such a fancy place. Maybe I could borrow Mama’s gloves!

“We were Presbyterians for a year until they got the Catholic church built.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. For a long time, the bishop of Philadelphia wouldn’t build a Catholic church here because he didn’t like the Italians. He was Irish. So the Italians became Presbyterians because the Presbyterians were willing to build a church, and they did, on the other end of Garibaldi Avenue. When the bishop found out, he rushed to get
Mount Carmel built and even sent a nice Italian priest, Father Impeciato, to run the parish and to keep us happy.”

“That sounds so crazy.” I laugh.

“It was. My papa says it’s all about the money. He says the bishop figured out how much collection money he was missing when the Italians turned Presbyterian and that’s why he built the church. Mama thinks it’s terrible when Papa criticizes the Church, but that’s how he feels.”

I imagine Mr. and Mrs. Ricci debating about the Church and the neighbors joining in for a lively discussion. That sort of conversation could only happen in town. “When I’m on the farm in Delabole, I feel like I’m missing something. It’s so quiet on the farm, nobody ever drops in, it’s always arranged. Here, you have conversations on the street, you hear people laughing. You have nice stores. The bakery. The butcher shop. The grocery store. Places to go, like church. People everywhere. You can go for days on the farm and only ever see your own family.”

“Not here. Every night after dinner we walk through town. Everyone does. It’s called
La Passeggiata
, but Papa calls it ‘stretching our legs.’ ”

“That must be wonderful.”

“It is. That’s when you hear all the gossip, like which husbands have girlfriends—we call them
comares;
they visit on Saturday nights while the wives sit home waiting—and which wives spend too much at the butcher, and funny things, like Mrs. Ruggiero, who goes to Philadelphia to get her hair done and gets her poodles done at the same time in the same style. Stuff like that.”

“Do you think you’ll live here forever?” I ask her.

Chettie thinks for a moment. “Yes, because I’m the oldest. The oldest always has to stay near the parents.”

“Why?”

“Because being the oldest puts you in the chain of command. Isn’t Assunta like a boss?”

“Yes, always has been.”

“See? She knows she would have to run things if your parents weren’t around or, God forbid, got sick or something. It’s a curse to be the oldest. I wish I wasn’t.”

This is what I love about Chettie: besides the fact that she makes me laugh and I can tell her anything, she is sensible. She sees order in the world, and she fits her dreams into that order. She doesn’t have high hopes or expectations that can never be fulfilled. She’s practical. Practical is the best thing to be; when you aim too high, you will be disappointed. I wish I was more like her. I haven’t told her about my crush on Renato, but I’m eager to know if she thinks it’s a crazy dream to like someone who is so much older, so I ask her, “Have you ever been in love?”

Chettie laughs. “Not yet. I don’t think so anyway. What’s ‘in love’? Butterflies in your stomach, bees on your brain? I get the vapors when I think of Anthony Marucci. I like him, but he’d never go for me. Not now, at least.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes the girls from West Bangor.”

“Are they special?”

“Let’s put it this way: they are much friendlier than the Roseto girls, if you know what I mean. But then, when it’s time, Roseto boys marry us.”