Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [36]
After banging on their chests, the man in blue listened to their breathing. A few of the immigrants tried to talk to the inspectors, but the inspectors ignored them or put their fingers to their lips. For a line that moved so slowly, it all happened quickly; Giovanna counted no more than six or seven seconds for each person.
The immigrant was then guided forward a few feet to another man with shiny buttons who snapped back the immigrant’s eyelid and took a look. Sometimes he scrawled an E on their clothes. Numbered and possibly “lettered,” they moved on to an area that Giovanna couldn’t see from her place on line.
When Giovanna reached what she had thought was the front of the line, she realized it snaked around and she was nowhere near being examined. She was in a maze, never knowing what the next corner would bring and searching for an elusive and uncertain exit. Her head moving like a searchlight, she saw her young friend from the boat and waved. She barely recognized the girl, who was twice her size from wearing countless layers. Instead of leaving her luggage, her mother had dressed herself and the children in all the clothes that they had brought with them. The girl, her face shiny from sweat, smiled and waved back at Giovanna.
A voice and an arm prodded Giovanna farther. From this vantage point, she could see the step after the exam, and she froze in fear. The inspectors spoke to you, and they expected you to speak back. Her hand rose to her throat; she had heard rumor of the examinations, but no one had ever told her you must speak. Here, too, they held blue chalk, and she saw an X marked onto a man’s lapel.
Giovanna was flushed and sweating. She cleared her throat and tried to say, “Buon giorno.” Hot raspy air was all that emerged from her lips. So what if she didn’t get into this l’America? What difference did it make? Although she asked herself the question, she knew the answer. When her parents first suggested going to New York, after her initial shock, she realized that that was what she wanted. She needed to kneel at the place where Nunzio was buried.
With her panic rising, she prayed to Nunzio and to the Madonna to give her speech. She prayed to the whore in the harbor, and she prayed to Saint Rocco. Her pounding heart reminded her that the physical was first, and she was sure to be marked if she didn’t calm down. She instructed herself as if she was coaching a laboring mother to concentrate. Focusing on Nunzio’s face, she imagined tracing the outline of his jaw with her finger, playing with the flesh of his earlobe, lingering in the warmth behind his ear, and then following his hairline down the nape of his neck. It was working; her body and breathing were returning to normal. Her finger had circled round Nunzio’s head and was touching the end of his eyelashes when she was pushed toward the first inspector.
She met the eyes of the inspector while he watched her walk. Within seconds of reaching him, he had thumped and listened to her chest and checked her skin and hands. His hand went up and a uniformed woman took the pins from Giovanna’s hair, releasing her long dark chestnut braids, which had been wrapped around her head. The woman’s fingers moved like lightning, pulling apart the braids and checking Giovanna’s head and scalp before motioning her forward. Out of their clutches, Giovanna braided and repinned her hair, feeling as if she had been disrobed in public.
Her relief at making it through that part of the exam was nullified by the sight of the officer snapping back the eyelid of the woman in front of her with a buttonhook. Giovanna responded by forcing her mind back into focus and letting her finger go from Nunzio’s lashes to his brow. So strong was Giovanna’s concentration that she didn’t even flinch when the cold hook brought her eyeball to eyeball with the inspector.
Guided into the next line without an E on her clothing, Giovanna began to notice once again what was happening around her. An older man, who was slightly stooped, was surreptitiously trying