“Oh, on First Avenue?” somebody said. “Whut’s he, a wop tailor?”
“Are you a wop, too?”
“I’m an American,” I said.
“Americans doan go roun’ wearin’ horse blankets.”
“On’y wops ’n’ horses do.”
“Let’s see that horse blanket, anyway,” someone said, and I felt hands tugging at the jacket.
“Leave it alone,” I said, and backed away again.
“Whut you doin’ comin’ roun’ here in that shitty horse blanket, carryin’ that pot full o’ shit?”
“Get away from me,” I said, and raised my father’s bamboo cane.
“Well, now, lookee here,” somebody said.
“He’s a real fierce li’l bastard, now ain’ he?”
“Le’s see that cane.”
“Le’s see that flower pot.”
“Where you get that horse blanket?”
“Please, I want to go to my Aunt Bianca’s.”
They were all around me now. They were poking me. Somebody reached for my cane. Somebody else yanked at the sleeve of my jacket, and I pulled my arm away. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and giggled and danced away when I whirled on him.
“Please,” I said. “I’m blind.”
“Please,” someone mimicked, “He blind.”
I felt someone tugging at the potted plant, heard a tearing sound, realized a leaf had been pulled from the aspidistra, and then felt it striking my face. I backed away and collided with someone who pushed me forward against someone else. They began shoving me back and forth then, spinning me around in, the circle they had formed, tossing me from one to the other as I flailed at them with my father’s bamboo cane, the cane whistling on the air and never striking home. Neighing like horses, they snatched leaves from the plant as I spun dizzily in the circle, tossed the leaves into my face, laughed as I tried to protect the plant, the cane always moving but never connecting, until someone snatched it from my hands, and I heard a sudden loud cracking sound, and realized it had been snapped in two. I held the potted aspidistra in two hands, using it as a weapon, swinging it back and forth in front of me, but someone knocked it to the pavement, and I heard the pot smashing into a hundred pieces, and then someone tore at my right sleeve, loosening my grandfather’s careful stitches, and then ripped it all the way, pulling it free of the shoulder, and someone ripped the other sleeve loose, and someone else tore the jacket up the back. One of them shoved at me from behind, and I fell to the sidewalk, trying to cushion the blow with my hands, and my hands hit some of the broken pieces from the aspidistra pot, and I pulled them back in pain and hoped they were not bleeding. On my knees, I crouched on the sidewalk, and somebody laughed, and then they all laughed, and then they left.
I don’t know how long I crouched on that sidewalk, listening for sounds, turning my head sharply from right to left, uncertain whether they were really gone or were silently preparing another attack. No one came to my assistance. (Many years later, when I asked Biff Anderson why no one had come to my assistance, he laughed heartily and said, “Man, you was white. This whole fuck-up didn’t just happen yesterday, you know.”) I got to my feet. I did not know where I was. My cane was gone. Flailing the air with both hands, I groped for a building that would define the inner limits of the sidewalk. Instead, I fell off the curb, and scrambled back onto the sidewalk, and got to my feet again, rushing forward in panic, hands outstretched, palms open, and slammed into a solid brick wall. Hand over hand, I felt my way along the side of the building, and came at last to the corner. If I had made a right turn when stumbling into this street, then I would have to make a left turn to get back home.
My grandfather found me wandering along First Avenue. He must have been dressed in his own Easter finery, black suit, white shirt, black tie, a straw boater on his head. He was carrying a white cardboard carton of pastries in his hand, I later learned. He was not out looking for me, he had merely gone to the pasticceria on the corner to buy some pastry for the holiday, and was undoubtedly walking back to the apartment with a jaunty spring in his step on this beautiful clear bright sunny Easter morning, and had seen his grandson in tears and in tatters, and perhaps even then did not rush to me at once, but approached me slowly and cautiously, as though unwilling to believe his own eyes.
“Ignazio!” he shouted, and I rushed to him, rushed to his voice, rushed sightlessly into his outstretched arms, and he clutched me to his chest, and said, “Madonna mia! Ma, che successe? Oh, Madonna, Ignazio, Ignazio, chi ha fatto questo?” and stroked my face with his hands, brushing at the tears, and said, “No, no, non piangere, caro, caro, non piangere,” and then angrily shouted, perhaps to the heavens, “What kind of place is this, what kind of country?” and hugged me to him again, and said, “No, no, carissimo, non ti preoccupare,” and then said, “What happened? Tell Grandpa.”
Sobbing, I said, “They didn’t like my...” and then stopped short of saying the word “jacket” because my grandfather had made the jacket for me, and I did not want to hurt him. “My haircut,” I said.
“Your haircut?” he said, puzzled. “What’s the matter with your haircut? Oh, Madonna, look what they did, your jacket is ruined. Who did this?”
“Some boys,” I said. “Five or six boys.”
“Were they Irish?” he asked immediately and suspiciously.
“No.”
“Then what? Colored?”
I nodded.
“Bastardi,” he said.
“Grandpa?” I said, and began to weep again.
“Yes, yes. Ignazio. Come now, no more tears.”
“Grandpa . .. why do I have to be blind?”
“Ah, ah,” he said, and hugged me and rocked me. “Ah, Ignazio, dear baby, dear child, I would give you my own eyes if that would make you see. Come, you must not cry. Here, here,” drying my eyes and my cheeks with his handkerchief, and then abruptly and surprisingly saying, “Do you want a cannolo? See? Here’s the pastry box. Do you feel the string? Give me your hand. Here. Do you see the string?”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
“Ooooo, I can’t break the string,” he said. “It’s too strong for me. Help me break the string, Ignazio.”
“You can break the string, Grandpa.”
“No, I can’t, I can’t. Look! Do you see? I can’t do it. Oh, what a strong piece of string. Help me, Ignazio.”
I felt along the string with both hands, and took it in my fingers, and broke it. Then, sobbing, I threw myself into my grandfather’s arms again.
“Don’t you want a cannolo?” he said gently. “Tch. No more crying, please. We’ll go to the tailor shop and wash your face before your mother sees you. Do you know what Grandma made for us? Rigatoni! That’s your favorite, no? And antipasto, and meatballs, and roast beef, and potatoes, and salad, and nuts, and I’ll slice a peach in wine and let you have some of that. We’ll get you drunk, eh, Ignazio, we’ll make a regular ubriacone out of you, eh? Tch, look at your jacket. Never mind, I’ll make a new one for you. Come. Take my hand.”
He was standing opposite me. I knew he was holding out his hand, but he did not reach for my own hand. He simply stood there, waiting.
And I reached. I touched air. I groped.
And finally, I found his hand and took it in my own.
“Well, there are good and bad in every kind.”
My mother used to repeat this maxim on the average of twice weekly. I don’t think she meant it to apply to black people; it didn’t apply to them that Easter morning. It occurs to me that she repeated those identical words to me years later, when I told her I was going to marry a Jewish girl. “Well, there are good and bad in every kind.” Then she went to stick her head in the oven. (Just a joke, Mom, full of little jokes.) Actually, she was very tolerant about the entire matter, which was more than could be said for Rebecca’s father, the Mad Oldsmobile Dealer.