Free The King of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli Page A

pocket. The boy could eat it later.
    I walked back along the balcony. A hand caught my shoulder, and a woman yanked on the coat. I pulled away and ran. When I snuck a glance back at her, she was watching me.
    The boy in the bathroom was waiting. He'd make a dash for it soon. Then I'd be alone again. And someone would write another O on my back. And I'd never make it onto a boat. Never get home to Mamma.
    I needed something to catch that woman's attention so I could get to the bathroom. Anything.
    I took the meat out of the coat pocket and tapped on the shoulder of a man. He looked at me. I pointed at the woman and handed him the meat. The man frowned. He stood up and walked toward her. I forced my way past therest of the men and ran down the stairs. I tapped on the bathroom door.
    The door opened. The boy snatched the coat and shut the door in my face.
    Panicked, I dashed down a hall and opened a door.
    Men stood with their shirts in their hands, waiting to be inspected. A young girl carried a coffee cup to a doctor. She left through a side door.
    A few of the other doctors had cups on the tables near them.
    I picked up two empty cups. One in each hand, I walked out the door the girl had used.
    I was in a kitchen.
    A woman tilted her head at me and said something.
    I forced a smile and put the cups on the counter. Then I walked through the kitchen and out another door and, sure enough, there were stairs. I went down and out onto the street.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Manhattan
    I broke out running. I wove in and out of the people, checking over my shoulder. No one had followed me.
    Ellis Island was easy to figure out. Ships docked on one side to drop off people. Smaller boats docked on the other to take them away. Immigrants stood in little groups and wrinkled their brows, carefully counting American money. Some were met by the joyous shouts of relatives. Others milled around in the early evening heat with paper pinned to their shirts. They looked hopefully at everyone who passed. A tall man went from person to person, reading their names off those papers. He gathered some together. One man said, “Ah, so you're my
padrone
.” After that, anytime I saw someone reading name tags, I hurried the other way.
    Women in white uniforms with red crosses on the sleeve gave out doughnuts and apples. They didn't offer me any, so I took two doughnuts off a pile. They weren't nearly so good as
zeppole
back home, but okay. People ate sandwiches the women had given them, but there weren't any left. When I finished the doughnuts, I took an apple. Other women not in uniform but all wearing the same little hats helped people find lost baggage or relatives. America was full of women who wanted to help strangers.
    Many spoke languages I understood more or less— Italian dialects, I heard a woman call them. I followed her around for a while, until I heard her explain she was sent by a society to help protect Italian immigrants. I would have asked her what we needed protection against, but I didn't want her to notice me.
    A man clutched a scrap of paper and showed it to another man in uniform, who pointed. “That's the boat to Mulberry Street.”
    Mulberry Street. Napoletani. Maybe Tonino, Mamma's friend. I'd try to get on a ship back to Napoli first, but if I needed help, I'd look for Tonino.
    At the boat I walked past the ticket-taker, ready to show the documents in my waistband. But he didn't ask for anything. In Italy, I'd have gotten nabbed by the collar. Here, I was almost invisible. Good. That would make it easy to stow away on a ship back to Napoli when I reached the Manhattan docks.
    The ferry left Ellis Island. Seagulls flew alongside. The evening sun seemed to sink into their white feathers and get lost entirely, turning them into flying balls of light. It was the strangest thing, but those seagulls made me happy.
    I remembered my last full day in Napoli—how a seagull had watched what the
scugnizzi
were doing, how it had probably been waiting