The King of Mulberry Street

by Donna Jo Napoli

  At the boat I walked past the ticket-taker, ready to show the documents in my waistband. But he didn't ask for anything. In Italy, I'd have gotten nabbed by the collar. Here, I was almost invisible. Good. That would make it easy to stow away on a ship back to Napoli when I reached the Manhattan docks.

  The ferry left Ellis Island. Seagulls flew alongside. The evening sun seemed to sink into their white feathers and get lost entirely, turning them into flying balls of light. It was the strangest thing, but those seagulls made me happy.

  I remembered my last full day in Napoli—how a seagull had watched what the scugnizzi were doing, how it had probably been waiting for its chance to steal. It felt like years ago.

  We docked at a pier and got off. The press of people during the ferry ride gave way to nothing but a sea breeze at my back. Night was coming, and how I wished I could wrap up in Mamma's shawl. But I'd find a ship to hide on; everything would be okay.

  Horses pulled wagons and people pushed carts of all kinds. A fish market was closing, and a man threw buckets of seawater over the wooden planks outside the shop. He scooped a few fish out of a tub of melting ice, the remains of the day, and laid them in a row on the pier. Then he dumped the icy water into the harbor. He went back inside the shop as boys ran up, grabbed the fish, and disappeared down a street. They were naked, but for two in short pants. They'd been swimming. The fishmonger came out, locked his shop, and walked away. He didn't even glance at the pier.

  Laying the fish side by side like that, so neat and clean, had been a gift to the poor. And women gave out apples and doughnuts on Ellis Island, even if the doughnuts tasted pretty bad. Maybe everyone in America took care of the poor.

  A lamplighter worked his way along the road. People left the wharf area and seeped back into the innards of the city. I ducked into a side street. A man turned the corner up ahead and walked toward me with a dog. I darted down an alley.

  There was excrement everywhere, from dogs and catsand horses. And from people. The walls stank of urine. A rat shrieked and ran by with another one chasing it.

  I ran out onto the next street. Stay out of alleys! And there was the man from the ferry, the one who wanted Mulberry Street. I followed him. I could wait till morning to find a ship. For now I needed a place to sleep.

  A coach rolled past, pulled by two horses. Men with an air of importance sat tall on its benches, wearing black hats. They knew exactly where they were going, where they belonged.

  I held the hem of my shirt in my fists and squeezed tight. I wanted to stop and lie down. Exhaustion washed over me.

  The man I was following stopped, asked directions, and got pointed along. Cafe tables and chairs cluttered the sidewalks, where people ate and talked under round lanterns. Spicy aromas circled them.

  A woman passed with a cloth sack over her shoulder and a pig at her heels. She stooped to pick up a bottle and slide it into the sack as the pig trotted to a garbage can. Together they sorted through the stinking waste.

  I hurried to keep within sight of the man. He turned right, went a few blocks, then turned left. He knocked on a door and people rushed out to surround him. A smell came with them—porcini mushrooms and garlic and rosemary and tomatoes. They all talked at once: “Giorgio was supposed to go meet you, but he got the day wrong.” “Sorry, sorry.” “Now you're here and everything will be good.” They rushed him inside.

  The door closed. The dinner smell faded.

  I stood there. On Mulberry Street. My bottom lip trembled.

  A rock hit me on the shoulder. I went to grab it and throw it back, but it was a rock-hard dog turd. I almost fell on it, I was so surprised.

  A boy a few years older than me stood at the opening of an alley. “Get out of here.”

  I walked up the sidewalk fast, checking over my shoulder for him. I crossed a street and a man pushing a cart had to swerve around me, cursing. Things fell off his cart. I stooped to help pick them up, but he shouted at me, “Thief!”

  A woman yelled, “For shame! Think of your mother. Think how humiliated she'd be.”

  I ran to her. “Do you know Tonino?”

  “Which Tonino?”

  “The widower. He left his children in Napoli.”

  “Go home,” she said over her shoulder as she walked off.

  It was dark by then and I wanted to run away. I turned around and went back to the alley where the boy had stood. After all, that boy looked just as alone as me.

  He was gone.

  “Where are you?” I tried not to step in anything putrid, calling, calling. I crossed a street and went up the next alley. It was slow going because of all the garbage. And it wasn't just garbage. The carcass of a big dog lay to one side. The smell was awful. I remembered the body in the grotto back home and cleansing myself of that stench in the lake on Vesuvio. Nowhere to wash here.

  Then I saw the boy up ahead. I walked more quickly. So did a man in uniform. He blew a whistle. The boy ran and the policeman ran after him.

  Nothing was going right. I had no new plans—me, the boy full of plans. I went back to the alley with the dead dog. I threw pieces of a crushed wooden box into a half-empty barrel to make a clean layer on top of whatever was inside. Then I climbed in. I looked up to say good night to the stars, but I couldn't see any. At home, no stars meant rain was on the way.

  I checked to make sure the documents were safe in my pocket. Then I recited every one of Nonna's charms I could remember—charms to keep evil at bay.

  That was where I spent my first night in America, grateful for the exhaustion that let me sleep. If there was one lesson I'd learned since I left Mamma, it was to sleep: sleep puts aside cares.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sharks and Mooks

  I woke to the noise of horses on cobblestone streets.

  My neck hurt from being bent over my knees for hours. I stood and picked a chicken bone off my pants. It had jabbed my thigh all night, but I'd been too afraid of what it might be to touch it.

  Rain started, turning the gray alley stones to black. It was just a drizzle and it felt good. I climbed out onto a log that rolled out from under me. I fell onto my bottom with a smack.

  I brushed off everywhere and rubbed my shoes with the underside of the front of my shirt. Then I raised my face to the rain, mouth open. The fat, slow drops soothed my cheeks and throat. A high-pitched tinkling came, so delicate I thought I was still dreaming. I followed it.

  A bony boy walked down the sidewalk beating ametal triangle with a rod. Other people were out on the sidewalk already, too, heads bowed under kerchiefs and hats. Some carried umbrellas. Whenever the boy passed someone, he beat the triangle louder, then put out his hand. A man gave him a coin.

  He was nothing but a beggar.

  The beggar boy went slowly, so I had a chance to look around. Windows were open everywhere. People lived crowded together as in Napoli—filling basements and garrets, as well as all the floors between. A man came out of an outhouse, and the way he stretched, I knew he'd spent the night there.

  I gritted my teeth. I wouldn't sleep in a barrel again. I wasn't a scugnizzo.

  By the time the beggar boy finally stopped on a corner, the rain had let up. Early sun glinted off the wet stones. Too bad I hadn't stood in one spot and drunk the rain while it was still coming down. My throat was dry.

  The beggar boy took a tin cup out of his pocket, put it on the ground, and played his triangle. Then he whistled a tune. Men dressed in fancy suits dropped in coins.

  “Hey,” I said to him.

  He turned his back to me. He was pretty tall, but I bet he was only a year older than me.

  “Hey, can you tell me which way to the boats to Napoli?”

  “Bolivia,” said the beggar boy. He pointed.

  Soon I was out on the wharves again, where a huge passenger ship was docked. Officials on the steerage deck processed the first- and second-class passengers.

  I walked around until I found two men talking Napole-tano while they laid bri
cks in a sidewalk.

  “Excuse me. Do you know about the Bolivia?”

  The younger man jerked his chin toward the dock. “That ship?”

  “Is it going to Napoli?”

  “It just came from there,” said the other man. “No one cares where it's going next.”

  “I do,” the younger man said. “In Italy the air is bell' e fresca—clear and cool. I'm going back as soon as I make enough money.”

  “Yeah?” said the other man. “You'll take one whiff and you'll be on the next boat back to America, like every other fool who forgot what Italy's really like.”

  “I'm going back to Italy,” I said.

  The man wiped his mustache. “Get a load of this kid,” he said to the younger man. “Talks like a big shot.”

  “It's true,” I said.

  “Don't let your mother hear you say that,” said the younger man. “You'll break her heart.”

  “My mother's in Italy.”

  “Where's your father?” said the other man.

  I didn't answer.

  “You alone?”

  “Not for long,” I said. “I'm going to sneak onto that ship.”

  “You'll never make it,” said the man. “See the guards?”

  “And if you get caught trying,” said the younger man, “you'll wind up in an orphanage.”

  “Orphanages aren't as bad as the streets,” said the other man.

  “Remember that one that burned down? Half a dozen kids died.”

  A shopkeeper came outside and said something to the men in English. They got back to work.

  If my experience on the last passenger ship was typical, it would be a long time before the Bolivia was empty and I could sneak on. Days, probably. So I walked along the wharf toward the Statue of Liberty.

  A ferry crossed from Ellis Island. My eyes fixed on it. There was no one aboard I could know, no long-lost cousin. But I stood watching anyway.

  A man got off and went up to a policeman and asked him something. The policeman answered in English. The man got so flustered, he pulled a piece of cigar from his pocket and fiddled with it. The policeman took out a match and lit the man's cigar. The man's face widened in a huge smile of surprise. I was smiling, too. For this moment it didn't matter that no one understood anyone else.

  A group of men came up to the policeman now. They said the same words over and over, till I found myself whispering them, too—the English words: “Which way Lester Brothers?” The policeman turned to other passing men, and more people got consulted, and soon there was a crowd.

  An Italian said to another man, “Ignorant Irish. They want to make shoes at the Lester Brothers factory, and they don't even know it's way out in Binghamton. Days away.”

  “Someone ought to tell them to go over to Chatham Square to earn the travel money to get to Binghamton,” said the other man.

  “You going to tell them? You going to help the Irish?”

  They laughed and went on.

  And just like that I had my next plan. I'd work inChatham Square till the Bolivia was empty and I could sneak on. But first I had to get breakfast. Where were the American ladies who liked to help strangers? No one handed out food on this wharf.

  I went back up the street. It was busier now; skinny children in rags hawked their wares. Their dirty hair was blond or light brown, their faces red and snot-streaked. They had scabs and open sores on their elbows and knees.

  The beggar boy with the triangle stood on the same corner. “Have you got anything to eat?” I asked him.

  He turned away and whistled again, the same tune as before. Someone dropped a coin into his tin cup.

  What a stupid question. Maybe a night in a barrel had softened my brains.

  Okay, so there was no food sitting around for the taking. That meant a job came first, then breakfast. “Which way Chatham Square?” I asked him, using the English I'd heard from the men who came off the ferry—my very first attempt.

  He spat on the ground in front of me.

  “Come on,” I pleaded in Napoletano. “I need to get to Chatham Square.”

  “So what,” he said in English. I didn't understand, of course, and he knew that. After a bit, he said in Napole-tano, “Why?”

  “I need money.”

  “You, begging? With those fancy shoes?” He spat again. “Forget it. That area's taken. And the padrone in charge of those boys will whip you bloody if you move in.”

  “I'm going to work, not beg,” I said.

  “So what,” he said again in English. Then he shook hishead. “You think I don't work? I stand here all day long. I have to bring in eighty cents or my padrone will beat me.”

  “Why don't you run away?”

  “He binds our wrists to the bedpost at night.”

  I looked around. No one was watching this boy, so far as I could see. “Why don't you run away right now?”

  “Think you're so smart, do you? Where would I go? Anyway, I owe him money. And this is work. Decent work. There's no crime in being poor.”

  “That's the truth.” Everyone I'd ever known was poor. “But begging …” I didn't finish.

  “I make music. It's not the same as begging. I give people what they want to hear. What's the matter with you? You don't recognize ‘Daisy Bell’? The new song about the bicycle built for two?” He whistled the tune again. Someone dropped a coin in his cup. He whistled another tune. Another person dropped in a coin. He gave me a self-satisfied look. “That was ‘After the Ball Is Over.’ You don't know that one, either, do you? It's the most popular song from Tin Pan Alley.” His last three words were in English.

  “What's Tin Pan Alley?”

  “Twenty-eighth Street. Where they write the songs.”

  I shrugged. “I've never been there.”

  “So what,” he said in English. His mouth twitched. “I've never been there, either. But everyone knows the songs.”

  I shrugged again.

  He pressed his lips together. “It's okay. I wouldn't actually know about them myself if the woman downstairs didn't sing them half the night. You need money, huh? Tell you what. Give me those shoes to hold for you, and you can take my corner and play this triangle. As soon as you've gota dollar, I'll split the extra twenty cents with you, half and half.”

  That was how I learned that a dollar was one hundred cents. “No,” I said.

  “That's ten cents each.”

  “I can count.”

  “You'd get the money fast. They always give more to smaller boys. And you're clean. You'd be done by afternoon.”

  Me, clean? Nonna would be appalled at how filthy I'd gotten. “I won't take off my shoes.”

  “Then they won't give you nothing. You got to look poor.”

  “There's no way I'll beg.”

  His cheeks flushed. “You don't listen good.” He spat. “So what,” he said in English. “No one cares what you think.”

  “Which way Chatham Square?” I said jokingly, trying to make up.

  “Get out of here. You'd only get me in trouble with my padrone anyway.” He pointed. “Turn right at Park.” And he went back to playing his triangle.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He turned his back on me and whistled that second tune.

  I walked the way he'd pointed. At every corner I asked, “Park?” After several blocks someone finally nodded yes. I looked at the street sign. P-A-R-K. That was how you spelled park. It was almost the same as how I'd have spelled those sounds in Italian. In the top right corner of the sign were the letters S-T. Could that be a word?

  I turned right. It wasn't long before I was passing all kinds of factories. They made silverware, jewelry, billiard tables. They made umbrellas, lightning rods, false teeth, paper, medicines, guns. I passed a piano factory and a carriage factory and one for ship propellers. I stood outside the windows and watched and listened. I heard so many languages, even one that sounded sort of like singing, out of the mouths of gaunt men wearing funny quilted jackets in a cigar factor
y. But no one spoke Italian.

  It didn't seem possible. I knew where Chatham Square was—I'd passed Mulberry Street to get here, so it was right at the bottom of the street where all the Italians lived. Where were the Italian workers?

  A boy stood on a corner with a tin cup on the ground. He played a small harp. I went up to him. “Where are the factories that Italians work in?”

  He turned his back to me. Red welts showed under the collar of his shirt. I stepped away in a hurry, praying his padrone hadn't seen me, that I hadn't gotten him in trouble.

  I hurried to Mulberry Street and went up the block, past the hanging sides of beef and pork in front of the butcher's, past the pharmacy, past the ratcatcher who stood by a wall, holding out a string with dead rats attached by the tail. He was good! I hurried along listening for someone I could talk to, anyone who could explain how I could earn money.

  And he appeared, the boy who had thrown the dog turd at me the night before. He stepped out of an alley into my path, legs planted. “I told you to get out of here.”

  “I'm glad the policeman didn't catch you,” I said.

  “How'd you know about the policeman?”

  I shrugged. “I need to find a factory with Italian workers so I can earn money.”

  “That why you were in Chatham Square?”

  “How'd you know I was there?”

  He crossed his arms on his chest. “Even if you weren't a little squirt, you couldn't get a job there. Chatham Square factory managers don't hire from this neighborhood. They think they're too good for Five Points people. Italians can only work laying bricks or breaking stones or digging ditches.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don't know anything, do you?” The tough guy walked around me. “Where'd you get those shoes?”

  “My mother bought them for me.”

  “Where's your mother?”

  “At home.”

  “Where's home?”

  I shrugged.

  “I bet you live in Brooklyn, and you got lost in the city, right? So now you want to do some piddling errand so you can make enough money to take the streetcar home. Or, no, you live in the Bronx, that's it, right? The Italians in the Bronx make good. That's how your mamma got money for those shoes.” He smirked. “That, or she works at home.”