The Black Madonna (5 page)

She spoke to no one but sat with her eyes straight ahead. She thought about Nicky alone in the apartment but it was still early in the day, she reminded herself, and she relaxed, unlacing her fingers, which she held tightly together in her lap. She had left Nicky lunch, and Dante was downstairs, standing watch outside the building. It was a beautiful day.

At the main desk she got the room number of Angelo Sabatini with no trouble at all. He was in the men's ward, they told her, on the second floor. The halls of the second floor were crowded with men in chairs, in pieces, suspended on metal racks. The smell of illness, the smell of them, made her hold her breath, but then she was in front of his room. She stopped and made herself small outside the door. She didn't see him at first. There were two rows of iron beds and she looked carefully from one bed to the other at the faces of the men. She was straining to see clearly and still stay hidden.

She saw him finally in the last bed, by the window. Even here, she thought, he managed to find a way. Thirty men and Angelo Sabatini gets the window, the light, the air, the view. She stepped inside. The room went silent for an instant while the men closest to the door looked her over. There was a card game going on near the center of the room, wheelchairs pushed together. The men raised their heads.

She walked softly toward Angelo's bed at the end of the row, the last bed, the one by the window. She smiled at the men who stopped what they were doing to look at her, count her steps, realize she was not there for them.

Angelo was asleep. She stood there at the side of his bed. His hair was as black as she remembered. His beard made a shadow along the hollows of his cheeks. He looked the same to her except he was thinner. She could see that now, standing over him. He was still handsome, more handsome a man than she would be expected to have. She knew that. She had heard the whispers.

For that moment, she forgot what he had done, forgot her curses, her son at home with no father and legs that didn't work. She conjured up the color of his eyes behind the closed lids. Nicky had those blue eyes. Everyone had said they would change. “All babies have blue eyes when they're born,” Jumbo's mother had insisted down at the stoop, rubbing her belly, amazing them all with its size such a short time into her pregnancy. But Nicky's eyes hadn't changed, except to get more blue. Jumbo's mother would never join in when the other women went on about them. Teresa would nod at the compliments and cross her fingers behind her back. It never hurt to be too careful.

T
eresa reached out her hand and shook her husband's arm. He turned his face away from her in his sleep. This made her angry and she dug her fingers into the soft space between his neck and his shoulder. The cotton of his pajamas was smooth and finely woven. They were his own. Cynthia must have brought them, Teresa thought, washed them, pressed them in her Bronx apartment, standing near the open window to catch the breeze.

“Angelo,” Teresa hissed, and his eyes opened. He stared at her, blinked, wrinkled his forehead. His reaction startled her. Had she gotten so old, so ugly? “You bastard,” she said to him. “You don't know who I am?”

He looked at her. He sat up in the bed. His eyes were wide. His mouth opened but he didn't speak. Then the surprise passed and he smiled at her. “Teresa . . .” he said. “
Madonna!
I must be dreaming. Am I in heaven?” He held out his arms. “Come here, let me kiss you. You're so beautiful. I don't believe you're really here.” When she stood still, he put down his arms. “How are you?” he said. “Me, I'm sick. I'm not myself. I'm good for nothing. Look at me. Remember how strong I used to be? Forget me. Come here . . . Let me look at you. You look wonderful . . . Teresa . . .”

She smacked him hard across the face. He started to say something but she smacked him again, this time with the back of her hand. Her pocketbook flew off her arm, everything inside spilling into the aisle between the beds. Two young boys came from nowhere and scrambled to collect the change and the pocket mirror. They ran off with them into the hall.

No one moved but heads turned. She hit him again on the side of the head and then once more. She scraped his face with her fingernails. “Dog,” she said. “Son of a pig.” She put her face close to his. “Your mother pushed you out from her ass,” she whispered. “That whore you're with should get cancer. She should die without her tongue.”

“Teresa . . .” he said. He was crying. He took her hand and kissed her fingers. His blood was caught under her nails. He looked in her face for some sign of forgiveness.

“I wish you dead, Angelo, crippled in the street, claws for hands, broken under a train.”

“Ah, Teresa . . .” he said again, fighting for his breath. “What are you talking about? Listen to me for a minute.”

“It's not true? You're gonna tell me it's not true what I know? Just because you fooled me all these years, Angelo, don't think I'm stupid.”

“Okay, okay.” Sobs caught in his throat. “But the truth, Teresa, did I take care of you? The money . . . did you get the money every month? No matter where I was? No matter what? I sent you things. I always sent you presents.”

“You left Nicky and me alone on Spring Street, just me and Nicky, and you never came.”

“I did come.”

“Once . . . you came once in all those years. Who remembers once? ‘She has no husband,' they say. ‘Nicky has no father.
Il figlio di nessuno.
' They forget you exist, you come once in all those years. They forget and they whisper that Nicky's a bastard. They say things about me behind my back. ‘Where is he?' they say . . . ‘this Angelo Sabatini?'” She pulled her hand away. It was wet from his lips and his tears and she wiped it on his bedsheet in disgust.

“Things happen,” he told her. “I don't know why. Look at me. God paid me back. I'm finished. My ticker's bad . . .” And he started to cry again.

“Who cares about you, Angelo? Nicky and I manage good enough, but you stopped the money. That whore you live with is getting it, no? From my son's mouth to her pocket.”

“Please, Teresa, she's a good woman. You two would get along, believe me. You'd like her.”

Nicky's mother spat in his face. He closed his eyes. “And you married her, didn't you, Angelo? You stupid. You know you go to jail for that in this country?”

“If you'd listen, Teresa . . .”

“I'm not listening to nothing. You listen. I'm going to your house in the Bronx, to your wife in the Bronx. I'm gonna take Nicky with me. I'm gonna tell her some things. And then I'm gonna pull out every hair on her head.”

“I don't know, Teresa. You were so sweet, such a sweet girl. What happened to you? Remember how you used to sing for me, and I would . . .”

“Shut up,” she said, “before I kill you. If I had a father . . . brothers . . . anybody . . .”

“Okay, okay. What do you want? What am I supposed to do? You want to kill me? Go ahead. I'm half-dead as it is. Tell me. Anything. I'll make it up to you. But Teresa, the truth. Did you and Nicky want for anything? Who on Spring Street's got better than you?”

“Nicky can't walk,” she told him.

“What? What happened?”

“He had an accident.”

“Oh God. How? What?”

“I need money . . . for an operation to make him walk.”

“Look at me, Teresa. I got no money. I can't work no more. I'm shot.”

“Nicky needs the operation.”

“I got no money,” he told her. “I'd give it to you in a minute. You know that. For Nicky I'd do anything. He's all I got.”

“The disability . . .”

“How much you think that is? What do you think I get? It's nothing.”

“Your wife,” she said, “the other one. Get the money from her.”

“My wife?”

“Yeah, Angelo. Cynthia, Celestina, whatever you call her, the undertaker's daughter. She must have money. Whoever heard of a poor undertaker? Ask
her
for the money for your son.”

“Where'd you get all this from?”

“Never mind.”

He held his head in his hands. “Go ahead, Teresa,” he said. “Choke me. Ruin me. That's why you came, right? I'm not sick enough. I'm not half-dead already. You wanna finish the job.”

“I want the money for Nicky's operation,” she said.

“At least you have to give me some time. Let me get out of here . . .”

“. . . and then you come down to the neighborhood. You spend a few days on Spring Street. You come all dressed up with presents for me and Nicky. You walk all around and you take us to Bleecker Street for ice cream and pastries. You show everybody Nicky's got a father, Teresa Sabatini's got a husband, and then you can go. You can say you're shipping out and you can go for good.”

Angelo's tears had dried. He reached for her.

“You want me to come down to Spring Street and stay with you, Teresa? Like the old days? Like we was before? Like nothing's changed? You still look good, Teresa. You look good to me.”

Nicky's mother stepped up close to the bed. She leaned over her husband and he lifted his face to her. She caught up the collar of his soft cotton pajamas in both hands. “You never talk to me like that again,” she said. “You do like I tell you and then you leave. Everything's changed. Anything I do now, I do for Nicky.”

Angelo leaned back into the pillow. She pulled at him, ripped his collar, and when she let go, he fingered the torn cloth. His eyes were wet again. She turned to go. The men in the room looked down suddenly, pretending to see the cards, the letters, the magazines they held in their hands.

“Teresa,” Angelo called. His voice was hoarse.

“Don't forget,” she said. “I know where to find you.”

Teresa took the El back downtown. She was on Spring Street before she knew it. Until she climbed the four flights to the apartment, she didn't realize how much her feet hurt.

T
he morning after she had thrown away her treasures, Teresa lay in bed until noon. Nicky had been awake for hours but he lay there, waiting for her to move, to say something. He was frightened that she was dead and he was afraid to look at her, to touch her. He cried silently, his hand over his mouth. He was hungry. He had to pee. He was sure she was dead. He was almost hysterical when she turned to him in the bed and touched his face.

“Nicola,” she said. “What is it?” He didn't answer and she pulled him against her. She kissed his face and his ears and his fingers. She lifted the covers and kissed his feet.

He giggled when she did this, but then he was angry. “Why did you do that?” he said.

“What?”

“Stay asleep so long. I thought you was dead. I have to pee.”

“So why didn't you go pee?”

“I was scared. Why'd you scare me?”

“So what?” she told him. “So I slept a long time, so you thought I was dead. What does it matter? I'm alive now, no? It's a miracle. Why are you crying? You're such a baby. I don't have a son. I have a little girl.” She laughed at him, grabbed him between his legs. “Let me see,” she teased him. “Are you a little girl?”

He lay in her arms and she stroked his hair. She sang him a Neapolitan song, a song about women.
You're like a cup of coffee,
the lover sings,
bitter until I stir you and the sugar comes to the top.

“It's going to be okay, Nicola,” she told him.

“But you took everything, the stuff my father sent. What'd you do with it?”

“We don't need any of it,” she said. “Your father's coming back. He's coming back to see you, from halfway around the world, all the way back to Spring Street.”

Nicky sat up and stared at her. She put pillows behind his head, ran her fingers along his arm. “He's going to bring the money for your operation. He's going to buy you toys and ice cream and say hello to all your friends.”

“You saw him? He's coming here?”

“He's coming, for sure.”

“When?”

“Soon.” She took his hands, kissed his open palms, and held them against her face. “I'll make you breakfast,” she said, getting up, “coffee and milk, with an egg in it.”

“And sugar.”

“Spoonfuls of sugar . . . and you can sit by the window on Spring Street and call your friend Salvatore to come over. He's a good boy, that one, just like you.”

“And Jumbo . . .”

“No,” she said. “He's bad luck, that one. He's no good.”

“Mama . . .”

“No,” she said, helping him out of the bed. “Don't bother me. I said ‘no.'”

T
eresa went down that evening to sit on the stoop. Jumbo's mother Antoinette was sitting at the bottom, and when Teresa saw her there, she stopped and sat on the top step next to Magdalena. She told Magdalena that Nicky's father was coming home. There was no keeping him at sea, she said, after he heard about what had happened to his boy.

She said this loudly enough for all the women to hear. They stopped talking and looked up at her. This was news. They could talk about Loretta Pagliani's fallen womb anytime.

The women moved nearer to her, except for Antoinette, who stayed where she was, and even slid a little farther away and looked out into the street.

“When he heard about the accident,” Teresa said, “he made plans to come right home.”

Antoinette blew her nose into a dirty handkerchief and stuck it in a big black pocketbook that swung from her arm. “Why now?” she said. “What took him so long?”

“What difference does it make?” Vicky Palermo said. “He's coming, isn't he?”

“Well, I'll believe it when I see it.”

“It takes a long time to find a man at sea,” Teresa said. She kept her gaze level as though no one of importance sat below her. “He's halfway around the world. It takes a long time.”

Magdalena put a hand on Teresa's shoulder. “You have a good man,” she told her. “He's always taken care of you and Nicky.”

Antoinette opened her pocketbook, took out her handkerchief, and blew her nose again. Then she stood up. “I'm going in,” she said. “It's getting too windy down here.” She pushed past the women. “Excuse me,” she said, climbing over them. She stepped on the hem of Teresa's dress.

“Going to clean your house?” Teresa called after her, but Antoinette kept going.

Teresa started talking again about how Nicky's father was coming back and about all the places he would take them and all the presents he would bring. But before anyone could answer, she stood up and said good night.

When the door had shut behind her, Mary Ziganetti shook her head. “This I want to see,” she said.

Magdalena turned to her. “If she says he's coming, why shouldn't he come? Why would she lie?”

“Ah, Magdalena,” Annamaria Petrino said. “You're still a girl. You don't know anything about life.”

“So you say,” Magdalena answered. She stood up when she said this. Vicky Palermo laughed and tugged at the hem of her dress to get her to sit down again but Magdalena caught her dress and held it against her legs. She walked down the steps, careful not to step on fingers and toes.

“And you, of all people to stick up for her. There's no love lost between you two, believe me,” Mary Ziganetti said to Magdalena's back. “She thought that boy was hers before you came. Who knows what she had in her mind or what went on?”