Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [43]
Through his letters, Nunzio had taught her to appreciate the lines and grandeur of New York’s buildings, and she found beauty in their spires, angles, and in the shadows they cast. What she both hated and loved the most were the attempts at replicating the splendor of Italy in the tenements. She had seen Lorenzo’s idyllic little paintings of Calabrian countrysides in the foyers of tenements. They made her heart ache at their nostalgic hopefulness, while her head laughed at the absurdity of these little landscapes in the dark. The paintings didn’t amuse her as much as the burlap that was shellacked onto the walls with linseed oil in order to resemble linen in the dim light. What intrigued her most, however, were the plaster walls and wood trim painted to look like marble or granite. In this America, even if you didn’t have something, you simply created its facsimile. On the surface, nothing would be denied you in America.
Giovanna observed that Italian-American immigrants fell into two categories—those who had completely embraced their new world and those who spoke only of returning to Italy. This schism made perfect sense; loyalty for Italians was often a much stronger characteristic than reason. However, the Italians who had wholeheartedly accepted America and cursed their homeland at every opportunity still took pride in their heritage. Giovanna was amazed that two of the most prominent statues in New York were of Italians.
Downtown, Domenico had taken her to the statue of Garibaldi in Washington Square Park, near the big arch to nowhere. “When he was a boy, your Zio Nunzio would ride his donkey and pretend he was Garibaldi,” reminisced Giovanna, looking at the statue.
Domenico had looked at his aunt incredulously. “He had his own donkey?”
Another time, Lorenzo brought Giovanna uptown to see the new statue of Columbus at Fifty-ninth Street. Hundreds of Italians, mainly from the north of town, converged at the column on Sundays. Giovanna heard one well-dressed man exclaim that they should also put statues of Vespucci and Verrazano around the circle.
Returning home from her trek, she heard Domenico arguing with his father even before she opened the door.
“I can read and write. I speak English, what more do I need to know?”
“No! You stay in school. At least for a few more years.”
As soon as Giovanna entered the apartment, Domenico tried to enlist her support. “Zia, tell Papa I should be a newsie like the other boys!”
“Domenico, I agree with your father. You’re a smart boy who could one day write the papers, not sell them. But Lorenzo, what do you think, maybe he could work at Vito’s Grocery in the afternoons?”
Domenico turned to his father. “Can I, Papa? I know Vito would give me a job.”
“Fine. It’s settled. But only after school and weekends.”
Teresa was making sauce at the stove with the newborn slung against her chest. With every word of the conversation, Teresa’s actions became louder and louder until her furious stirring and pot slamming woke the infant. Teresa’s bitterness toward Giovanna had only grown after the birth of her daughter—she deeply resented feeling indebted to her capable sister-in-law.
Giovanna ignored Teresa, not knowing what else to do, and told Domenico about her visit to the construction site.
“Zia, you should hire a detective! They’re not policemen. I read about them in comic books. They’re called ‘sleuths.’”
“Slu-eths?”
Giovanna tried over and over again to say the word, and each time her pronunciation was met with peals of laughter from Domenico and Concetta. This was not an easy word for an Italian tongue—she even let out a big, throaty laugh herself. It was an entertaining notion, but there would be no detectives. If there was something to find, Giovanna, with the blessing