The Black Madonna (23 page)

“Just pour me a drink, will you? And bring me up to date.”

“The baptism's set. All I need are godparents. I'll get one of my sisters to be the godmother.”

“Which one? How you gonna pick? You got five.”

“The one with the biggest mouth, the biggest ass, the oldest, the fattest, I don't know. My mother can take care of that. And I need a godfather.” He looked at them. “You wanna flip a coin?”

Salvatore stood up. “Choose Nicky,” he said. “You almost killed him. Now he'll be the godfather to your son. It's appropriate.”

“Geez, these words, Salvatore. You're giving me a headache.”

“That's nice, Sally,” Nicky said, “but . . .”

“No, I think it's only right. I'll stand up for him when he gets confirmed. With Jumbo for a father, by the time he's twelve, he'll need me.”

Jumbo put an arm around each of their shoulders and they stood there, the three of them, in a huddle. “We got it,” he said. “All we need is a party. I should have it here, no?”

“Perfect. Fat Eddie Fingers can take a piece of the kid's envelopes and make on the party too.”

“Christ, maybe this kid will get me out of debt finally. So I can get a real job and move out of Harvey and Sylvia's house.”

“You gonna come back to the neighborhood?”

“Well, Antoinette's been making noises. I hear she's got two hundred in an envelope for the super when he clears out Big Lucy's apartment. One more Mangiacarne in that building and we may as well own the rattrap.”

“What about your wife?” Nicky said.

“
Gita, git,
you know what I mean? A little at a time. I think Antoinette and Judy are gonna be crazy for one another. My sisters are gonna forget she's even Jewish. And hey, double holidays, more parties, more envelopes.
Gelt,
they call it. I'm in heaven.”

“It's okay to name the baby Salvatore?”

“No, Christ. I promised to name him Sol.”

“Sol? How's he gonna live in the neighborhood with a name like Sol?”

“When he's here, he'll be Sal. Sal, Sol, who can tell the difference? Smart thinking, no?”

“I think you just got lucky, Jumbo. Suppose you had to name him Irving?”

“Suppose, suppose. Suppose I drop dead and don't have to worry about nothing? Hey, things work out. Who used to say that? Who used to tell us that the end it all balances out?”

“Magdalena,” Salvatore said. “Magdalena used to tell us that.”

T
hat night Jumbo went out to Long Island early. Luca Benvenuto let him go since he had booked the christening party for the next week. Jumbo held Judy's hand in the living room after the nurse had put Baby Sol to bed and whispered in Judy's ear how happy he was. He made love to her on the couch after Sylvia and Harvey went upstairs. Jumbo told Judy to be quiet, to save up all those screams for when they had their own place. If Judy had known how quiet she'd have to be on Spring Street, she would have screamed till her lungs burst.

O
n the planned Sunday, Jumbo said that he wanted to take the baby to see his mother and his sisters. Judy said she would come. He took her aside and said if she didn't mind, he thought it was a good idea for his mother to have some time alone with Baby Sol. He didn't want Antoinette to feel left out. After all, Sylvia had the baby all the time. Her girlfriends had come bearing gifts, raising their eyebrows in private. Except for Elaine Himmelfarb, whose daughter had run off and become a Hare Krishna, they whispered, no one had done worse with their children than Sylvia Bernstein.

Judy was nervous. “Could the baby nurse come? Just to make sure,” she said. “Antoinette hasn't had a baby in years.”

“Oh, Judy, c'mon. It's like riding a bicycle. And what about my sisters? C'mon, honey, you gotta give her a chance. She's the grandmother, too, and she ain't hardly seen him. He'll be back tonight safe and sound.”

So they put Baby Sol in the portable carriage in the back seat of the Cadillac and made Jumbo promise he'd pull over right away if Baby Sol cried. They armed him with bottles and diapers and diaper pins and rattles and dressed him in short knitted baby blue pants with knitted suspenders and a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar with rabbits embroidered along the edges. They needn't have bothered.

On Spring Street, Antoinette had the christening set ready. A long satin and lace dress and matching cap and booties. She had even cleaned the house for the occasion and when Jumbo arrived he made her sit down in the living room chair before he'd put the baby bundle in her arms. When he left to go downstairs, his sisters came and they undressed little Sal and counted his toes and his fingers and eyed the size of his penis and the width of his chest before they dressed him, layer by layer, in his christening outfit. “Not as big as Jumbo,” Antoinette said, “but then no baby ever was. Salvatore,” she crooned, “little Sal . . . if only your grandpa was here to see you . . . his little namesake . . . his little Sally. He's gonna be smart,” Antoinette said, looking up at her five daughters. “Jews are smart. You gotta give them that.” She snuggled him up near her face; she cuddled his head in the folds of flesh at her neck and she started to sing.

J
umbo waited for Nicky downstairs and when he showed up, Jumbo put his head back and yelled for his mother to come down. Antoinette had wanted the baptism in St. Anthony's but Nicky had been right. Antoinette was excited that they would have the church to themselves, even if it was St. Patrick's on the East Side, and that the priest was a friend of her son's. Nicky chauffeured them over and Antoinette was impressed enough with Father Jerome to kiss his hand.

The main doors to St. Patrick's were open and the church was lit only by the altar and at the baptismal font. Antoinette leaned heavily on Rosina's arm, the daughter she had chosen to be Baby Salvatore's
gummara
because she was the her favorite. Rosina wore a light blue satin suit with a white lace blouse and a small blue hat that ended in points on her forehead. Antoinette had put away her mourning clothes and wore beige, from her stockings to her pearls.

The East Side neighborhood watched the procession enter the church after hours. Nicky waved and stopped to talk to some of the old men on the chairs on the sidewalk. He knew them by name and they knew not to ask. Father Jerome had slipped away and met them now at the font, the white-and-gold stole draped around his neck, his Bible open. He said the prayers for baptism and made the sign of the cross over Baby Sol/Sal's head and dripped the water on the forehead. The baby squirmed but never cried and then fell back to sleep. Nicky and Rosina recited their Apostle's Creed and Father Jerome blessed all of them standing together and Nicky handed him a white envelope with a C-note inside and shook his hand.

“You're coming to the party, no?” Antoinette asked. “You sit by me.”

“Of course,” Father Jerome said, and Nicky took him aside and told him if he got drunk or touched one woman at the party he was going away for minimum three years, and Nicky would make sure it was someplace cold and dark, someplace like Dannemora.

They drove back to Spring Street, and for once in a long time, Antoinette was happy. She was getting out of a white Cadillac holding a brand-new baby boy, the heir to the Mangiacarne name, dressed in a satin-and-lace christening gown from Italy. She had bought it on Grand Street, not far from Harvey Bernstein's underwear store, and she would have stopped to see him if she could have remembered his last name. Antoinette walked into Benvenuto's slowly, waving to the women who stood outside in the summer heat, to the people on their way to her grandson's party. She moved slowly, because of her size and because she wanted to savor every minute of her ascendancy. She had produced the biggest baby on Spring Street and now, she was sure, she had the
smartest
baby on Spring Street in her arms.

Luca Benvenuto had done the place up like a palace with silver and white crepe paper and blue cardboard baby shoes and Italian and American flags he had borrowed from the American Legion hall on MacDougal Street.
BENEDETTO SALVATORE
hung over the main table in big blue letters and the food started at one corner and went around to three sides of the room. Sugared almonds sat in glass dishes on the bar. Antoinette insisted Father Jerome and Nicky sit at her table and she held a seat for Teresa. “We're family now,” she told her, and she let Teresa hold Baby Salvatore and then he was passed from arm to arm and back again and Nicky never bothered to bring in the portable crib from the back seat of the Cadillac.

When they asked where the mother was, Antoinette said she was resting. It had not been an easy birth, she whispered to the women. Girls today were delicate. The women nodded and Anna Giacometti said the baby seemed small. “Maybe,” Antoinette said, “but he's gonna be smart. He's half-Jewish. You know anybody smarter than them?” The women nodded their heads some more. “And how come he's so quiet now?” they asked, and Antoinette pinched his leg so he howled and then she sat back in satisfaction. Oh, her Jumbo had done good.

M
agdalena came in to wish Jumbo well. She had sent the cake, a tower of marzipan in blue and white, filled with cannoli cream and rum. She had a girl with her, Marilena, from her village of Castelfondo. Marilena didn't lower her eyes when Magdalena introduced her to Nicky. He noticed the strange amulet she wore at her throat on a black silk cord. He couldn't have known it was the polished black bone of a goat. She was very young, and when the music started, she danced a tarantella with a white handkerchief held high over her head. Magdalena stood to the side watching, holding Salvatore's arm. His wife wasn't there. She always preferred to stay in Connecticut.

Antoinette waltzed with her son to Jimmy Roselli and when she sat down and fanned herself with her beige handkerchief, her knees apart, her thighs meeting, Teresa leaned over and spoke softly in her ear. “See, Antoinette, Magdalena's prayers to the Black Madonna were answered. You got a daughter-in-law, that when there's a wedding, your son can take you. She won't care about what's important to us. On Sunday, they'll eat in your house because this wife, she'll never cook better than you. She won't even try. And you've got a grandson. Come fall, you'll be on the stoop with this baby in your arms.”

“And you can hold him, Teresa. Anytime you want.”

T
he Black Madonna has long protected her mountain villagers in southern Italy, and some say she followed her people to America. What else explains the magic and miracles on Spring Street in Little Italy over the decades?

Teresa, whose son Nicky should never have walked again after his four-story fall, keeps a holy card of the Black Madonna hidden beneath her underwear. Magdalena, beautiful and mysterious, can make any man fall in love with her, including her stepson Salvatore, by praying secretly to an image of the Black Madonna in her attic. And Antoinette, after giving birth to five girls, had Jumbo, the biggest baby Spring Street ever saw—once she had the Black Madonna's portrait in her kitchen.

Vibrant, dark-souled creatures who get their way, control their lives, and pass on arcane knowledge like family heirlooms from generation to generation, Teresa, Magdalena, and Antoinette, with their intersecting lives, take center stage in
The Black Madonna.
This is an exploration of how each woman, and her beloved son, is forever changed by the Madonna of Viggiano. Louisa Ermelino's wonderful novel reveals a delicious truth: that it is the Italian-American women who hold the secrets—and the power—from the “other side” and that they know how to use them.

A celebration of mother love and magic,
The Black Madonna
is filled with the sights, sounds, smells, and taste of Little Italy. Ultimately, it is a vibrant and life-affirming saga that all Americans will want to embrace as their own.

“Bad boys and good mothers—or good boys and bad mothers? In
The Black Madonna,
Louisa Ermelino shows us three exasperating but lovable Italian mamas, and their equally exasperating but lovable sons. It's a
festa
worthy of the best held on Spring Street!”

— RITA CIRESI, author of
Sometimes I Dream in Italian

LOUISA ERMELINO is a reporter for
InStyle
magazine. She's worked at
Time
and
People
magazines and for the television show
Top Cops.
A native of the Italian neighborhood in New York City that borders Greenwich Village, she lives there with her husband, Carlo Cutolo. They have three daughters: Ariane, Ruby, and Lucy.

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