wasn’t worried about the milk. With the other baby, the one that couldn’t swallow, there had been so much milk that when the baby died, no one could make the milk go away, until Donna Vecchio had come with her powers of fattura and a paste of olive oil and parsley. Donna Vecchio would be angry that she wasn’t called for this baby.
The mother tried not to be afraid. This was America. She tried not to be afraid of Donna Vecchio. She tried not to be afraid of Armando.
Armando, who had come to her brother’s house in Brooklyn one day to ask for her.
“Yes,” her brother’s wife had said.
“Who is he?” her brother had asked his wife that night when she told him.
“He’s Genovese,” his wife had said.
“But what does he do?” her brother had asked.
“He’s Genovese, I told you,” the wife had said. “What are you worried about? The Genovese always make a dollar. The undertaker, the butcher, all Genovese.”
“She’s a child,” her brother said.
“She’s old enough.”
Armando had come and taken her from her brother’s house with the front yard in Brooklyn and brought her here to the building across from the horse stables. She had carried her own things.
Once she had gone to her brother, and her brother had said that he would kill Armando with a knife.
But this was America.
Could she see her brother in jail because of Armando? She had come back alone to the building across from the horse stables.
The mother sat in the chair by the window with her baby. She heard the men coming home from work and the children called in from the street. She heard them on the stairs and smelled the cooking from their mothers’ open doors.
Outside the window the laundry had disappeared. Empty clotheslines crisscrossed the yard. The mother looked out the window to where her girl would go, not to hang laundry, she was determined, and she waited for Armando.
Armando, who would come home and shout that there was no coal, that there was no food. He would try to bother her or he would be too drunk. He would not remember about the baby. She would not tell him.
If the shouting got too loud, if Armando banged too hard and too long on the door and the women got frightened, they would call the police. The police would come to the building across from the horse stables. They had come before, because this was America.
The men would not interfere. Behind the door was Armando’s house. It would be the women who would call the police, and the police would come and make her open the door. They would make her let Armando into his house.
The men would nod. It was Armando’s house. The women would stand in the hall with their heads covered. Some things do not change.
In the morning the baby cried. The mother made a fire in the stove. She ate bread and drank coffee and sat in the chair by the window with her baby.
A policeman came. He asked the mother to come with him. She wrapped the baby, covered her shoulders, and followed him to where they showed her Armando, his face battered and bloodless.
“An accident,” the policeman said, “a fight. We don’t know yet. Do you know anything?” he asked.
“I don’t know anything,” she told him.
“We’ll find out,” he said.
She knew they wouldn’t.
When she came home, the women were waiting for her. They were waiting on the stoops and they were waiting by their open doors.
“Armando is dead,” she told them.
Alfonsina came. She called out to the Virgin and Santa Rosalina. “I heard,” she said. “I just heard about Armando.” She took a package wrapped in newspaper from under her skirts. “I brought it back,” she said. “We can do it now. We can flush it down the toilet now. You don’t need no more trouble.”
“Give it to me,” the mother said.
Alfonsina crossed herself. She swore she would say nothing, and she left the mother and the baby and the package wrapped in newspaper that she had carried under her skirts.
Armando came into the house that night in the undertaker’s box. He lay on the white satin inside the box in the black suit he was married in. The people came and gave the mother money folded inside envelopes. The women whispered and shook their heads. She was young to have no husband. Why didn’t she cry?
The men standing in the corners talked of other things. Some of them watched her too closely. She was young, they thought. She would get lonely. Maybe, when some time had passed . . .
The paid mourners in black shawls moaned over Armando’s body. They moved back and forth over him, shaking water blessed by the priest from their fingers. The water made damp spots on Armando’s black wedding suit.
Donna Vecchio came. When Donna Vecchio came, everything stopped. Her hair was done in marcelled waves. Her hairdresser lived in her house. Donna Vecchio had large breasts and short, bent legs. The envelope she gave the mother smelled of lavender.
“I’m sorry for your trouble,” Donna Vecchio said. “And how is the baby?”
“Do you want to see her?” the mother said.
“The baby isn’t mine,” Donna Vecchio said. “You didn’t call me for this baby. She isn’t one of mine.”
“But she is,” the mother said. “I am giving her your name, Carolina. I am asking you to baptize her, to be her gummara.”
Donna Vecchio smiled and held out her hand for a kiss.
The rows of borrowed chairs were empty. The mother sat alone. She would sit all night to watch for Armando’s spirit. When the spirit of the dead leaves, it looks for a sleeping body to enter. It enters through the mouth.
The mother wouldn’t sleep, but would sit all night with Armando, with the sound of the ice melting into the pan underneath his coffin. She would not let the baby sleep.
Underneath Armando’s body was a block of ice, and underneath Armando’s head, underneath the white satin pillow, was the package wrapped in newspaper.
And tomorrow they would bury Armando. They would put him in the ground with the afterbirth of the baby, in a hole so deep the dogs don’t find it.
SISTER-IN-LAW
Get in the car.
I started to turn but there was a gun in my back or something pretending to be a gun. I faced forward. The voice was familiar, a woman’s voice, a cigarette voice. Philip Morris unfiltered. I think that’s the only way Philip Morris comes. Smoking them was a grand statement, too big for me, but if I was right about
