My Uncle Matt got back the ring and the watch, but not the pants. It was not to be the last of our family’s encounters with that other family — the Murdering And Filching Italian-Americans.
I knew my way around the neighborhood by heart, and was allowed almost complete freedom in moving from the house of one aunt or goomah or cousin to that of another; the only restriction was that I ask someone to cross me whenever I came to a curb. On Easter Sunday in the year 1934, we were still living on 120th Street between First and Second Avenues, and my Aunt Bianca was living above her corset shop on 116th Street, also between First and Second. The route to her building was a simple one.
I came down four flights of steps to the ground floor of our own building, and then across the wide top step of the stoop, and down four narrower si to the sidewalk. Then I turned right and walked down to First Avenue and made another right at the comer. I always walked close to the buildings, rather than the curb, and I knew each of the tenements on the block, knew where two iron posts with a chain hanging between them indicated there were steps leading down to a basement (careful!), knew where a wrought-iron fence separated Dr. Mastroiani’s sandstone building (the only two-story building on the street) from the pavement, knew the pillars on either side of the wide stoops of the three buildings after the doctor’s, and the open court in the big apartment building close to the corner, and then the barber pole (which I’d walked into two or three times before I firmly located its exact distance from the barbershop door), and then the plate-glass window of the pasticceria on the corner, and then the right turn onto First Avenue. I carried a bamboo cane in those days; it was the cane my father once used in his Charlie Chaplin imitation.
From the corner of First Avenue and 120th Street, there were four streets to cross before I got to my Aunt Bianca’s house. In musical terms, and in descending diatonic order, these were 119th Street, 118th Street, 117th Street, and last but not least, since it was a very wide street, a street held for a full four beats, rather than a single beat like the streets before it, the concourse or boulevard or esplanade or simply big mother of a street that was 116th. The musical reference above is no accident, I’m sure. I made the mistake that day because of a difficult (for me) waltz, which I was playing in my head as I carried an Easter plant to my Aunt Bianca. The plant was a gift from my mother. She did not particularly like Aunt Bianca, but Aunt Bianca had made her six brassieres free of charge two weeks before, and this was my mother’s obligatory payoff, and thank God Aunt Bianca hadn’t made the bras two weeks before Christmas because that would have required a grander gift, and I’d have been carrying an entire forest down First Avenue.
Visualize Blind Iggie Di Palermo, beribboned aspidistra in a red clay pot clutched in my left hand and pressed against my scrawny, almost eight-year-old chest, Daddy’s discarded Charlie-Chaplin-imitation bamboo cane in my right hand, blue eyes open wide and naked, Grandpa’s new Easter jacket on my back, brand-new knickers covering my skinny legs, tap-tap-tapping down the avenue with that waltz in my head. What happened was that I made it to the curb at 119th Street and then, perhaps because at that moment I was five bars into the coda, just after the trills, and the piece called for a seven-bar run of eighth-note triplets in the right hand — I turned right with my feet also, instead of waiting for someone to cross me to the other side. I tapped blithely up 119th Street, mentally playing that piece for all it was worth, the bamboo cane rapping out the three/four beat while the melody soared in my head, and when I got to the corner of Second Avenue, I asked someone to cross me, thinking this was the corner of 119th Street and First Avenue, believing I was heading south instead of west, and knowing I still had three streets to cross before turning right again toward my Aunt Bianca’s shop in the middle of the block. Those streets were, in my busy, busy head, 118th Street, 117th Street, and then 116th Street. Instead, I crossed in succession and with the kindly help of pitying parading pedestrians, Third Avenue, and then Lexington Avenue, and then Park Avenue, and made a right turn on Park Avenue, heading uptown, heading north again instead of west, in which direction I should have been heading had I been on 116th Street, where I was supposed to be... Are you hopelessly confused? So was I.
I heard voices.
The voices belonged to black people.
I knew those voices well. I imitated them every day of the week. But it was rare for any black people to wander down to 116th Street between First and Second Avenues, which is where I believed I was at the moment. I suddenly began to wonder exactly where I was. Vague memories began to filter back. Hadn’t I heard the sound of an elevated train roaring overhead as I replayed the first section of the piece, and while I thought I was being helped across 119th Street? When had they built a crosstown elevated structure on 119th Street, and how come nobody had told me about it? And hadn’t I heard another elevated train when I thought I was being led across 118th Street? I was suddenly frightened. I stopped stock still in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Buck, buck, how many fingers’re up?”
They were playing Johnny-on-a-Pony.
“Three!”
“Wrong, man, two.”
“How come when you on our backs, we can never guess the ’mount of fingers?”
“You think I’m lyin’?” I heard the sound of sneakers slapping against the sidewalk; the person talking had leaped off the backs of the “pony” team. “How many fingers did I had up, kid?” There was a sudden silence. I could hear the shuffling of more feet on the sidewalk now. “You there with the flower pot,” he said. “How many fingers was I holin’ up?”
“Me?” I said.
“Tell ’em how many fingers they was.”
“I didn’t see,” I said. He was much closer to me now. They were all moving close to me. I didn’t know how many there were. I began listening for separate voices.
“Why wuhn’t you payin’ ’tention?”
“Whut you doin’ on this block, man, you can’t pay ’tention?”
“Where you goin’ with that plant?”
“To... to my aunt’s.”
“Who your aunt?”
“Aunt Bianca?”
“Who? Talk English, man.”
“Aunt Bianca.”
“Look at me when you talkin’. Whutchoo lookin’ ever’ which way for?”
“He blind.”
“That ain’ no reason for him not to be payin’ ’tention when we got a serious prolum to solve. How many fingers was I holin’ up there?”
“I... I couldn’t see the fingers,” I said.
“Where’d you get that horse blanket?”
“What?”
“This thing.” A hand flipped at the lapel of my jacket. I backed away a pace.
“It ain’t a horse blanket,” I said.
“Where’d you buy that thing? Over to the horse stables?”
“I didn’t buy it. My grandfather made it.”
“What’s he do, sell horses?” somebody asked, and they all laughed.
“He’s a tailor.”
“What kind of tailor? A horse tailor?”
“He’s a real tailor,” I said. “He’s got a shop on First Avenue.”