The Mexican boy with the messy apron hands me my slice of pizza on a flimsy paper plate. I step back towards the open window, rest the plate on the sill, grip the crust with my shaky fingers and take a slow first bite. The bottom is burnt, as usual, but nevertheless it seems to melt into the sauce and cheese as I chew. Patsy’s pizza is as good as ever. Even with my dentures in, it tastes good as it did seventy-five years ago, when Papa took me as a treat on my tenth birthday. Can it really be seventy-five years??
Nowadays nobody expects to see an eighty-five-year-old woman walking the streets of East Harlem. The neighborhood has cleaned up considerably, but there are still a good number of crazies wandering around. They do not scare me, though. I am quite active for my age, and I am also very handy with my cane—so all you hoodlums, beware! And after all, how could I be frightened of these familiar streets, where I played as a young girl?
I suppose, though, these streets are not entirely familiar. I used to bump into all kinds of family and friends at each and every corner, but now I am surrounded by foreigners—those Latino types. “El Barrio” sounds to me like the Italian word “barriera,” a barrier, a barrier that blocks me out of here because I no longer belong. “Barriera.” A barrier between me and these strange new people. To me they will always seem strange and new, through they have already been in this neighborhood for over half a century.
Among bodegas, dollar stores and “cuchifritos” (what in heaven’s name are those!?), Patsy’s seems like the last outpost of a forgotten world. But a few of us Italians still remember. Those few who attended the memorial service at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel certainly do.
Joey Caruso died ten years ago. He did not get a parade like Pete Pascale, though by golly, did he deserve one. He deserved ten parades. I remember, right on this corner, when I was playing jacks with Luisa, some ruffian came and stole our ball. Joey Caruso ran right after him and snatched it back! A real gentleman, he was, and he stayed that way his whole life, God bless him.
And now he’s been ashes for ten years. Imagine? There were only about ten or fifteen of us at the memorial service, all old friends of his from the neighborhood. All old folks, like me, who still remember. The inside of the Church is just the same as it was when I was a girl, where Mama and Nonna would kneel down on the pew, white lace over their head and shoulders, rosary beads in their hands. The Church seemed emptier than it was when I was a girl, but I did see a few Spanish ladies crossing themselves, praying in a language that I could not understand. Do their words express the same reverence as Mama’s and Nonna’s?
My son, his wife, and my three grandchildren do not care about this neighborhood the way I do. I left East Harlem for the suburbs once my oldest son was born, in ’50. Today he said he was too busy to come to the memorial. Little Annie has a soccer game, I think. Or maybe it was Little Susie. My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.
But here there are still things that I remember quite clearly. I toss my empty plate into the trash, avoid looking at the Mexican boy with the messy apron, and head back onto the street at a grandmother’s pace. I turn towards Park Avenue. It was here that Jewish tailors lined the streets and an open market bustled beneath the elevated tracks. Suddenly I hear a quick shout, and I turn around half-expecting it to be a Jew haggling with a customer over the price of a suit. They were always very insistent about their prices. I remember threads and strips of fabric beneath our feet and the smell of Eastern European cooking, so different from our own, that radiated from those shops. I turn around and to my disappointment discover that the source of the commotion was two dreadlocked hooligans having a disagreement. Ah, well.
Suddenly the whole street seems terribly deserted. I move onward onto Park and walk up to 125th street, and then I arrive at the Metro-North train station.
I enter the wood-paneled waiting area as if moving from the past into the present. I am surrounded by young suburbanites: wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, and groups of friends who have come to the city for the day, all waiting for their train back home. They all look like my son, like his wife, like my grandchildren. They walk through East Harlem and see nothing more than loonies and bodegas…
I climb the steps to wait up on the platform, and from my seat I can see all the way down East 125th street. I try to picture Sophie and Annie playing jacks like I did, seventy-five years ago, on one of the street corners. Joey Caruso’s been ashes for 10 years. Can you imagine?
The train approaches the platform and the doors “ding” open like a perfumed elevator or a TV commercial. I step inside and take a seat by the window. The train takes off. We race through Harlem and fly over the river.
We enter the Bronx. Behind me I hear a little girl ask her mother, “Where are we? What is this place?” The mother answers, “I don’t know, sweetie. Looks like the middle of nowhere.”
Is that all that’s left of us?
Soon the train leaves the city entirely. We run alongside a highway and then plunge into the woods, where here and there you see a house and a neat backyard peeking out from the trees. Any of these houses could be my son’s. My grandchildren could be playing in any of those yards.
Who are we now? Are we still the same people in the forest as we were in East Harlem? Are we still Italian?
For me being Italian means jacks on the corner, Joey Caruso, white lace at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and buying our clothes from the Jewish tailors near Park Avenue. For my son being Italian means a cannoli for the kids, the occasional pasta dinner, and a vague feeling of contempt for establishments like Olive Garden. My grandchildren barely even know that they are Italian. They don’t even call me “Nonna.”
Where did we cease to become real Italians? Did leave our “Italian-ness” on the side of the highway, when our moving van sped out of the city? Did it fall out of our moving boxes as we carried them into our new suburban home? Did we lose it somewhere among the trees?
Part of me believes that we can only be real Italians in East Harlem. Our surroundings shape our identity. Now we are the Italians of Westchester, not the Italians of East Harlem. Something is lost, I think, in that transformation.
We cannot move back—my journey out of the city is irreversible. El Barrio is the barriera that bars our return.
The train arrives at my station. I step out and look over a parking lot filled with cars, and I see my son step out of his forest-green Volkswagen. I tell him that I don’t need any help down the steps—I made it to Harlem and back by myself, for goodness’ sake!—but he helps me anyway. A real gentleman, he is, and he’d better stay that way his whole life, God bless him.
