Cent'anni!

By Diane Fortuna

In "Cent' Anni: 100 Years," ten short sketches present three generations of an immigrant Italian family from Bari as they lurch through dooms of love to an American identity. Separating these related vignettes are Interludes, one-page snapshots of their lives in New York City and Long Island.

In Italy, Northerners considered the peoples south of Rome to be barbarians: "Hide the silver," the adage goes, "They're from Bari." Even greater hostility awaited these impoverished Southern Italians in New York. To deal with it, they insulated themselves within the magic circle of their immediate family adopting a cunning silence to keep all others at bay. Despite high principles of sacrifice and care giving, some could neither forego "easy money" nor the privileges and power such money procured.

Beginning with the death of Mamma in 1929, some of the stories are comic, some sad, some both, all originating from the struggle "to breathe free" in a new land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449087302

Diane Fortuna

Diane Fortuna is a Johns Hopkins Ph.D and published Joyce scholar. She has taught Modern British, Continental and American Literature in Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, California and Suzhou, China. Since retiring from the Stony Brook University in 1999, she has written two books, Cent Anni, a short story sequence about an Italian family in New York, and They Were Legal: Balzac y Lopez,the History of an Hispanic Family that includes the death of her great aunt, Daisy Lopez Fitze in the Triangle Factory Fire, 1911. Diane has been an active member in Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and the Triangle Memorial Association serving as the Co-Chair for the first gathering of the Triangle Fire Families and Friends in 2010 and as a representative on the Permanent Memorial Committee.Families and Friends in 2010 and as a representative on the Permanent Memorial Committee. Having lived in France, Italy and China, she presently is content to reside in Stony Brook with two sons and a grandson in close proximity.

Book preview

Cent’Anni 100 Years

Diane Fortuna

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2010 Diane Fortuna. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 6/24/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4490-8730-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-8728-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-8729-6 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010902018

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Frontispiece - Passport Picture, 1914

Photograph - Holy Communion

Interlude 1 - Mamma

Protection

Interlude 2 Cheeks Like Apples

The Bed

Photograph - Pretty Woman

Interlude 3 Christmas

Blessed is the Peacemaker

Interlude 4 Seven-and-a-Half

The Female Pope

Interlude 5 Champagne Glasses

The Magnificent Infallible Transferable Diamond

Engagement Ring

Interlude 6 The Promise

Omertà

Interlude 7 Caregivers

Garibaldi, I Love You

Interlude 8 Thompson Street

Photograph - A Tuscan Farmhouse

The Bamboo Brake

Interlude 9 A Year in Italy

Her Kind of Funeral

Photograph - Wise Guy

Interlude 10 Natural Causes

The Night Fidel Came to Town

Interlude 11 Meatballs and Mazola

****

Afterward

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Passport Picture, 1914

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Holy Communion

Interlude 1 - Mamma

Spring came, and Anna finally had to admit that she was too weak to finish sewing the matching white silk dresses by April 28.

‘Lena and Maria don’t have to make their Communion this year, Mamma,’ her daughter Jennie said. ‘It can wait till next spring.’

‘No, no,’ Anna responded from bed. ‘Take the material to Signora Pascale on Sullivan Street. She only needs to sew the scalloped hems and make the buttonholes. It won’t cost much, and Papa will give you the money. I want to see my girls looking like brides.’

Early on the morning of April 28, Anna smiled as Lena and Maria filed into her bedroom. They were dressed all in white, wearing beaded snoods with attached tulle veils and white gloves, stockings and shoes. They carried small silk bags and big bouquets of white carnations and stephanotis.

Anna died ten days later on May 8, 1929.

Protection

After Mamma’s death, Papa bought a 4-bedroom house in Jamaica, Queens. He still commuted daily into New York City to his shoemaker’s shop on Thompson Street. One cold night in January 1930, he came home very late from work. Jennie had begun to worry. Perhaps her father was getting sick, her euphemism for the word that was never spoken.

Jennie knew all the signs. Papa would feel a chill and ask for a sweater and a lap robe when he sat in the parlor. He would stop talking abruptly, his eyes would glaze over, and a full minute later, he would continue speaking mid-sentence unaware that he had paused. His daughters would put him to bed and keep watch over him. Within two or three days, he would go through as many as 36 hours of continual convulsions. It would take weeks before he was himself again, and these episodes happened regularly every one and a half or two years.

It was a family secret that Papa had suffered from violent seizures since he was nine years old, but from the moment he walked through the door, Jennie knew that his unfortunate malady was not the cause of her father’s pallor. Papa was frightened half to death. He looked like a man about to be thrown into a den of wolves.

Jennie had already made supper for her husband, George, her six younger sisters and brothers and her own little girl. Hastily setting the table for Papa, Jen had him sit down as she dished out a bowl of hot minestra. The old man stirred the vegetables in the broth but didn’t raise the spoon to his mouth to eat. His hand was trembling.

George came into the kitchen from the parlor where he had been reading The Daily News, took one look at his ashen-faced father-in-law and asked, "Papa, what’s happened? Ch’é succeso?"

At first, Papa didn’t want to tell them about his trouble, but his daughter and son-in-law insisted. Upset, Papa began half in English and half in Italian.

Presto nel mezzogiorno, in the early afternoon, a young fellow had come into the shop. Non era dal vicinato, he wasn’t from MacDougal or Thompson Street where almost everybody was a round-headed Italian da Napoli o Bari, from Naples or Bari. This thug was wiry, dark-skinned and light-eyed. He probably came from the East Side da dove vengano tutti i Mafiosi siciliani, where all the Sicilian toughs hung out.

Era zoppo, the guy had a bad limp, and he was all dolled up on a weekday. Looking aces with a tan silk scarf and a soft gray fedora, he wore his camel-colored wool coat open over a three-piece suit. He kept his hands in his pants’ pockets. From across the counter, he took note of Papa’s machines and the neatly stacked paper bags that held shoes or boots ready for pick up. The transparency of his eyes made Papa shiver involuntarily.

Those two, he pointed at the lasting and polishing machines, "look molto cari, mighty expensive, Pops. And rents on Thompson Street must be high, or maybe you own the building?"

Papa was uneasy. He shook his head. I no own nothing. The guy looked menacing. Papa quickly added, D’Ambrosio on Houston Street, he owns.

The punk checked out a second set of shelves, these filled with more than thirty pairs of shoes needing repair. "You do a pretty good business here. You must have a thick wad of money tucked in your mattress, Pops. You know -- money you put u sac, in the bag, for a rainy day."

The guy talked so fast, Papa got confused. He didn’t understand -- rainy day? It wasn’t raining.

Look, Pops. I’m going to do you a favor. I’ll sell you an insurance policy that you can pay in weekly or monthly installments. With a business like this, you gotta have protection. He looked over the dark, little shop calculating how much cash Papa took in per hour. You need business owner insurance to cover the machines and the store against accidents like fire, floods, break-ins. That policy will cost you -- let’s say -- no more than $2.50 a week.

The protector saw that he had frightened the old man, and he wanted to keep the pressure up.

"You know the joke of du’amici, two friends, who retire and meet each other after a number of years. The first guy says ‘Hey, Tony, how did you retire?’ And Tony says, ‘There was a fire at my store. And how did you retire, Vinnie?’ Vinnie says, ‘My business had a flood.’ And Tony says, ‘So, Vinnie, dimmi, tell me, how do you make a flood?’"

Get the picture, Pops?

Again Papa didn’t understand. What joke? What picture?

And you should have liability insurance, too, just in case one of your customers slips and hurts himself in the shop. That plan costs another $2.50 a week. Your premium will be $5 a week, or you can pay $20 once a month. Leave it to me, and you’ll never have to worry about a thing.

I’ll be in next week to collect the first payment, Pops. Now, don’t forget --$5 on the 5th and every Wednesday after, or give me $20 -- and your first month’s plan will be paid in advance.

Papa was shaking as he looked up at George. "He say if I no pay, he come back, break my fingers and slit le tendine, the cords in my hands. Por mostrame, to show me, he take a switchblade out of the pocket, and he carve ‘N’ on the counter. He say, ‘You pay or you never cut another piece of leather again.’"

What did this gangster look like, Papa? George had grown up on Mott Street. Sicilian himself, he knew just about everyone from laggiù, from down there. Papa, who prided himself on never having taken a dime he or his kids hadn’t worked for, was so leery of Sicilians that seven years before he had refused to let Jennie go out walking with George. But when he finally allowed his daughter to bring the boyfriend home, Papa approved. George worked as a film projectionist in Brooklyn. He had a steady job. He despised easy money.

As Papa once again described the hustler, a curious expression crossed George’s face. He had a bad leg, you say? George rubbed his chin thinking. I’m not sure, Pa, but I may know this guy. Maybe I can go talk to him.

****

Just north of the Williamsburg Bridge by the docks, the shoreline dips and makes a small basin somewhat shielded from the strong currents of the East River. On summer days when neither fire escapes nor rooftop asphalt beaches gave relief from the suffocating heat, the kids from Kenmare and Mott used to walk east on Delancey Street to their favorite place to swim.

One stifling dog day in August 1919, George had just taken a dip in the river and was drying himself with a towel. A bunch of younger kids -- eleven and twelve-year olds, George guessed -- were diving from the dock a short distance away from him. They were fooling around and making lots of noise. The two biggest boys grabbed two of the smaller ones by the shoulders and threw them into the water. The horseplay soon turned rough with the bullies dunking the little ones until they sputtered.

Annoyed at being picked on, the two smaller kids swam far away from the group. Without realizing it, they had moved into one of the boat traffic lanes.

Before anyone could scream a warning, a 14-ft. speedboat bore down on them and struck one of the boys. Unaware of the accident, the boat sped on.

Instantly, George was on his feet. The water where the kid went down began to turn red. George didn’t think. He simply dove off the dock, swimming as fast as he could to the spot where the boy had disappeared. He saw the tint of blood coming from beneath the ripples of the boat’s wake and hesitated only a moment. Then he took a huge breath and dove down through the opaque water. George didn’t see anything immediately, but as he spread his arms wide in a breaststroke, the waters seemed to part. The unconscious youngster lay crumpled on the bottom in ten feet of water, his lower left leg badly broken and bleeding.

George later tried to remember what happened next, but he couldn’t. He only knew he somehow had managed to get the boy to the surface and then onto the dock. Quickly, George ripped his towel and applied a tourniquet to the kid’s leg above the injury. Then he placed the youngster on his stomach, straddled the boy’s torso and began a rhythmic pressure on his diaphragm, pressing down for a count of five, then letting up and simultaneously raising the youngster’s arms.

After the longest two minutes of George’s seventeen-year-old life, the kid choked and began to breathe. His terrified buddies and the twelve-year-old bullies cheered. A crowd gathered.

Minutes later, an ambulance arrived. Once the medics took over, George was suddenly tired, and his stomach felt queasy. He just wanted to go home and lie down.

As he was slowly trudging under a broiling sun along Kenmare Street, a black Model T Ford pulled up in front of him. Dressed in expensive suits, two swarthy men got out and startled George by coming toward him. Realizing that they had been looking for him, George was too scared to speak.

You? Are you George? the tall one asked.

Yeah, that’s him, the other one answered.

Are you the one that pulled the kid out of the river? the tall guy demanded.

George nodded dumbly.

Get in the car.

George was so stunned he did as he was told without question. The kid you saved, the tall one said, is our kid brother. I’m Dom and that’s Paulie Nuzzi. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at Paulie in the back seat. And Sal is the one you fished out of the drink.

They wanted to give George money, but he refused. At first, the men didn’t believe him. Nobody they knew turned down money. But George quietly declined; he wanted nothing. The brothers just looked at each other.

Without asking his address, Dom dropped George off in front of the Mott Street tenement where he lived with his mother and brother. Now listen to me, kid. You did good today. You need anything -- ever -- you come see us.

****

Over the next couple of years, George ran into Sal Nuzzi from time to time in the neighborhood. At first, the kid was on crutches. Later, Sal was able to maneuver on his own without aids, but he was left with a decided limp.

When George and Jennie married, they lived with her family in the South Village. He rarely went back to Mott Street and probably hadn’t crossed Sal Nuzzi’s path in six or seven years.

Something told George that Sal was the young punk who had leaned on Papa, and if he weren’t the one, Sal would know who was. The next morning, George came into the kitchen and, instead of having breakfast, told Papa and Jen that he was going for a walk.

Actually George was headed for Nuzzi and Bros., Inc., but not before he made some inquiries sotto voce.

At Imperiale’s Pool Parlor on the corner of Broome and Mulberry, he learned that