The Black Madonna

by Louisa Ermelino

  At noon Dante’s mother would bring down his lunch and a small carafe of red wine and he would go over to the park bench on the corner to eat it. When he was finished, he had a coffee in the café next to Benvenuto’s Bar and Restaurant. This had been going on now for a long time, as long as anyone could remember.

  Dante’s mother talked with the other women on the stoop about Dante’s condition. “When he goes far away,” she would tell them, “he gets dizzy, sees little black dots. Up the block, he’s okay, maybe, but he can’t cross too many streets. My poor Dante,” she always said, “such a strong healthy boy.”

  The women would click their tongues in sympathy. They would silently thank God for their men, but they would tell Dante’s mother that it was not the worst thing in a son. No daughter-in-law would curse her old age. And they would smile but mean it.

  Nicky’s legs swelled and his knees filled with water. The doctor had sewn crosses in black thread across his legs and Teresa washed around the stitches with wet cotton. When he was healed, she broke the threads with her teeth, and kept them with the bloody cloth, underneath the squares of silk her husband had sent her from halfway around the world.

  Dante didn’t tell Nicky’s mother what the doctor had said about Nicky’s legs. “Why should I?” he told everyone else at the end of the story. “What do they know, after all?” If Nicky’s mother heard, she never let on.

  And Nicky didn’t tell his mother about the rope and the knot his father had said could hold anything. “We were playing on the fire escape. Nicky fell,” Jumbo told Teresa even though she didn’t ask. Jumbo’s mother had sent him to talk to Nicky’s mother because she was afraid.

  “It pays to be careful,” Antoinette said to the women on the stoop, “you never really know.” She crossed herself and spat three times.

  The women on the stoop told Nicky’s mother to thank God that Vicky Palermo was in her kitchen, that Dante was standing outside, that JoJo Santulli had his uncle’s car. They put a hand on her shoulder and asked if Nicky’s father was coming home. Teresa looked at them, wiped her eyes with a corner of the handkerchief she had balled up in her fist. “He’s on his ship. He’s halfway around the world. How could he come?”

  Teresa kept Nicky in the house. Everyone could see him sitting in the front window where she had carried him so he could watch the street. Sometimes he sat in the back window and looked across to Salvatore’s building. Salvatore would wave and shout at him across the alley.

  Nicky’s mother kept him home from school. When the truant officer came, she bandaged Nicky’s head so that only one eye showed. She left a small space for him to breathe. She led the truant officer into the bedroom and showed him her son. “He fell three stories,” she whispered in his ear.

  Nicky joined the list of the mysteriously afflicted on Spring Street. His mother said he was going to stay home from now on. She would keep him there. “I’m not taking any chances,” Teresa told the women on the stoop. “The next time he could get killed.”

  After the fall, Nicky’s legs healed but they didn’t work. His mother massaged them. She rubbed them with olive oil that she heated in a pot on the stove. For weeks and weeks she did this, twice a day, but when Nicky tried to walk, he fell. Teresa made him stop. “You’ll hit your head,” she told him, and carried him everywhere.

  “Take me downstairs,” he asked her. “I’ll sit on the stoop.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “There’s only women on the stoop. How can they talk with you there? Use your head.”

  “Take me on the corner, then. I’ll sit in the park.”

  “I can’t stay there all day and watch you.”

  “I can stay alone.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Dante can watch me, then. He’s always outside.”

  “You can’t impose on Dante. Use your head.”

  “C’mon, Ma, I wanna go out.”

  She sat next to him, reached over and pulled down the shade on the kitchen window. She put her hands on his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck. “You will, caro, when you can walk, when you can protect yourself. They can’t see you like this. You’ve got to be strong. Who knows what could happen now? What they could do to you?”

  “Who, Ma? Who’s they? You’re making me crazy. I just wanna sit downstairs.”

  “Shh . . .” she said. She closed his eyes with her fingers, covered his mouth with her hands. “You want to walk again, you listen to me.”

  Jumbo stayed away and Nicky’s mother was glad of that. She attached a holy-water font in the shape of a seashell inside her door, and when she heard Jumbo or his mother leave the house, she sprinkled the holy water onto the landing and down the stairwell.

  Salvatore came by often and sat with Nicky on the couch in the parlor under the shelf of dolls in extravagant costumes. Teresa would put out dishes of nuts and hard candies, even though Salvatore would bring Nicky jawbreakers and lemon ice from the candy store downstairs where Dante sat when it rained. When Teresa saw Salvatore, she would touch his cheek; she would push the hair back from his forehead with her hand. She wanted to, but did not, wet her fingers and smooth the cowlick that sprouted at his part. He had been hers for a little while; he had been like her own. But he didn’t remember, couldn’t have remembered, and now he was grown, a big boy, like her Nicky.

  Salvatore would smile at Teresa’s attentions. He was used to being fawned over. Magdalena spoiled him, would pet him until he blushed. But Salvatore came here to see Nicky. He would make Nicky tell him over and over again about the rope and the knot and how he fell the three stories onto Vicky Palermo’s fire escape.

  “I could show you how to knot the rope,” Nicky told Salvatore. “You could swing across the alley to see me, climb right up the fire escape to my window. You wouldn’t have to come all the way down and across and up again. You could come anytime, three o’clock in the morning if you wanted, and no one would know. We could smoke butts out the window. If my legs worked and I had the rope, I’d come over and see you tonight.”

  Salvatore shook his head. “How could you still wanna do that?”

  “The knot was perfect,” Nicky said. “It was Jumbo. He busted the rope. If it wasn’t for Jumbo, we’d be swinging all over the alleyways with that rope.”

  Salvatore squeezed the pleated cup to get at the last of the lemon ice. “When are you gonna walk, Nicky? When are you gonna get out of here?”

  “Who knows? ‘Soon,’ my mother keeps telling me. ‘Any day,’ she says.”

  “You went to the doctor?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t say much. My mother’s mad at Dante and JoJo Santulli for taking me to the hospital but everybody thinks they’re heroes so she won’t say nothing.” Nicky shrugged. “At least I don’t have to go to school.”

  “You’ll go,” Salvatore said, “but you’ll get left back and you’ll be in Fat Augustina’s class for two years. She’ll get to beat the shit out of you for two years instead of just one.”

  “Nah,” Nicky said. “I’m a cripple. She’ll treat me good, and anyway then I’ll be with you and Jumbo and nobody can say I got left back on purpose.”

  After three months when the truant officer stopped coming and Nicky wasn’t walking, his mother went to see the woman on Bedford Street who had the power. Teresa brought her oranges and grapefruits and the money that had come that morning in an envelope from the Suez.

  “My son can’t walk,” Teresa told the woman. “What can you do?”

  “I can do everything,” Donna Rubina Fiore said. She lit candles and put the money in the front pocket of her dress. She kept her hand over the pocket where the money was. “First,” she told Nicky’s mother, “we call the good spirits in. It’s not enough just to keep the evil out. It’s already here. That’s why your son can’t walk.” Teresa nodded and touched Donna Rubina’s hand to show her respect. “Fill a glass with water, cover it with a dish, and burn a candle,” Donna Rubina said. “When the candle’s finished, write your son
’s name . . .”

  “Nicola. His name’s Nicola . . .”

  “Write ‘Nicola,’ then, on a strip of paper, fold it four times . . .” Donna Rubina leaned across the table, “for the four elements . . . and put it in the dish. The glass of water goes on top. Leave it at the foot of his bed and come to see me when the glass is empty.”

  Nicky’s mother repeated the instructions to herself on the way home. She did all that Donna Rubina told her to do, and when the glass was empty she went back to Bedford Street.

  Donna Rubina sat in her darkened parlor. She was laying out a deck of picture cards. “The water’s gone,” Teresa told her.

  “Good, the spirits have drunk it. I come soon to see the boy.”

  Donna Rubina came to Spring Street the next week and climbed the four flights to Teresa’s house. She crossed herself at the holy-water font when she came through the door. She leaned over Nicky, who was sitting up in bed. He could see her gold tooth. She smelled of must and camphor. Nicky was only twelve but he wasn’t stupid. “Ma . . .” he said.

  Teresa stood beside him. “Shh,” she told him. She pulled his ear. “Keep quiet and listen.”

  Donna Rubina carried a black bag big enough to hold a baby. She put it on the table and opened the gold clasp. From inside she took out a square of white linen and a glass jar with a thin layer of dirt at the bottom. She showed the jar to Teresa. “From the cemetery,” she told her, “on All Souls Day.” Donna Rubina emptied the dirt into the center of the cloth, twisted the ends around the lump of earth, and strung it around Nicky’s neck with a cord. He hated the way it smelled but saw his mother smile.

  “Lay down,” Donna Rubina told Nicky, and she closed his eyes with her fingers. She put her hands on his forehead and rubbed his temples. She outlined his eyebrows, his nose, his mouth. Her hands were rough and smelled of dead things like the cloth bag she had placed around his neck. She spoke low in an ancient dialect he couldn’t understand and then she put her two fingers hard into his eyes. Nicky sat up and yelled at his mother. Donna Rubina slapped his face. “No wonder,” she said. “An ungrateful son . . .”

  Teresa moved close to Donna Rubina. “He’s sorry,” she said, and poked Nicky hard in his ribs with her finger. “Forgive him.” She put four tightly rolled bills into Donna Rubina’s hand. Donna Rubina took them without looking down and dropped them into her front pocket. She had explained to Teresa that the money must be rolled up tight, as slim as cigarettes, disguised to fool the spirits.

  Teresa bent to kiss the old woman’s hand. “Mille grazie, Donna Rubina,” she said, and she stood back up and put a hand on Nicky’s shoulder. Nicky felt his mother’s nails dig into his skin.

  “Thanks,” Nicky said. He blew out his anger in a sigh. His mother led Donna Rubina to the door and he heard them whispering.

  When Donna Rubina was gone, when the hallway door downstairs had slammed behind her, Teresa came back and sat beside him on the bed. She smoothed back his hair. She ran a hand down his arm and over his legs. He looked away from her. “When you walk, you’ll thank me,” she told him.

  “Yeah,” he said, “except I’ll be blind.”

  Nicky’s mother waited for her miracle. She lit candles and stood Nicky up from the chair in the kitchen. She did this only at night, making sure the window shades were pulled down, the chain secure in its slot across the door. She closed her door after all the other doors on the landing had closed. She listened for the doors in the rest of the building to close. When she came down the narrow hallway of her apartment to unhook the string that looped around the doorknob and held her door open, she was the last one.

  After the house was secure, after the door was shut, she would help Nicky up from the chair and stand in front of him. She would coax him forward. “Cammina, cammina,” she would say in a soft voice. She would close her eyes halfway and mutter a prayer and Nicky would hold out his arms to her and try to move his legs. She would step back, calling to him, whispering his name, and then he would fall.

  Once he knocked her down and fell on top of her. The two of them lay there, Nicky tangled in her skirts. She smacked him that time and said he wasn’t trying, but then she enclosed his head in her arms, his chin caught in the bend of her elbow, and pressed him against her. She held him this way and petted him until he complained that he couldn’t breathe.

  Nicky was bored with the rituals and the amulets and the smell of the olive oil that she worked into his legs. After Donna Rubina had stuck her fingers in his eyes, he wouldn’t let his mother bring her to the house. Donna Rubina told her there was little she could do from a distance, that the demons were very clever, convincing Nicky to refuse her help. Donna Rubina smelled failure and took care for her reputation. She promised Teresa she would hold Nicky in her special prayers. “He’s a very young boy,” she told her. “Miracles take time.” Donna Rubina scratched her chin with the thumb of her right hand. “There is something . . .” she said to Teresa, who had come to see her with gifts of pignoli cookies and figs soaked in brandy.

  Teresa stood very still. She put her palms together, fingers laced in supplication. Donna Rubina hesitated. She curled her bottom lip under her front teeth. “. . . something I can give you,” she said, and she pulled a small leather case from her pocketbook. Inside, next to a scapular of green felt, was a holy card with an image of the Madonna, a gold Madonna with a black face. She held a black-faced infant and they wore gold crowns and garlands of flowers. Patrona e Regina della Lucania was printed along the bottom of the card. The sky behind the Madonna was blue.

  “From our province,” Donna Rubina said. “Magnificent, no?” Teresa nodded, afraid to do more. Donna Rubina handed the card to Teresa. “For you,” she said. Teresa closed her hand over the picture of the Black Madonna. “Keep her hidden,” Donna Rubina said. “Keep her hidden for yourself and your son.” Teresa reached into her pocket but Donna Rubina stopped her. “No, no,” she said. She smiled. “Next time.”

  When Teresa got home she put the holy card with the picture of the Black Madonna in her top dresser drawer, between the folds of silk cloth from halfway around the world.

  Get me crutches,” Nicky told his mother, “so I can go downstairs. I can go up the block. I can go to school.”

  “How can you do that? You can’t walk.”

  “If you get me crutches, I can.”

  “You think you gonna crawl, Nicky? Forget it. When you walk, you go downstairs. You crawl, you stay home.”

  “But I can’t walk. You just said I can’t.”

  “You will. I promise,” she told him and then she made a sound, a long, low wail, a cry, until he promised to stop asking her and give her more time before he hobbled around outside like a cripple, like the boy in the movie she took him to see every Christmas at the Loew’s Sheridan. “There’s still Our Lady of Mount Carmel, La Madonna Bruna,” she said. “The Madonna who answers. I’ll do the novena. I’ll walk barefoot in the procession to 115th Street with a lighted candle. I’ll go on my knees. Then we’ll get our miracle. You wait. Have patience. I promise you.”

  She cut him a piece of bread and covered it with butter. She poured him a glass of milk and held it while he drank. When he was finished she made him spit on a corner of the handkerchief she pulled from under her sleeve and then she wiped the corners of his mouth.

  Nicky told all this to Salvatore, who came now to see him almost every day after school unless he had to work for his father. Salvatore’s father was an important man, a padrone. He had a shelf of books in his house and could add columns of numbers in his head. The neighborhood was always talking about just what he was worth.

  If Salvatore saw Nicky in the front window, he would go up and knock on the door. But usually in the afternoon when school got out, Nicky’s mother sat him in the back. “You don’t want them to see you in the window all the time with your tongue hanging out,” she said, and Nicky didn’t complain because he knew Salvatore would see him in the back window and would climb up th
e back fire escape and sit outside the window and they would talk. Teresa never objected to Salvatore. When he would come to see Nicky in the window, she would bring them glasses of water tinted with wine. Nicky would ask him about the rope, but Salvatore always said he couldn’t find one, not the right kind anyway, the kind Nicky said he needed, but he said he would try and figure something out. What Salvatore figured out was a platform on wheels that Nicky could sit on and pull himself around the apartment. Salvatore got the idea from the go-carts they would make with a crate and a two-by-four piece of wood and a roller skate. Teresa was not unhappy about Nicky’s new freedom. She said as long as no one saw him wheeling himself around like a circus freak, it was not a bad thing. When Salvatore arrived with the contraption under his arm, Teresa had nodded her head and raised her eyebrows, secretly pleased at Salvatore’s cleverness. Nicky kept his “chair” under the bed and out of sight, and used it when his mother was not around.

  Teresa came downstairs one night after supper when the weather was starting to get warm. The women made room for her on the stoop. They asked about Nicky’s legs. They had seen Donna Rubina come and go. Nicky’s mother shook her head. “Bad luck sticks,” she told the women. “It’s hard to shake.”

  The women looked down. They rocked back and forth, their skirts tucked behind their knees, and they agreed with Teresa, but one young woman stood up. It was Magdalena, Salvatore’s stepmother. “This is America,” she told them. “You can make your destiny.” The women looked at her. Magdalena seldom sat on the stoop, didn’t gossip, never put her head together with theirs, but while they were wary of her, they listened, because behind their suspicions was a grudging respect.

  If magic didn’t work, she said, maybe Nicky needed a doctor, a special kind of doctor. “You ask my husband,” she told Teresa. “He knows all kinds of people. He has business outside, away from here.”