The Creeds that Move Men's Hearts

by Melody Veltri

  I can’t make conversation because I am overcome with relief and emotion. I can see that Fitz is looking behind us, but I can’t bring myself to turn my head.

  “It’s all right. He’s gone into the bar.”

  “Was he following me, Fitz?”

  “I was wondering that meself when I saw you both ahead of me. He’s an odd one, and I don’t trust him. I’d be careful about walkin by yourself, darlin’.” He looks right at me when he says that last line, and I see that he is worried. The last thing I want to do is add to his worries.

  We get to my house, and I thank Fitz sincerely. I can’t tell Pa or Giova what has happened or they’ll go after Vassari and risk being hurt or worse. I can’t tell Mama, or she’ll lock us all in the cold cellar for the rest of our lives.

  At the door, I turn and watch Fitz stroll back down the street. I know that he is going to McGuire’s. I wonder if he will sit alone. Will Luca be watching him? Most of all, I wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald just saved me from something terrible—was he my guardian angel tonight? My brain is unsure, but my heart says that I am a very lucky girl that he came along when he did.

  “Carolina, mangia.” Mama motions to the dining room while she grabs something out of the kitchen. Apparently, everyone is already having dinner.

  “Why so late today, figlia?” asks Pa. “You’re out of breath.”

  “I had lots of questions for Sister, Papa.” I take a seat by Giuseppe, and he gives me a ridiculous gigantic smile and a pat on my head. It’s so hard to remain in my agitated state around him.

  Mama feels responsible to Zia Teresa for taking good care of Giuseppe. In her mind, that translates into feeding him until he bursts. I’m thankful that in the passing of bowls and dishes, and in Mama’s frequent trips to the kitchen, no one is paying attention to me. It’s a while before I can calm down enough to eat. I just keep cutting food and moving it around.

  Every time that Mama goes into the kitchen to refill plates—and that is every ten minutes—Giuseppe folds his napkin into something funny to make Marcello and Lindo laugh. While we are eating, he seems to be smoothing his napkin on his lap. When Mama goes into the kitchen the first time, he lifts up a tiny napkin brassiere that he holds it to his chest. Giova and I smile, Papa smiles and shakes his head, but the little boys are falling off their seats. When Mama leaves to make coffee, Giuseppe reveals a napkin bunny. With a little movement of his hand, he makes it look like it is hopping on its own. Marcello and Lindo laugh and clap and beg Giuseppe to show them his tricks. For now, Giuseppe has no trouble communicating with his eyes and hands. Pa says he’ll pick up English quickly when he finds a job.

  After dinner, we sit around the radio and listen to the baseball game on KDKA. I find my mind wandering. Had Luca been going to the bar all along? Had I overreacted? Why would he follow me—to scare me? To hurt me? I pick up my sewing and try to shake the memory of his angry steps from my mind.

  Dear Diary, June 27, 1925

  I’m going to ask Papa to buy me a prayer card of Thomas More to keep in my room. I want to be reminded of someone who was brave enough to die for what was right, even though he could have saved himself by just signing the paper. One minute, Henry VIII is a good Catholic and a friend of the pope, and the next minute, he has no conscience at all and thinks he’s the Pope himself. What do we do when bad men have power over the lives of others? It happened then. It will always happen. I wish I could believe that I will always be strong enough to stand up for what I think is right. I don’t know if I have that kind of courage. Tonight, when Luca appeared to be following me, I had no courage at all. All of the things that I would have liked to say to him fell away, and I was left with nothing but my naked fear.

  * * *

  “Marcello! Carolina! Lindo! Andiamo a la festa!” Mama is packing sweaters for us all and making sure that her purse has everything she needs—tissues, lipstick, good luck red pepper, money, mirror, rosary.

  This is the annual San Gennaro Festa. All of Sharpsburg will be there, and it is Mama’s one chance to be around all of her neighbors all day. I’m just as excited as she is. It’s not every day that we have a celebration.

  Though we all leave the house together, including Giova and Giuseppe, we all have our own agenda when we get there. Marcello and Lindo are very quickly off with their friends. Zia Izzy has come with us, and she and Mama and I want to see the parade. Papa wants to sit with the men and play bocce and is immediately invited to do so by Mr. Lanzini, the baker. Giova takes Giuseppe to the roulette wheel and the blackjack table. He intends to teach Giuseppe a little about gambling—his treat, of course, since Giuseppe has only two coins to his name. Father Vecchio is running this game himself and is doing quite well. He swiftly scoops up the coins that Giova has bet on the number twenty. Giuseppe looks at him and frowns. That is too easy and too fast a way to lose money.

  As the parade starts, a large statue of San Gennaro is carried on a platform by four men who each take a corner, the handles resting on their shoulders. San Gennaro is dressed in bejeweled robes and covered in dollar bills. Leading the procession is a brass band made up of seventy and eighty-year-old men, each wearing a blue uniform and a white hat. Their music is a tired, off-key assault to the ears, but no one is critical of it.

  “Mama Mia!” cries Zia Izzy. “Look who’s marching behind the statue!”

  I can see Nicoletta’s fiery red hair flowing behind her. She is wearing a white dress with a low neckline and across her body is a red, white, and blue banner. She must have two dozen red roses in her arms.

  “That puttana!” says Mama. “What a nerve she has!”

  I think I know what a puttana is, but I must be mistaken. Mama has no right to say that about Nicoletta. Maybe I heard her wrong. Maybe it doesn’t mean what I think.

  Nicoletta is beaming—a big smile across her face. “Hello, Leo!” she hollers as she passes the mayor. She waves at him, and he turns scarlet. I didn’t know that Nicoletta is friends with the mayor.

  Giova and Giuseppe come up behind. “Mama Mia,” says Giuseppe. “Che bellisima! La faccia di un angelo!”

  “Giuseppe, that’s no angel. You stay away from that one,” says Mama sternly.

  Giuseppe doesn’t hear a word. He is watching every move Nicoletta makes. I’m watching her, too. She winks at the chief of police and then blows kisses to a few men who are standing with their wives. I can see the men are trying to ignore her, but the wives have noticed, and the looks on their faces are pure astonishment. I can’t help but wonder about Mama’s word for Nicoletta. Surely, she is just being friendly . . .

  “Giova, what happened to Nicoletta’s husband?” I ask.

  “Stefano? He fell into the galvanizing pit at the factory. Biggest, strongest man I’ve ever seen.”

  “What’s a galvanizing pit?”

  “It’s a horrible place. I worked there two days and quit. It’s a big pit in the floor where the zinc boils. They use the zinc to coat the iron and steel tools that are dipped into it.”

  “How did he fall in?”

  “I don’t know for sure. There’s no guardrail around it. When I was there, I had to wrap my head, my hands, my feet, and my face with burlap sacks just to protect myself from the heat. It’s hard to see with a burlap mask on your face. I guess he couldn’t see how close he was to the edge of the pit.”

  “My God, Giova.” My sympathy for Nicoletta runneth over.

  “It’s no way to die. I couldn’t last two days there.”

  Poor Nicoletta. How can these women not be moved with pity for her? It isn’t like them to turn their backs on a young widow.

  Zia Izzy is getting hungry, so we make our way to the booths. There are booths that are full of religious items for sale—rosaries, statues, holy cards. Another booth has a raffle for a live turkey. Mama and Izzy are quick to take their chances on a couple of tickets. The food booths are an outdoor smorgasbord of Italian culinary specialties. One has hot and sweet sausage sandwiches with grilled onions
and peppers. Another sells zeppole—fried dough balls sprinkled with powdered sugar and served nice and hot. Mama buys me a bag. For a while, I’m content to breathe in their delicious odor.

  She and Izzy stop at a booth and have a glass of vitella—red wine with a slice of peach in it. As they turn to leave, Mama sees Lindo crouching behind the wine cups. He’s waiting for the booth owner to be distracted. Mama walks up quietly behind him and cracks him on the head with her purse. He looks up, startled.

  “Hey, you. What are you trying to do? Here’s a nickel. You go buy a zeppole and get away from this wine. Shoo.”

  Mama, Zia Izzy, and I find a soft spot in the grass to sit and rest and watch the crowd. Near us, two old men are playing morra. Both men put their arms behind their backs, and on a count of “uno, due, tre,” they throw out their fingers and holler a sum. Whoever guesses the sum, wins the hand.

  As I watch these old men, it’s clear to me that my generation is something different. We are Italian-Americans, not Italians. We don’t have the unspoken understanding of those who were born in the old country. We won’t miss the smell of the sea or the dust of the land or the vastness of the sky. Sharpsburg is all we have known. America is all we have known. We will never miss the Italian language and songs. We may think of ourselves as Italians, but we aren’t. And our children—what will they be? Maybe Italian and Polish or Italian and Irish. But what is that, if not American?

  “Lena, where’s Sara today? Doesn’t she usually come to the Festa?” asks Zia.

  “You know Vassari. He barely provides for her. I don’t know if he’s working or not. Sara got a job at the railroad tracks. She’s oiling the wheels of trains.”

  “What kind of job is that for a woman? Luca should be ashamed of himself,” says Zia Izzy. “He has no right to call himself a man.”

  “Even so, she is happy to have the work. I think she needs the money. She takes in laundry. I’ve even seen her sell her doilies door to door. We all make doilies—who needs another? But people buy them out of pity for her. It’s just not enough, not enough to live on.”

  While we are talking, Mrs. Del Vecchio is coming toward us. She is dragging Marcello by the arm and is being followed by her oversized son, Dommie.

  “Magdalena Costandini, your son just hit my Dommie and tried to take his candy. What kind of boy are you raising?”

  This is going to get ugly because Mama will defend us all against anybody, even if she turns around and punishes us afterward.

  Mama pretends to size up Marcello and then looks Dommie up and down. “No,” she shakes her head. “Marcello is too skinny. How could he hurt a big boy like that?”

  “Are you saying I’m a liar?” fumes Mrs. Del Vecchio, her thin lips pursed in defiance.

  “We’re saying you’re a dried up hag, and you should go back to Naples where you came from,” pipes in Zia.

  They fight in Italian for about ten minutes until Zia finally points her finger at Mrs. Del Vecchio and in her most threatening voice says, “I would hate to see this big boy be turned into a girl, wouldn’t you?”

  I know that Mrs. Del Vecchio doesn’t really think that Zia can do that, but since Dommie is her child, she can’t take a chance like that. She gives Zia and Mama one final glare, mumbles something about people who don’t teach their children to behave, and stomps off with her sissified and overindulged son.

  Now Mama pulls Marcello over her lap and gives him a good paddling. He cries a little, and then she gives him a nickel and sends him off to the zeppole booth as well, with orders to catch up to Lindo.

  I don’t know where Giova and Giuseppe have gone. If Giuseppe is interested in Nicoletta, he had better not let Mama see. I can only imagine the uproar that would cause. She’d send him back to Italy.

  In the distance, there is the sound of a calliope.

  “Mama—that’s your song! It’s playing ‘O Marie!’”

  “Come on,” says Mama. “Let’s find it.”

  The calliope is an ornate steam organ with big pipes. On the front of the calliope, there is the figure of a busty Italian woman in a peasant blouse, wearing a shawl around her skirt and a scarf around her hair. The man who owns the calliope is playing along with it on a horn. He has quite a crowd enthralled by the performance, including Mama and Zia.

  “How about ‘O Sole Mio,’” says Zia, and the crowd cheers for that one. For a few minutes, everyone is nostalgic for home. For a few minutes, we are all Italian. We can forget the struggle to be American for just a little while. During the singing and clapping, I can’t help but feel someone’s eyes on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a boy—a man?—who is about twenty years old. His hat is cocked to the side, and he’s leaning against a pole with his hands in his pockets. Surely he can’t be looking at me? I was fifteen three months ago, but I don’t look any older, do I? I know why Giuseppe and all of the other men look at Nicoletta, but who would look at me that way? I must be mistaken.

  “Hmph.” I turn my head to the right and see that Zia is now staring at him.

  “Don’t look at that boy, Carolina. He has wolf eyes for you.”

  I think my skin is too dark to turn red, but I feel like my face is on fire. Fortunately, Mama did not hear her. She’s busy clapping her hands to the music.

  For the next two songs, I am uncomfortably aware that I am being studied. Just as I am wondering if he will ever walk over and talk to me, Mama grabs my arm.

  “Come on, Carolina. Let’s find your father and your brothers. I want us all to sit together for the fireworks.”

  Dear Diary, July 8, 1925

  I love la festa. I wish we could have one every weekend. Even Mama loves it. Nicoletta led the procession today, and Giuseppe fell in love with her! I hope that I didn’t discover what I think I discovered about her today. I don’t want to think of her that way. Maybe she is just flirting when she waves and winks at men. Mama and Zia Izzy are jumping to conclusions. I’m sure that’s it. I wonder how she learned to do that—flirt with men. I was very uncomfortable when that boy was looking at me at the festa. I couldn’t even look at his face. How did Nicoletta learn to smile back like that? It seems so natural and effortless for her. And how does she smile when the love of her life—her Valentino—has died so tragically? How does she even wake up in the morning? I would want to die myself.

  4

  I always prefer the work we do in the summer to that of the winter. A whole lot of it involves the garden. I always have a chance to spend more time with Pa because of that. Every summer he grows tomatoes, garlic, cherry and green peppers, lettuce, basil, and oregano. At first, we have to turn the soil over and do the planting. Eventually the tomatoes need to be staked, and we need to water and weed everything. But really, the plants take care of themselves, and most of the time I am sent outside with the boys just to pick what’s ripe or what is needed for the day’s dinner. Papa also has his fig tree and his grapes. We don’t deal with the grapes until fall, but Papa will definitely make wine. Prohibition can’t stop Italians from doing that.

  The other thing that I love about summer is that sometimes—especially in July and August—it gets too hot upstairs to sleep, and Papa lets us sleep on the screened-in back porch. Tonight is one of those nights.

  “Pietro, maybe they’ll get sick from the mal aria out there. I don’t like them to have a chill from the draft.”

  “Lena, if you’re outside, it’s not a draft—it’s a breeze.”

  “Call it what you want, Mr. Smarty Pants. What if it gets cold in the night, and they get sick?”

  “I would call that a miracle. It’s ninety-eight degrees outside today. In the middle of the night, maybe it will go down to eighty degrees. It feels like 108 degrees inside this house, and if they stay in their rooms, they won’t be able to sleep all night. Besides, Lena, the house is five feet away. Anyone who gets cold can just walk back into the house, right?”

  “Let’s hope that they can. Let’s hope that they don’t get a chill in their s
leep and get a stiff neck and a bad cold in the morning.”

  Papa shakes his head and walks away. If Mama were really concerned about our health, none of us would be leaving the house. She just needs to cover her bases and let us know that she has worried her share. If something would happen and one of us comes down sick, it is not her fault.

  The sky is not always clear in Sharpsburg. In fact, it’s rarely clear. Tonight is one of those unusual skies where there are hundreds of stars in every foot. We are fifteen miles up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. Sharpsburg sits in a valley and is surrounded by something that is larger than a hill and less than a mountain. Lying on my back, I am struck by the thought that the nicest view of Sharpsburg is above us and that the same stars that shine down on us are shining down on the rich and poor, on the good and evil alike. From where God sits, are we the stars? I wonder.

  “Giuseppe, tell us a story,” says Lindo.

  Giova repeats that to him in Italian, and Giuseppe is quick to feel obligated. “Si, si,” agrees Giuseppe. “Fammi pensare.” (Let me think.)

  In no time, Giuseppe weaves a story about a fat mustached lady in Catanzaro who expected him to marry her. So he jumped on a ship with pirates and sailed the Atlantic in search of treasure for several years, just to escape her. Just when he thought it was safe to return, he saw the woman selling fish on the dock. All this time, she had waited for him to come back. The woman started to chase him, and Giuseppe was forced to jump aboard the ship that had brought him here to America.

  “Did you have a long sword and a patch over your eye?” asks Marcello. He and Lindo understand most of the Italian but prefer to speak in English. Again, Giova translates for Giuseppe.

  “Si,” answers Giuseppe, “La mostrero.” (I will show you.) He grabs an iron poker from the house and begins to use it as his sword. Giova laughs, takes the handle of Mama’s broom, and begins to fence with him.

  We’re all enjoying the spectacle when Mama comes out with extra blankets for us. She makes Lindo and Marcello go to the outhouse before they fall asleep, and her interruptions put Giuseppe’s adventures to an end.