The Last Lady of Mulberry: A Story of Italian New YorkThomas, Henry Wilton
General
The Last Lady of Mulberry: A Story of Italian New York
Thomas, Henry Wilton
Italian Americans -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction
Bridget treated herself to a flood of tears, and the children kept
her company. All at once Signor Tomato stopped wailing, and startled
her by saying resolutely that they must all leave Mulberry--right
away, that very night. His dear wife need give herself no care as to
their destination. Enough that her loving husband, with an eye on
the trickster Fate, had always kept a refuge in the country--a place
of shelter for his family whereof he had never spoken. It was not
far. They could load their household stuff on the push-cart still at
the door, and be off under cover of the night. In the sweet country
perhaps their fortune would change. After all, it was good to fly from
Mulberry, out to the free meadows, amid trees and flowers, where birds
sang, and one could see the big gold moon hanging over the fields for
hours and hours. Some picture of his fatherland had flashed in his
vision, and Bridget, catching the buoyancy of it, offered a “Glory be!”
for the chain of events that was to lift her out of “Ghinnytown.”
“Arrah,” said she meditatively, “maybe it was an angel, afther all.”
“Ah, yes; who knows?” he said in Neapolitan, and she knew a proverb was
coming: “Chance is the anchor of hope and the tree of abundance.”
Their poverty brought its blessing in the fact that they were able to
crowd all their worldly holdings--not forgetting the bust and Mike
and Pat and Biddy--into a single load of the push-cart. The puzzle
of bestowing the children so that they might be comfortable enough
to sleep during the long journey at hand was a teasing one. But
the Tomatoes were equal to it, though it called out all the genius
for _multum in parvo_ of which experience had made them masters.
What bedding they owned was spread on the bottom of the cart, and
the furniture so stacked as to form a low arch, beneath which the
youngsters crept with shouts of glee. A bed not made up on the floor
had played no part in their happy lives, and this sally abroad in the
darkness and open air seemed a much better thing than huddling in the
cote back of the nankeen sail, where Bridget kept her doves at night.
While the parents moved back and forth, carrying the remaining odds and
ends and finding a place for them on the cart, anxious treble voices
issued from the load:
“Mah, did yer put in the skate?”
“Don’t fergit der duster handle.”
“Where’s der Jack Tar wagon?”
“Say, Biddy’s gone ter sleep.”
At last Domenico locked the door, and with Bridget by his side at the
shafts, began the exodus from Mulberry, first stopping to shake his
fist at the scene of his downfall and observe:
“I’m no dead-a yet, you bet-a!”
“Dead is it?” said Bridget, as she put her strength to the crossbar.
“Sure it’s yersilf’ll live manny a day to wink at the undertaker.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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