The Black Madonna

by Louisa Ermelino

  She showed him the address and he told her to go to Houston Street and take the Third Avenue El. She thanked him and felt lucky.

  It was a long ride. “Liar, cheat, thief,” she mumbled to herself, but when the sun cut through the grime on the windows, she forgot about her son’s father. She looked out the window and imagined that she was going away somewhere, somewhere nice. She expected that the train would pass out of this city and into the country and she thought that she might open the window and smell the fresh air.

  There was an old woman sitting next to her who asked where she was going, and Teresa showed her the envelope with the address on it. “Get off at Fordham Road,” she said, and asked Teresa for the stamps. Without hesitating, Teresa tore them off the envelope and gave them to her. Without the stamps, the envelope looked ugly and unimportant.

  The train came into Fordham Road and Teresa got off and waited on the wooden platform until it pulled away. The old woman waved through the window, the stamps in her hand, and Teresa waved back. She looked down at the remnant of the envelope she held. It was nothing, she thought, dirty paper, and after she had studied the address written on the back of it until she could close her eyes and still see it, she tore the envelope into small pieces and threw them into one of the square metal garbage containers that hung under the gum dispensers.

  Down all the steps to the street, she thought about finding Nicky’s father. She slowed her pace. She thought about going back up the stairs on the other side and taking the train down to Spring Street and forgetting about him but then she was in the street and her mind cleared. She had been taking care of herself and Nicky for a long time. When she found the dirty rotten sonofabitch . . . She closed her eyes then cast them up to heaven and asked the Madonna that he die spitting blood. She imagined him, his face no longer handsome, red spittle dried on his lips, and she felt better. She would know what to do when she found him. She trusted herself.

  This neighborhood was similar to her own, she noticed. There were faces like her own; she knew the language and the sounds on the street. It was no Park Avenue. She walked slowly, watching for the numbers on the buildings.

  Outside a doorway, where a group of men sat on kitchen chairs, she stopped. They were talking, smoking, watching the street. One man ground out his cigar. It was an Italian stogie, a guinea stinker. She could smell it from where she stood. She watched him pull off the burnt end with his fingers and chew the stub.

  “Signori,” she said, standing at a respectful distance. The man chewing the cigar stub raised his hat to her.

  “I’m looking,” she said, “for Angelo Sabatini.”

  “Sabatini? Angelo?” The man scratched his head before he replaced his hat. “You mean Angie Kiwi? . . . The sailor?” Nicky’s mother clenched her hands into fists, her nails dug into her palms.

  “Maybe,” she said. “He’s a merchant seaman?”

  “Yeah, Angie Kiwi . . . I don’t know why they call him that. Who remembers these things?”

  “There’s a bar he hung out in,” another man said. He was leaning against the building, his legs crossed at the ankles. “A sailor’s joint, the Kiwi. Maybe that’s how he got the name.”

  “Funny name.”

  “Yeah, must come from someplace them sailors go. They go some crazy places . . .”

  Nicky’s mother shifted her weight. Her feet hurt. “He’s lived here long?” she said, her voice low, friendly.

  “Long enough, yeah. He married a girl from around here. Ain’t that right,Vinny?”

  “Yeah, he’s married to Damiano’s daughter Cynthia.”

  “Damiano the undertaker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d she get that name? I never heard nobody with that name.”

  “It’s Celestina, but you know. They all want to be up-to-date today so she calls herself Cynthia.”

  “What a name . . . Cynthia.” The old man with the cigar butt sighed and spat out some black juice and coughed. He turned to the man sitting next to him, who was dozing in the sun. “Ain’t that right?” he said, nudging him with his elbow. “Angie Kiwi’s married to Celestina Damiano? The one with the big earrings?”

  His friend opened his eyes, brushed aside a fly that had landed on the top of his very large ear. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “They live over there”—and he pointed across the street—“on the top floor. Celestina, she’s always complaining about the stairs.”

  “Her name’s Cynthia,” the man leaning against the building said.

  “Well, I call her Celestina. I ain’t up-to-date like some people.”

  “You can call her what you want, but Angie Kiwi’s not there.” This from a fourth man, young and handsome. He looked at Teresa, his eyes careful. It was what he did with women.

  “Well, that figures. Sailors are never home. My mother always said they made good husbands. ‘And if you’re lucky,’ she used to say, ‘they die young and leave a pension.’”

  “What does your mother know? Your father drove an elevator.”

  “That don’t mean she didn’t have dreams.”

  “Angie Kiwi’s in the hospital,” the young man said. He lit a cigarette that he took from a silver case.

  “No . . . what are you telling me?” the old man chewing the cigar said.

  “It’s his ticker. They brought him in a few days ago.”

  “How do you like that? Guy survives all them years going all over the place, makes it through the war, finally gets home, and bang, his ticker goes.”

  “Ain’t that always the way?”

  “But it got him off the ships.”

  “Nah, that was a fugazy. Celestina’s brother made a connection in the union. Angie Kiwi put in a disability claim, said he hurt his back, and the brother pushed it through. They can’t prove nothing about your back. It’s the best way to go. Worst thing, you carry a cane a few years till they settle. My brother-in-law got ten gees, moved to Florida.”

  “You’re right, I remember. Angie Kiwi told my brother Charlie he had to stay flat on his back all the way from Singapore to make the story stick. Told him it almost wasn’t worth it, missing all them slanty-eyes on the way home. Said when them girls heard Angie Kiwi wasn’t coming back, they cried for days.”

  “He’s full of shit,” the young man said.

  The man standing against the building laughed. The old man chewing the cigar stub spat out tobacco juice. The young man checked his shoes.

  The old one swatting flies raised his hand. “Shut up,” he said. “The lady, she don’t want to hear you.” He tipped back his chair and tipped his hat to Nicky’s mother. “Scusate, signora . . .” he said, extending his hand.

  “Niente,” Teresa said. She smiled a little bit. She had wanted them to forget she was there. She felt the young man’s eyes on her and she swayed slightly, rocking back and forth on the heels of her shoes. She wasn’t used to going long distances in shoes with such high heels, such delicate soles, but her feet had stopped hurting. She couldn’t feel anything but the flush of triumph and revenge.

  Angelo Sabatini, her husband, who had another wife, another name . . . Angie Kiwi, they called him up here, who made girls from halfway around the world cry, was lying in the hospital with a bad heart. She said a sudden prayer to the Virgin that he should not get off so easily. Not a heart attack, she begged. He should die in agony, but, she added, not before she found him, not before she told him the way things were.

  The men had forgotten her again. She waited and listened, but they were discussing a bocce game now, and someone named Gianni Michalini’s accident. She stepped forward. “Poor Angelo,” she said softly. “Do you know where he is? What hospital?”

  They all looked up, as though surprised to see her still standing there, and the handsome young man shrugged his shoulders and pulled on the sleeves of his jacket so that they fell just right over his shirt cuffs. “Where could he be?” he said. “The hospital we all go to.”

  The cigar chewer pointed up the street.
It’s not far,” he said. “Keep walking straight. You can’t miss it.”

  The old man chewing the cigar stub laughed out loud. He was missing teeth. Nicky’s mother could see this when he laughed. “He’s a good guy, that Kiwi. If you see him, tell him Frankie Moe sends his regards.”

  “Life is funny,” one of the men said. “You never know what’s coming next.”

  “Celestina must wear Angie out every time he comes home. This time his ticker couldn’t take it.” The man on the bench bit into his apple.

  “Yeah, maybe Celestina’s got something those slanty-eyed girls don’t.”

  “Hey, you forgetting about this lady?” The fly swatter turned his head.

  But Teresa was gone. She had left and no one had seen her go, not even the handsome young man who had watched her so carefully from the start.

  Teresa found the hospital easily enough. It was a great cavernous building that took up a city block. When she got inside, she felt dizzy and out of breath. She could hear her heart beating. She sat down on a bench against the wall and waited for the feeling to pass.

  She spoke to no one but sat with her eyes straight ahead. She thought about Nicky alone in the apartment but it was still early in the day, she reminded herself, and she relaxed, unlacing her fingers, which she held tightly together in her lap. She had left Nicky lunch, and Dante was downstairs, standing watch outside the building. It was a beautiful day.

  At the main desk she got the room number of Angelo Sabatini with no trouble at all. He was in the men’s ward, they told her, on the second floor. The halls of the second floor were crowded with men in chairs, in pieces, suspended on metal racks. The smell of illness, the smell of them, made her hold her breath, but then she was in front of his room. She stopped and made herself small outside the door. She didn’t see him at first. There were two rows of iron beds and she looked carefully from one bed to the other at the faces of the men. She was straining to see clearly and still stay hidden.

  She saw him finally in the last bed, by the window. Even here, she thought, he managed to find a way. Thirty men and Angelo Sabatini gets the window, the light, the air, the view. She stepped inside. The room went silent for an instant while the men closest to the door looked her over. There was a card game going on near the center of the room, wheelchairs pushed together. The men raised their heads.

  She walked softly toward Angelo’s bed at the end of the row, the last bed, the one by the window. She smiled at the men who stopped what they were doing to look at her, count her steps, realize she was not there for them.

  Angelo was asleep. She stood there at the side of his bed. His hair was as black as she remembered. His beard made a shadow along the hollows of his cheeks. He looked the same to her except he was thinner. She could see that now, standing over him. He was still handsome, more handsome a man than she would be expected to have. She knew that. She had heard the whispers.

  For that moment, she forgot what he had done, forgot her curses, her son at home with no father and legs that didn’t work. She conjured up the color of his eyes behind the closed lids. Nicky had those blue eyes. Everyone had said they would change. “All babies have blue eyes when they’re born,” Jumbo’s mother had insisted down at the stoop, rubbing her belly, amazing them all with its size such a short time into her pregnancy. But Nicky’s eyes hadn’t changed, except to get more blue. Jumbo’s mother would never join in when the other women went on about them. Teresa would nod at the compliments and cross her fingers behind her back. It never hurt to be too careful.

  Teresa reached out her hand and shook her husband’s arm. He turned his face away from her in his sleep. This made her angry and she dug her fingers into the soft space between his neck and his shoulder. The cotton of his pajamas was smooth and finely woven. They were his own. Cynthia must have brought them, Teresa thought, washed them, pressed them in her Bronx apartment, standing near the open window to catch the breeze.

  “Angelo,” Teresa hissed, and his eyes opened. He stared at her, blinked, wrinkled his forehead. His reaction startled her. Had she gotten so old, so ugly? “You bastard,” she said to him. “You don’t know who I am?”

  He looked at her. He sat up in the bed. His eyes were wide. His mouth opened but he didn’t speak. Then the surprise passed and he smiled at her. “Teresa . . .” he said. “Madonna! I must be dreaming. Am I in heaven?” He held out his arms. “Come here, let me kiss you. You’re so beautiful. I don’t believe you’re really here.” When she stood still, he put down his arms. “How are you?” he said. “Me, I’m sick. I’m not myself. I’m good for nothing. Look at me. Remember how strong I used to be? Forget me. Come here . . . Let me look at you. You look wonderful . . . Teresa . . .”

  She smacked him hard across the face. He started to say something but she smacked him again, this time with the back of her hand. Her pocketbook flew off her arm, everything inside spilling into the aisle between the beds. Two young boys came from nowhere and scrambled to collect the change and the pocket mirror. They ran off with them into the hall.

  No one moved but heads turned. She hit him again on the side of the head and then once more. She scraped his face with her fingernails. “Dog,” she said. “Son of a pig.” She put her face close to his. “Your mother pushed you out from her ass,” she whispered. “That whore you’re with should get cancer. She should die without her tongue.”

  “Teresa . . .” he said. He was crying. He took her hand and kissed her fingers. His blood was caught under her nails. He looked in her face for some sign of forgiveness.

  “I wish you dead, Angelo, crippled in the street, claws for hands, broken under a train.”

  “Ah, Teresa . . .” he said again, fighting for his breath. “What are you talking about? Listen to me for a minute.”

  “It’s not true? You’re gonna tell me it’s not true what I know? Just because you fooled me all these years, Angelo, don’t think I’m stupid.”

  “Okay, okay.” Sobs caught in his throat. “But the truth, Teresa, did I take care of you? The money . . . did you get the money every month? No matter where I was? No matter what? I sent you things. I always sent you presents.”

  “You left Nicky and me alone on Spring Street, just me and Nicky, and you never came.”

  “I did come.”

  “Once . . . you came once in all those years. Who remembers once? ‘She has no husband,’ they say. ‘Nicky has no father. Il figlio di nessuno.’ They forget you exist, you come once in all those years. They forget and they whisper that Nicky’s a bastard. They say things about me behind my back. ‘Where is he?’ they say . . . ‘this Angelo Sabatini?’” She pulled her hand away. It was wet from his lips and his tears and she wiped it on his bedsheet in disgust.

  “Things happen,” he told her. “I don’t know why. Look at me. God paid me back. I’m finished. My ticker’s bad . . .” And he started to cry again.

  “Who cares about you, Angelo? Nicky and I manage good enough, but you stopped the money. That whore you live with is getting it, no? From my son’s mouth to her pocket.”

  “Please, Teresa, she’s a good woman. You two would get along, believe me. You’d like her.”

  Nicky’s mother spat in his face. He closed his eyes. “And you married her, didn’t you, Angelo? You stupid. You know you go to jail for that in this country?”

  “If you’d listen, Teresa . . .”

  “I’m not listening to nothing. You listen. I’m going to your house in the Bronx, to your wife in the Bronx. I’m gonna take Nicky with me. I’m gonna tell her some things. And then I’m gonna pull out every hair on her head.”

  “I don’t know, Teresa. You were so sweet, such a sweet girl. What happened to you? Remember how you used to sing for me, and I would . . .”

  “Shut up,” she said, “before I kill you. If I had a father . . . brothers . . . anybody . . .”

  “Okay, okay. What do you want? What am I supposed to do? You want to kill me? Go ahead. I’m half-dead as it is. Tell me.
Anything. I’ll make it up to you. But Teresa, the truth. Did you and Nicky want for anything? Who on Spring Street’s got better than you?”

  “Nicky can’t walk,” she told him.

  “What? What happened?”

  “He had an accident.”

  “Oh God. How? What?”

  “I need money . . . for an operation to make him walk.”

  “Look at me, Teresa. I got no money. I can’t work no more. I’m shot.”

  “Nicky needs the operation.”

  “I got no money,” he told her. “I’d give it to you in a minute. You know that. For Nicky I’d do anything. He’s all I got.”

  “The disability . . .”

  “How much you think that is? What do you think I get? It’s nothing.”

  “Your wife,” she said, “the other one. Get the money from her.”

  “My wife?”

  “Yeah, Angelo. Cynthia, Celestina, whatever you call her, the undertaker’s daughter. She must have money. Whoever heard of a poor undertaker? Ask her for the money for your son.”

  “Where’d you get all this from?”

  “Never mind.”

  He held his head in his hands. “Go ahead, Teresa,” he said. “Choke me. Ruin me. That’s why you came, right? I’m not sick enough. I’m not half-dead already. You wanna finish the job.”

  “I want the money for Nicky’s operation,” she said.

  “At least you have to give me some time. Let me get out of here . . .”

  “. . . and then you come down to the neighborhood. You spend a few days on Spring Street. You come all dressed up with presents for me and Nicky. You walk all around and you take us to Bleecker Street for ice cream and pastries. You show everybody Nicky’s got a father, Teresa Sabatini’s got a husband, and then you can go. You can say you’re shipping out and you can go for good.”

  Angelo’s tears had dried. He reached for her.

  “You want me to come down to Spring Street and stay with you, Teresa? Like the old days? Like we was before? Like nothing’s changed? You still look good, Teresa. You look good to me.”