The Black Madonna Read online

  THE

  BLACK

  MADONNA

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Louisa Ermelino

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  ISBN 0-7432-1338-6

  The author wishes to thank the Ucross Foundation for the gifts of time, support, and wide-open spaces. And for their faith and efforts: Roz Siegel, Elaine Markson, Lutz Wolff, Sara Nelson, and Daniel Richman.

  FOR

  BINNIE KIRSHENBAUM

  AND

  FOR CARLO, ALWAYS

  . . . on a throne supported by two long shafts, which a dozen men at a time took turns in carrying, came the Madonna. She was a paltry papier mache affair, a copy of the powerful and famous Madonna of Viggiano, with the same black face, and decked out with sumptuous black robes, necklaces, and bracelets. . . . Peasants with baskets of wheat in their hands threw fistfuls of it at the Madonna. . . . The black-faced Madonna, in the shower of wheat, among the animals, the gunfire, and the trumpets, was no sorrowful Mother of God, but rather a subterranean deity, black with the shadows of the bowels of the earth, a peasant Persephone or lower-world goddess.

  —Christ Stopped at Eboli, by Carlo Levi

  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1947)

  THE

  BLACK

  MADONNA

  TERESA

  MAGDALENA

  ANTOINETTE

  TERESA

  1948

  Teresa Sabatini always said her Nicky was a good boy, a smart boy. She said he never gave her any trouble, but how could that be?

  It was Jumbo. Jumbo weakened the rope, Teresa said. But if Nicky was so smart, like his mother said, how could he have let Jumbo go first? How did it happen?

  Jumbo was the biggest baby ever born on Spring Street, or Thompson Street, or anywhere else anyone could remember. He broke the midwife’s scale and so she held him up by his feet like a chicken and guessed his weight. “Twenty-three pounds,” she said, and Jumbo’s father yelled it out the window.

  Dante was standing downstairs like always and when he heard it, he went into the candy store and called the Daily News. A photographer came and took pictures of Jumbo, who had been carefully dressed in his sister’s clothes because nothing his mother had ready would fit him.

  Jumbo’s mother Antoinette took him the next day to show him to Teresa, who lived downstairs. She put Jumbo next to Teresa’s son Nicky, on the couch in the parlor. Nicky was four months old and his mother loved him more than life. Teresa felt proud to see him sitting on the couch, propped up with pillows. “Look at that, will you?” Antoinette said, pointing to Jumbo, “bigger than your Nicky and only just born.”

  When Jumbo’s mother left, Teresa pinned a blessed medal of the Immaculate Conception on Nicky’s undershirt. The medal had been blessed by the bishop when he came the May before to raise money for the missions. Teresa had held it up herself when the bishop made a cross in the air with his right hand over the congregation. It was a silver medal but Our Lady’s dress was painted blue. Teresa attached it to Nicky’s undershirt with a small gold-colored safety pin. She sat on the couch and held him in her lap. She put her mouth in the soft place between his head and his shoulder.

  Jumbo’s mother cut the picture out of the newspaper with the caption that said BIGGEST BABY BORN and pasted it on the wall near the light switch in the kitchen so that anyone who came in could see it and know she had produced a masterpiece. When it was time for the landlord to paint the apartment, she said no, and took the month’s free rent instead so as not to disturb the picture.

  Next to Jumbo’s picture hung the image of the Madonna that had belonged to Antoinette’s mother, the Madonna with the black face, which she had brought with her from the other side. Antoinette’s mother had kept the Black Madonna in her bedroom, the gilt frame festooned with blessed palm and silk flowers, but Antoinette kept her in the kitchen so the Madonna could look over the family all together, all the time. The Mangiacarnes were always in the kitchen.

  Teresa took consolation in the fact that Antoinette kept a messy house and hid dirty dishes in the bathtub under the porcelain cover. The cover was to make you forget there was a bathtub in the kitchen. It was six feet long, it had clawed feet, but when it was covered, you could forget. You could feel high-class. Teresa remembered how, when she was growing up, before steam heat, the bathtub was exposed and filled with coal. That, she thought, was obscene. She took this apartment on the fifth floor, even though there was one available on the second, because it had a bathroom, a real bathroom off the entrance hall with a narrow tub and a toilet and room for a wooden hamper with a hinged lid where she put Nicky’s dirty laundry. Teresa said it was worth the extra stairs, and she never left her dishes in the sink but washed them the same night.

  Teresa would bathe Nicky in a laundry tub set on the kitchen table. She would test the temperature of the water with her elbow before she put him in, cradled in one arm so he wouldn’t slip. She would press her fingertips over his heart to count the beats. She laid him on a towel, rubbed him dry, kissed the backs of his knees. She made a bunting with the towel, a corner of it falling in a point over his forehead, like a monk’s cowl. Then she would put on the wool undershirt, put her ear against his chest, and pin the medal of the Blessed Virgin where his heartbeat was. She didn’t trust Jumbo’s mother not to overlook him, to call up the evil eye, which would make him sick or crippled or worse. She held Nicky close to her body when she heard Antoinette pass the door on her way downstairs.

  On the stoop in the late afternoons before they went upstairs to start dinner, the women would sometimes talk about the state of Antoinette’s house. Teresa always wanted to turn the conversation to Jumbo, how big he was, how it wasn’t normal, but she never did. She knew the women would think she was jealous, because truly, what was more beautiful than a big fat baby boy?

  Instead, the women on the stoop would ask about Nicky’s father and Teresa would tell them what she told Nicky as she rocked him to sleep, that Nicky’s father was working the ships all over the world, that he sent money from places like Singapore and the Solomon Islands. “See you soon” he always wrote across the piece of paper folded around the money. Teresa would bring down the envelopes that the money had come in and let the women look at the stamps.

  Dolls with brown faces and yellow faces dressed in extravagant costumes would arrive. Teresa would open these packages on the stoop and pass the dolls among the women for them to admire before she brought them upstairs and put them on a shelf over the couch in the parlor. Every day she dusted them, and the beginning of each week, she washed and pressed their satin dresses.

  Sometimes Nicky’s father sent her silk cloth in bright colors with gold threads running through it, and once there were sequined slippers, the toes curled up in front. She folded the silk cloth neatly into her top dresser drawer, next to the slippers, next to the envelopes with stamps from all over the world.

  She bought a globe in the five-and-ten-cent store and showed Nicky the places in the world his father would go. She would match the names on the stamps to points on the globe. She would take Nicky’s finger and trace the path of his father’s ship, watching
as it moved nearer to New York, closer to Spring Street. But Angelo Sabatini would come home only once, when Nicky was seven, the time he showed him how to tie the sailor’s knot, the time he gave him the ring he had won in a crap game in Hong Kong.

  Nicky and Jumbo were friends growing up, which was why they were swinging on the rope. It was Nicky’s idea when they found the rope behind the stairs. They were sitting out on Nicky’s back fire escape when Nicky told Jumbo he could make a knot so strong that they could do anything with that rope. They could go anywhere. He learned that knot from his father, who was a sailor, a merchant seaman, he told Jumbo, who sailed all over the world.

  “You don’t have a father,” Jumbo said.

  “I do too.”

  “I never saw him.”

  “He’s a seaman. I told you a million times. He goes all over the world.”

  “Then how’d he show you the knot, if he’s never here?”

  “He came home once,” Nicky said, “and he showed me how to make the knot.”

  “So what?” Jumbo said. “Who cares if you can make a knot in a rope? Where’s that gonna get us?”

  “Listen, it’ll be great. We tie the rope on the fire escape and we can swing across to the next one, like Tarzan. You know the way Tarzan goes all over the place on those vines? Well, we can go right along the building. If we can rig it up right, we can maybe even get over to Salvatore’s, knock on his window. His mother’ll go nuts.”

  “Maybe we could catch her in her slip . . .” Jumbo half-closed his eyes. He ran his tongue over his upper lip as though he were tasting chocolate. He kissed the tips of his fingers.

  “Yeah, maybe . . .”

  “She ain’t his real mother, you know. His real mother’s dead from when he was a baby. Magdalena don’t look like nobody’s mother because she ain’t.”

  “Forget Magdalena. You wanna swing on that rope or what?”

  “What else can we do?”

  “We can set fire to Mary Ziganetti’s cat.”

  “Forget it. Let’s swing on the rope.”

  Nicky climbed up and knotted the rope on the fire escape above. “You go first,” he called down.

  “I don’t know,” Jumbo said. “You think it’s safe?”

  “Of course it’s safe. Watch me.” Nicky slid down the rope. “See? It’s easy.” His palms burned and he pressed them against his legs. He kept smiling so Jumbo wouldn’t notice.

  “That’s different,” Jumbo said. “It’s not the same thing, coming down like that.”

  “You’re such a Mary,” Nicky said. “Here, take the rope.” Jumbo held the rope in both hands and Nicky twisted it around Jumbo’s wrists and tugged on it to tighten the knot.

  “Tarzan just holds on,” Jumbo said. “He don’t do it like this.”

  “Tarzan’s a pro. We’re just starting.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Why? I told you this knot can hold anything. It holds big ships. Now get up on the railing.”

  “I’m too fat.”

  “C’mon, Jumbo, just get up there. Grab my hand. I’ll hold you.”

  “Let me step on your knee.”

  “You’ll kill me if you step on my knee. Forget it.” Nicky pushed Jumbo aside. “Give me the rope. I’m going first.” He tried to unwind the rope from Jumbo’s hands but Jumbo clenched his fists.

  “No, no, I’ll do it. I’ll go. Just hold me.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. I’m sure. C’mon before somebody sees us and makes us get down.” Jumbo slipped one hand off the rope and grabbed Nicky’s shoulder. There were circles of sweat under his arms. Nicky could see them when Jumbo pulled himself up onto the fire escape railing. Jumbo moved his hand to Nicky’s head and pulled at his hair.

  “Jumbo . . .”

  “What? What?”

  “Let go,” Nicky said. He put his hands against Jumbo’s back, his fingers spread wide, and gave him a shove. Jumbo flew out, propelled by his weight. “Open your eyes,” Nicky hollered, but Jumbo didn’t and missed his chance to catch hold of the fire escape on the other side. He shrieked as he swung back.

  Nicky could see the terror in Jumbo’s face. His mouth was a gaping hole; his eyes had disappeared into the flesh of his cheeks. Nicky waited, ready to push him out again anyway. He leaned over the fire escape, arms extended, and when Jumbo came close enough he gave him another push. But his hand caught Jumbo’s shoulder and sent him back out over the alley spinning at the end of the rope like a top.

  “Now, now,” Nicky yelled, and this time Jumbo caught the fire escape with his feet. “Good going. Now climb down. Go ahead. You can do it.”

  Jumbo started to cry. “I can’t. I can’t. Oh God, Oh God. Ma!!!!!”

  “Quit it. Shut up. Don’t be a dope. You’re there. You can do it. Just don’t look down.”

  Jumbo left one hand on the rope and stretched the other out toward the railing. Nicky made his voice soft. “Good. Good. You got it. Come on. You got it,” and Jumbo grabbed the railing and pulled himself over. He stood on the fire escape, his face red and shiny with sweat. He was panting. Nicky could see his tongue. “You did it. Great,” Nicky called out to him.

  Jumbo took a deep breath. “I did good, huh?” he shouted. His voice cracked.

  “Yeah, yeah, you did great, but now don’t let go the rope. Send it back. I’m coming over.”

  Jumbo had forgotten about the rope, which had caught around his neck and under his arm. He took hold of it now with one hand and pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt with the other and wiped his face. Nicky could see Jumbo’s huge chest heaving. The rolls of white flesh above his waist quivered.

  Nicky whistled through his fingers. “Send it back,” he yelled.

  “Okay . . . Hold your horses.”

  Nicky was anxious now, excited. He was proud of himself, proud of his father. The knot had held. If the knot could hold Jumbo, it could hold anything, he figured, just like his father had said.

  Jumbo flung the rope to him and Nicky caught it easily and leaped off the fire escape in one smooth motion. He held the rope tight between his knees and raised one arm in the air. He yelled at the top of his lungs, euphoric, and swung far out over the alley.

  But not far enough. Nicky never reached the fire escape where Jumbo waited to catch hold of him but missed it by a mile, and swung back, away from the fire escape, away from Jumbo, far out over the alley. And that was when the rope broke.

  Nicky went down three stories. The fire escape outside Vicky Palermo’s window on the second floor broke his fall. He smashed her pots of basil when he landed. Blood and small sounds came out of his mouth.

  The sun was strong and Jumbo couldn’t see. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and he looked for Nicky down in the alley. He thought he might be dead falling so far. He should be splattered all over but he wasn’t even there, not a trace of him, not that Jumbo could see. Jumbo looked over at the fire escape Nicky had jumped from and down into the alley one more time before he shrugged his massive shoulders and went home for lunch.

  Outside Vicky Palermo’s window, Nicky lay on the fire escape and moaned from deep in his throat and called for his mother. He crawled up to the windowsill and fell in the open window. He was covered with blood and dirt. He smelled of basil.

  Vicky Palermo was bleaching her hair with peroxide at the kitchen sink. When she saw him she ran out into the hall and down the stairs and into the street screaming that something had come through her window and was dying in her kitchen. Dante was standing outside the building like always and she pulled on his arm and made him go upstairs. He tried to make her come with him but she wouldn’t.

  Dante carried Nicky down in his arms, talking to him all the way while JoJo Santulli got his uncle’s car and drove them to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s. Dante liked Nicky. “I wish I had ten of him,” he was always telling Nicky’s mother Teresa, although she was the only one who believed it was true.

  At the hospital, a pretty red-h
aired nurse held Nicky’s hand while the doctor set the bones and sewed up the wounds. They thought Dante was the father and made him sign a paper. They told him they didn’t know what would happen, how or if Nicky would walk again. Bring him back in a week, the doctor said, and they would see. Nicky held the red-haired nurse’s hand all the way out to the car and only let go when Dante had to shut the door so they could drive back to Spring Street.

  Nicky’s mother was downstairs waiting for them when JoJo Santulli pulled the car as close as he could to the curb. She led Dante up the four flights of stairs to the apartment and tried to give him money before he left. She put Nicky in her bed with the quilted satin coverlet and in the corners of the room she put flat dishes filled with olive oil to protect him, to create a place for him safe from malevolent spirits.

  In the morning she brought a basin of water to the bedroom and washed Nicky in the bed. She wiped the dried blood from around the wounds on his legs and kept the cloth. She laid it on the windowsill in the sun and when it was dry she folded it and put it in her top dresser drawer, underneath the squares of silk her husband had sent from Singapore and the Solomon Islands. She never asked Nicky what happened. She only planned how she would make him whole again and keep him to herself.

  Dante stood downstairs outside the building where he always stood and told whoever passed what had happened, as much as he knew, about Vicky Palermo’s kitchen and JoJo Santulli taking them to St. Vincent’s and how he had signed the paper for them to fix Nicky’s legs. He mentioned the red-haired nurse and said that if he ever got married, that was the kind of girl he could go for. Everyone he told nodded at this, even though everyone knew that Dante would never get married.

  What Dante would do was stand outside the building on Spring Street. He was always there if you needed him, unless it rained. Then you would find him in the candy store, sitting on the wooden folding chair in the back next to the red icebox full of soda bottles.