Free The Black Madonna by Louisa Ermelino

pocketbook that swung from her arm. “Why now?” she said. “What took him so long?”
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” Vicky Palermo said. “He’s coming, isn’t he?”
    â€œWell, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
    â€œIt takes a long time to find a man at sea,” Teresa said. She kept her gaze level as though no one of importance sat below her. “He’s halfway around the world. It takes a long time.”
    Magdalena put a hand on Teresa’s shoulder. “You have a good man,” she told her. “He’s always taken care of you and Nicky.”
    Antoinette opened her pocketbook, took out her handkerchief, and blew her nose again. Then she stood up. “I’m going in,” she said. “It’s getting too windy down here.” She pushed past the women. “Excuse me,” she said, climbing over them. She stepped on the hem of Teresa’s dress.
    â€œGoing to clean your house?” Teresa called after her, but Antoinette kept going.
    Teresa started talking again about how Nicky’s father was coming back and about all the places he would take them and all the presents he would bring. But before anyone could answer, she stood up and said good night.
    When the door had shut behind her, Mary Ziganetti shook her head. “This I want to see,” she said.
    Magdalena turned to her. “If she says he’s coming, why shouldn’t he come? Why would she lie?”
    â€œAh, Magdalena,” Annamaria Petrino said. “You’re still a girl. You don’t know anything about life.”
    â€œSo you say,” Magdalena answered. She stood up when she said this. Vicky Palermo laughed and tugged at the hem of her dress to get her to sit down again but Magdalena caught her dress and held it against her legs. She walked down the steps, careful not to step on fingers and toes.
    â€œAnd you, of all people to stick up for her. There’s no love lost between you two, believe me,” Mary Ziganetti said to Magdalena’s back. “She thought that boy was hers before you came. Who knows what she had in her mind or what went on?”
    Magdalena turned and narrowed her eyes at them. She raised her arm and made a screwing motion into the air with her hand before she went on down the street.
    â€œEh,” Annamaria Petrino said. “In Sicily, they don’t leave a man and a woman in the same room alone. They’re no fools.”
    â€œWhat can you do?” Mary Ziganetti said when Magdalena had gone. “Naive, that’s what she is.”
    â€œThat’s not what I hear,” Annamaria Petrino whispered.
    â€œYou’re terrible,” Mary Ziganetti said. “Filthy-minded. Now tell me, what do you hear about her?” And Vicky Palermo moved down a step, closer to Mary Ziganetti.
    T he next morning Teresa went to the phone booth in the luncheonette on Varick Street and called the hospital in the Bronx.
    â€œDeceased,” the man at the other end of the line said.
    â€œHe’s dead?”
    â€œDead.”
    â€œNo,” Teresa told him. “It can’t be. I just saw him. I was talking to him yesterday.”
    â€œWell, you ain’t gonna talk to him today.”
    â€œCheck again. Angelo . . . Angelo Sabatini . . . S-A-B-A-T-I-N-I.”
    â€œLady, he’s dead . . . this morning . . . heart attack.”
    â€œHow could you tell me this?”
    â€œListen, lady, you called me. I didn’t call you.”
    Teresa leaned against the wall of the phone booth. She clenched her teeth. “That sonofabitch,” she said. “Now he had to go and die? He couldn’t wait a few weeks?” She slammed down the receiver and slid into the seat in the corner of the phone booth. A woman outside knocked on the glass door and pointed to the watch on her arm. Teresa turned her back to her and put another coin in the telephone and called back the