I Know This Much Is True (94 page)

I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 629

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

629

f

The truth was that I could not sleep from thinking what that crazy
mingia
Prosperine might do. Finally, I solved the problem when I began the practice of pulling the heavy oak bureau in front of the bedroom door before retiring each morning. “I have to get in there to clean!” Ignazia protested. “To put away laundry! To wash the floor!”

“Do your work when I’m not here,” I told her.

“When you’re not here, I sleep! It’s nighttime.”

“Change your habits then.”

Only with the protection of that heavy bureau could I manage to get some rest, though still I slept poorly and with much interruption. Once I dreamed I saw Prosperine leaping from the maple tree into the open bedroom window, that goddamned peeling knife of hers clenched between her teeth. Bluejays flew behind her, hundreds of them. They flew inside, pecking at me and fluttering, circling around and around the bedroom. . . . Was this to be the lot in life of a man so
speciale
that he had once seen the Virgin’s tears? Was I to be boss-dyer at work and a monkey’s quarry inside my own
casa di due appartamenti
—the house I had built with my own two hands?

11 August 1949

One afternoon in the fall, I met
Signora
Siragusa on the street.

“Domenico, you naughty fellow,” she chuckled. “I saw your little wife at Hurok’s Market yesterday. Already she’s got a little belly, eh?

What’s the matter with you that you couldn’t wait?”

Next morning, I came home from the plant and lifted Ignazia’s gown while she slept in our bed. I saw.

I saw, as well, that the scowl Ignazia wore in my presence was gone when she slept. Was this the peace of mind she had had as a child in Sicily? In the arms of that redheaded Irishman? When her eyes opened and she saw me, her frowning returned.

I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 630

630

WALLY LAMB

f

“What’s this, eh?” I asked, my hand patting her belly.

For her answer, she burst into tears.

“Eh?” I repeated.

“What do you think it is with that thing of yours always poking inside of me?”

“When is it coming?” I asked her.

“How should I know?” she shrugged, pushing and hurrying herself out of the bed. “Those predictions are never exact. Maybe February. Maybe March. . . . What are you staring at me for?”

“Are you glad about it?” I asked.

She shrugged again, pulling on her dress. She twisted her braid into a knot and pinned it at the base of her neck. “These days, I take what comes. What other choice have you left me?”

I brought Ignazia to Pedacci, who was a shoemaker on the East Side and
presidente
of
Figli d’Italia
. Pedacci could tell boy or girl by having the mother walk up and down on the sidewalk in front of his store.

He stood in his doorway while Ignazia walked back and forth, back and forth, three, four times. Each time she got back to the front of the store, she stopped, but Pedacci waved his hand for her to walk some more.

Our request for a prediction had interrupted Pedacci’s game of pinochle in the back room. The other card players—Colosanto (the baker) and Golpo Abruzzi (brass factory)—watched Ignazia walk, too. From all that walking and watching, Ignazia became red-faced.

She stopped and motioned me to her side, complaining in a voice loud enough for Pedacci and the others to hear. “All this staring!

What am I—a statue in the museum?”

“Don’t be disrespectful,” I warned her. “If Pedacci says walk, then walk!”

A couple more trips to the stop sign and back, Pedacci rubbing his chin, squinting his eyes. Then he put up his hand to stop her.

My wife’s pregnancy was extremely difficult to predict, he whispered to me—one of the most difficult he had ever seen. The I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 631

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

631

f

baby did not hang in the usual way. Tuscan women sometimes carried their children in this manner. Was Ignazia by any chance from Tuscany?

“No, no,” I told him. “
Siciliana.
”

Well, he said, with this one, it would be necessary to lift the
tette
to decide. Strictly for the purpose of accurate prediction. I understood, didn’t I?

“Of course,
Don
Pedacci, of course,” I said. “I am a modern man, after all, not some jealous, unschooled peasant from the Old Country. Let me just tell my wife.”

I approached Ignazia cautiously. That woman’s temper could sometimes blow like the shift whistle at American Woolen and Textile and it would not do for her to show me her usual disrespect in front of these men.

“It will be necessary for you to step inside for a minute with
Signore
Pedacci,” I whispered. “To make an accurate prediction, it is necessary for him to lift the
tette
.”

“
What?
” she shouted. “
Mine?
No, no, no, no! Go tell that old goat to lift his own wife’s
tette
!”

“Please to keep down your voice,” I said, more firmly this second time. “The poor man is a widower.”

“Tell him to go feel the
melanzana
at the fruit market then and to keep his dirty hands off of me! I won’t be handled like a pair of shoes in his shop!”

I took my wife’s wrist, gave it a little twist to show her I meant business. “Show some proper obedience to your husband,” I warned her. “Do as I say.”

“Bah!” she said. But the twisting put fear in her eyes and she obeyed.

They were inside for four, five minutes. “Congratulations, Domenico!” Pedacci said when he emerged again. “A son!”

Ignazia stood behind him. The news had brought no joy to her face. Tears, it brought, and a frown I still see this morning, sitting in this garden, so many years later. Ignazia was, from the I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 632

632

WALLY LAMB

f

beginning, a wife to break a man’s heart.

“Come in back for a little drink,” Pedacci said. “Golpo and Colosanto and I want to toast your
bambino
.” He turned to Ignazia.

“Just a small drink,
Signora
Tempesta. Then I’ll send him back out again. Sit down, ha ha. Tell my customers to come back in an hour, hour and a half.”

Ignazia locked her jaw and blew air out of her nose. She did not sit.

In Pedacci’s back room, I had a little drink and then another one and then Pedacci and the others invited me to play some cards.

Was it a crime for a man who broke his back with factory work year in, year out, to sit with a
paisano
or two and have a simple game of cards? My wife thought so! I had just been dealt a beautiful hand when Abruzzi laughed and nodded his head toward the doorway.

There she stood.

I stood up and walked over to her. “What’s the matter with you, eh?” I whispered.

“
Mi scappa la pippi!
” she whispered back. Her feet did a little dance. Her hands made fists.

“Don’t speak such vulgarity in the presence of other men!

Where’s your dignity? Hold it until we get home.”

“I can’t hold it!” she protested. The other three smiled at their cards. Pedacci began to whistle.

“Piss on yourself then, woman,” I said. “And piss on your disobedience, too!”

She banged the door. Behind it, out in the shop, I could hear her shouting at the shoes.

“That’s telling her,” Abruzzi said. “A king is a peasant in a castle where the woman rules.”

“
Si,
” Pedacci nodded and agreed. “Women, like horses, have to have their spirits broken or else they’ll make bad wives. Eh, Domenico?”

“
Si, signore, si,
” I said. “Breaking their spirit is the only way.”

I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 633

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

633

f

When I came back out into the shoe shop—not more than two, three games later—Ignazia was nowhere. That goddamned Abruzzi made a joke that my poor wife had either defied me or floated out the door from her “little problem.”

When I got home, Ignazia was in the kitchen, soaking her blistered feet in warm water and salts. Her eyes were red. She had run the three miles back home.

The other one was at the sink, washing out Ignazia’s dress and underclothes. “Go to your room,” I told Prosperine. “I want to speak to my wife alone.”

But the Monkey just stood there, staring defiantly at me and wringing out Ignazia’s underclothes as if it was my neck in her hands.

“Go!” I commanded, clapping at her. “Hurry!”

She left the room slowly, watching me as she entered the pantry.

I began sweetly, as sweet as sugar. “So, you’re growing a boy inside you, eh? In a little while, you and I will have a son.”

“May God help any son who grows up as inhuman as you are,”

she said.

“
Inumano?
Why am I
inumano
?”

The water in the basin sloshed and jumped over the sides. Her whole body shook from her sobbing.

“There, there,” I told her from across the room. “It’s the child that brings on this nervous condition of yours.”

Then Prosperine came out of the pantry again with two big onions. She began slicing them, staring not at the job but at me.

She used a knife far too big for the job of onion-slicing.
Chop chop
chop
.
Hack hack hack
. She worked and watched, eyeing me, butchering onions with her big knife.

On the night of 2 December 1916, I was at work, busy supervising the dyeing of wool for pea jackets, U.S. Navy. Earlier that week there had been problems on first shift—two bad dye runs that the second shift boss (goddamned French Canadian named Pelletier) I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 634

634

WALLY LAMB

f

had let get by him. The mistake had cost money to American Woolen and Textile, and Pelletier had been demoted.
Janitore
he was now
,
third shift.

“Have the Top Wop supervise the next runs,” Baxter, the owner’s son-in-law, had ordered Flynn. “If the Top Wop’s in charge, it’ll get done right.” It was Flynn who told me what Baxter had said. “He doesn’t mean anything when he calls you a wop,” he said. “Take it as a compliment. Just make sure you don’t fuck up any of the dye runs.”

I lost sleep that week and, in my sleeplessness, thought about my first work in America. It had been years now since I’d swept the main lobby of the New York Public Library or scrubbed men’s and women’s filth from those long rows of toilets, but as I lay awake, the stink and ache of that miserable work came back to me—the look of all those self-important New Yorkers walking past a lowly
janitore
, congratulating themselves and thinking how much better they were than I was. I had traveled far, had seized opportunity and been rewarded for my seriousness of purpose. But one misstep could turn me from a boss back to a toilet scrubber.

On that same night of 2 December, I was reexamining and rematching samples with a magnifying glass and a special lamp I had bought for better illumination—making sure one more time before approving the run. Flynn called out my name.

“Eh?” When I looked up, I saw Prosperine walking toward me with Flynn.

“Better come with me,” she said. “It’s her time.”

“What? How could it be her time already?”

She looked over at Flynn, who looked away. “Her water burst,”

she whispered. “The pains have started. Maybe a problem, maybe not.”

“What kind of problem?”

She shrugged.

“You left her alone then?”

The Monkey shook her head. “
Signora
Tusia from next door is with her.”

I Know[613-648] 8/19/02 11:45 AM Page 635

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

635

f

I looked from the Monkey’s face to Flynn’s, and then back again.

I saw Baxter watching us through the glass wall of his office. “Go home,” I said. “Let women fix women’s problems. What do you think—that I can drop everything and run? Stop interrupting a man at his workplace.”

Prosperine ignored the order. “She needs
dottore,
” she said.

“
Signora
Tusia thinks so, too. Better fetch him on your way home.”

I leaned my face close to her face. “Doctors reach into the pockets of honest workers,” I said. “Go home and midwife her instead of walking around town. Earn your keep for once, you lazy
mingia.
” If I didn’t get her out of there, I might end up
janitore.

I walked back to my samples. Flynn stood staring at me. Baxter, too.

“
Figliu d’una mingia!
” her voice screamed. “You’ll save a penny and lose your wife!”

My workers stopped their tasks to stare at that skinny bitch who dared to raise her voice to me that way. What could I do but grab her by the collar and coat sleeve and throw her out of that goddamned mill? I had work to do! The earnings of a
janitore
could not support a home such as mine—could not feed and clothe a wife and son, let alone a goddamned monkey with murder in her eye!

For the rest of that shift, I could not concentrate. I looked again and again at the clock. Had my son come into the world by now?

Should I beat Prosperine for her public defiance? Should I fetch Quintiliani, the Italian
dottore,
on my way home from my shift? Each hour that went by was a week. But the dyeing went successfully. Baxter was right: if you wanted the job done right, put Domenico Tempesta in charge—even on the nights when his head was full of worry!

At dawn, I left the mill and hurried to the home of Quintiliani.

His housekeeper said he was still out from the middle of the night, boy with burst appendix. She said my hired girl had come looking for him earlier and that she’d sent her on to Yates, the Yankee
dottore
.