The Black Madonna by Louisa Ermelino Read Free Book Online

the street and stood there looking up.
    No one on Spring Street had ever jumped out a window. Cesare Garibaldi’s wife had fallen out shaking her dust mop, and a super had gone down hooking up a new clothesline. Charlie Esposito threatened to jump when his wife died, but that had just been talk.
    Salvatore and Jumbo ran to the front window, dragging Nicky along between them. They had the best seats in the house. Matty J was out the window on the fifth floor of the building directly across from them. Matty J’s mother screamed as loudly as Matty J.
    Matty J’s father pulled on his arm. Matty J pulled back and tilted farther out the window and his shoe fell off and hit Margie from the second floor on her forehead as she was looking up. The shoe was a loafer, soft as butter. Only this morning, his mother had shined it with a soft cloth. Matty J was shaking his fist at the sky and cursing God.
    â€œHe lost at the track,” Luisa Carelli told Annamaria Petrino. They were standing downstairs looking up. “Last week it was a card game.” She blew her nose and put the handkerchief in the front pocket of her apron.
    Annamaria Petrino made a face. “His wife spoils him,” she said. “He’s getting worse. He never tried to jump before. Sometimes he bangs his head against the door downstairs but he never tried to jump.”
    â€œHe always goes up the roof when he loses.”
    â€œYeah, but only to be nearer to God, to curse Him from a closer distance.”
    I nside, the boys elbowed each other out of the window. “Matty J’s crazy,” Salvatore said.
    â€œCrazy like a fox,” Jumbo answered. “He’s forty-five years old and he’s never had a job. That’s my kind of crazy.”
    â€œHere come the cops,” Nicky said. “What are they gonna do?”
    â€œTalk him in,” Salvatore said.
    â€œI didn’t know cops did things like that.”
    â€œYeah, they’re regular good Samaritans when they’re not breaking heads.”
    â€œShh,” Nicky said. “I want to hear what’s going on.”
    Nicky listened to the policemen cajole Matty J. There were two of them. They were tall and blond. He imagined their nameplates said Donovan and Murphy. They talked to Matty J until he stopped screaming and then they took his arm and pulled him inside.
    Matty J’s mother was kissing the policeman’s hand, the one that held Matty J’s arm. “You saved my son,” she said. “You brought him back from the edge of hell, the jaws of death.” She covered the policeman’s hands with her own. Her husband wiped the tears from her eyes with his handkerchief.
    â€œWe have to take him to Bellevue,” the cop said, “for observation.”
    Matty J’s mother was a small woman. She looked up at the big, blond policeman. “You crazy?” she screamed, and she bit him. She dug her teeth into the hand she had been caressing. Her husband held her shoulders. The policeman was shouting. His partner was pulling him out the door. Matty J’s mother followed them down the stairs and into the street. “You leave my son where he is. You don’t touch my son. Murderers. Killers.” The policemen worked their way through the crowd and got into their car. Everyone watched them drive away. “The nerve . . .” Matty J’s mother said when the police car turned the corner. Everyone surrounded her in sympathy.
    Margie from the second floor gave her Matty J’s shoe. An hour later, Matty J was outside the building with the racing form. He was clean-shaven, his loafers polished to a dull sheen.
    The three boys hung out the window until the street was back to normal. Salvatore looked at Nicky and Jumbo. “You know what those cops are saying?”
    â€œDumb guineas,” Jumbo said.
    â€œCrazy wops,” Nicky answered.
    â€œSick dagos.”
    â€œDopey greasers.”
    They hit and