Streets of Gold (21 page)

“I’ll tell her, Aunt Bianca.”

“Close the door,” my grandfather said. “We’re not partners with a coal man.”

“I was just leaving,” Bianca answered, and went out.

“No three-legged table!” my grandfather shouted after her.

“She smells nice,” I said.

“The butcher thinks so, too,” Dominick said.

“Sta zitto,”
my grandfather warned.

“What for?” Dominick said. Everybody knows about Aunt Bianca.”

“You mean about her sleeping with the butcher?” I said.

“Who told you that?” my grandfather asked.

“She’s a widow,” Dominick said. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Is that what they teach you in law school?” my grandfather asked. “That there’s nothing wrong with your mother’s sister sleeping with the butcher?”

“Well,
what’s
wrong with it, Pop, would you tell me?”

“Why doesn’t he marry her?” my grandfather asked.

“Maybe he doesn’t like her,” Dominick said.

“Then why’s he sleeping with her?” I said.

“You hear what this child hears?” my grandfather said.

The bell over the door tinkled again, and Luke and Matty came rushing into the shop, out of breath. Matty always smelled of Camel cigarettes.

“What took so long?” my grandfather asked.

“We ran all the way over,” Matty said. “Hi, Iggie, how’s the kid?”

“Fine, Uncle Matt.”

“You love my daughter?” my grandfather asked him.

“What?”

“Your wife, my daughter.”

“What is he crazy?” Matty said. “
È pazzo questo?”
he asked Pino. “We been married eleven years, she’s gonna have another baby any day, what are you asking me
now
if I love her?”

“Then get back their pants.”

“What?”

“
And
my ring,” Dominick said.

“
And
my watch,” Luke said.

“They’re crazy, right, Iggie?” Matty said. “How do I know who stole your stuff?”

“Ask who you play cards with,” my grandfather said.

The shop fell silent. They were waiting for Matty to say something. I turned to where I figured he was standing. The clock ticked noisily on the wall. Matty sighed.

“What kind of watch, Luke?”

“A Bulova. Seventeen jewel.”

“And the ring, Dom?”

“From Fordham. Gold, with a red stone.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Ma subito,”
my grandfather said. “Quick, you hear?”

“Pop, I
ain’t
Al Capone,” Matty said, and went out.

“There much pressing back there?” Luke asked.

“There’s always pressing back there,” my grandfather said. “Thank God.”

“Who wants some hot chocolate?” Luke asked. “You want some hot chocolate, Iggie?”

“Don’t get chocolate on the clothes!” my grandfather said. Dominick had opened the door and was starting out of the shop. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” Dominick said. “I got torts.”

“You got torts, I got clothes,” my grandfather said. “Help your brother sort them, then you can go.”

“I can do it alone,” Luke said. “Go on, Doc.”

“Okay?”

“Go, go,” my grandfather said.

“Buy me a charlotte russe and stick it in the icebox for when I get home, okay, Doc?”

“Right,” Dominick said, and started out again.

“Watch when you cross!” my grandfather said.

“Pop, I’m twenty-six years old,” Dominick said, and closed the door behind him.

“Well, back to the eighth circle,” Luke said, and went through the curtained doorway, and started the pressing machine. I don’t know where he picked up that reference to Dante. He had dropped out of high school in his sophomore year, going to work first for my Uncle Marco in Brooklyn, and then later helping out part time in the tailor shop. He was now my grandfather’s full-time presser, and he earned a good salary, more than my grandfather would have paid an outsider. He rarely played violin anymore, but he banged the piano obsessively, and I think he dreamed of starting his own band one day, I don’t know. He once approached my father about joining
his
band, and my father (hypocrite who couldn’t read a fucking note) said, “Can you read music, Luke?”

“Sure I can read music,” Luke said. “I studied violin for four years, didn’t I?”

“I mean
piano
music,” my father said.

“Well, no, I can’t read piano music, no. I mean, I can read the
notes
, but no, I couldn’t play from no sheet music, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, suppose somebody should come up to the piano with her own music, like, you know, to sing a song at one of these affairs? Could you play it for her?”

“If I knew the song, I could play it by ear.”

“But suppose you didn’t know the song?”

“Then I guess I couldn’t play it,” Luke said. “But I know almost every song ever written.”

“Sure, but suppose the sax player or the trumpet man know it only from the sheet music, you understand me? Only in the key it’s written. Then what?”

“Well, then I don’t know what,” Luke said.

I overheard that conversation when I was supposed to be asleep, the way Luke had overheard my mother’s story about the Chinese rape artist. Luke was the one who later repeated the Charlie Shoe story to me. He told me he thought
maybe
it was true, but why anyone, even a Chink, would have wanted to touch Stella when she was eleven and ugly as sin (according to Luke) was beyond him. “Your mother puts on airs,” he said to me. “She always did.”

My Uncle Matt got back the ring and the watch, but not the pants. It was not to be the last of
our
family’s encounters with that
other
family — the Murdering And Filching Italian-Americans.

I knew my way around the neighborhood by heart, and was allowed almost complete freedom in moving from the house of one aunt or goomah or cousin to that of another; the only restriction was that I ask someone to cross me whenever I came to a curb. On Easter Sunday in the year 1934, we were still living on 120th Street between First and Second Avenues, and my Aunt Bianca was living above her corset shop on 116th Street, also between First and Second. The route to her building was a simple one.

I came down four flights of steps to the ground floor of our own building, and then across the wide top step of the stoop, and down four narrower si to the sidewalk. Then I turned right and walked down to First Avenue and made another right at the comer. I always walked close to the buildings, rather than the curb, and I knew each of the tenements on the block, knew where two iron posts with a chain hanging between them indicated there were steps leading down to a basement (careful!), knew where a wrought-iron fence separated Dr. Mastroiani’s sandstone building (the only two-story building on the street) from the pavement, knew the pillars on either side of the wide stoops of the three buildings after the doctor’s, and the open court in the big apartment building close to the corner, and then the barber pole (which I’d walked into two or three times before I firmly located its exact distance from the barbershop door), and then the plate-glass window of the
pasticceria
on the corner, and then the right turn onto First Avenue. I carried a bamboo cane in those days; it was the cane my father once used in his Charlie Chaplin imitation.

From the corner of First Avenue and 120th Street, there were four streets to cross before I got to my Aunt Bianca’s house. In musical terms, and in descending diatonic order, these were 119th Street, 118th Street, 117th Street, and last but not least, since it was a very wide street, a street held for a full four beats, rather than a single beat like the streets before it, the concourse or boulevard or esplanade or simply big mother of a street that was 116th. The musical reference above is no accident, I’m sure. I made the mistake that day
because
of a difficult (for me) waltz, which I was playing in my head as I carried an Easter plant to my Aunt Bianca. The plant was a gift from my mother. She did not particularly like Aunt Bianca, but Aunt Bianca had made her six brassieres free of charge two weeks before, and this was my mother’s obligatory payoff, and thank God Aunt Bianca hadn’t made the bras two weeks before
Christmas
because that would have required a grander gift, and I’d have been carrying an entire forest down First Avenue.

Visualize Blind Iggie Di Palermo, beribboned aspidistra in a red clay pot clutched in my left hand and pressed against my scrawny, almost eight-year-old chest, Daddy’s discarded Charlie-Chaplin-imitation bamboo cane in my right hand, blue eyes open wide and naked, Grandpa’s new Easter jacket on my back, brand-new knickers covering my skinny legs, tap-tap-tapping down the avenue with that waltz in my head. What happened was that I made it to the curb at 119th Street and then, perhaps because at that moment I was five bars into the coda, just after the trills, and the piece called for a seven-bar run of eighth-note triplets in the right hand — I turned right with my
feet
also, instead of waiting for someone to cross me to the other side. I tapped blithely up 119th Street, mentally playing that piece for all it was worth, the bamboo cane rapping out the three/four beat while the melody soared in my head, and when I got to the corner of Second Avenue, I asked someone to cross me, thinking this was the corner of 119th Street and
First
Avenue, believing I was heading south instead of west, and knowing I still had three streets to cross before turning right again toward my Aunt Bianca’s shop in the middle of the block. Those streets were, in my busy, busy head, 118th Street, 117th Street, and then 116th Street. Instead, I crossed in succession and with the kindly help of pitying parading pedestrians, Third Avenue, and then Lexington Avenue, and then Park Avenue, and made a right turn on Park Avenue, heading uptown, heading
north
again instead of
west,
in which direction I
should
have been heading had I been on 116th Street, where I was
supposed
to be... Are you hopelessly confused? So was I.

I heard voices.

The voices belonged to black people.

I knew those voices well. I imitated them every day of the week. But it was rare for any black people to wander down to 116th Street between First and Second Avenues, which is where I believed I was at the moment. I suddenly began to wonder exactly
where
I was. Vague memories began to filter back. Hadn’t I heard the sound of an elevated train roaring overhead as I replayed the first section of the piece, and while I thought I was being helped across 119th Street? When had they built a crosstown elevated structure on 119th Street, and how come nobody had told me about it? And hadn’t I heard
another
elevated train when I thought I was being led across 118th Street? I was suddenly frightened. I stopped stock still in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Buck, buck, how many fingers’re up?”

They were playing Johnny-on-a-Pony.

“Three!”

“Wrong, man,
two
.”

“How come when you on
our
backs, we can never guess the ’mount of fingers?”

“You think I’m lyin’?” I heard the sound of sneakers slapping against the sidewalk; the person talking had leaped off the backs of the “pony” team. “How many fingers did I had up, kid?” There was a sudden silence. I could hear the shuffling of more feet on the sidewalk now. “You there with the flower pot,” he said. “How many fingers was I holin’ up?”

“Me?” I said.

“Tell ’em how many fingers they was.”

“I didn’t see,” I said. He was much closer to me now. They were all moving close to me. I didn’t know how many there were. I began listening for separate voices.

“Why wuhn’t you payin’ ’tention?”

“Whut you doin’ on this block, man, you can’t pay ’tention?”

“Where you goin’ with that plant?”

“To... to my aunt’s.”

“Who your aunt?”

“Aunt Bianca?”

“
Who?
Talk
English
, man.”

“Aunt Bianca.”

“
Look
at me when you talkin’. Whutchoo lookin’ ever’ which way for?”

“He blind.”

“That ain’ no reason for him not to be payin’ ’tention when we got a serious prolum to solve. How many fingers was I holin’ up there?”

“I... I couldn’t see the fingers,” I said.

“Where’d you get that horse blanket?”

“What?”

“
This
thing.” A hand flipped at the lapel of my jacket. I backed away a pace.

“It ain’t a horse blanket,” I said.

“Where’d you buy that thing? Over to the horse stables?”

“I didn’t buy it. My grandfather made it.”

“What’s he do, sell horses?” somebody asked, and they all laughed.

“He’s a tailor.”

“What kind of tailor? A horse tailor?”

“He’s a real tailor,” I said. “He’s got a shop on First Avenue.”

“Oh, on First Avenue?” somebody said. “Whut’s he, a
wop
tailor?”

“Are
you
a wop, too?”

“I’m an American,” I said.

“Americans doan go roun’ wearin’ horse blankets.”

“On’y wops ’n’ horses do.”

“Let’s see that horse blanket, anyway,” someone said, and I felt hands tugging at the jacket.

“Leave it alone,” I said, and backed away again.

“Whut you doin’ comin’ roun’ here in that shitty horse blanket, carryin’ that pot full o’ shit?”

“Get away from me,” I said, and raised my father’s bamboo cane.

“Well, now, lookee here,” somebody said.

“He’s a
real
fierce li’l bastard, now ain’ he?”

“Le’s see that cane.”

“Le’s see that flower pot.”

“Where you get that horse blanket?”