1907
The Americanization of the Gibaldi family has begun. It is a difficult challenge for any greenhorn immigrant, although the very young seem to have an easier time of it. Vincenzo—which means the same thing as “James,” more or less—refuses to be called anything other than Vincent. Salvatore becomes Sam, and Giuseppa is now Josephine.
Brooklyn days are far more challenging than she has ever anticipated. At night, however, cloistered in their tiny apartment at 9 Union Street, she tries to direct Vincent’s dreams. Each evening she puts baby Sam to bed and then rocks Vincent to sleep in her arms, whispering of her Sicily.
Josephine has found the American immigrant experience daunting, even frightening at times. The culture shock is immense. She takes sweet comfort in verbally reconstructing Sicily for her children. She transfers to Vincent her world and her perceptions so that many of his first childhood memories are his mother’s very best recollections. She wants him to remember the land of his birth, for she sees how America takes over the spirit. She senses that, with time, they will all completely forget their homeland.
Josephine and Tommaso had grown up in the little village of Licata, near Agrigento, the largest city on the southwestern coast of Sicily. Like most young people in their world, they had children at an age so tender that they hardly knew each other.
Tommaso Gibaldi came from a line of market haulers who brought fresh vegetables and fruits up and down the coast. Little Vincent has almost no memory of Licata, where their tiny house caught the fragrant sea breezes from the Mediterranean. They lived in one of the true garden spots of the earth, but their Eden was ruined by poverty and violent criminals. This is exactly why Tommaso chose to bring Josephine and the children to America, where the opportunity is endless, poverty can be reversed, and laws protect the citizens.
As it still is to most immigrants, America is an immense challenge to Josephine. At first, she probably wakes up in the morning and wonders why she has traded the poverty of Sicily for the poverty of America. She misses the Sicilian coast more than she can express. On many hot Brooklyn nights, longing for her home while Tommaso works a brutal late second shift on the docks as a loader, she must feel claustrophobic. At night in Licata, the ocean sends cool breezes into town; on those gentle winds are fragrant hints of African orange blossoms and Greek olive trees. Licata smells of wild orchids and other subtropical coastal blossoms, of scupazzu, the dwarf palms that grow everywhere, sweating in the hot sun. It is an identifiable combination carried subtly on the breezes of the Sicilian coast, that made Josephine feel heady as if from wine.
She whispers of these things to Vincent, high up on the asphalt roof above the streets of Brooklyn. She re-creates a romantic, perfect Sicily for him. She speaks to him in Sicilian, which contains threads of Arabic and Spanish, even though it sounds close to Italian, which is actually a dialect of Tuscan. Sicilian has no future tense and, like Sicily itself, no future for Josephine and her family. America is all about the future.
Yet Josephine relates to her son that the sands of the Sicilian coast are the richest witnesses in the world, having seen the arrival of the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Carthaginians, Saracens, Normans, Germans, and Spaniards. He is fascinated by the history of Sicily, by the thousands of years of cultural invasions, and thus the true complexity of being Sicilianu. Like all good mothers, each night Josephine must exhaust her already tired body and mind trying to get Vincent calmed down by telling him stories.
Josephine insists on calling Vincent “Jimmy” (in her strong accent it comes out “Jeemie”), for which he rebukes her. He is Vincent Gibaldi, and he doesn’t like the name James. Even though it is a solid American name, he refuses to let anyone call him anything but Vincent. He makes fun of his mother’s thick accent when she tries to say “Jimmy.” She is the only person who will ever call him this.1
The children in the Brooklyn schools are unusually tough and often violent. They have inherited a legacy of brutal behavior from the unfortunate traditions of the Five Points area, mirroring the adults in their lives. Even in the youngest grades, the public schools are alarming examples of survival of the fittest. It becomes the sad duty of all immigrant parents to go about converting their sweet children into survivors.
Josephine tells Vincent old Sicilian stories about strong-willed youngsters who were forced into violent, adult actions in order to avenge the wrongs done to their loved ones. These are the Sicilian versions of Robin Hood and the romanticized American West, imbued with a liminal coming-of-age mystique. They will hopefully better prepare Vincent for the streets of Brooklyn.2
The folk tales are epic, about the outlaw heroes of Sicily, mythologies that have been expanded from generation to generation and grow with each telling. They recount adventures of violence, robbery, and revenge that have acquired a patina of Sicilian mores over many hundreds of years, imparting the wisdom of the peculiar codes of conduct, justice, and honor. For Josephine, they define much of what she’s been taught about men, although she knows that her own husband toils more fearsomely in America than the protagonists of her stories. She wants to make sure, however, that Vincent understands the responsibilities of manhood from her Sicilian perspective. She relies on the entertainment value of her son’s imagination.
Vincent loves every sport; he is always moving, always running. Getting him to sleep is still a never-ending struggle. He denies he is tired until he literally drops, which makes Josephine feel close to dropping as well. She combines her lessons of manliness with the only method she knows to get him to bed: he can be counted on to beg for a story. Josephine will always give in, because it is still their tradition and she feels relieved to have him remain still.
She recounts to Vincent tales of vinnitta. He will be restless with feelings of pride as he hears about resourceful Sicilians carrying out their revenge. Vincent must feel the hot rush of blood to his face, little needle pricks of emotion, spawned by the overwhelming, self-righteous sense of justice. These cathartic rhythms simmer inside him. He is already tightly in control of his emotions, having learned this from the rare hours spent with his father. Life is demanding, and men are serious. From these stories, Josephine is able to instruct him, hopefully giving him a better ability to see what is coming in the schoolyard and on the streets before he becomes a casualty.
She wants their share of the promises of America, but education for the poor comes with a high price. She expands her storytelling to include all of the cautions that reflect her gravest worries for her greenhorn children out on the mean streets. The immigrant experience, especially in New York, is initially a dialogue of survival.
Josephine doesn’t need to worry. Her little Vincent is a splendid survivor. Taking his cues from the oral tradition of his Sicilian heroes, he is fearless. He is naturally prepared. Vincent will know to take the enemy by surprise, for only a stupid cow marches into battle; better to be a scorpion and wait for the adversary in his shoe. He will learn that victory always depends on great preparation, that the better the sketch, the better the finished painting. In a fight, he will learn always to aim for the head—a man with a bleeding, broken nose will almost always cease his attack.
He will be cautioned never to fight angry, which will make him lose his senses. He should always retreat and return another day with a plan. He is admonished to always walk away from trouble smiling, because to avoid blame, one must seem innocent. He is cautioned to remain a good man, un omu di rispettu, and harm nobody who is innocent. This way the people will stay behind him and remain his friends.
He is also warned never to boast, to talk of nothing concerning his affairs to others, not even to his friends. In addition, Josephine’s Sicilian tales certainly teach him the virtue of silenziu, always to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open.
From what the future will prove, Josephine also insists that her children always be polite and display good manners. In their home there is great respect for elders, the ever-present reminders from their Roman Catholic traditions. However, Vincent certainly learns early that family life and street life demand different rules. As in the home of his future boss, Alphonse Capone, who also lives nearby in Brooklyn, his mother’s table is a sacred place, the most important sanctuary. Good sons speak differently at home in front of their parents than they do outside, where dog eats dog. It is a masculine code to conduct personal business away from one’s family. This duplicity seems to be an unwritten law in immigrant homes, like wiping one’s feet before entering. Life is hard in America, too. A man doesn’t complain.
One of the guiding concepts in most Sicilian families is honor. Shame and disgrace result from dishonor, which seems to be worse than death itself. Moreover, they subscribe to an old-world version of honor; to Sicilians, it is the total definition of any human being, the cornerstone of Sicilian culture, even in Brooklyn. A person is either honorable or not. Surrounding Vincent is a world of men who bend the laws to get by in America. Nevertheless, each one is judged in his own community by his sense of honor. As in other cultures, this might be considered hypocrisy, but it is the basis of life in Sicily, where a righteous man can be a killer and still remain honorable, perhaps even well liked.
To his dismay, Tommaso Gibaldi finds that the Black Hand gangsters have become just as entrenched in America. The extortionists and murderers who prey on the vulnerable in Sicily have moved their operations to Brooklyn, where they urbanize their modus operandi. Their activities have become so widespread and notorious that the state’s attorney in Kings County recognizes their milieu and gathers his troops to combat this Sicilian menace. A headline in the Brooklyn Eagle claims THE FIGHT AGAINST THE BLACK HAND IN THE CITY WILL NOW BE UNDERTAKEN IN EARNEST.3
In another world, the Rolfes live in a three-bedroom apartment at 632 West Addison Street, a few blocks from Lake Michigan on Chicago’s growing North Side.4 Both parents adore Louise while suffering a growing estrangement from each other. Bernard is rarely home, his ambition taking him downtown to the Loop as well as to other cities in the Midwest. Consequently, Mabel spends all her time with Louise. When Bernard comes home on his increasingly infrequent visits, he spoils his daughter, trying to make up for his growing absence.
Mabel feels more and more like a prisoner in their apartment. To assuage her growing claustrophobia and loneliness, she eats rich foods and reads movie magazines. Her body has transformed into a matronly heft, with thick ankles and a sagging bosom. She tries to hide it all under tentlike flowered dresses. Bernard, whom she and everyone else call Frank, will look at anyone else but his wife.
Louise is bright and hears everything. Like most children, she understands the nuances of adult emotions, something that her parents probably sense but deny. The growing distance, resentment, and bitterness in their home hang like heavy curtains. Little Louise knows from the time she is two that her parents don’t like each other, but she also knows they put whatever love they do have in her direction. She quickly learns to accept it, use it, and abuse it. As a toddler she becomes a grand manipulator, sensing opportunity and weakness in her parents and utilizing it whenever she can. She is completely adorable, and they must find it hard to say no to her. They are miserable in their tenuous union, but as long as Louise appears happy, they continue with their domestic charade, which will not last long.