Cetta looked at him. Sal wasn’t talking about New York. She could read it in his eyes. Eyes that were defeated, spent. Not the way they’d been after he was shot in the shoulder. His eyes weren’t filled with fear and paranoia. They were simply eyes that knew something. The eyes of a man who knew, but could do nothing to keep his woman. Because he wasn’t a man any longer. He was a prisoner.
“They building more skyscraper,” offered Cetta, sitting across from him.
“Great,” he said, distractedly.
They stayed there in silence.
“The girls, they say hello,” said Cetta. “And Ma’am, she say hello, too.”
Sal didn’t respond.
“Everybody miss you.”
Sal looked at her without speaking.
“I miss you,” said Cetta, taking his hand in hers.
“Yeah …”
Silence again.
“Sal,” Cetta began. “I …”
But Sal stood up, almost violently. “I got to go,” he said, turning away from her. He knocked on the door behind which the guard was waiting. “Open up!” he said loudly.
“Sal …” said Cetta.
“I’m supposed to finish polishin’ a desk for the warden by tonight,” he interrupted her again, without looking at her.
Cetta heard the key turning in the lock. The door opened.
On the New York City Corrections Department’s boat she again felt a kind of stabbing pain. Like a distant sorrow. Like a lamentation. Something searing, suspended halfway between longing and guilt. And she felt dirty. Her eyes filled with tears.
It was Thursday. She would be meeting Andrew on the second floor of the boarding house near South Seaport, she would strip off her clothes, she would take him inside her, and then he, before he left, would give her a theatre ticket as compensation.
On Saturday, June 7, 1913, Cetta was standing at the entrance to Madison Square Garden. The first thing she saw, over the heads of the spectators lined up at the box office, was the poster advertising the show. It was all black. And out of the black there emerged the upper part of a young worker. The face was looking straight ahead, with a determined expression. His right arm was raised in the air, his hand open, fingers spread. The left arm was behind him, lost in the black beyond his elbow. Behind the young worker’s proud head, three letters appeared: IWW, meaning Industrial Workers of the World. “The Pageant of the Paterson Strike,” said other big letters. And in smaller letters, “Performed by the Workers Themselves.”
Cetta made her way through the crowd and stood by the poster, clutching her ticket in her hand. The ticket prices were listed at the bottom. Boxes: $20 and $10. Seats: $2 — $1.50 — $1 — 50¢ — 25¢ — 10¢. Cetta checked her ticket: a dollar. Then she looked around, trying to find Andrew. “I won’t be able to sit with you, love,” he’d said as he gave her the ticket. “I have to stay with the committee. You understand, don’t you?” But Cetta wanted to see him, at least for a minute, before the entertainment began. Perhaps she wouldn’t get to kiss him, but maybe she could take his hand. He was the first and only man ever to have taken her to a restaurant. He was the first and only man to have invited her to the theater. A good and important man, who was looking after all those people — who since the beginning of February had been on strike in Silk City. That’s why he didn’t have much time for her, Cetta told herself, letting her gaze sweep over the crowd.
“Where are leaders?” she asked a man standing at the entrance with a red armband. She thought he must belong to the union.
The man looked at her. “Are you one of ours?” he asked her.
“Of course,” she said proudly. Just for a moment she felt as though she were a part of this crowd.
“Sorry,” said the man. ”It’s just that … well, our women don’t wear getups like that … usually.”
Cetta blushed and glanced down at her green dress with yellow flowers and low-cut neckline. “Yes, usually I not wear it either,” she said with an embarrassed smile.
“Who is it you’re looking for?” the man asked. “John, Bill, Carlo, or Elizabeth?”
“Who?”
“Reed, Haywood, Tresca, or Lizzie Flynn,” said the man.
“No, I looking for Andrew Perth,” said Cetta.
The man thought for a moment. Then he tapped another man on the shoulder. “Hey, do you know Andrew Perth?” he asked him.
The new man shook his head.
“Do you know who Andrew Perth is?” he asked a second man, he too with a red armband.
“Andrew Perth?” he answered. “Isn’t he one of the South Seaport guys?”
“Maybe,” said the first man. “The comrade here was asking about him.”
“He’ll be inside. The ones from South Seaport are in Section Three.”
“Good. Section Three. I find,” said Cetta.
“Hold on, sis — I mean, comrade,” the man stopped her. “Where’s your ticket?”
Cetta showed it to him.
“A dollar seat,” said the man. “You could have bought a cheaper dress and given us some more money,” he added. He reached out his arm with its red band, pointing to an entrance. “You’re through there.”
Cetta turned her back on him and went toward her door. She had no idea who the persons were whose names the union man had recited, but obviously Andrew wasn’t the leader.
She came into the theater and gasped. It was huge, or at least it seemed that way to her. But she didn’t know if all theaters were like this. There were signs that marked off the various sections, according to what kind of ticket you had. The dollar seats were almost at the very back of the room. She kept looking through the crowd as she climbed to an empty seat in the dollar section. And then she saw Andrew at the railing of a twenty-dollar box. He was applauding. Next to him was a woman dressed like a man. Was she really wearing trousers, Cetta wondered. She wore a pair of round eyeglasses like Andrew’s. And a cap that hid her hair. But Cetta knew her hair would be blond, fine and straight. And she had fair, almost transparent skin. She was looking at Andrew with a proud smile. Behind them another four men and two women were standing, all of them dressed in the same way. Like workers. Even Andrew was dressed as a worker.
Again Cetta felt ashamed of her own green dress with yellow flowers. She’d bought it especially for the occasion from a Lower East Side street vendor for $3.80.
When she looked up again she saw that Andrew was laughing as he turned toward the woman in glasses, hugging her, giving her a kiss. She was tempted to leave. Something held her back.
“Can I sit next to you, cutie?” said a voice to her right.
Cetta turned. The workman was peering down her neckline.
“You touch me one time, I snap off you prick and stick down you throat,” Cetta informed him. She went back to looking at Andrew and his wife. They just alike, she thought. Two Americans. And again she felt horribly out of place.
The lights went down and the play began. Cetta barely followed the plot: a confrontation between workers and the police. She could feel a growing sense of uneasiness. It wasn’t the anger she’d imagined as soon as she’d seen Andrew with his wife. It was something more subtle. Something she wasn’t ready to accept.
Suddenly the audience was on its feet, singing in a foreign language. Cetta stood up too, to look at Andrew.
The worker sitting next to Cetta peered down her dress again. “Come on, sing the Marseillaise with us?” he asked.
“Get fuck,” Cetta told him. Now Andrew was singing with his arm around the bespectacled woman.
Then came the second scene, in which some poor unfortunate who happened to be under the portico watching the uprising was accidentally shot and killed by a police bullet. His name was Valentino Modestino. Always the Italians who suffer, thought Cetta. Always. She was still watching Andrew. In the third scene, Modestino’s coffin was lowered into the grave to the strains of the Funeral March, and covered by the strikers’ red flags. As if he was a hero. He not one of
you. You not give a fuck, she thought, angrily. Then she looked at Andrew and said softly, in a cracked voice: “He never ask you to educate him.”
Cetta couldn’t follow the rest of the show. She was overwhelmed by a thought that she didn’t want to take on a rational shape. I’m not like you, she thought. And as the audience sang the “Internazionale,” she noticed that the workman next to her was peeping down her dress again. No, I’m not like you, she thought again, letting the feeling of otherness triumph in her. I’m a whore in the wrong dress.
At that moment Andrew saw her. Their eyes met. For an instant. Andrew looked away, embarrassed. And his wife saw her, too.
When the pageant ended, the crowd poured out to the street. Cetta saw Andrew talking excitedly with some people. The wife was a little ways off, passing out handbills. Cetta could see that she was staring at her. They found themselves in front of one another, a few steps apart in the crowd. Andrew’s wife was scrutinizing Cetta’s dress, with scorn.
“He not tell me it a costume party,” said Cetta.
Andrew’s wife pulled off her cap and shook out her hair. Blond, fine, straight. And pale blue American eyes, thought Cetta. Like Andrew’s.
“Did he at least teach you to have a social conscience?” said Andrew’s wife, glancing over at him with a sarcastic smile.
“Did he teach you to fuck?” asked Cetta, with her black eyes; her dark curls fastened at the nape of her neck.
The woman felt the blow. She looked down for a moment. Wounded. Cetta noticed that Andrew was watching them. He was pale and looked worried. Weak. Mean-spirited.
“He all yours,” Cetta told the union member. “Only thing he teach me was, I’m a whore,” she said softly. “But I know that before.” She turned and disappeared into the crowd of people exalting the Silk City strike.
Before she went home she bought a fashion magazine. Then she rushed back to the house. With the rage that was shaking her inside. And the humiliation that kept her from breathing. She didn’t go down to the basement apartment, she went up to the second floor and knocked loudly at Mrs. Sciacca’s door, asking herself: What got into your head? over and over.
The plump neighbor opened the door, half asleep, with a blue wool shawl over her nightgown. “Is late,” she said.
“I have to see Christmas,” said Cetta, an irrational urgency in her voice.
“He sleeping …”
“Is something important. He get up now,” and Cetta pushed past Mrs. Sciacca like a Fury. She reached into the cot where Christmas was sleeping and took him in her arms, pulling him violently out of sleep.
Christmas whimpered something. Then he opened his eyes and recognized his mother. He was five years old, and his blond forelock was rumpled across his forehead. His eyes were frightened.
Cetta carried Christmas to the living room window and opened it. She set him on the sill and opened the magazine.
The child was petrified.
“Look here: This an American,” Cetta said, in an exalted voice, showing him a model dressed in a polo outfit. Then she took Christmas’ face, pressing his cheeks, and turned him to look at the street. “Now look at him,” she said, pointing to a man coming home with his street-vendor’s cardboard suitcase. “He never be American.” She flipped angrily through the magazine, possessed by an interior rage that showed no sign of diminishing. She stopped at the photo of an actress. “She American. She look like that,” she said. Again she forced Christmas’ face around to look into the street. “And that one, she never be American,” she sighed, pointing her finger at a humpbacked woman rummaging through the scraps from the market.
“Mamma …”
“Listen! Pay attention, angel,” and Cetta took his face in her hands, tightly, her eyes bright. “I never get to be American. But you, yes. Understand?”
“Mamma …” Christmas began to cry, all confused.
“You understand what I say?” she cried.
Christmas’ mouth twisted, trying not to weep.
“You going to be an American! Say it!”
Christmas’ eyes were wide open.
“Say it!”
“I’m sleepy …”
“Say it!”
“I’ll be … American.” Christmas murmured, and then burst into tears, trying to get away from her.
Cetta hugged him more closely then, and finally her anger was transformed into tears. Her humiliation made her sob. “You be American, Christmas … yes, you be my American boy … I’m sorry, so sorry, angel …” Cetta wept, stroking her son’s hair, drying his tears, drenching him with her own. “Mamma love you so much … you only thing Mamma love … only you … little boy. My little American boy …”
From the doorway Mrs. Sciacca stared at them, surrounded by her children, all gripping their mother’s vast nightgown, peering around her with sleepy faces.
24
Manhattan, 1923
“Tell that little turd t’ get outta my shop,” said Pep, jerking a thumb at Joey.
Lilliput growled quietly. Joey was leaning against the back door frame. Next to him, Santo’s face blushed flaming red. He turned on his heel and went outside.
Christmas turned to Joey. “Leave us alone,” he told him, tossing a small metal container in his hand.
“Youse let some alte kokker tell ya what t’ do?” sneered Joey.
Pep rose up with all his huge bulk. With both hands he grabbed Joey by the lapels of his worn jacket, almost lifted him off the ground, and hurled him out of the shop. Joey crashed against Santo. Lilliput was barking furiously. “Basta, Lilliput!” Pep roared. And then he slammed the back door violently shut, making lumps of plaster fall off the wall. He put a hand against Christmas’ chest and pushed him against the wall of the shop. “What you think you doing, boy?” he said in a low and threatening voice.
“Calm down, Pep,” said Christmas, smiling. “I brought the cream for Lilliput. She’s getting’ better, right?”
“Sì, she get better,” growled Pep. “So? Answer what I ask you.”
“I did answer you.”
“I not give a fuck about cream,” said Pep, lifting his hand away from Christmas’ chest.
Christmas tucked his shirt back in his pants and held out the tin of pomade to Pep. “You don’t owe me a thing,” he said.
“No? Why not? You rich now?” Pep towered over him.
Christmas shrugged. “Maybe because I like Lilliput,” he said. He put his hand on the knob and started to open the door.
Pep slammed it shut again. “You listen to me, boy,” and he waved a finger crusted with animal blood in his face. “You listen good …”
“Hey, ya all right in there, Diamond?” Joey’s voice interrupted from outside.
Pep and Christmas looked at each other in silence.
“Everything’s fine,” shouted Christmas.
“I not like him,” said Pep, jerking his thumb towards the door and an unseen Joey.
“He’s my friend, not yours,” said Christmas with a defiant look. “I’m the one who has ta like him.”
“I say it again, boy: What you think you doing?”
“Pep, it’s really nice to talk with you, but I gotta go,” said Christmas. He didn’t want to listen to Pep or anyone else. He wasn’t a kid any more, he was a man.
“You remember first time you come here?” Pep went on. “Eh? Remember?”
Christmas stared at him without speaking. He gave the smallest possible nod, moving his chin down, looking bored.
Pep gave a bitter laugh. “The Diamond Dogs,” he said. “You really think I believe? You no have gang, I know that. How I know? Because you eyes, they tell me.”
Christmas looked down for a moment, but then snarled “What the hell do you want, Pep? You think you gotta preach at me?” Insolently he stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t act tough with me,” said Pep. “You turning into a two-bit guappo, yeah — a cheap little thug. You know why I give you half dollar to protect Lilliput? Is
because I look in your eyes, not because I think you really do something. I read something I like in your eyes. But now I no recognize you no more. If I see you today for first time, I kick you out, like that delinquent out back.” Pep shook his head, then spoke in a voice that was warm and fatherly. “My mangy little bitch, she wag her tail when she see you. She know. You can trust animal, eh? They never wrong. Is instinct. But you keep on like now, in two week she growl at you, too. When you come and try scare me for money, like hooligans from Ocean Hill. When you start suck blood from poor people who don’t got a pistol. This not a city. This not a jungle like some people say. Is a cage. Too many of us, all inside, we go crazy. Is no game for young boy. Is serious business. But you still got time to be man, not guappo.”
Christmas gave him a hard look. Under it all the anger he couldn’t suppress was simmering. “Nice talkin’ to you, Pep,” he said tonelessly.
The butcher stared back at him wordlessly, then stretched his lips into a painful grimace and stood aside. Christmas reached the door and opened it.
“One more thing,” said Pep. “That one, the pimply kid,” he tilted his head towards Santo, leaning against the wall with Joey, “he’s-a get kill if he stay with you. You still got balls left, eh? Get rid of him. Not take him down too.”
“You shoulda been a priest, Pep,” said Christmas.
Lilliput gave a long quavering howl. Then she waddled over to crouch between her owner’s legs, still whimpering softly.
“You not come here no more,” said Pep, and closed the door.
Christmas could feel that it wasn’t just the door of butcher shop on the Lower East Side that was closing. He was afraid for a second. Then he decided he wasn’t going to pay any attention to that feeling. His shell had hardened now. With time he’d get even tougher, he told himself. He whistled to his two pals and walked down the alley alone.
“He give you the two bucks?” asked Santo as he joined them.
Christmas looked at him. He didn’t know what his own eyes said, but he knew that Santo’s never changed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out two silver dollars and tossed them into the air. “Sure,” he said. “Don’t he always?”
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 21