The Black Madonna Read online

  Nicky came into the room where his father was laid out. His mother and Dante were on either side of him, his arms over their shoulders, their arms across his back. Nicky had seen his father only that one time, when he came to Spring Street and showed him how to tie that knot. He stretched out his neck to look, saw the open casket, and smelled the flowers, and then he started to scream and cry.

  The crowd behind pushed forward and Teresa lost hold of him. She shouted to God and to Dante, who reached out to grab him in an embrace before he fell.

  But Nicky didn’t fall. He put one foot in front of the other and he walked. He looked straight ahead and walked up the aisle to the coffin. Teresa shouted out and the crowd fell back. She moved toward Nicky, toward the coffin, but Dante held her. He dropped to his knees and pulled her down next to him.

  The crowd began to mumble. The undertaker jumped on a chair in the back. “A miracle,” he shouted. “God has performed a miracle . . . here . . . in this funeral parlor on Sullivan Street.”

  Teresa tried to get up. She still thought Nicky would fall. She wanted to protect him, to save him. “No,” Dante said in her ear.

  The undertaker had stepped down from the chair. He moved to the front of the room to direct the mourners. He pointed them to the velvet kneeler in front of the coffin, holding their hands in his for a moment as they passed by on their way to pray before the body. “A miracle,” he told them as they moved through the aisles. He smiled, thought about expanding . . . selling relics. He kissed his fingers and touched the feet of the statue of the Madonna that stood on a pedestal in a corner of the room.

  Nicky knelt at his father’s casket. “I knew it,” he said to the body. “I knew you’d come back and I’d walk again.”

  Donna Rubina Fiore from Bedford Street called out and made the sign of the cross on her forehead, her lips, her heart. She told the people near her that she had cast this spell. She had made Nicky Sabatini walk. The undertaker implied that the funeral parlor was blessed. “Ask yourself,” he said. “Why has God chosen this place?”

  When Nicky got up from the casket, everyone clapped and cheered. The men came and slapped him on the back, the women covered him with kisses. The children gave him gum and marbles and sucking candies they had hidden in their pockets. Jumbo gave him half a Hershey bar, the mark of his fingers imprinted in the chocolate. He had stolen it from Sam & Al’s candy store only that morning.

  Teresa took places and that night she collected the envelopes the undertaker had provided. They were stuffed with money. Everyone was hoping for some of her blessing, her luck, to rub off on them. The number runners didn’t get home until midnight that night and every night of Angelo Sabatini’s wake. Everyone played the date of the miracle, the time of the miracle, the street number of the funeral parlor. Everyone went to sleep determined to remember their dreams. Every night of the wake the mourners dug deep into their pockets and filled the envelopes with money, a token of their sorrow and respect and hope for a score.

  He left her alone in life, they said about Angelo Sabatini, but he worked a miracle for her in death.

  Teresa insisted that Nicky sit in the first chair, the chair of honor, and greet all the people who filed past the coffin. They kissed his hands and pressed them against their foreheads.

  Nicky took Salvatore on the side and told him it was creepy and he would be glad when it was over. Salvatore told him to enjoy it. He had been touched by God, Salvatore told him. Even Magdalena had said it and she knew these things. It was a once in a lifetime.

  The night before the funeral, Teresa made Nicky sit at the kitchen table and then she went to all the windows and pulled down the shades. She locked the door and hooked the chain, and then she took out the white envelopes that she had collected every night at the wake and put them on the table. She gave half of the envelopes to Nicky, and the two of them unfolded the money from inside the envelopes and put it into piles, stacks of ones, fives, tens, and twenties. There was even a hundred-dollar bill from the undertaker and Nicky held it up and turned it over in his hands until his mother slapped his face and told him to put it down. “It’s only money,” she said. “First comes honor.”

  There were hardly any ones. She told him he could keep the few there were. Then she made him stand up. To look at him, she said. She made him walk around the table, to see his legs work. “Tomorrow’s the funeral,” she told him. “Tomorrow, in the morning before church, we go say goodbye to your father. You stay in the room with me when they close the box. You watch with me.”

  “Why?” Nicky asked her.

  “To make sure they don’t take nothing. You think they care? They strip you naked before they close the box if nobody’s looking.”

  “You’re gonna bury him with the cuff links?”

  “Why not? How’s he gonna look when he gets where he’s going with no cuff links? Like a pauper?”

  “What about the ring?”

  “Which ring?”

  “The one he gave me, that time he came. Remember? I showed you and you said I’d lose it and you put it away. Well, you must of given it back to him because he’s wearing it. I saw it on his hand. It’s a big ring, square, all gold. It’s got shapes on it, like a tongue . . .”

  Nicky’s mother pushed the side of his head with her hand. “What are you talking about? A tongue . . . How can you talk to me like that?”

  “What? Whadda you want from me? It looks like a tongue. He said he got it in Hong Kong, in a crap game. The guy didn’t want to give it to him but he had no money, all he had was the ring.”

  “So?”

  “So can I have it? Papa gave it to me.”

  “Why not? Remind me tomorrow when they close the casket and I’ll get it for you. You’re his only son. You deserve something.” She pulled him down on her lap and put her mouth against his ear. “Poor Nicola,” she said softly. “Your father’s dead.”

  “What do you think it’s like to die?”

  “It’s like going to sleep.”

  “Where do you think Papa is now?”

  She turned her face away at this question. With devils burning his feet, she hoped to herself . . . with monsters poking sticks into the openings in his body. She shrugged her shoulders, tightened her arms around Nicky. “I don’t know,” she told him, “but how bad could it be? Nobody ever comes back.” She petted his head and kissed his temples. “You’re not too sad, are you, Nicola?”

  “Nah, we all gotta go,” he told her.

  He squirmed in her lap. “What?” she said. “What is it? Tell me.”

  Nicky fingered the dollar bills she had given him. He touched the piles of money on the kitchen table one by one. “Look at all this, Ma.”

  “What?”

  “All this money. We’re making out like bandits.”

  “So?”

  “So, can’t we keep him an extra day?”

  Teresa grabbed his ears and pushed him off her lap. She knocked him to the floor. She picked the money off the table and threw it at him.

  “What should I expect?” she said to no one. “His father’s son.” Nicky watched her. Then he smiled and came and stood behind her. He put his arms around her waist and buried his face in her neck like a lover. She covered his hands with hers.

  And Teresa walked in the procession for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, even though Nicky could walk, even though the miracle had already happened. She walked barefoot carrying a lighted candie all the way up to 115th Street because she had promised. She prayed in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel to protect her son, the way years ago and far from New York, Magdalena had prayed in a village church to the Black Madonna to grant her wish, the same Black Madonna that looked over Antoinette’s kitchen, that lay hidden in Teresa’s top dresser drawer. Always, there was the Black Madonna.

  MAGDALENA

  1936

  Amadeo Pavese was married a year when his wife gave birth to twin sons. She died delivering the second, who was stillborn. Amadeo Pavese named the fir
st baby Salvatore and made the priest christen him before he said the prayers for the dead.

  The midwife spoke with Amadeo about the infant Salvatore. What did he know about babies? she asked him. Amadeo covered his face with his hands.

  “The baby needs a nutrice,” the midwife said, “mother’s milk. He needs a bambinaia to wrap him in strips of cloth so his legs grow straight, to swaddle him in blankets so he feels secure.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and held herself. The priest put a hand on Amadeo’s shoulder.

  “But who?” Amadeo said. The priest put his hands behind his back and walked the length of the room.

  “Teresa Sabatini,” the midwife said. She had thought only a moment. “She’s around the corner on Spring Street. You can see into her windows from yours. Here,” and she pulled Amadeo over and pointed with a finger.

  Amadeo looked up. The priest nodded. “A good choice,” he said, “a good woman. I just baptized her son. She named him Nicola.”

  The midwife took Amadeo’s hand. “Povero tu,” she said. “This terrible thing. Ah, who can understand God?” She shot a look of anger at the priest. He stepped forward and frowned, raised a hand in benediction. “A good woman, Mrs. Sabatini . . .” he said.

  “Perfect,” the midwife said. “Her baby is just months old. I delivered him myself. Her husband’s always away at sea. Her house is clean. She’s filled with milk. I was there only yesterday.” She patted Amadeo’s hand. I’ll talk to her.”

  “When?”

  “Now, I’m going over there now.”

  The undertaker came to the house to get the bodies. He covered the windows in the front room with a black curtain and cleared a space for the coffin. He brought two lamps and twenty folding chairs.

  The coffin was polished red mahogany and the mother and child lay inside together, the baby in the white christening dress that had been brought from the village of Castelfondo in Lucania, the mother in her wedding gown, the baby in her arms.

  The wake went on for six days and was talked about for years after. It was the pain of life laid out in a box for everyone to see. Everyone who looked into that coffin felt lucky, made the sign of the cross and promises to God.

  Antoinette Mangiacarne went to the funeral parlor every day, and every day when she came home she would knock on Teresa Sabatini’s door and tell her about the flowers and the people and the coffin where Amadeo’s wife lay with her son in her arms. She called Teresa a saint for nursing the orphan.

  “He’s not an orphan,” Teresa told her.

  “Ah, no, but without a mother is like an orphan, as unfortunate as an orphan. How is he?” she asked. “I hear he’s frail.” Antoinette looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the infant, but Teresa had the babies tight together in the cradle in her bedroom, blankets up to their noses, away from Antoinette’s eyes.

  “He’s beautiful,” Teresa said, “a treasure, like my Nicky. They could be brothers.”

  Antoinette shook her head. “Delicate babies are sweet, easy to take care of—not like my Jumbo. She laughed. “What a handful!” And Antoinette excused herself, promising to come again.

  Teresa closed the door after her before she went to the back to look at the sleeping boys. She had agreed to nurse the baby because there was no one else and the priest had promised her grace. She had more than enough milk and while she thought she had no more love or attention to give, that Nicky had taken it all, she was surprised by her own feelings when the infant clung to her. Nicky was almost five months old, already alert and moving. This one was newly born, and to him, Teresa was the world.

  Six days is too long,” the undertaker said, worried about the Health Department. The bodies were starting to turn black. He had seen the discoloration after the third day. “There’s a reason we do things,” he told Amadeo. “I’m an undertaker, not a miracle worker.” The funeral Mass had been postponed twice. The priest was getting edgy, looking for sin. “Enough is enough,” the undertaker said. “Believe me, I know. You don’t want them talking that you’re crazy. Grief-stricken is bad enough.”

  There was a white hearse on the seventh day, like a wedding coach, and the neighborhood held its collective breath when they saw it parked outside the church. A teddy bear of blue flowers and a wreath of white orchids covered the top of the coffin and after the priest said the prayers at the grave and the people had all gone home, Amadeo Pavese stayed with the gravediggers until the coffin was deep in the ground and covered with dirt. Every Sunday he went back. On Christmas he brought a fir tree strung with lights, and at Easter, a basket of colored eggs and a yellow stuffed bunny.

  After the funeral Amadeo came home to the empty house and sat at the table to write a letter to his Uncle Carmelo and his Aunt Guinetta in Castelfondo telling them about the death of his wife and child. He sent the letter along with the money he sent every month the way his father had done. Amadeo Pavese never forgot the family in Castelfondo. When his business did well, he sent more money, and in return he received photographs of the carved and varnished door of the house in Castelfondo, the indoor toilet with the porcelain seat, Zia Guinetta in front of the house, her hand on the brass doorknob. Pictures arrived of the daughter, Maria, in her Communion dress, and of Mammone, the most important mother, in a hat of silk flowers.

  Amadeo had once brought over Zio Carmelo’s son Tommaso to work in the business when he was first starting, but Tommaso had gone back home two months later, appearing in Castelfondo with a cardboard suitcase full of new clothes, ten words of English, two of which were “For chrissakes,” and the attitude of a man who has seen the world. He never worked again. The sort of work available in Castelfondo, he explained to his father, was beneath him. How could he possibly go into the fields after having been to America?

  Having been to America became his career. Having been to America had made him a man of stature. Tommaso loved America and he loved his cousin Amadeo, whose money his father sent him to collect at the post office every month on the fifth. The only thing better than being a rich man, Tommaso told the men in the café, was to be a rich man’s relative.

  Zio Carmelo sent long and detailed letters from Castelfondo, addressing Amadeo as figlio mio. When Amadeo was married, he sent an elaborate gift from a shop in Matera.

  When Amadeo was married was the first time Zia Guinetta worried. “After all,” she said, “Amadeo will have a family of his own now. Suppose he forgets us?” But Zio Carmelo waved his hand at her.

  “The girl is from Lucania. She knows about family, how one helps the other,” he said, and for sure, month after month, the money was there at the post office when Tommaso went to pick it up.

  “I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Zio Carmelo said one evening while Zia Guinetta massaged his feet, but when the news of the deaths of Amadeo’s wife and son arrived, Zio Carmelo suffered a bout of indigestion. He blamed the garlic his wife crushed on his bread in the mornings, the tomatoes she used for her sauce. He blamed her, but in fact, it was fear. He felt a pain in his heart for his nephew, but the pain in his stomach was for all of them in Castelfondo: Guinetta, Maria, Tommaso, Mammone. They were stuck away in the mountains of Lucania. Who would remember them if Amadeo Pavese forgot?

  When Amadeo lost his wife and his infant son, he closed his heart. There were women who passed by the stoop of his house purposely to talk to him, women who came to his store and lingered too long, but he had no interest. The only woman he saw was Teresa Sabatini, because she took care of his son. If Zia Guinetta had known this, if she could have seen across the ocean to New York, she would have slept better, but instead she worried. There was not a lot to think about in the village of Castelfondo.

  The eclipse . . . I knew when the year began with an eclipse of the sun that 1936 would be unlucky.” Everyone knew this, but Zia Guinetta knew it more than most, because she was a witch. She had learned the arts from her mother on Christmas Eve, the only day of the year when the powers can be transferred. It was said that she h
ad captured Zio Carmelo with more than her physical charms. She had made him love her and marry her despite his mother, who had scratched her face until she drew blood when she heard about their courtship.

  Zia Guinetta had been the housekeeper of a local priest who took her in when she was orphaned as a young girl. She had cooked his food and cleaned his house and aborted his babies, until the day she saw Zio Carmelo coming home from the fields. She was there every day after that, waiting for him where the path turned and led up to the village.

  She would let her hair loose when she saw the top of his hat. She offered him sausages she had made, bread she had baked, cakes filled with almonds, jam made of figs. In each of these, she put bits of her skin and hair and monthly blood until he became so obsessed with her that he couldn’t eat or sleep. His mother consulted doctors from as far away as Potenza, but no one could help.

  Zia Guinetta came to Zio Carmelo’s door but his mother pushed her out into the street. She tore the buttons off Zia Guinetta’s dress. Zia Guinetta stood there and shrugged her shoulders. “He’ll eat from my hand,” she told Zio Carmelo’s mother, “or he’ll die. His insides will dry up like fruit left in the sun.”

  Zio Carmelo’s mother slapped Zia Guinetta’s face and pulled the gold hoop from her ear, but Zia Guinetta didn’t move. “Without me, he’ll die,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do.” Zio Carmelo’s mother sat down on the stoop of her house, covered her face with her hands, and cried until she lost her eyesight, while Zia Guinetta went inside and fed Zio Carmelo bits of sausage and bread and almond cake from her fingers. She covered his tongue with her jam made of figs. Zio Carmelo’s mother died before they married and the newlyweds took over her house. An orphan from the village of Tolve came to live with the priest.