Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [9]
Lorenzo wanted his turn at life—to become a man like his father, with a house and a business. The Mezzogiorno had turned him into a contadino without power or a future.
“I’m going to America.” There. He said it.
Concetta sucked in air and began to clear the dishes as if a word had not been spoken.
Lorenzo looked at his father. “I’ll send money. I can’t help you here.”
His father walked out the door in silence and sat on the dock. Lorenzo rose to hug his mother, who sobbed at his touch. She didn’t want her son to see her this way, so she waved him out of the house. He heard Giovanna comforting his mother as he walked to his father and sat down beside him. Domenico didn’t look up and continued staring into the water that reflected his weather-beaten but still handsome face. In a soft voice and with tears etching his skin, Domenico said,
“Dami centu lire
E mi ni vaiu a l’America
Maladitu l’America
E chi la spiminata”
Give me a hundred lire
And I’m off to America
Goddamn America
And the man who thought it up
Domenico pulled at the ropes holding the trunk to test their tightness. Lorenzo checked his pocket many times for the address of Luigi DiFranco. It had been arranged that he would first go to Luigi’s home until he found his own place to sleep in New York. The piece of paper seemed so fragile. What if he lost it? He had already memorized the address, Mulberry Street, 141, but he did not trust his memory. He copied it again and put it in his shoe. The immigrants who returned described a city of black smoke and soot. He had waking nightmares of wandering around trying to see obscured numbers and not being able to ask directions.
Domenico put his hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder and said, “Andiamo.” Concetta and Giovanna were inside the house. Having said their goodbyes, Concetta did not want to see her son walk off. She was in her rocking chair, the one where she had nursed Lorenzo, winding her rosary through her knotted fingers. Giovanna sat beside her, resting her hand on her mother’s leg. When Concetta heard the mule’s hooves scrape on the cobblestones, she rocked faster and faster until Giovanna had to grab the arms of the chair to keep it from falling over. As the frantic rocking stopped, her mother let escape a wail from deep inside her chest that Giovanna knew was echoing off the cliffs of Scilla.
THREE
Maria Perrino groaned. Her mother absentmindedly patted her head and continued her diatribe. “L’America’s worse than a cheap whore, a mala femmina, who lures away our men.”
Giovanna and Signora Scalici tuned her out as they prepared the room for the birth. Giovanna had heard Maria’s mother give this speech before. Maria’s father was one of the first to go to America. Initially, he had sent the family a letter with money each month; now it was once a year at best. After Lorenzo emigrated, the Costas’ fish store had become one of the primary places for women who had already lost their husbands and sons to America to come and commiserate with one another. In their minds, the Statue of Liberty was not lifting her lamp, but her skirts. She was l’America’s Scylla, a beauty beckoning from a rock in the water. And she was going to devour them.
Not getting a reaction, Maria’s mother asked Giovanna a question. “Have you heard from Maestro Nunzio in Rome?”
Giovanna nodded. “Last week,” she said, and continued scrubbing her hands while Signora Scalici tended to the young woman. Giovanna no longer apprenticed; she delivered the firstborns