The Black Madonna

by Louisa Ermelino

  Harvey had a makeshift dressing room in the back so the ladies could try things on and he kept a young shop assistant to help them with the hooks and snaps so essential to ladies’ underwear. He’d have his lunch every day in the dairy restaurant across the street where the old waiters with bad feet and body odor knew his order, the same every day: potato-leek soup with dill served in the thick china of coffee shops, the soup slopped into the cup so that it had flowed over the edge, the cup sitting in a puddle of soup in the saucer that Harvey would put to his lips if no one was looking.

  The trend to abandoning undergarments worried Harvey. He had read where the young girls weren’t even wearing panties, let alone girdles, but Sylvia said he was crazy. Where was a woman without her foundation garments? Anyway, they had put enough away for a rainy day. The only thing left for them to do was to marry off Judy, but to tell the truth, this worried Sylvia. When Judy turned thirty, Sylvia had arranged a quiet dinner for the three of them at Trader Vic’s in the city. She didn’t want to advertise Judy’s age, to start her friends gossiping or not being responsive when a possible suitor, a young nephew or a friend’s son, came into town. Sylvia didn’t want Judy to be thought of as old . . . as in maid. She remembered the dreaded card in the game Judy would play with her father as a little girl, the ugly hag with the disgruntled face.

  Sylvia wished Judy would dress up more, tweeze her eyebrows, shorten her skirts. Those glasses! Sylvia would fret to Harvey in bed after the lights were out. She would only let Harvey read in bed for fifteen minutes and then the light had to go out. “She’s not a bad-looking girl,” she would say in the dark. “What could it be?”

  “Leave her alone. She’s having fun. She’s young yet.”

  “She’s not so young, Harvey, God forgive me for saying it. She’s past thirty. And she’s not even dating. We never should have let her move to the city. Who’s she gonna meet there?”

  “Who’s she gonna meet here?”

  “Oh, stop it. If she was here she’d be at the club on weekends. There’s always a stray man here and there. People would see her. They’d want to fix her up. Now she’s just Sylvia and Harvey’s daughter who moved to the city. Besides she seems too independent. No one wants a girl like that.”

  “Sylvia, she’ll be fine.”

  “You think so, Harvey? She’s got nobody. Not a brother, not a sister, just us, and when we die someday, God forbid, Judy’s gonna be all alone.” Sometimes when Sylvia said this, she would cry softly into her manicured hands. Her hairdo would quiver and Harvey would pat her hand and sometimes take her in his arms and sometimes even get a hard-on and make love to her, careful not to disturb her hairdo.

  Antoinette Mangiacarne, sometimes known as Mama Jumbo, thrived on her only son. Even his missteps, somewhere deep in her heart, gave her pleasure because they tied him to her all the more tightly. She never hesitated for a minute to go to Fat Eddie’s Club on King Street that time Jumbo had run away. For her son, she would have thrown herself in front of a moving train and pulled her daughters along after her. She believed when he was born that he was destined for great things but fate had intervened when Nicky’s mother had targeted him for her grudge. Antoinette knew that if she had had an ally more powerful than Teresa Sabatini, Jumbo would be a doctor by now, a lawyer, a business owner, a restaurateur, an executive in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

  But if it wasn’t to be, her consolation was that she was here to protect him from real terror and physical harm. He had stayed healthy, thank God, with an appetite that never faltered through all the usual childhood sicknesses and the most terrible stomachaches and flu and fevers. Antoinette could not remember a time when Jumbo’s weight dipped even a pound, when his pants had ever been loose at his waist. For this she was grateful and could put up with the evil eye that Nicky’s mother had invoked. After all, if you didn’t have your health, you had nothing. Antoinette knew this because she and her family had nothing but their health, and cheap rent on their tenement apartments.

  Secretly Antoinette thought it was not a bad thing that had brought Jumbo back to the neighborhood bar in Benvenuto’s. She had worried about him uptown at night. This way he was here. She could see him coming and going. She knew where he was every day and every night of the week because Fat Eddie Fingers had been clear about the hours Jumbo had to work if he wanted to continue breathing and Antoinette had solemnly sworn on the head of her dead husband that Jumbo would do exactly as Eddie asked. Antoinette finally felt that things were under control. Nicky’s mother’s curse might have been lifted or frittered away, its energy spent, or Jumbo just too vigorous and healthy to be influenced by its evil anymore. If Antoinette had known what was brewing, she might have lost her appetite, she might have needed more than two handkerchiefs in her apron pocket to collect her tears or contain her fury.

  It had been a slow night at Jilly’s, a Tuesday. Jumbo thought the group of girls who came in and sat at the bar looked snotty. Haughty would have been the word but Jumbo would not have used a word like haughty. They all ordered brandy alexanders except for one girl. She ordered scotch on the rocks, telling Jumbo her father had taught her that when you drink, it was the sugar that killed you. “Smart man,” Jumbo said, and liked her right away. When all the girls got up to leave and she purposely waited for him to come down to her end of the bar, he took her drink off the check and smiled at her.

  She had long brown hair and glasses, which Jumbo thought made her look smart. On her way out he noticed her big ass and the line of her panties underneath her knit dress and then and there he hoped he would see her again.

  Jumbo never thought about girls except the ones you paid for or else left before dawn. To get serious meant responsibility and Jumbo knew his limits. Mouths to feed and rent to pay? He had never lived on his own. He hadn’t even been able to make it with Nicky and Salvatore. That three weeks when he was eighteen had been the last time he had been out of his mother’s house, except for that time he hid out in Georgia, which no one counted. Antoinette had cried when he moved back home. She had lovingly hand-washed every piece of dirty clothing he brought back with him, and his sisters Rosina and Albina had stayed home from work one whole day to press everything, even his boxer shorts and undershirts, and fold them neatly one on top of the other and place them back in the empty drawers that had waited for his return.

  Her name was Judy, not Angelina or Cosima or Bernadina, and when she walked into Jilly’s alone that Friday night, Jumbo swooned. He hadn’t remembered her mouth being so full. She wore lipstick and a sweater that was cut low enough so he could see the top of her breasts and she sat alone at the bar and leaned over so that when he poured her scotch he could see down into her sweater. He imagined he could see her nipples pushing against the wool but of course he couldn’t because Judy Bernstein’s father was in lingerie and her bra was padded and double-layered with lace and Jumbo would have had to have X-ray vision to see even the hint of a nipple but he imagined where they were and that was good enough.

  He took her to an after-hours joint down on Broadway and then to Ratner’s for breakfast. “You’re Jewish?” he asked her when he heard the name Bernstein.

  “Why? That matters?”

  “No, whatta you kidding? I meet all kinds of people in my business. You kidding or what?”

  “I don’t really observe.”

  “What?”

  “Observe . . . the rules . . . like not eating pork.”

  “Pork?”

  “Jews don’t eat pork . . . or shellfish. Don’t you know that?”

  “Sure I know that. So you don’t eat pork?”

  “I do. I thought God would strike me dead the first time I had a ham sandwich but here I am.”

  “I’m glad, Judy.”

  “That I eat pork?”

  “No, that God didn’t strike you dead.”

  They went out for four months. Jumbo knew his way around the city. He took her to shows and restaurants and clubs and discos. They went
out every weekend and twice during the week. He was going into debt but he wasn’t worried. It was small potatoes compared to when he was gambling.

  Antoinette was suspicious. He was staying out later and later and he had stopped giving her money for the house, which before he had forced her to take. “No,” she always said when Jumbo pushed the rolled-up bills into her hand. “That horse’s ass, that s’facime takes everything you make.” Jumbo would slip the money into her pocketbook and she would find the bills at the bottom of her bag when she went shopping.

  But lately, Jumbo had been apologizing. “I got some expenses, Ma,” he told her. “You know that fat bastard takes everything.”

  Antoinette smelled a rat. She tortured Rosina and Albina and Filomena and Angelina and Raffaella but they swore they knew nothing, had seen nothing. Antoinette noticed a smear of pink on Jumbo’s shirt collar and had a mild fainting spell. She showed it to Rosina. “Ma, he’s a man, for chrissakes. You want him to be a fag?”

  “You think that’s it? Just a one-time thing?”

  “Well, I don’t see no steady girl around here, do you?”

  “No, you’re right. It’s nothing, right? A little fun. He’s a man, after all.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “But suppose some girl tricks him, gets herself pregnant? Suppose it’s not even his baby? She’s a big whore. Gives it out to everybody and poor Jumbo gets stuck because he’s a dope. Your father never told him anything. And how could I say those things? I’m his mother.”

  “Ma, please, Jumbo’s thirty-two years old. He can take care of himself. You should be glad if he’s with a woman. My Tony was thinking for real he might be a riccone.”

  “Why? Because he’s not a pig like the jerks you and your sisters married?”

  “Ma, please, I’m trying to make you feel better.”

  “You’re not. I don’t feel better. I feel sick to my stomach.” Antoinette mixed a big glass of water and Brioschi. The bubbles soothed her stomach, the fizz tickled her nose, which she used to sniff for perfume and other aromas that would give her fears a name.

  The Bernsteins were pleased when Judy told them she was seeing somebody and that was the reason she hadn’t been home to visit. With her job and all, there wasn’t time. Sylvia didn’t pry. She didn’t want to interfere but she poked Harvey every night when he turned off his light and rolled over. “D’ya think it’s serious? It’s been months. Did she say anything to you?”

  “No, Sylvia.”

  “But she always talks to you. She’s closer to you than she is to me. I’m her mother. She should tell me. But she hasn’t, not a word. She should be asking me for advice. After all, there’s ways to get a man. I hope she’s being careful. You know, nobody buys the cow when they get the milk for free. It sounds old-fashioned, but it’s true.”

  “Oh, Sylvia, please . . . She’s thirty-five years old.”

  “Don’t say that. She’s near thirty. That’s how you say it, near thirty.”

  “Sylvia, go to sleep.”

  “Oh, Harvey, do you remember when we first met?”

  Judy wanted Jumbo to meet her parents. She said if he really liked her as much as he said, if he loved her the way he said when they spent the night in the hotel on Twenty-third Street where he knew the night clerk and he pulled her on top of him, being much too large to risk it the other way, then he should meet her parents. Unless he wasn’t serious, she said, but using her just to have a good time.

  Jumbo cried when she said this. He loved her. He had never loved anybody before her. He swore this, but he was nervous. He knew she came from a nice family. He was positive. She was so educated, so cultured. Maybe they should wait. Give her parents time to get used to the idea of an Italian son-in-law, a bartender, no less. He knew that Jewish mothers wanted doctors; they wanted lawyers, professors. They went for titles. He knew he was right.

  “Stop it,” Judy said, when he went on and on this way. “I’m telling them this weekend.”

  “Whatta you gonna tell them?”

  “That I met a man. That I love him. That I’m happier than I’ve ever been and I want them to meet him.”

  “Ah, Judy, that’s really how you feel?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her hands, sucked each finger one by one. He wished he could eat her except that then she would be gone.

  “So? You’ll come?”

  “Suppose they don’t want to meet me? Suppose they say ‘You’re dead to us’ and have a fake funeral. I heard about that. Vinny Maisano married a Jewish girl and her family did that. They never spoke to her again. It was like she was dead.” Jumbo had tears in his eyes. “Can you imagine that? They made believe like she died.”

  “Jumbo, stop being dramatic. My parents wouldn’t do that. They’ll love you. If I love you, they’ll love you. They’ll have to.”

  Sylvia and Harvey could not have been happier when Judy announced she was taking the 11 A.M. train home to Lawrence on Sunday and that she had something to tell them. Sylvia was beside herself. She made Harvey bring Nova Scotia and bagels and cream cheese from the East Side for their brunch. She told Harvey that she knew the news would be about Judy’s beau. Fiancé, she hinted to her friends on the golf course. Engaged, she mentioned to her bridge club. She didn’t sleep Saturday night. Sunday morning she was up at six setting out the Lenox.

  Harvey picked Judy up at the train station and drove straight home. Sylvia told him not to stop, but to come right back, which he did. She watched through the bay window as they got out of the car and came up the steps between the porch columns that reminded Sylvia of Tara and had convinced her to buy this house. Judy looked to Sylvia like she had put on some weight. This was the first disappointment. Didn’t love take away your appetite? How could you snare a man carrying around twenty extra pounds? But Sylvia embraced her only child. She held her at arm’s length and told her how wonderful she looked. Had she lost some weight?

  They sat at the table with the fresh flower centerpiece and the cut-crystal glasses filled with freshly squeezed orange juice while Judy told them about Jumbo. The Nova Scotia caught on Sylvia’s temporary cap when she heard he wasn’t Jewish but she recovered. Italian wasn’t the worst thing. They were family people. Italians and Jews had lived side by side in the Bronx. It could be worse.

  When Judy mentioned that he was a bartender, the bagel caught on what Sylvia feared was a tumor in her throat but she waited calmly to hear the rest, that he owned his own restaurant, which had in it a very graceful bar, like the divine Romeo Salta’s. Didn’t the owner sometimes step behind the bar to serve drinks? Sylvia asked herself. Successful restaurateurs had to be hands-on. Her Uncle Seymour had owned a restaurant. He had always said it. No absentee owners in the restaurant business. But no, Judy was saying, Jumbo didn’t own the bar and restaurant. He only worked there.

  College . . . what college had he gone to? City College had its share of wunderkinds, her brother Saul, for example. CCNY was an excellent school. Who could afford Yale and besides they had quotas. Sylvia was sure there must be quotas for Italians the same as for Jews.

  Sylvia relaxed. She coughed up her bagel and took a sip of coffee. He hadn’t gone to college? Self-educated? Sylvia’s words, not Judy’s, who was telling them how wonderful and kind and generous and smart her boyfriend was, and you know what? Judy said finally, “I love him.”

  Harvey took Judy’s hands in his and said he was so happy for her. Sylvia sat back in her chair and bit her tongue.

  “Are you sure, dear? It’s so important to have things in common.”

  “I’m sure . . . And I’m sure you’ll love him, too. You’ll have to.”

  “We will, won’t we, Sylvia?” Harvey nodded his head, smeared cream cheese on his bagel. “Our Judy always had the best taste in friends.”

  Sylvia rolled her eyes and wiped her mouth with her full-size linen napkin. Sweat broke out on her forehead. For the first time in a long time, she was lost for words. “You’l
l have to bring him out, sweetheart. Let us see this guy of yours.” She laughed. “You haven’t even told us his name.”

  Judy laughed, too. “It’s Alfonso but everyone calls him Jumbo.”

  Sylvia swallowed hard. Harvey carried the ball. “What an interesting name. How did he get it?”

  “He thinks it’s after that famous circus elephant. He was the biggest baby born on Spring Street, he tells me. The Daily News sent a photographer to take a picture of him and it was on the second page of the paper. Jumbo says the Italians love nicknames. Everyone has one.”

  “Well, Jumbo’s certainly easier to remember than Alfso.”

  “Alfonso.”

  “Excuse me,” Sylvia said.

  “You okay, Mother?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. You two go on. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Sylvia Bernstein went upstairs to the pink bathroom attached to the master bedroom and threw up her guts. She washed her face and reapplied her makeup. Harvey and Judy waited for her in the living room.

  “Sylvia,” Harvey said. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh yes. It’s the orange juice,” she said. “I shouldn’t drink it. Too much acid.”

  Judy hugged her mother when she came close enough. “Oh, I feel so happy now that I’ve told you. And you don’t mind too much that he isn’t Jewish?”

  “We can talk about all that later,” her father said.

  Sylvia retired to bed with a lace handkerchief drenched in Chanel No. 5 tied over her eyes. “Look on the bright side, Sylvia,” Harvey said. “Our baby’s happy. She’s found a man who loves her. What else can we hope for?”