The Sour Smell of Pain Joe Giordano

An Italian immigrant in New York tries to carve out a living, but wonders if the best years of his life are behind him.

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I was ten when my feet touched Ellis Island. Carmela, my mother, held onto my snot-wipe jacket sleeve as we jostled among the huddled steerage masses, ravaged by seasickness, yearning to breathe anything but coal ash fumes and vomit. We clomped down the steamship's wooden gangplank onto the dock in New York Bay. I was the Sun, the center of my mother's world, and she was Venus, orbiting: dark-hair, blue-eyes, and pale, the most beautiful woman in the world. Inside the Immigrant Inspection Station, a doctor in a white coat saw my runny nose and spoke gruff gobbledygook to a tall man with a black mustache who marked me with blue chalk, earmarking us for a few days of quarantine where we dined on prison-quality slop.

My father, Nunzio, left Naples before I was born. He stole watermelons from an aristocrat's farm, and when the Don announced in town that my father was the thief, the Don was blown away with a shotgun blast to the face. No witnesses came forward, but family smuggled my father out of Italy. He worked on a merchant ship in exchange for passage to New York. The authorities grabbed him on a lower Manhattan street and gave him the alternative of extradition back to Italy, or to enter the service as a World War I Doughboy. Despite being gassed in France, the first thing my father ever unpacked was a grainy black and white picture of himself in uniform. After discharge, he wrote to my mother. Ignoring her parents' pleas, she booked us passage to New York. When I met my father, he peered at me with hands on hips. I thought, who was this stranger? He took my mother into his arms, and when I tugged on her dress, he shoved me away with his leg.

He was a short wiry man with a full head of black swept-back hair; the shape of my father's eyes earned him the nickname Chinaman from his fellow rag pickers. The gang of them acquired their piles of lice-infested clothes from alley refuse dumps or as discards from deceased folks' families who kept anything still wearable. Ragmen would hang their acquired remnants from frayed rope lines for the rain to cleanse and the sun to bleach. My father owned a rickety spoke-wheel pushcart piled over with bloated burlap bags of what he could scavenge. Whenever a landlord grew frustrated with rent delays and threatened to lock us out, we relocated to another tenement in the Italian ghettos around Manhattan's Mulberry Street or Brooklyn's East New York. Constant moves were incompatible with formal education, plus my father saw me as a pair of hands to help his business. I sucked cotton dust into my lungs and retched at the crusted filth and odor of rags often steeped in human waste.

Whenever my father wanted sex with my mother, he'd order me to bed. Although I pressed my ears like a vice, his muffled grunts drove me into a fetal position. Two sisters, Filomena, then Concetta, arrived in the next years. A Brooklyn tenement landlord allowed my mother to earn our rent as a hall cleaner and toilet scrubber, but the bending and kneeling in the years that followed deformed her body into a permanent stoop, and I watched my mother's face grow tired. As soon as my sisters could sew, they earned extra money with piecework. That was their childhood. My mother's affection toward me was limited to when my father wasn't around.

Lugging loads of refuse strengthened me, and I grew tall for my age. My father and I would push our cart past a boxing gym off Utica Avenue, and I'd sneak a peek inside to watch a match of one man imposing his will on another. One day, I snuck away from my rag duties and walked up to the owner and promoter, Maxie Shapiro. He purchased the club with purses he earned as a featured middleweight. He was a Jew in his mid-forties with curly reddish-brown hair, a cauliflower ear, and a nose nearly flattened on his face. I lied when he asked my age. He gave me a look like he wasn't that stupid but threw some boxing gloves at me and told me to get into the ring. He put me up against a white-as-milk skinny-leg Irish kid, and in one round I turned the Mick into a cowering blob of sobbing flesh. Maxie pulled me off my bloodied opponent, gave me a silver dollar, and told me to come back the next evening ready to box.

My Friday night opponent was black, with the experience of a dozen club fights. I took three punches for each one I gave. He cracked my nose, but I knocked the sfaccimma out in the fifth round. As the betting long shot, I received nice tips from the winning gamblers. Maxie gave me a fistful of dollars and said he'd teach me some defense if I returned to the gym on Monday. I'd earned more money in an hour than my father gave me in my lifetime, and the gym crowd's back slaps and "atta boys" puffed out my chest. I arrived home late. When my mother saw my face, she covered her eyes. My father waved the back of his hand and told me to, "Get to bed." I pushed him up against the wall and held him with both hands. I saw fear in his eyes. My mother cried to let him go, and I stormed out the door. That night, I slept in the tenement's basement, crawling through a broken window. I slept on a cold concrete floor that stank of cat urine. From then, I was on my own.

Maxie gave me a cot at the gym and a few bucks to guard the place at night. Despite Maxie's defensive training, I took punches, closing in on my opponent to deliver my own. Eventually I ran out of fighters in my weight class, and Maxie matched me against bigger, heavier kids so I could earn. I developed scar tissue over both eyes and a nose that twisted in two directions. I visited my mother and sisters when my father wasn't home and gave them money.

I'd boxed for a couple of years when I drew a bout with an orca-tough German light-heavyweight who turned my face into raw liver before he stopped me in the tenth.

That night, Maxie talked to me while he patched my cuts. "Vince, you're a mensch. You know that I love you, but if you keep taking these beatings, your brain will be scrambled, and all you'll be good for is to empty spittoons. You need work that takes advantage of your toughness but doesn't rip your face to shit. Capeesh?"

My bruises cried out for an entire bottle of aspirin. I nodded to Maxie.

He said, "There's a guy I want you to meet. He's connected, you know, a paisan. I arranged for you to see him tonight."

---

The sky looked angry, and lightning flashed in the distance. The Italian social club on Atlantic Avenue smelled of De Nobili cigars. I'd worked for Frank Ruggiero a couple of years. His nickname, "Hole-in-the-head," derived from a depression in the upper portion of his brow like he'd been hit with a ball-peen hammer. He always wore a suit and tie with a boutonnière. That day, the flower was red. Frank made book and was a loan shark. I removed my newsboy cap and sat. We went through the same ritual whenever he gave me a job. A greasy-hair waiter put down two espressos and a bottle of anisette on a tile-top table. The saucers each had a sliver of lemon peel.

Frank poured some anisette into the black coffee. He took a sip and asked, "How's your mother?"

"Not great."

He nodded. "There's a figlio di puttana, Tasso Papadapa-some-shit. Greek prick who thinks he's smarter than everybody. I'd be just as happy to see his brains on the concrete as receive the money he owes. So, do what you gotta do. Okay?"

Tasso hung out at a pizza joint, and my mother's apartment was on the way. I stopped at the bakery on the corner and bought the crumb buns she enjoyed. Her apartment was on the third floor, and I walked up the dark creaky stairs amidst the odor of sautéed garlic. The front door of her apartment opened into the kitchen. I was surprised to find my father home. He'd carved some peaches into a tall glass he filled with red wine from a jug. Seeing me, he headed for the back bedroom of the railroad apartment without a word and parked himself on a wooden chair. He forked out the sliced peaches and drank the wine while he peered over the street through a screened window.

My mother smiled at the sight of me. She sat, shrunken, in a corner chair. Her condition had progressively worsened. Rheumatoid arthritis the doctor said. Her fingers were deformed, and Concetta spooned farina for her. Concetta, the prettier of my sisters, thin with dark hair, wore no make-up and was still dressed in her robe. I kissed my mother on the cheek and got a wet one in return. Sweated, she had the sour smell of pain. My other sister Filomena, with premature gray streaks in her stringy brown hair, sat at the Formica kitchen table and sewed buttons on sweaters from a pile for a factory on Euclid Avenue. She frowned as my father left the kitchen.

Filomena put down her sewing. She cut the white bakery box string and sliced crumb buns, putting them onto a plate. "Sit, I'll perk a pot of coffee."

"Don't bother. The cake is for you two and Mama," I said.

On the wall near the door hung a plaque, Who's in the doghouse? The dog with the "Vincent" label was inside.

Filomena saw that I noticed. "You still work for Frank Ruggiero?" she asked.

"Yeah, so?"

"If you're arrested, Papa won't bail you out, and Mama will want to come to court. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you want that?"

"That won't happen."

"So you say." Filomena returned to her sewing.

Mama ate a sliver of crumb bun.

"Why's Pop home?" I asked.

Filomena said, "He says his lungs are weak. He coughs and wheezes."

I leaned close. "Is he stepping out on Mama?"

She shot a quick glance at Concetta, and her eyes cast down.

My face turned scarlet. "Son of a bitch."

Mama asked, "What's the matter? Why do you need to swear?"

"Sorry Mama." The apartment had a slew of holy pictures and little saint statues. The number of them grew with the severity of her disability.

I stood. Filomena pulled at my sleeve, but I strode back to the bedroom and loomed over my father. He ignored me.

I spoke to him in Italian. "If you touch Concetta, father or not, I'll rip your balls off."

He sipped his wine, then glanced up at me. "What makes you think I'm your father?" His Chinese eyes crinkled in smile before his gaze returned to the street.

I stiffened. My face lost color. My brain whirred, and I clutched my forehead.

After a few moments I regained control of my voice. "Remember what I told you."

I returned to the kitchen. Emotion had risen into my throat. I thought to confront my mother. Who? Why? But Mama needed to use the toilet. I kissed her goodbye and left so that my sisters could assist her in the bathroom.

---

Tasso Papadopoulos, fidgety, skinny with black hair wore a red garnet pinkie ring, a gray sharkskin suit, and a fedora. He sat at an inside table, reading the horse race pages of the newspaper, pencil in hand. I sized him up as a talker, not a fighter. Too bad, I thought. My head felt like an overheated steam boiler ready to explode.

I stood over him. "You have the money you owe Frank Ruggiero?"

He spoke in staccato. "Hey, hello. Whoa, I didn't see you. What's your name?"

I stared at him.

He said, "You're Italian? I'm Greek. Una faccia una razza. Greeks and Italians, the same, right? Hey, look, you want a slice of pizza? How about an Italian ice? Jesus Christ. Relax."

Tasso waved to get the attention of the counter guy, but the owner had ducked into the back room when the front doorbell jingled, and he saw it was me.

Tasso tried to smile.

"Frank Ruggiero's money," I said.

"Look, whatever your name is, paisan, loosen up. Cool off. What a face. You look like you want to kill somebody."

"Mr. Ruggiero told me that if you don't pay what you owe, I should splatter your brains on the pavement."

One of Tasso's eyes twitched.

I said, "I have a sick mother. After I turn you into a drooling imbecile, and the cops arrest me, she'll need to come to the police station. The idea that you'd embarrass my mother angers me."

Tasso's face dropped. He reached for his money clip. "Your mother must be very proud of you."

I clenched my fists but took the wad of bills he handed me and left.

As I walked back to the social club to deliver Ruggiero's money, I thought of the days when my mother and I lived on a Neapolitan sun-drenched farm of sweet tomatoes and sweeter watermelons with doting grandparents. By putting the best part of my life early, God had screwed me over.