When the World Was Young

by Tony Romano

  She stopped and squatted down before him. “You like that, kiddo? You like your sister’s singing?” She poked him in the chest, nudged his neck, squeezed his cheek, and got back a squeal each time. “How ’bout a pinky, kiddo.” Her other brothers had taught him to poke out his little finger and hook it with theirs early on, and even now, at sixteen months old, Benito complied, his round pasty face lighting up each time.

  “Victoria take you to the feast?” she said. Victoria. Too many syllables. Too long. Most people shortened it to Vick, which sounded harsh to her ear, metallic. Some of her friends at school called her Tori now and then, but that wasn’t her. She’d gone through a Vicky period back in seventh and eighth grades, but that struck her now as bubbly—she couldn’t help but recall the little circle she used then to dot the i and how the tail of the y snaked across to underline her name.

  “Let’s go, kiddo.” She pondered why the pitch in her voice rose higher when she talked with Benito. “Victoria will take you to your first feast.”

  “Tawya.”

  “What! What did you say?”

  He grabbed at his shoe, white and polished.

  “Did you say Toria? Toria? Say it. Tor-i-a.”

  “Tawya.”

  She laughed like she hadn’t laughed in a long while and looked around to find someone to tell.

  “Tawya,” she said. “That’s it.” Hi, how do you do…my name is Tawya. Tawya Peccatori. “Can you say Lupa?”

  “Papa.”

  “No, not Papa. Lu-Pa.”

  “Lupa.”

  Victoria clapped to show her amazement. “Now, can you say Witch?”

  Just before they turned onto Ohio Street, Victoria stopped, adjusted her calf-length red skirt, and brushed her shoulders with two precise flicks of her fingers. She smoothed down her sleeveless white top and pulled at two thick strands of her ponytail to tighten it, then drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly and evenly.

  “Say Tawya.”

  “Tawya.”

  “Good boy.”

  They turned the corner.

  “There it is, kiddo.”

  Ohio Street ran from Lake Michigan to the western border of Chicago, and on any other night, there was little to distinguish these four blocks from any other—row after row of frame bungalows with plastic awnings, red-and-brown brick apartments with flat roofs slathered in tar, and the occasional five-and-dime corner store like Casey’s that sold milk and bread and candy and cigarettes. But tonight, strings of bare bulbs stretched from one side of the street to the other so that they formed a canopy. Inevitably a string or two would flicker off as someone’s fuse burned out, but for now everything was illuminated, a pack of tiny night flies swarming around each smoky yellow bulb. The lights may have been too bright for Benito because he glanced down at his pudgy fingers, then gazed skyward at a constellation of stars directly overhead. Victoria squinted to spot someone she knew, but there were too many faces, too many legs. Did the crowds grow thicker each year, she wondered, or was this one of those tricks of memory?

  On either side of the street, just off the curbs, vendors had erected makeshift stands with ropes and tables and tents.

  “Lupini beans here. Get your lupini. Ceci beans.”

  Victoria bought a small bag of lupini and broke one apart for Benito, who chewed with trepidation on his brow. They strolled over to the African Dip, where for twenty-five cents you got three chances to dunk a Negro into a tank of water. The man sat on a metal chair that swung out from under him whenever a baseball hit the bull’s-eye next to his head. Someone had thought to add a metal grate to shield the man’s face. The white proprietor of the booth, an older, fat man with a thick cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth, quietly collected bills while the Negro egged on the crowd. He had a tight handful of singles.

  “Just laughin’ and prayin’ and singin’ and hopin’,” the Negro sang, “he will be there.” He flashed a wide grin with the biggest teeth Victoria had ever seen. “Now, now, you can do better’n dat,” he cried to three young boys sharing a quarter’s worth of tosses.

  The African Dip turned out to be a game of peekaboo for Benito, who laughed each time the man crashed into the water. Victoria remembered a time when she’d been amused by the game herself, but this time she stayed for Benito’s sake. Something about the whole thing tugged at her conscience, though. And after a while she knew why. Standing there, gazing blankly—at the splash, the laborious readjustment of the metal seat, the heavy leap back onto the chair, water dripping from those broad blue lips, and that grin, especially the grin—the irony slowly dawned on her. She thought, If this Negro were out of that cage and walking down Ohio Street right now, minding his own business, he’d get the living crap beat out of him.

  And she knew the guys who would do it. She liked some of them. They were older, closer to Santo’s age. They hung around a social club with no name on Erie Street. One of the boys’ uncles had a candy store in the space before his wife died, but the aisles had been pushed aside now for card tables. Every time she passed the club Victoria couldn’t help but glimpse inside. The storefront windows were painted a rich burgundy, but the great glass door was usually wedged open enough to spot someone pulling in a poker pot or taking a drag off his cigarette or bending down to tie a shoe. She was ashamed for them, for their narrow scope, for their rage, but she was drawn to some of them like lightning heat. Guys like Dominick Pacini and Eddie Milano. Even Pooch with his rounded shoulders. They were just trying to protect what they thought was theirs. They didn’t know better.

  A thin strain of an Italian ballad her father liked to hum blared from one of the apartment windows behind Victoria. She turned the stroller and walked toward the music, the record’s needle scratching out rhythmic pops and hisses, the sound turning more warbled with each step. On her right a man who looked like her father curled a sledgehammer behind his shoulder, lifted it high to where it seemed suspended in midair, and brought it down on the rubber pad of the Hi Striker with such torque that she felt the thud in her tailbone. Still, he missed hitting the bell. On the other side of the street a man with hairy shoulders threw weighted balls at a trio of tin milk cans, knocking down all but one. Beyond the stand two boys with cutoffs and dago tees darted out of a gangway with shoulders hunched and hands over their ears. They crouched and waited and seemed disappointed when only two or three firecrackers on their string popped.

  The charcoal aroma of Italian sausage nudged Victoria along. She craned her neck trying to spot Jimmy’s beef stand, hoping she’d find Darlene or someone she knew. She was beginning to feel that isolation of being at a party full of strangers. She passed St. Columbkille, where the flashing lights from the carousel in the back parking lot spilled onto the street. Father Ernie, the young priest, bending over a stroller, patted the soft tuft of an infant’s head that pulsed red, then orange yellow from the lights. Father Ernie spoke to the mother briefly, then touched her arm at the elbow, a light, reassuring grasp. He leaned his head toward hers and whispered something. The mother gazed down at the asphalt and barely nodded. The two of them appeared to be in confession. As he backed away from her, Father Ernie held his gaze and offered what Victoria called a funeral smile. Genuine, full of compassion, but tinged with pity. The mother tried to muster her own version, but her gaze landed just beyond him, the pity directed more toward herself. She raised a hand in Father Ernie’s direction, as if to wave, but scratched at her shoulder instead, her gray, woven wool sweater, too heavy for June, crimping at the edges.

  Victoria headed straight for the woman, thinking the two strollers might give them pause to exchange a few words, but the woman, worry lining her face, barely noticed her. Even Benito, who pointed to the baby and muttered “Bino” couldn’t pull her attention.

  “That’s right, kiddo. Bambino. Just like you.”

  She tried thinking about what could be wrong, but she didn’t get far. Under a streetlight between Tony’s Clams and a booth that sold Vienna Red Hots sto
od the boy who could complicate her summer if she gave in to her yearnings, Eddie Milano.

  For Santo, the feast was like a holiday that had lost its magic. The same gray men sat on the same flimsy folding chairs on the same corner at Ohio and Damen, slapping knees and shouting about presidents and politics and the latest soccer scores from Europe. Their faces became so intensely flushed when they drilled home a point that Santo couldn’t help but laugh. He recognized many of the men from the store, so he had to stop while they hurled questions and talked about him in Italian. Two summers ago, during such an exchange, one of the men, who couldn’t have known the impact his words would have on Santo, the remark delivered in such an offhand manner, said, “The church gets its cut.” He was talking about the feast, of course, and now, every game, every ride Santo passed, every dirty dollar bill exchanged for a hot dog or beef sandwich, Santo would think, The church gets its cut. He couldn’t see any wrong in this, but the unadorned truth pulsed before him like a gaudy Christmas light.

  He’d already run into Fran and Karen, who insisted on walking with him, but he sidestepped them easily, telling them he had to look for Victoria. Which was more or less true. He had to get her home by eleven. He talked with Eddie Milano for a while, who wanted to know what Santo had been up to and how his sister was. Suddenly everyone wanted to know about his sister.

  The first time he spotted Sylvia Gomez that night, across the street, walking hand in arm with a man who could have been her father, Santo felt feverish. She wore the same dress she had on that afternoon when she sat and sipped wine and smiled at him, all some faded memory now. Rather than envy he felt sorry for Henry Gomez. He was too old for her. He should have been kicking back with the gray brigade on Damen, hollering about taxes in America that didn’t fund health care, not strolling the streets with a woman nearly twenty-five years younger.

  Sylvia dipped her head to the side to move the hair from her face, then tossed it behind her ear. I could make that, Santo thought. The line was a running joke with his friends, delivered always in deadpan earnestness at the most unlikely moments. But all irony was drained now from the line and replaced with a more guttural groan, a slow yearning. Santo continued in their direction, casually glancing across now and then. The last thing he wanted was to catch their eyes.

  Why would a woman allow such an arrangement? Santo wondered. She’d been more or less sold to Henry Gomez. There couldn’t have been much passion there, not enough anyway. Santo felt that given half the chance, he could be an expert in passion. What else was there? He trailed them awhile longer until he realized what he was doing—following them—and circled back toward the church.

  Women from numerous sodalities and auxiliary societies in the area gathered around the statue of the Madonna, making last-minute adjustments for the procession. Barefoot, draped in black, lace shawls spread delicately over their shoulders, they were professional mourners. Their hands worked in a flurry, nimbly pinning pale lilies and irises at Mary’s feet. They lighted rose-tinted votive candles. They unlatched the strongbox. They provided the required solemnity, without which the feast would simply be another carnival. A handful of local chapter members from the Knights of Columbus milled about, their royal-blue blazers and gold-cloth shoulder cords gleaming against the night’s black. Once the procession began, they would form a flank around the regiment of women.

  The street began to thin as people jockeyed for position near the curb, waiting for the Madonna to pass. They were mainly older, louder. What did the young ones know, they said. Giovanotti ignoranti. Tutti. But soon the younger ones, the mothers and fathers, did join them. And one day they would be the ones to complain. Santo wondered if the generation after that, his generation, would someday follow step. He could do without the sodalities, their graveclothes and solemn bows, the incantations under the breath. He could do without the ceremony. He wondered if the rituals would hold some particular fascination for him in the future. Was that a natural part of aging, like balding? Along with a bulging gut came an obsession with rosaries? The procession did nothing for him but evoke memories of past processions, memories so sweet his throat sometimes ached. But that couldn’t be enough to sustain all this, could it?

  He backed out from the tight throng that had built up like moss around him and studied the backs of their heads. He wasn’t of them. And never would be.

  At ten o’clock the bell in the church tower clanged, a majestic peal. As soon as the reverberation from one bell crash rippled out, another took its place, creating something like a hush in the street. A reordering of attention. Six women on either side of the stretcher that held the Madonna—Santo counted them, twelve in all—hoisted the makeshift altar to their shoulders and began their crawl down Ohio Street. The rest of the women, fifty or sixty, maybe more, fell into place behind them. The women looked at no one, their eyes downcast throughout the entire march. They weren’t worthy. No person was worthy enough, their gestures implied. They clutched their black bead rosaries, their fingers traveling around the circle of thread like they were doing piecework.

  As these graven women and their escorts carved their way through the tunneled street—men, women, and children clamoring on either curb, a canopy of lights blanketing them from above—the regal Knights floated toward the outstretched arms to receive the wave of dollar bills, stuffing some of them into the black strongbox, pinning others at the Madonna’s feet. Though he hadn’t seen her, Santo knew Zia Lupa was among them. If you’re stingy with God, she said, God will be stingy with you. Some of the older men and women at the curb, the ones who could recount stories about the grand feasts in their paese, sauntered toward the altar, pinned their gifts, then retreated into the tangle of pressed bodies.

  Santo inched along the sidewalk, keeping pace with the procession. A half block ahead of him, not more than ten houses away, Sylvia Gomez pushed out from the crowd. Santo stopped, waited for a husband to slip out behind her. But no one did. She strolled ahead of him, toward Damen, nothing between them but segments of sidewalk. He picked up his pace some.

  Nice night, isn’t it? Sylvia?

  Ah, Mrs. Gomez, nice evening.

  Signora. Cooled off some, didn’t it?

  Long time no see.

  Come here every year?

  Is this your first time?

  Without breaking stride, Santo swiveled left then right, searching for a husband. The poor guy couldn’t make it past ten. That would give them something to talk about. Weather. Feast. Husband. There was plenty to talk about.

  He came up on her right.

  “Hey, uh—” He stopped himself when Hey, ma’am fell thick on his tongue. Hey, ma’am would have ruined everything.

  She turned. “Santo!” A slow smile overtook her surprise.

  He took a step in the direction they’d been moving and she moved with him.

  “Can I get you that water now?”

  Confusion registered on her brow.

  “This afternoon…I offered…never mind. Dumb joke. How are you?”

  “Fine. And you?”

  “Never better.” He’d heard someone say that once and remembered feeling better himself.

  “You’re not working tonight?” she asked.

  Up close, her nose sloped straighter than he’d recalled, and her coffee-brown eyes were set too close together. The imperfection excited him.

  “Everybody’s here,” he said.

  She glanced around as if to confirm this. “I guess you’re right.”

  “I’m always right.”

  “You’re always right?”

  “I’m always right.”

  “What about when you’re wrong?”

  “Well, that’s different.”

  “Ah.”

  They came up on two girls with Hula Hoops and had to squeeze around them, Sylvia’s arm brushing against his. How easy it would have been to take her hand then.

  “What do they call those rings?” she asked.

  He knew exactly what they were
called—his brother Anthony had one—but he decided that a man with a silk shirt, borrowed or not, didn’t say things like Hula Hoop.

  “Some kind of hoop,” he said. “A fad, you know.”

  “I want to try.”

  “I don’t know. It looks kind of dangerous.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right.”

  A faint grin. “I know.”

  A man with a red beret selling pinwheels stepped in front of them. Santo wanted to ask the man what he was thinking. What he saw. A man and a woman—together? Did the man expect Santo to pull out a quarter and present the pinwheel to the lady? They shook their heads and swung around the man, not even pausing. A good sign. They were together and couldn’t be bothered.

  Trying to appear nonchalant, Santo poked his head around, still waiting for a husband to emerge. Well behind them, the marchers had stopped at the church, the midway point, to pray with Father Ernie. Say a prayer for me, Santo thought. He supposed he believed in sin, had probably committed sin during their short walk. Coveting they called it, which sounded innocent enough.

  He glanced across the street. “Goddamn,” he said. “That frickin—”

  “What?”

  “That no—”

  “What. What happened?”

  He thought he’d been muttering under his breath. “Nothing. Nothing happened.”

  He craned his neck trying to track his sister and Eddie Milano as they slipped in and out of view between pockets of neighbors. No doubt Eddie was searching for a dark gangway they could duck into.

  “I…uh—” Santo, forget it, he told himself. Just forget it. “I think I have to go.” What the hell am I saying?