The operators were bound together by what they were running from—poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families—as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures: painted houses, boxes of chocolates, bottles of soda pop, white sand beaches, Ferris wheels, rumble seats, silk stockings, and the words a better life.
Better meant American. Better meant safe, clean, honest, and true. Dreams of every size and description lulled them into restful sleep at night and fueled them through their backbreaking days.
At the end of their shifts, the girls took magnets and pulled stickpins from the cracks in the factory floor, saving every pin, and therefore every penny, for management. Sometimes the silver pins shimmered in the cracks like buried treasure, and the girls imagined there might be something more beneath the wide planks of old wood, something more just for them.
The cut over Enza’s eye was not deep, but it angled above her eyebrow like an apostrophe. Laura entered with the first-aid kit from the office.
“That’s it. I had the office send for Mr. Walker. He’s on his way. They told him everything.” Laura threw open the metal kit and poured rubbing alcohol on a square of gauze.
“Was he angry?” Enza asked.
“It’s the middle of the night. He wasn’t happy.” Laura reached over the sink to swab Enza’s wound. “This is going to hurt.”
“I’ll do it.” Enza said. She took the gauze and dabbed the cut.
“Why don’t you cry? You’ll feel better.”
“I’m not sad.”
“But he hurt you.”
“No, you came in time. He’s been after me for months. I’m lucky you were there,” Enza said, but there was no mistaking the anger in her voice. “How soon can we get out of here?”
“We can leave right now, if you have enough money saved. Do you think you can get by? Because if you can, now is the moment. We just got paid, so I’m flush. I’ll resign the minute Mr. Walker gets here. I’ll need an hour or so to go home and pack. We can get a short-term room at the Y and hunt for jobs from there. We’ll split everything right down the middle, fair and square,” Laura promised. “Go home and pack. I’ll meet you on the sidewalk in front of three-eighteen Adams Street by eleven a.m. Does that give you enough time?”
“Yes!” Tears sprang to Enza’s eyes.
“Now you cry?” Laura said in disbelief.
“Happy tears,” Enza said, wiping them on her handkerchief. She decided, for the first time in six years, to take her last paycheck from the factory to provide a foothold for her new life instead of sending it home to the mountain. This was the day she had learned her value. She would be worth nothing if she continued to take the abuse in the factory and on Adams Street. The old ways were finished, and not for one moment would she miss them.
As Enza walked back to Adams Street, the haze over Hoboken hung like a bolt of thick charcoal wool in the early light of morning. She saw a group of street urchins, hungry, barefoot, covered in the ash-gray desperation of poverty, playing in the streets with an old rusty tin drum, which they rolled down the street with sticks.
There were times when she stopped and bought bread for the children, or sweet rolls, or hot pretzels. This morning, Enza stopped at the corner and bought a large sack of oranges. They were expensive, but Enza wanted to do something special, since she wouldn’t be here on Christmas. Enza waved to the children. They ran to her, gathering around her like pigeons pecking for crumbs, extending their open hands.
On this gray winter morning, on the brown street, the only flashes of color came from the oranges, bright and full like the sun itself.
As she handed out the fruit, Enza imagined that these young faces were her own brothers and sisters. She saw Eliana in a girl with a torn brown apron, Vittorio in the tallest boy of the group, who went barefoot even in the cold, and finally Stella, in the little girl with the black curly hair, left in her sister’s care, although the older girl couldn’t be more than eight years old. Enza fought back tears when she thought about her baby sister, and how the little girls who wandered the streets of Hoboken were reminiscent of Stella’s spirit. They were unlucky, and so was Stella.
One by one, she placed an orange in every outstretched pair of hands, a small sign of hope in a place where there had been none for so long, the children couldn’t remember what it felt like to receive a treat. Elated, the children shouted, “Grazie mille,” a million thanks, for one small thing, one bright, sweet orange apiece. They would eat the pulp, the juice, and the peel.
As she packed, Enza felt the full weight of having spent an irreplaceable stretch of her youth in a place undeserving of it. The bandage over her eye tugged at her skin, but she was already thinking of the scar she’d carry, the marker that signaled the end of her old life and the start of a new one. Enza refolded her clothes neatly, arranging them in her satchel. She flipped the top of the duffel and buttoned it, pulled on her sweater and then her coat.
The basement door swung open, surprising Enza and filling her with a dread she knew she had felt for the last time. She smiled to herself.
Signora Buffa stood at the top of the stairs. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m leaving your house, Signora.” Enza climbed the stairs and pushed past her.
“No, you’re not! You can’t!” Signora barked.
“My debt to you is paid in full. I prepared every meal, scrubbed every dish, washed, hung, pressed, and folded every article of clothing for three households and for you for six years,” Enza said calmly.
“Make my lunch,” Signora sneered.
“Make your own lunch, Signora.”
“Enza, I am warning you, I will report you!”
“I already have my papers. You can’t compromise them.”
“You ungrateful girl—”
“Maybe. But there’s plenty of that to go around here.” Enza went through the kitchen to the living room, buttoning her coat with one hand as she went.
“What do you mean? Answer me!” Signora sounded weak and pathetic. “I said, answer me.”
Enza realized her father was right: a bully backs down when you stand up to her.
Enza heard the footsteps of Dora, Jenny, and Gina on the stairs behind her. They lined up like train cars, Gina carrying her infant, Dora balancing her toddler on her hip, Jenny tightening the belt on her robe, long past the appropriate hour to be wearing one.
“She’s leaving us!” Anna moaned.
“You can’t go!” Dora sneered.
“The diapers!” Gina groused. “Who will do the diapers?”
“You were to bake bread today,” Gina complained. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business.” Enza turned to Anna. “Signora, you live in a tenement, and yet you behave like the entitled rich. You have airs of privilege without the pedigree or education that define them. You’ve indulged your sons, and to your surprise, they married shrews—”
Gina lunged forward. “Who are you calling names?”
Enza held up her hand, and Gina stepped back. Enza continued, leveling her gaze upon Anna: “You’ve earned an old age of misery. Your daughters-in-law are lazy.” She turned to the women of the house. “You breed children in this house like animals, and expect me to cook, clean, and pick up after all of them. Now it’s your turn,” she said as she pushed the front door open.
“You get back here right now, Enza,” Signora Buffa shouted.
Enza walked through the door. “You’re a drunk, and it’s no wonder your husband stays in West Virginia.”
“He’s working! You ungrateful girl!”
“You kick a dog long enough, and eventually it will bite. I would say thank you, but for all these years I have never heard you utter the words. So let me say this to you for the last time, Signora: ‘Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.’ How does that make you feel, Signora? Ah. Now you know.” Enza looked up at the others. "Now you all know.”
Enza walked out o
n to the porch, leaving her life of indentured servitude behind, the awful women, the howling babies, the filthy cribs, the stagnant baby bottles, mounds of dirty diapers, the dank, dark basement, and the broken cot.
Laura Heery beamed as Enza skimmed down the stairs with her duffel. Soon the porch behind her filled with the Buffa women, who called out to Enza and over one another in high-pitched squawks:
Puttana!
Strega!
Pazza!
Porca i miserable!
Doors opened up and down Adams Street as prying eyes peeked out. Neighbor women hung out the windows, turning toward the caterwauling at number 318. Still others took seats on their stoops, ingesting the theatrics with relish, happy for once that the misery visited upon this street was not their own.
Enza felt the first delicious rush of freedom. Good, kind Laura looped her arm through Enza’s, carrying her suitcase and hatbox with the other.
The Buffa women continued to call the girls names from the porch as the two friends walked proudly together up the block in lockstep. As the neighbors joined in the taunts, Enza and Laura deflected their curses. They held their heads high, and kept moving, as the insults fell around them like grounded arrows, missing their marks.
As they made the turn off Adams Street onto the Grand Concourse, finally free, they smiled, broke into a run, and didn’t stop until they had reached the ferry landing and boarded the boat for the quick ride across the river to Manhattan.
Chapter 16
A CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE
Un Tartufo di Cioccolata
There was no place more serene on Christmas morning than New York City; the streets were so quiet, it was as if they were carpeted in velvet.
Ciro maneuvered the repair cart into the carriage house on Hester Street. He removed his sleep roll, lunch tin, and a box of chocolate truffles he’d purchased in Astoria before he headed back to Mulberry Street.
Carla and Remo attended Christmas mass at the church of Saint Francis Xavier, after which they took the train to visit Signora’s cousins in Brooklyn.
Ciro unlocked the door of the shop and went to his room. He laid out his best shirt, pants, socks, and underwear on the cot and removed his signet ring, placing it on the nightstand. He took a fresh towel and went upstairs, to the alcove off the kitchen. As the water filled in the four-legged tub, he shaved, careful not to nick himself. He brushed his teeth with a paste of baking soda and salt, rinsing thoroughly. He took off his clothes, stacked them in a neat pile, climbed into the tub, and, beginning with his face, neck, and hair, lathered up and scrubbed down his body, careful to take the small brush and clean under his nails, down to his feet, where he spent extra time on his heels. Proper fitting shoes had changed his feet—no calluses or blisters, even though he was on his feet thirteen hours a day. If Ciro had learned anything, proper fitting shoes, made with good leather, could change a man’s life, or at least his ability to withstand long hours on his feet.
He emptied the tub and scrubbed it down, leaving it spotless and dry, as though he hadn’t bathed in it. This was a habit from the convent. Wherever Ciro went, including the cart with his sleep roll, he neatened up after himself, leaving the premises better than he’d found them. This was also the mark of the orphan, who never wanted to appear to use anything beyond the portion assigned, including bathwater.
Ciro picked up his clothes, wrapped the towel around his waist, and went quickly back down the stairs to his room, where he dressed, careful to lay the collar flat on his shirt and make the knot in his silk tie square. He placed his gold signet ring back on his finger. He pulled on his jacket, then his coat. Finally, he grabbed the chocolates.
On the ferry to New Jersey, he sat back on the bench and took in the Hudson River. This morning, the foamy white waves of the water matched the overhead sky. He remembered how Stream Vò had poured in a waterfall over the mountain, then thinned out in the distant valley, flat and gray, like the scribble of a lead pencil. He wondered if anyone had thought to make cleansing mud to wash down the church statues with ingredients dug from the bottom of the Hudson River. Memories of Iggy, his short cigarettes and happy laughter, made him smile.
The streets of Hoboken were filled with people on the move this Christmas morning. Freshly scrubbed, his clothes neatly pressed, Ciro stood out, looking robust and healthy in a neighborhood where the people were anything but. He moved through the crowd, checking the numbers on every building until he found 318 Adams Street. He climbed the steps and rang the bell.
A woman came to the door. She looked at Ciro through the screen, which was odd, as it was winter, and the screen door had not yet been taken down. There must not be a man on the premises to do the chores, he thought.
“Ciao, Signora.”
Anna Buffa smiled at him. Her shirtwaist skirt and blouse looked as though she had slept in them. He noticed that she was missing two teeth from the side of her mouth. Ciro could see she once had been attractive, but no more. “Buon Natale.”
“Buon Natale, Signora. I am looking for Enza Ravanelli.” When Ciro said her name aloud, his voice caught. Weeks of preparation had brought him to her doorstep. He had broken off his relationship with Felicitá, put money in the bank, and was ready to court her with the dream of marriage, when and if that was her desire. He’d thought of every conversation they had, and reread the letter she had written to him in response to his, in which he had begged her to be patient. Now it was he who couldn’t wait to see her and tell her his feelings.
“Who are you looking for?” Signora Buffa asked.
“Enza Ravanelli.” Ciro repeated her name loudly. “Is she here?”
Anna’s smile faded. “She doesn’t live here.”
“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong house.”
“You have the right house.”
“Va bene. Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m Ciro Lazzari.”
“She never mentioned you.”
“Could you tell me where she’s gone?”
“She went back to Italy.”
“Italy?” Ciro’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Packed up and left. Just like that. She owes me rent too.” Signora Buffa eyed the box of candy.
“When did she leave?”
“Weeks and weeks ago. It was such a scene. I don’t remember. She screamed at me, upset my daughters-in-law. Disrespectful. An awful, awful girl. She had been stealing from me for months. I was glad to see her go.”
“That doesn’t sound like Enza.”
“You don’t know her like I do. I had to throw her out. She had men in this house at all hours. A real puttana. A disgusting pig of a girl, really.”
Fury rose within Ciro to hear Enza described in that way, but he could see that the old woman was drunk, and no protest on his part would have even registered. Besides, he was too devastated to think of anything but the love he had lost because he hadn’t expressed it in time. He had missed his moment with Enza, and there was no retrieving it. She had made her demands clear, but he was too late.
Ciro turned to go down the steps.
“You want a drink?”
“Excuse me?”
“Come in for a drink.” She opened the door wide. “It’s Christmas.” Inside, the house was a disheveled mess. She ran her hand down her thigh and lifted the hem of her skirt to show her leg.
Ciro leaped down the stairs and onto the street. He didn’t look back at the strange woman in the yellow house; instead he looked around to see if there was anyone who might know what had happened to Enza Ravanelli. He approached a neighbor, who turned away, and another who did the same. He stood there for a long time, until the beggar children surrounded him.
“Dolci! Dolci!” they cried when they saw the blue box covered in foil. More children gathered around, until they had encircled Ciro. He opened the box of chocolates, and one by one he placed a chocolate candy, wrapped in paper, in each outstretched hand, until he had g
iven away every single sweet.
A girl with wide-set brown eyes looked up at Ciro, holding her chocolate. “Are you Santa Claus?” she asked before running off with the candy.
Ciro buried his hands in his pockets and made his way back to the ferry. If Enza had fled Signora Buffa’s house, why hadn’t she come to Mulberry Street? Had she returned to the mountain without him?
Laura pushed through the glass doors of the Horn & Hardart’s Automat on Thirty-eighth and Broadway, scanning the bustling eatery for Enza.
Enza and Laura were regulars at the Automat, centrally located in midtown, convenient for most of the random jobs they’d been picking up through leads, tips, and advertisements in the paper.
“It’s brutal out there.” Laura sat down next to Enza, peeling off her gloves and coat. “It’s freezing. Nice new year so far. Nineteen seventeen, the year of the tundra.”
“Anything from the agency?” Enza asked. The girls had registered with Renee M. Dandrow Associates before Christmas, looking for work.
“How do you feel about scullery work?”
“When you taught me English, you never once said the word scullery.”
Laura laughed. “I didn’t teach you old English. Scullery is kitchen work. Not rolling dough and making soup, but the rough stuff. Scrubbing pots, mopping, that sort of thing.”
“I can do that,” Enza said.
“Good, because we’re booked to work through the weekend at a private home on Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side.” Laura spread the newspaper want ads on the table.
“What are they paying?”
“Fifty cents per shift,” Laura replied. “And we’re lucky it came through, since rent is due on Friday. You want to split a slice of pie? That’s always in the budget.”
“Would you like coffee with it?”
“Please,” Laura said without taking her eyes off the newspaper.
The scent of chicory, cinnamon, and cocoa gave the bright, shiny eatery a feeling of home. The coffee was a nickel, the pie was ten cents, and the girls left full. There were no waitresses at the Automat, which was self-serve.