Elizabeth Street (6 page)

“The kitchen is not so bad, Nunzio. In fact, in the winter, you may find your niece and nephew joining you,” Lorenzo warned. “Later tonight, Luigi and Pasqualina DiFranco will come by to pay their respects…”

Lorenzo kept talking, but Nunzio wasn’t listening. He was looking at Teresa’s table with as much reverence as he had the Brooklyn Bridge. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so much food. He was ravenous.

Domenico watched his uncle’s eyes follow his mother’s every move. He snatched a meatball and secretly handed it to Nunzio. Nunzio took a breath to protest, but then winked at Domenico and took the meatball.

Lorenzo was chatting nervously, and Nunzio surmised it was because he was avoiding asking a question. Correctly guessing the cause of Lorenzo’s angst, Nunzio said, “Lorenzo, your parents are well.” He continued, and Lorenzo’s shoulders relaxed. “If there was more food, that would be better for everyone. But your mother still sews like no one else in the village, and if there is a fish to catch, your father will catch it.”

Lorenzo’s face radiated relief. “And Giovanna, is there no child?”

It was Nunzio’s turn to be pensive. “I wait for a letter. I wait.”

Teresa ordered everyone to the table, and her pride was evident. Her ink black hair was swept back in a bun, and although her plain face still looked young, she had the weary but confident bearing of an older Italian woman. Teresa stopped fluttering while Lorenzo said a prayer and continued serving when he finished. She refused every entreaty to sit down and instead concentrated on keeping Nunzio’s plate full—something that hadn’t been possible for many years.

Lorenzo laid brick in the spring, summer, and fall, and, if he was lucky, sold sweet potatoes in the winter. During the first of his eight years in New York, Lorenzo had had such a difficult time finding work that he had even considered listening to the lies of the padroni and going off to lay track for a railroad or to work in a mine. He knew he would be cheated, but at least he would be working.

In the end, what kept him from indentured servitude was Teresa, who was wise in the ways of finding a job. Teresa made the rounds with Lorenzo to the barbershops, cafes, and markets to chat and listen to rumors of work. Before long, Lorenzo was on the laborer circuit and rarely spent more than a day or two between jobs.

Nunzio now benefited from his brother-in-law’s experience. Lorenzo wrote down the addresses of three places where he could look for work. At the first location, after having trouble finding the place and waiting in line for five hours, he was told he was too late, all the jobs were filled. He cursed himself for getting lost, and the next day woke at three in the morning to ensure he would be at the next site well before six.

After again waiting for hours, he was told they already had too many Italians on the job. A small boy with a pimply face and hands much older than his years explained when he saw Nunzio’s puzzled expression, “They think if there’s a lot of one kind, the unions will get you.” Nunzio had no idea what the kid meant.

On the third day, he hiked down to the Brooklyn Bridge long before the sun came up and walked across to where they were building a waterfront warehouse. There were already three men in line, all Italian, and each had heard a different story concerning how many men were to be hired. Lines were a new experience for the Italians, but they caught on quickly to this American phenomenon. The men had queued up in front of a misshapen small shack made out of scrap wood. It stood alone on a lot strewn with rubble, which had the beginnings of a foundation. They watched in silence as a short, fat man with ruddy skin placed a plank across two crates in front of the shack, making a table for himself. One by one, workers and foremen arrived at the site carrying trowels, buckets, and tins of food. It was hours before the fat man called them forward.

“Hey, this wop says he’s an engineer!” yelled the hiring boss to the foreman. “And he speaks English.”

The tall, thin foreman sauntered over. “So, you’re an engineer.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Nunzio proudly, “I studied in Rome.”

“So, I bet you built that there Col-es-see-um.” The hiring boss laughed heartily at the foreman’s joke.

Nunzio ignored them. “I know how to build. I work hard.”

“You eye-talians haven’t built anything that isn’t falling down. This is America, wop-boy, and you don’t ‘build’ here—you carry brick.” He turned to the hiring boss. “Hire ’im, but keep your eye on ’im. I don’t trust no English-speaking eye-talian with red hair.”

Nunzio twirled his sandwich, which was harpooned on a wire, toasting it over the flame. Six laborers, all
paesani
, ringed the fire, eating their lunch. Nunzio never thought he’d think of Sicilians, Abruzzese, and Napolitans as paesani, but here in this country they were all Italian. In his most recent letter to Giovanna, he wrote of the irony that, in America, Italy was more united than in Italy.

Two-Toed Nick opened his flask of wine. “Nunzio, where you go after this joba?”

“Joba.” “The job.” The word was always said with such reverence that Nunzio envisioned it as a satin-coated deity. He had been on this job eight weeks, and it was coming to an end. “I don’t know. But I want a big one so I lose no days and return to Scilla.”

“You Calabresi, always thinking you’re going home.”

“Sicilians are so different?” Nunzio nodded to another man at the fire. “Saint Carmine told me he counts the days on his bedroom wall.”

Two-Toed Nick looked offended. “Saint Carmine is not
Siciliano
. He’s
Napolitano
. And besides,” he said with a smile, “he’s not right in the head.”

“Don’t tell that story.” Carmine didn’t move as he spoke and continued puffing on his cigar.

“Nunzio, didn’t you ever wonder why they call him Saint Carmine? It’s certainly not because he worships at a certain house on Mulberry Street.”

The laughter started.

“It’s not funny,” protested Carmine, who got up in a dramatic huff and pretended to go back to work.

Two-Toed Nick took Carmine’s exit as permission to continue.

“Like I said, Saint Carmine is Napolitano and every few years the Napolitanos have to deal with Vesuvius coughing up hot lava. One time the lava, it was coming straight for Carmine’s village. Carmine went to the church, and he ripped the statue of Saint Gennaro from the altar and carried it halfway up the mountain. Then he takes Saint Gennaro, and he puts him down in the path of the lava.”

Two-Toed Nick stood to reenact the story, shaking his finger and mimicking Carmine’s gruff voice. “Carmine says, ‘Saint Gennaro, we pray to you, we give you a big festival, we give you money. Now, you do your job—make this lava go away from our village.’ Then Carmine, he stood and waited as the hot rock flowed. The lava, it headed straight for Saint Gennaro and Carmine’s village. Carmine, he sees the saint is doing nothing, and he goes
pazzo
. He starts throwing rocks at the statue screaming, ‘You dirty bum! You freeloader!’ Carmine keeps throwing those rocks as he’s running for his life down the mountain.”

The men, despite having heard the story before, cried from laughing so hard. Nunzio, who kept trying to catch his breath, laughed hardest and at the same time debated whether to write Giovanna to tell her this story. He knew she would let loose the throaty laugh that he loved, but he could also imagine her crossing herself, filled with guilt for laughing when a saint was involved.

When Nunzio caught his breath and ended his silent debate, he asked, “And what of the village?
Cos’è successo
?”

“Who knows? Carmine, he kept running right onto a boat and came here!”

The men collapsed again into laughter as the foreman walked by. “Hey, you gang-o-dagos, enough lounging around. Get your sorry garlic asses back to work.”

Nunzio had started on the job as a laborer. He mixed mortar and loaded wheelbarrows with piles of bricks, delivering them to the bricklayers. He hadn’t done such mind-numbing, backbreaking work since he was a child.

The foreman who had hired Nunzio called him to his “office,” the misshapen wood shanty. “So, hotshot, you can drive a wheelbarrow. Now we’re gonna see if you can lay brick.” The foreman stood up, and Nunzio almost smiled, not because he was being “promoted,” but because the man so lived up to his nickname. Carmine called him “
Linguine con Pomodoro
” because he was tall and thin with red splotches all over his white skin. Linguine con Pomodoro handed him pointing and bricklaying trowels. “Borrow these today; tomorrow you bring your own.”

Nunzio had spent two weeks watching the fluid movements of the bricklayers, so it didn’t take him long to master the bricklayer’s art. He stayed out of Linguine con Pomodoro’s eyesight until he could dip his trowel and ice the brick like a seasoned artisan. He missed the freedom of movement he’d had as a laborer, but he loved climbing the scaffolding and working high off the ground. This warehouse was only six stories, but that was three stories higher than most of the buildings in Scilla.

Nunzio could also see everything that went on around and below him. He could see the inspector coming even before Linguine con Pomodoro, who always had the inspector’s favorite scotch waiting. The inspector would enter Linguine con Pomodoro’s “office,” and after an hour or so, the two would emerge singing songs or laughing at the punch line of a joke.

Accidents on the job were to be expected. There were the petty nuisances of the trade—skin burned and chafed so badly by mortar that the only way to relieve the pain and heal the wound was to urinate on your own skin. Or the sore and bent backs that needed both hot and cold to straighten them out. But these were the daily annoyances, not the events that earned workers their nicknames.

Two-Toed Nick was simply Nick before a pile of brick crushed his foot. One-Legged Paul, who sold fruit from a Mulberry Street pushcart, was formerly Paul the Riveter.
Uno Occhi
(One-Eye) Nardone, who lived in Lorenzo’s building, used to set the dynamite to build the tunnels. Now he dug them, because you didn’t need good eyesight to shovel dirt in the dark. Nunzio prayed that his nickname would not change. His paesani had taken to calling him “Professore,” and it was his hope that he did not become the Professore of a missing piece of anatomy.

Sundays were the only day of the week that “Joba” was not worshiped. The women went to church and cooked, and the men gambled and relaxed in the cafes. It was also the one day of the week to be an individual. The man in the apartment on the first floor played his mandolin when the Sunday meal ended until the first of the
bambini
were put to sleep. Carmine, not surprisingly, loved the theater and was a vocal member of the audience at performances in Little Italy. Lorenzo made extra money by painting idyllic landscapes in tenement foyers. Apartment seekers rarely saw the actual rooms for rent and instead met the landlord in the foyer. The effect of scenes reminiscent of the Italian countryside apparently made the potential tenants feel at home, and it allowed the savvy landlords to charge even more for the airless dark rooms that were more reminiscent of railroad cars than open villas.

So on Sundays, Teresa cooked, Lorenzo readied his paint box, and Nunzio would kneel and say a prayer of apology to Giovanna for missing church before scrubbing himself and the children clean. He would fuss over little Domenico and Concetta, making sure that their Sunday clothes were pressed properly and that their hats were on straight. The three would leave the house on their weekly adventure, brimming with excitement, and Teresa, who was large with child, would smile and shake her head.

Nunzio, his niece, and his nephew would retrace their steps back to the Battery, stopping at each skyscraper to explore the building and to ride the elevator. The first time Nunzio charmed a watchman in the Park Row building and they rode the elevator to the top, Domenico emerged from the gilded marvel with his hand cupped under his chin, holding the contents of his stomach. Undeterred, Nunzio took them on every elevator he could sweet-talk his way into until Domenico’s stomach adjusted to life in the twentieth century. When the watch-men weren’t watching, Concetta and Nunzio would run their hands along the marble in the lobbies to feel the cool of the stone. Nunzio would point out details in the carvings, and if there were paintings, they would memorize the colors and scenes to describe them later to Lorenzo. Sometimes while waiting for the elevator, Nunzio would show them how to measure the lobby with their strides. They did all of this in silence. The rule of thumb was “no talking” for fear they would broadcast their immigrant status more loudly than their appearance already did.

On the way home, Nunzio would buy the children sugared almonds and pistachios. They would sit on the bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge that they had claimed as their own and discuss the merits of all the buildings they saw. Concetta chattered about the animals she saw in the marble patterns; Domenico bragged that someday he would carve the greatest gargoyle; and Nunzio imagined Giovanna was on the bench with him and these were their children.

The trio would make their way home just in time for Teresa’s feast. The children would collapse into chairs as Lorenzo rubbed the paint off his hands with turpentine. The music of the mandolin player—whose family ate one hour earlier—filled the exhausted silence. By the time Teresa piled the table with nuts, fruit, and pasticcini, they would have revived and would all be talking at once. When the meal ended, Lorenzo would smoke his pipe with his children on his knees before leaving for the cafe. “The Goat”—Nunzio wasn’t the only one who noticed that Lorenzo ran like a goat—would try and persuade Nunzio to go with him, but Lorenzo knew that Nunzio would opt for his solitary walk instead.

After Sunday dinner Nunzio would walk up to Twenty-third Street and stand at the intersection of Fifth Avenue to assess what work had been completed since the previous Sunday. These men, how lucky they were! They were building the most marvelous building in the entire world. They had shaped it like a triangle, and it was going higher than Nunzio could have ever imagined before stepping foot on the Battery. But this building was different from the others. It had poetry. Its shape mimicked the crossing of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and it played with your eye. This was a masterpiece. And the way it was being built! This building was not held up by its walls, but by the steel of its interior. Nunzio marveled that the exterior of the building was like skin; it merely served to cover the interior structure. The middle of the building was covered in its facade first. Nunzio wondered whether they did this for any engineering reasons or if it was just to prove to the world that they could. He yearned to work on such a building.