The World in My Kitchen (11 page)

It was impossible for a young, struggling couple like Jimmy and I to carry a mortgage on the new house while paying for the rental on Nineteenth Street, not to mention paying Toothless and buying materials to redo the new house. So we decided to move into our Sullivan Street house immediately. I started to pack our household possessions. Naima and Toothless helped. I packed our clothes in large wardrobe boxes, and everyone, including the movers, laughed at me as I wrote “close” on each box. We moved into an empty house that had only a single toilet and one wash basin on the first floor. There was no kitchen, no bathroom. The radiators barely got warm from a frail steam-heating system whose boiler was in the next door neighbor’s house, the Brods, who had bought their house at the same time as we bought ours. Naturally, they wanted us to get a new heating system immediately. This was going to be expensive, but it had to be done. Therefore, our first priority was to find a real plumber. I also had other worries.

“How do we live in this empty house with four children, the youngest only 18 months old?” I asked Jimmy. “I don’t think we can do it!”

“Yes we can. We’ll put our bed in the living room and place the children’s mattresses on the floor next to us. We will buy a microwave oven to heat breakfast, an electric kettle for tea, paper plates and cups, and for dinner, we will go out and explore all the local restaurants. No problem; you will see.”

I took two weeks off from Hofstra University to pack and organize the move. Within two days, we had moved, and then the problems really started.

Thomas was crawling all over the place. The floor was not the best place for him. Toothless had removed the linoleum that was covering the stairway, exposing the nails. While he removed the nails on the three flights of stairs, we had to watch Thomas like hawks. Gladys could do little else but keep an eye on him. Then we had to teach him how to go down the steps, getting him to sit on the first step, then slide down on his bottom, just in case he escaped us. Finally, he succeeded, and with great peals of laughter, he reached the lowest floor.

The next problem was washing ourselves and our four children. The three girls went to school every day and could not look like dirty urchins. How do you wash kids with no hot water, no shower, and no bathroom?

I made a list of all our friends who lived within a ten-block radius and begged. Could we impose on them, once a week, all six of us to come and take showers? I was delighted by their responses. They all came to the rescue. So on Mondays, we bathed at Elisabeth Fonseca’s house; on Tuesdays we bathed at the Ghents; Wednesdays were bad because no one could have us; but on Thursdays and Fridays, we went to our neighbor, Mrs. Brod’s, apartment, and on the weekends, to my in-laws. After one month, I was afraid that I had used all my friends’ good will and started to apologize profusely. They all told me not to worry. Soon, we found a plumber who promised that within a month the top floor bathroom would be finished.

Having established a routine for the children and us, after my two weeks’ leave, I was ready to go back to teaching. The morning I was to return to work, I got up very quietly. Since we were all sleeping in one room, I decided I would have a coffee across the street at Freddie’s luncheonette.

As I entered, I looked around. I was astonished by the crowd at the counter. I was the only woman in the place; most of the men looked as if they were construction workers, and there were two policemen in uniform. They were all drinking beer or hard liquor and wine. Freddie’s was a bar, not a luncheonette! Freddie, I assumed it was Freddie himself behind the bar, was short, plump, with very thick glasses. He looked at me and said in a very polite, but gruff voice, “What you want?”

“Could I have a cup of coffee and an English muffin?”

“I haven’t served a cup of coffee in twenty years! Who are you? Where do you live?”

“Across the street, 114, in the big house.”

Suddenly, one of the men drinking called to me: “Have a drink…on me…come on beautiful, have a drink.”

I was about to leave when Freddie took my side and said: “Leave the lady alone.”

All the men suddenly kept quiet and looked sheepishly at Freddie.

“Today, I can’t give you any coffee, lady, but tell me what you want every day and at what time. It will be here for you.”

“I go to work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Could I have coffee and an English muffin?”

“You got it!” Freddie said with a grimace that was a smile.

And so three times a week, at six o’clock in the morning, my coffee and English muffin would be waiting for me. The men at the counter now greeted me with a warm “Hi.” Freddie never allowed them to be rude or familiar with me.

A few days later, wanting to thank him for his kindness, I entered his luncheonette in the early afternoon. To my surprise, the scene had radically changed. The counter was packed with women drinking soda or juices. Freddie’s wife, Marie, was now behind the counter chatting with the women. The opposite of Freddie, Marie was a tall, plump woman with grayish hair and a sweet smile. Every afternoon, just before school let out, the women would gather in the luncheonette while Marie would hold court, giving advice on numerous subjects from a pasta recipe to what to do when your daughter was dating someone you did not like because he was not Italian. Some of the women, I also learned, were widows or older women whose husbands were playing “Bocci,” the Italian ball game in special bars on MacDougal Street or sipping espresso at their social club. The luncheonette was a sort of social club for the women who had nowhere else to go. Marie had two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter was married and lived across the street from the luncheonette. Their son, Andy, was a problem, I had heard from sitting in the butcher store. He took drugs and was often drunk. Often, one could see him walking down Sullivan Street, muttering to himself while the old ladies would shake their heads in disgust. Years later, when both Marie and Freddie died and the luncheonette was sold to become a beauty salon, the old ladies lost their meeting place. Some died; others left the street to join their children in Queens, and a few elected the beauty salon as their new meeting place because the salon was run by a beautiful, young Italian woman, Pat, who knew everyone on the street. Years later, Pat and I became good friends, and when she decided to move her beauty salon two doors down, Jimmy designed it for her.

In the first months of living in the house, we had solved the problem of feeding the family. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I sent all four children to Luigi’s Restaurant at the corner of Prince and Sullivan streets, where Luigi’s wife would take care of them. The restaurant was a dark long room with banquettes on both sides. In front there was a bar, and around 5:00
P.M
., it was always filled with workers having a drink before heading home. Most nights the children ate pasta, meatballs, and salad. Jimmy and I ate sandwiches in the living room. The other two days and on weekends, I cooked in the fireplace. I used a hibachi, a small Japanese barbeque set in the hearth. In fact, I became quite an expert on cooking in the fireplace. We had lived in Italy, in Umbria, where cooking in the fireplace was common place. For example, veal chops were marinated in a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and herbs for a couple of hours, then grilled over hot coals. I also learned what vegetables would cook easily and quickly. Eggplant, thinly sliced and brushed with olive oil, cooked in a few minutes as did fresh shiitake or portobello mushrooms. Grated carrots tossed with lemony vinaigrette made a delicious salad, and frozen, tiny green peas could be heated in the microwave. That month, we ate a lot of hamburgers, pork chops, and veal chops.

Slowly, the house started to take shape. On weekends, Jimmy and I both worked side by side with Toothless. I painted the children’s bathroom, learned how to tape plasterboard, and removed linoleum with a blow torch. The children’s room was finally finished, and they all moved to the top floor.

One Saturday, I sanded the front door and painted it with glossy black paint. To my horror, the next morning the front door was all scratched and my work was destroyed. I was very upset and decided to repaint it and try to catch who had done it. But since I could not work until the following weekend, I had to wait. Jimmy and I now slept alone in the living room. One night, unable to sleep, still quite upset by the front door incident, I got up and walked toward the window, looking at the street, silent and empty. Suddenly I saw a young boy running toward our house, a rag in his hand. He climbed the stoop, lit the rag with a match, and was about to run down when, in an instant, I was outside in my nightgown and grabbed him by the hair. I pushed away the furiously burning rag soaked with gasoline and started screaming, shaking him like a leaf.

“Who are you? What’s your name? Who sent you? Answer…. I’ll call the police…”

A few minutes later, I found myself surrounded by about ten women. Still holding the boy by the hair, I screamed, “Who’s your mother? Where is she? Where do you live? What’s your name? Answer or I will call the police.”

The boy slowly pointed to one of the women standing by.

I dragged the child in front of her.

“Is he yours?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

For a second, I did not know what to do.
Should I call the police?
I was still in my nightgown, so I made a quick decision.

“Take him home. If I see him within ten feet from my house, I will file a complaint. Now tell me where you live?”

“Two houses down,” she answered, taking the boy by the arm. “Don’t worry; it won’t happen again.”

The next morning I told Toothless what had happened. He sat me down and said, “Let me tell you about the street. This is Mafia territory. You have invaded their turf, and they don’t know who you are. They are very good people, family people; they just don’t want someone not Italian living here.”

As I was about to protest that we were also a hardworking family, he shook his head and continued: “Freddie, who is so nice to you, collects the money for the number games. Do you see the black limousine on Friday nights parked in the street? They come to collect it. Willie takes down the numbers, collects the money, and gives it to Freddie. You know the social club down the street? This is where they gather and discuss their affairs. You are intruding. Give them time. The best thing you did was not to call the police.”

The next day on my way home from work, I stopped at the social club and sat down at one of the empty tables. A few men were playing cards; they looked baffled to see me there. A fat, middle age man stood up and walked toward me.
He must be the owner,
I thought, and so I asked him for a coffee.

“We don’t serve coffee.”

“A glass of juice, any kind of juice?”

“No juice! We serve nothing.”

This was clearly not Freddie’s Luncheonette. No one here was going to acknowledge my presence, let alone accommodate me. The man walked away, and so I sat there silently; then I started to talk.

“I am the new owner of 114…. I am French, and we have four children…. I work as a teacher, and my husband is an architect…”

No answer, no sign that anyone was listening.

“I work hard, so does he. We are not rich…. I chose this neighborhood because I had an Italian
ballia
(wet nurse)…. My first words were Italian.” Still no reaction. “And I love our house. We feel so safe…like in a village. I want my children to grow up here.”

As I got no reaction, I stood up and left, saddened.

That night I told Jimmy what I did and how I had failed.

“Don’t worry. You know what Toothless said; they will get used to us.”

For the next few weeks, nothing happened. Our bedroom was finished, so we moved to our floor. Now we had two bathrooms and no need to bother our friends. The next task was to create a kitchen out of the former outhouse. Toothless had found an old Italian tile setter in the neighborhood, and so Jimmy ordered a ton of sand for the dining room and kitchen.

A few days later, at 7:00
A.M
., the front door bell rang. I ran to open the door and faced a man holding papers.

“Rossant? I have your sand. Please sign here.”

Once I signed, I saw the truck turn around and dump one ton of sand on the sidewalk.

“But you can’t do that. It has to be in bags! How will we bring it in?”

“Lady, this is not my problem, but a word of advice—if you don’t want a ticket start bringing it in right away.”

I woke up Jimmy, the three girls, and Gladys and told them to take pots and pans, and together we would bring in the sand through the basement door.

We must have been a sight! The three little girls in their pajamas, Thomas jumping on the sand, me in my dressing gown, Gladys in a short nightie, and Jimmy, the only one half-dressed. We formed a line. I filled the pots, Jimmy at the other end emptied them; in between, the others passed the pots and pans.

Within ten minutes, we were surrounded by muscled young men from the neighborhood lugging enormous containers, and in a half hour, the sand was in the house. I made coffee for everyone, realizing that my speech at the social club had worked. We were now part of the street scene and accepted by the neighborhood.

One morning in June, after we had been in the house six months, I saw that the street was crossed by high-illuminated arches every ten feet. I asked Willy what they were for.