A Yonkers Kinda Girl Read online

  ISBN 10:1482302586

  ISBN 13:978-1482302585

  Copyright TXu1-839-146

  With deepest gratitude, to my editor, Sheila Nason

  And special thanks to my sister Cathy who supported me and always believed the book was worth writing

  Cover art courtesy of the artist Kate Abercrombie and The Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia Pa.

  Patrick

  When I was child

  My father died.

  My large raucous family slid.

  Out of it’s orbit and began to disintegrate.

  It was the sixties.

  Pre Berkeley, pre hippie, pre generation sixties.

  I ran around my Leave It To Beaver neighborhood.

  A child Cassandra calling:

  “It’s coming apart

  It’s coming apart!”

  The words froze in the air, desiccating,

  And blew into the cracks.

  The neighbors pitied my vacant mother.

  When I was a child my father died.

  It was my own personal catastrophe.

  1. May 1951

  Tito della Robbia was intoxicated by America before he saw the New York skyline. On the deck of a cruise ship, surrounded by returning tourists, he gazed through the grey drizzle at his dreamland. He heard of people who left Ellis Island with the generic name di Napoli. He passed through customs with both his name and dignity intact.

  Tito had read letters to his mother from Tatiana D’Agusta as she nodded over memorized passages. He planned to follow the D’Agustas years before he did, but a road construction accident killed his father, leaving his mother heavy with pregnancy and plunging his working class family into poverty. Nick was born in 1930, and Maria della Robbia died shortly thereafter.

  Tito was barely a teenager when he was left with three brothers, one an infant. When Mussolini ordered the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Tito was almost unique – a healthy young man immune from military service. All the neighborhood mothers helped raise his brothers, and he worked night and day, saving for emigration.

  By 1939, Tito could no longer deny that the world was going to explode into war. He used his America fund to send his baby brother to the D’Agustas. Meanwhile, he remained in Naples, trying to keep himself and his teenage brothers alive.

  The end of the war brought new opportunities for Tito. He worked with the American Army, mastering English and incorporating colloquialisms into his speech. Immigration laws had become stricter. It took Tito five years to gain entry, even with letters of recommendation from American officers and with a minor brother already in the country. By 1951, Nick was now a man of 21. He had graduated from high school and gone on to police training and become a Yonkers patrolman, He was going to college part time.

  Tito started to pass through the crowd. Nick was quickly upon him. Tito had expected Nick to drive a big Chevy, but instead they walked from the wharf across lower Manhattan to Little Italy. In Naples, Tito was a big man, but here he shrank to his five-foot six-inch frame. He felt as meager as his possessions.

  The D’Agustas had been aware that Tito was coming but had not known when he would arrive. Tatiana had regaled her daughters with tales of Maria della Robbia. Maria had helped Tatiana adjust to losing her wealth, family, and country.

  Tatiana had escaped from Russia with her ill husband and baby daughter, but in their flight, walking night and day as fall turned into winter, her daughter had died of pneumonia. They slept in railroad yards, only to be rousted in the morning with all the other refugees – both Russians fleeing the revolution and nomads from throughout Europe following the First World War.

  Tatiana and her husband finally arrived in Naples. He had seemed better almost immediately. His remission was temporary, and two months later he died. Maria della Robbia had opened her home to them when she came across them on her way home from Mass. Tatiana’s regal bearing throughout her mourning touched Maria.

  A year passed. Maria’s gentle cousin had come to Naples en route to America, and the spark between Tatiana and Anno was undeniable. Soon, Anno and Tatiana D’Agusta left for America.

  Tatiana never forgot the silent boy who had carried water for her dying husband and rubbed her hand after his death. Tatiana wanted to help Tito find the family she felt he needed, and a man who had raised three brothers through Mussolini and the war and had given up his life savings to protect his little brother would certainly make a fine son-in-law.

  Tatiana’s eldest daughter was married, but her second daughter, Isabel, was 29 and single. She had a steady boyfriend in Anthony Trotti, a thoroughly Americanized man whom Tatiana did not trust. Lately, there had been a change in Isabel. She had stopped speaking and would not even acknowledge her younger sister, Carmela. She was also gone late into the evening and early in the morning.

  Tatiana was certain Carmela had done something to cause the rift, but she didn’t know what. Carmela was 17 and too provocative for her own good. She had a way of touching men with her fingertips when she spoke that would surely bring trouble.

  Isabel worked in a three-generation tailor shop started by her father, Anno, and his partner, both from the small village of Cicciano. She made alterations and repairs and did the books. Isabel was close to the tailor’s wife, who was expecting their first child.

  What Tatiana did not know was that a few days earlier, Isabel had arrived at work to be greeted with the news that the baby had been born. Isabel went home to get the layette she had made. She entered the room she shared with Carmela only to find Carmela in bed with Anthony Trotti. Isabel uttered a short scream and ran out.

  She ran up to the roof and walked among the laundry trees, fuming. Anthony was a driver for one of the families and had the respect of all the punks in the neighborhood. Isabel had seen the lust in Anthony’s eyes when Carmela seductively pranced around.

  When she finally returned to work without the present, the tailor was concerned. “Hey, you OK?”

  Isabel didn’t answer, and he thought it was best not to push. Late in the afternoon, Isabel started to work like a woman possessed, but the tailor insisted it was time to close.

  Isabel, not wanting to have a confrontation in front of her mother, avoided going home. She walked around her neighborhood. Later that evening, she arrived home, expecting to see Carmela at least put up a repentant front, but Carmela sat beside their mother as though she was challenging Isabel.

  Tatiana said, “You’re so late. I thought you were with Anthony.”

  Carmela quickly added, “What’s the matter? Anthony getting bored with you?”

  Isabel had no reply. She left for work early the next morning, as her family was just stirring. She walked the same streets she had covered the night before, waiting for the tailor shop to open. Once inside, she sewed sometimes in a fury of speed and at other times through tears. She took to walking before and after work, trodding forlornly.

  She was vaguely approaching her home one evening when she came upon the della Robbia brothers.

  “Nicky, how are you? What brings you down here?” she said warmly to her adopted brother.

  “Isabel this is my brother, Tito. He just got off the boat. We’re going to your mother’s.”

  Tito grasped her hand and started pumping. “Hiya, Isabel. Glad to meetya.”

  Isabel laughed. “Well this one we won’t have to teach English at the kitchen table.”

  They walked on, stopping for Italian ices.

  “Italian ice? I never had this, but it’s OK.”

  Nick warned him, “Wait till you have some Italian food, Tito. Like nothing you’ve ever had.”

  Tatiana welcomed them warmly. Tito allowed his hopes to soar.

  Nicky and Tito shar
ed an apartment in Yonkers for a month. Nick had lived alone for three years and found a brother, who acted like a mother, a little difficult. Nick was engaged to an American girl, Karen Mallory. Their wedding was the next month. Tito got a job working for the city of Yonkers in the sanitation department, but he felt more at home in lower Manhattan than in Yonkers. He gravitated to the area where the D’Agustas lived and found an apartment nearby.

  Meanwhile, Carmela was late, and Anthony dismissed her. Carmela looked around and saw Tito, who had come to the D’Agustas announcing his success in finding an apartment and brandishing the key.

  Carmela jumped at the chance. “Sure, I’d love to see your place,” she said, as though the invitation were extended solely to her. He was embarrassed by the sudden attention of the voluptuous girl, but he shyly took her to see his home.

  She danced up the stairs flirtatiously and fawned over the apartment as though with her touch she could make it into a beautiful American home. Tito was overwhelmed and easily seduced.

  Anthony was born in February 1952. His father saw him as a miracle.

  “He’s over 10 pounds, and he’s a month early.” He didn’t see the knowing looks his coworkers exchanged because he would not allow such knowledge to pierce his dreams.

  Carmela’s talk of homemaking never happened. The apartment became increasingly dirty. Carmela became pregnant again when Anthony was only a month old. This time, Tito was the father. She felt trapped and angry. She called Tito “garbage man” and treated him with undisguised disgust. Tito became a quiet man, hoping his girl/wife would mature to a partner not a shrew.

  Life fell into a pattern. Tito would rise early for work. The commute was a subway through Manhattan and the Bronx to the end of the line at Woodlawn Cemetery, then two buses, one north to Yonkers, one west to downtown.

  Carmela took Anthony to her mother’s and left him all day. Tatiana, now Tanta, was too old to care for another baby, but she was frightened of what Carmela’s flashing temper might mean to her grandson. Tito returned home to make dinner and clean the day’s squalor, never knowing Carmela was farming the baby out. Carmela was sleeping with the delivery boy from the grocery located downstairs from their apartment, but as her pregnancy progressed, he began to shun her.

  Before long, Tito’s last two brothers arrived from Italy. Nick and Karen took in Guissepe, who immediately became Joe. Tito invited Nunzio to live with his family. Carmela no longer waited for Tito to leave the room to mimic him, exaggerating his accent, humiliating him. The two brothers sat mutely, prisoners of the war Carmela was waging against her world. To Nunzio’s horror, Carmela mockingly tried to seduce him when she was eight months pregnant.

  Frankie was born when Anthony was 10 months old. Frankie was smaller and built like Tito, but to Tito the sun still rose in Anthony’s eyes. Anthony followed Carmela around, adoring the volatile girl/woman who was his mother. One day as the baby’s crying built to a crescendo, Carmela decided it was time to go out to the glamorous uptown spots she had married too young to know. She dug through the closet for a blue satin dress she had received for her sixteenth birthday.

  Frankie had cried himself to sleep. Anthony stood on uncertain legs both hands on the edge of the bed, watching Carmela wash and primp.

  Tito was looking forward to arriving home early. A coworker, who planned to visit his mother in lower Manhattan, offered him a ride.

  As Carmela pulled the satin dress over her head, a side seam ripped loudly.

  Anthony gave a hearty baby laugh and clapped his hands. She tore off her dress and picked up Anthony slapping his frightened face. It became an uncontrolled dance, with her shaking and hitting the mesmerized tot.

  Tito still had his hand on the door when he saw Carmela and Anthony in their wild fandango. Carmela froze instinctively clutching Anthony to herself. The spell was broken when the tot started screaming. Tito flew through the living room to the bedroom. He grabbed Anthony and gently tossed him on the bed, and then he went for Carmela.

  Carmela hopelessly kicked and clawed as Tito was strangling the life from her. Nunzio burst on the scene and dragged Tito off of Carmela. Carmela slid to the floor gasping for breath, leaving a silence in which every detail was engraved in the participants’ memories. The clicking of the radiator brought Nunzio back first. He got a paper bag and began to fill it with Carmela’s things.

  Nunzio grabbed her arm, projecting her to the door. “Dirty slut. He caught you, huh?”

  Tito went to Anthony, and then seeing the child’s obviously broken nose dripping blood, he went after Carmela again. She fled the apartment.

  ***********************

  2. July 1954

  Bridget O’Dwyer attended the funeral of Lillian Conway on July 3, 1954. Bridget and Lillian had grown up on the same block in an Irish section of the Bronx. Lillian lived in an apartment house on one end of the block and played with other apartment children, while Bridget lived in a two-family on the other end and played with kids with back yards. There was no personal animosity, just economic snobbery.

  They both attended the same Catholic High School in Manhattan. They clung like burrs the first few months at the school, and then settled into their own cliques.

  In 1941, they both got jobs as clerks in the same office building. Their nodding acquaintance blossomed into friendship as they met and fell in love with their fellows at the same time.

  Bridget Kelly married an Army doctor before he shipped out to New Zealand.

  While Bridget and Owen honeymooned, Lillian learned her fiancé had died in the South Pacific, and she fell into a deep melancholy. One friend was basking in the sun while the other was lost in the dark separated them.

  Bridget’s first baby was born after twelve hours of labor, and each of the next six was born in less time. There was true concern that the eighth would be born so quickly that the mother and child would be unattended.

  Instead, this was her hardest pregnancy and labor. Nine months highlighted by morning, afternoon, and evening sickness, leg cramps, blinding headaches, and swollen feet ended in a thirty-two-hour labor. Bridget looked at her new baby and felt only exhaustion.

  Lillian Mary O’Dwyer would be the fourth baby born while they were practicing the rhythm method.

  Years later when Bridget told stories of her babies, she related how Deirdre crawled backwards, Patrick belly laughed when lifted to his high chair, Daniel waved with the back of his hand showing, Ann listened intently to the radio, Colleen got hiccoughs whenever she had a bottle, and Edward listened to the pandemonium around and gurgled his contribution to his mother. All she had to say about Lillian was that she screamed with colic for six months.

  Bridget loved Owen but suspected that as a physician, he should have had a better understanding of the rhythm method. Owen had a romanticized view of big families and chubby babies. Bridget knew Owen had no idea of the physical and intellectual challenges of running a household and stimulating eight young minds. Asking for his help did not occur to her. Owen would never think of changing a diaper or giving a bath.

  He had completed board certification in neurosurgery and had a senior staff position at a major New York hospital. He had an unheard of commodity – time. Bridget’s coolness to Lillian was apparent. He took to holding her in his arms while reading professional journals. He smiled at her pretty face framed in flaxen curls and whispered the secrets of hyperosmolar fluids.

  ***************************

  3. October 1963

  Tony woke early. The Saturday street noises were beginning their prelude to the weekend symphony. He lay quietly on the sofa bed beside Frankie. Tony listened to the grocer downstairs, unloading produce from the wholesale market. Tony laughed at the grocer’s sudden curses, knowing that meant the cat had landed a good one, claws in. Tony and Tito kept a running bet. When they heard the grocer yelp, Tito owed Tony a nickel. When the cat screeched, Tony owed. Tito said the cat was the ghost of Freddy’s wife. Tony figured that meant the grocer w
ould come back as a dog.

  Tony scowled as he thought of today. Nunzio and Joe treated Frankie and him as one of the guys. But Nicky’s kids were young and goofy. And Ma would get all whiney about wanting to move to Yonkers. Four months shy of turning twelve, Tony understood that he and his mother were at crossed swords but didn’t know why.

  From what Frankie and he had gathered at Tanta’s kitchen table, their real mother had run out on them, and Tito was stuck marrying Isabel. Eleven years earlier, Tito had faced a dilemma, having to raise two babies in a country where he could speak the language but not yet read the people. Tatiana was too old to raise babies. Tito had to work. So they worked out a solution after many glasses of wine: Isabel.

  At 31, Isabel did not have any suitors knocking down her door. She had grown to love her work doing alterations and was now making wedding gowns. She wanted a family. She had watched her older sister and brother get married, thinking her turn was next.

  Isabel knew her mother and Tito would come to her. She sat in her room and reviewed her life. When she first met Tito, she had liked him. But when Carmela named the baby Anthony, Isabel felt taunted. She could not bring herself to tell about his true parentage, and she avoided the babies because they reminded her of Carmela. Bitterness had grown inside Isabel, and she resolved to refuse.

  Tatiana knocked on her door and asked her to join them in the kitchen. Isabel cried, when Tito asked her to marry him.

  “Just for the kids. I’ll never raise a hand to you. I’ll never treat you wrong. Of course, I got to get a divorce, but the kids need a mother now.”

  He was mortally ashamed, and Isabel took his shame as repulsion of her.

  “So I can raise the children … and what? Be a poor man’s slave?”

  Her mother’s pleas for the bambinos almost fell on deaf ears until Tatiana opened the little footstool chest where Isabel kept layettes she had sewn.

  “These can be Anthony’s and Frankie’s. They would be your babies.”