The Boy Who Granted Dreams

  “It could work,” said Santo. “Sure.”

  “O.K.,” said Christmas, getting off the stool. “If you want to be part of Diamond Dogs, then you pay up. Get me a batch of that cream your mamma makes. If it works on the dog, you get t’ be one of us, and you’ll get your part.”

  5

  Manhattan, 1909

  The room was warm and pleasant, with elaborate draperies at the windows, even finer than anything Cetta had seen in the padrone’s house. The man behind the desk was the same one who had picked her out when she came off the ship less than five hours before.

  He was about fifty, at first sight ridiculous looking because of the long strands combed across his head from one side to the other to cover his baldness. But at the same time he exuded a disturbing strength. Cetta couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  The other man, the one who was standing, could talk to the man with the comb-over and to Cetta, too, in their own languages. He was interpreting everything the man behind the desk said. It was from him — as she followed him into the room a few minutes ago — that Cetta learned that the man with the foolish hair was a lawyer and that he took care of girls like her. “Cute ones like you,” he’d added, winking at her.

  The lawyer said something, staring at Cetta, who was holding Christmas — who had just been formally renamed by the immigration clerk — in her arms.

  “We can take care of you,” the other man translated, “But the baby could be a problem.”

  Cetta clutched Christmas to her breast. She didn’t answer, and she didn’t lower her gaze.

  The lawyer looked up at the ceiling and then spoke again.

  “How can you work with a baby?” the man translated. “We’ll put him someplace where he can grow up.”

  Cetta held Christmas even more tightly against her breast.

  The lawyer said something. The interpreter said, “If you squeeze him any harder you’ll kill him, and the problem’s solved,” and he laughed.

  The lawyer laughed with him.

  Cetta didn’t laugh. She pressed her lips together and frowned without taking her eyes off the man behind the desk, without moving. Except that she placed one hand on her sleeping baby’s blond head; as if to protect him.

  Then the lawyer said something that sounded brusque. He pushed his chair back and left the room.

  “Now you’ve made him angry,” said the interpreter, and sat on the edge of the desk. “What will you do if the lawyer puts you out in the street and doesn’t help you? Do you know anyone? Not a soul, am I right? And you don’t have a cent. You and your son won’t live through one night, believe me,” he said.

  Cetta looked at him in silence, without moving her hand from Christmas’ head.

  “Well? Are you mute now?”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Cetta said suddenly. “But nobody touches my baby.”

  The interpreter blew his cigarette smoke upwards. “You’re a stubborn girl,” he said, as he too left the room, leaving the door open.

  Cetta was afraid. She tried to distract herself by watching the spirals of smoke floating in the air, rising towards the ceiling with its ornamental plasterwork, more beautiful than anything she ever imagined might exist. She had been afraid right away. Ever since the moment when, going through customs, while the immigration officer was stamping her entry documents, the short swarthy young man with the sunny look, the one who had given Natale his new name had whispered in her ear, “Be careful.” She remembered the young man perfectly; he was the only one who had smiled at her. Cetta had been afraid from the moment the lawyer took her by the arm and led her across the line painted on the floor, the line that was where America began. She’d been afraid when they had made her climb into that huge black automobile, compared to which the padrone’s car was an oxcart. She’d been afraid as she looked at the concrete city rising before her eyes, so huge that everything the padrone owned, including the villa, was a hovel. She’d been afraid of getting lost among the thousands of people thronging the sidewalks. And at that moment, Christmas had laughed. Softly, the way babies do, who knows why. And he had put out one little hand and grabbed her nose and then a lock of her loose hair. And he’d laughed again, he was happy. Unknowing. And Cetta thought, how perfect it would be if he could only talk, if he could only have said ‘mamma.’ For in that very instant Cetta realized that she had nothing. That her baby was her only possession. And that she had to be strong for him, because this little creature was weaker than she was. She should be grateful to him because he was the only one in the world who hadn’t violated her, even though he was the one who, more than any other, had lacerated the place between her legs.

  When she heard the loud argument going on outside the room Cetta turned her head. In the doorway stood an unshaven man with huge shoulders and a dead cigar between his lips. He was perhaps thirty, ugly, with large blackened hands, and a boxer’s crushed nose. He was mechanically scratching his right earlobe. He wore a holstered pistol over his heart. There was a red stain on his shirt. It could have been blood, but Cetta thought it was sugo, tomato sauce. The man was looking at her.

  The argument stopped as the lawyer came back in, followed by the interpreter. The man with the tomato-stained shirt waited in the doorway while the other two walked past him, but he stayed there, watching.

  The lawyer said something without looking at Cetta’s face.

  “Final offer,” said the interpreter. “You work for us, we’ll put the boy in a place where they’ll take care of him, and you can see him on Saturdays and Sunday mornings.”

  “No,” said Cetta.

  The lawyer shouted and gestured at the interpreter to throw her out. Then he threw the immigration papers at her. They rustled in the air, and slid across the carpeted floor.

  The interpreter pulled at her arm, making her stand.

  And then the man in the doorway said something. His voice rumbled like thunder, low as a belch, its deep vibrations filled the room. He said only a few words.

  The lawyer shook his head, then shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  Then the man stopped scratching his earlobe with his black fingers, came into the room, picked up her immigration papers from the floor, glanced briefly at them, and in his ogre’s voice, without expression, he said. “Cetta.”

  The interpreter let go of Cetta’s arm and took a step backwards. The man jerked his chin at Cetta and left the room without saying a word to the other two. Cetta followed him, watched him pick up a rumpled jacket and put it on. It was too tight for him everywhere, across the shoulders, across his chest. He didn’t button it. Cetta thought that he wouldn’t be able to, even if he tried. Again he beckoned to her and left the apartment, with Cetta and Christmas following.

  When they reached the street the man got into a car that had two bullet holes in the mudguard. He reached across from the other side and opened the door, slapping the seat to indicate that Cetta should sit there. Cetta got in and he started off. He drove without ever speaking, without ever looking at her, as if he were alone. After about ten minutes he pulled up to the sidewalk and got out. And again he gestured at Cetta to follow him, pushing through a noisy crowd of grimy people dressed in rags. They went down a few steps to a partially underground corridor with doors on either side.

  They came to the end of the dark and foul-smelling passageway where, before opening the door in front of them, he picked up a mattress that was leaning vertically against the wall. Then he went inside.

  The room — for there was only one room — looked like many others that Cetta knew. Rooms without windows. Cords stretched from one wall to the other, next to the coal stove, with clothes hung up to dry, many of them patched. A curtain that didn’t quite hide the big bed. A rickety cook stove, its hood funneling smoke to the outside through two rusty pipes. Two chamber pots in a corner. An old cupboard missing a door and with one injured leg, under which — to make it level — a block of wood had been placed. A square table and three chairs. A sink an
d some chipped enamel pots.

  Two old people were sitting on the chairs. A man and a woman. He was thin, she was plump. Both of them very short. They turned their wrinkled faces towards the door, looking worried. A lifetime of fear showed in their eyes. But then, seeing the man, they smiled. The old man showed his empty gums, and then put a hand in front of his mouth. The old woman laughed, slapped her thigh, and stood up to embrace the man. The old man, shuffling, went behind the curtain that masked the bed. There was a tiny clattering sound, and when he emerged he was forcing yellowed dentures into his mouth.

  The old couple seemed happy to see the ugly man with black hands, who meanwhile had laid the mattress down in a corner of the room. Then, after they’d heard him say something in that voice that shook the air, the old woman had dipped a rag in water and begun to clean the sugo off the man’s shirt, ignoring his protests. And only after that did she look at Cetta. And nodded her head, yes.

  Before the man left, he reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out a banknote, then handed it to the old woman. She kissed his blackened hand. The old man stared at the floor, looking mortified. The man noticed, squeezed his shoulder, and said something that made the old man smile. Then the man turned to Cetta and gave her the immigration papers. Finally, as he was leaving, he pointed at her and said something to the old couple. Then he disappeared out the door.

  “What’s your name?” the old woman asked, in Cetta’s own language, as soon as they were alone.

  “Cetta Luminita.”

  “And the baby?”

  “Natale. But this is his name now,” said Cetta, thrusting the document at her.

  The old woman took it and handed it to her husband.

  “Christmas,” said the old man.

  “An American name,” said Cetta, with a proud smile.

  The old woman fumbled at her chin thoughtfully, and then turned to her husband. “It doesn't sound like an Italian name. Maybe it’s an Irish name, or a negro name.”

  The old man stared at Cetta, who didn’t react. “Don’t you know what a negro is?” he asked her.

  Cetta shook her head “No.”

  “They’re people who are … negro,” the old woman explained in Italian, moving a hand over her own face.

  “Are they Americans?” asked Cetta.

  The old woman turned to her husband. He nodded.

  “Yes,” said the old woman.

  “Then my son has a new American name,” said Cetta, satisfied.

  The old woman looked perplexed, shrugged her shoulders, and turned back towards her husband.

  “But at least you have to learn his name,” said the old man.

  “Oh my, yes,” the old wife confirmed.

  “You can’t make people read that piece of paper every time,” said her husband.

  “Goodness, no,” said the old woman, with an energetic shake of her head.

  “And when he’s bigger, you’ll have to say his name when you talk to him, otherwise he won’t learn it either,” the old man went on.

  “That’s true,” said the old woman.

  Cetta looked at them, bewildered. “Teach me how to say it,” she said at last.

  “Christmas,” the old man said.

  “CREESS … mahss,” the old woman pronounced.

  “Christmas,” Cetta repeated.

  “Good girl!” the two old people cried.

  All three of them remained standing in silence, not knowing what to do next.

  Finally the old woman muttered something in her husband’s ear and went to the kitchen stove. She put in some scraps of wood and lit the stove with a twist of newspaper.

  “She’s making something to eat,” the old man explained.

  Cetta smiled. She liked these two old people.

  “Sal said he’d come by and get you tomorrow,” the old man said, looking down, embarrassed.

  So the big ugly man’s name is Sal, thought Cetta.

  “Sal’s a good man,” the old man went on. “Don’t judge him by the way he looks. If it weren’t for Sal, we’d be dead.”

  “That’s right: Dead of starvation and no coffin to bury us,” the old woman nodded, stirring a pot of thick dark tomato sugo with bits of sausage bobbing in it. The odor of garlic filled the room.

  “He pays our rent,” said the old man, and Cetta thought he was about to blush.

  “Ask her,” the old woman said, without turning.

  Obediently the old man asked, “Does your son have a father?”

  “No,” Cetta answered without hesitation.

  “No? Well … good … good,” muttered the old man, as if trying to gain time for something.

  “Ask her,” said the old woman again.

  “Yes, yes, I’m asking her now …” he grumbled. He turned towards Cetta with a sheepish grin. “Were you a whore in Italy, too?”

  Cetta knew what that word meant. She’d heard her mother say it a hundred times, whenever her father came home late on a Saturday night. Whores were women who went to bed with men.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  They ate and went to bed. Cetta lay down on the mattress, still in her clothes, without blanket. The old people told her that Sal would bring everything she needed tomorrow.

  I don’t even know your names, thought Cetta in the middle of the night, listening to them snore.

  6

  Manhattan, 1909-1910

  “Cock. Say it.”

  “Cock …”

  “Pussy.”

  “Pussy …”

  “Ass.”

  “Ass …”

  “Mouth.”

  “Mouf …”

  The red-haired woman in her fifties, vividly made up, sitting on a velvet divan, turned to a coarse-looking girl of twenty, sprawled awkwardly on an armchair — it, too, covered in velvet — looking bored. She was half-naked, playing with the lace on the transparent dressing gown through which a satin bodice, the only other thing she was wearing, peeped. The red-haired woman said a few quick words, waving a hand at Cetta. The semi-naked girl spoke in Italian: “Ma’am says these are the tools of your trade. You don’t need much else for now. Say the whole thing again.”

  Cetta, standing in the parlor that seemed elegant and mysterious, was ashamed of her shabby clothes. “Cock,” she began in the hostile language she couldn’t understand, “pussy … ass … mout’.”

  “Good, you’re a fast learner,” said the young prostitute.

  The red-haired woman nodded. She cleared her throat and continued the lesson in American: “Do you want a blow job?”

  “Du … iu … uan … ta … boh … giabb?”

  “Blow job!” shouted the redhead.

  “Bloh … giabb. Blow job.”

  “Okay. Stick it in me.”

  “Steek eet een mi …”

  “Come on, big boy, harder, harder oh yeah, like that.”

  “Co moan beeg boy, ardor, ardor, ieh, laik a dat?”

  The red-haired madam stood up. She grumbled something at the prostitute who was acting as interpreter and then left the room, after stroking Cetta’s face with an unexpected tenderness, warm and melancholy at the same time. Cetta watched her go, admiring the dress. Only a fine lady could have a dress like that, Cetta thought.

  “Come on,” said the young whore, enunciating carefully.

  “Co moan, beeg boy, ardor –” Cetta began.

  The prostitute laughed. “Come on.”

  “Come … ahn,” Cetta echoed.

  “Good,” and she took Cetta’s arm and led her through the dark rooms of the huge apartment that seemed like a palace to her. “Has Sal tasted you yet?” the young whore asked, with a sly smile.

  “Taste me?” Cetta asked.

  The prostitute laughed. “I guess not. If he had, you’d be all bright-eyed and purring, and you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t talk about heaven till you’ve been there,” and the prostitute laughed again.

  They cam
e into a plain white-painted room, luminous compared to the others. Cetta saw wonderful dresses hanging along the walls. At the center of the room were an ironing board and flatiron. A fat old woman with a mean expression greeted them with a distracted nod. The prostitute said something to her that Cetta didn’t understand. The old woman came over to Cetta and stretched her arms out, looking closely at her; she cupped her breasts and buttocks and measured around her hips. Next she went to a chest of drawers, rummaged in it, took out a black bustier, and threw it roughly at Cetta. She spoke again.

  “She says to take off your clothes and try it on,” the prostitute translated. “Don’t mind her. She’s an old fatty who couldn’t live the life because she was too ugly, and the lack of cock made her mean.”

  “Look out, I know what you’re saying,” said the fat woman, speaking Cetta’s language. “I’m Italian, too.”

  “You’re still a mean bitch,” said the prostitute.

  Cetta laughed. But as soon as the old woman gave her a fierce glare from her wicked red eyes, she looked down and began to undress. The prostitute helped her hook up the bustier. Cetta felt strange. Stripping naked humiliated her, but trying on the lacy bustier, which seemed to her like something an elegant lady would wear, made her feel important. Part of her was excited, part of her was frightened.

  The prostitute noticed. “Look in the mirror,” she said.

  Cetta moved toward the mirror. But suddenly her left leg went to sleep. Cetta broke into a sweat. She dragged the leg.

  “Are you lame?” asked the prostitute.

  “No, no …” Cetta could see the panic in her own eyes. “I … twisted something …”

  Right at that moment the fat woman hurled a dress at her. Blue satin, with a long slit in the skirt to show off her legs and a low neckline trimmed with a black lace frill. “Try that, whore,” she said.

  Cetta slipped into it and then looked in the mirror again. She began to weep, because she didn’t recognize herself. She wept for gratitude to the American earth that was going to make all her dreams come true. That would make her into a lady.