Free The Black Madonna by Louisa Ermelino Page A

hospital.
    â€œWhere is he?” she said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œAngelo Sabatini. Where did they take him?”
    â€œIs that you again, lady?”
    â€œWhere did you say he was?”
    The man at the other end sighed. “Wait a minute,” he said and dropped the phone. The woman outside the phone booth banged on the glass door and made faces. Teresa made an obscene gesture with her free hand. “Body was released to Damiano’s Funeral Home,” the man at the other end of the line told her.
    â€œWhere is it?”
    â€œDamiano’s, Burke Avenue in the Bronx. Got it? Satisfied?”
    â€œThank you,” Teresa said. She hung up, put in more money, called the candy store under her house, and asked for Dante. The woman outside the phone booth pushed against the glass door. Teresa held it closed with her foot.
    She lifted her face to get the breeze from the little ceiling fan up in the corner of the booth, closed her eyes, and waited for Dante to come to the phone. By the time he got there, she had to put in another nickel to keep the connection, and then she asked him if he would look out for Nicky. She told him to buy a ham-and-cheese sandwich in Virginia’s on Sullivan Street and one for himself, and to tell Virginia to put it on her bill, and to tell Nicky not to worry, that she would be home early, before dinner. She had to go uptown to see the doctor again, she told Dante. “You tell that to Nicky,” she said.
    She opened the door of the phone booth and stepped on the foot of the woman who had banged on the glass. She pushed past the line of people waiting and she ignored the things they said to her. She walked east on Houston Street and rode the El up to Fordham Road. It was familiar now and she stopped the first person she met on the street and asked how to get to Damiano’s Funeral Home.
    â€œA few blocks down,” he told her, and when she found it, she stood outside across the street and admired the entrance. The name was in stained glass above the double doors: Damiano Funeral Home, it said, established 1895.
    I nside the entrance lobby, a man sat behind a desk off to the right, and across from him was a young woman, her eyes red, a handkerchief in her hand. She kept wiping her nose, twisting the handkerchief around in her fingers.
    Teresa stepped up to the desk. “Excuse me,” she said.
    â€œOne moment,
signora,
” the man said.
    Teresa turned to the woman. “Sorry,” she said to her. “I just want to ask a question.” The woman looked up. Confused, Teresa thought, almost terrified.
    â€œPlease,” the man said. “I’ll be with you in a minute. My daughter’s just lost her husband. We’re . . .”
    Teresa couldn’t believe her good luck. She felt a sudden affection for the Bronx. “You’re Damiano, the undertaker,” she said. “Am I right? And you . . .” she said to the woman, “you’re Celestina, Angelo Sabatini’s wife.”
    The undertaker stood up and came from around the desk. “How can I help you?” he said. “Who are you?”
    â€œMe? I’m Angelo Sabatini’s wife, the real one.”
    â€œThis is ridiculous,” Damiano said. “Get out.”
    But Teresa stood there, secure in her position, empowered, as confident as the devil. She would congratulate herself later. She took out the piece of paper, folded many times, that she had been carrying with her, her marriage certificate. She handed it to Damiano, and with it a wedding photo. She stood next to Angelo in the photo, in the white wedding gown they had bought in a secondhand store on the Lower East Side for fifteen dollars, Angelo in the black suit that was still hanging in the closet on Spring Street.
    Celestina Sabatini stood up. She pulled the picture from her father’s hand. The marriage certificate floated to the floor. Her tears had dried. “What is this? Who are