Chapter 10 #2
He would turn thirteen at the end of the month, and then he’d be a teenager.
A teenager who was going through puberty, and who wanted to experience what it would feel like to have sex with a girl.
The first time he woke up to find his thighs coated with semen, he realized he didn’t have any control over his body.
Kenny was certain his mother would see the stains on the sheet, so he’d begun placing a towel between his thighs when going to bed, hoping it would absorb some of the nocturnal emission.
He’d found it odd that he could control his body during the day, but it was different at night.
When he woke to find he had an erection, at first he thought it was because he had to empty his bladder, but later discovered it wouldn’t go down until he masturbated.
Thankfully his mother had already left the house to go work when he was able to stand in the tub and jerk his dick until he ejaculated.
The pleasure was so exhilarating that he was left feeling slightly lightheaded.
Then he showered, got dressed, ate his breakfast, brushed his teeth, and left the apartment to meet Ray and Frankie to walk to school together.
That was their time to talk about things they wouldn’t have been able to say in the company of others. And it was always about sex.
Kenny picked up a toothpick and speared a green olive and a cube of cheese.
He’d never eaten olives and wanted to know if he would like them.
He popped them into his mouth, slowly chewing the salty olive and hard cheese that was so different from the sharp cheddar cheese his mother used to make baked macaroni and cheese.
“Do you like it?” Frankie asked, as he picked up a small piece of marinated artichoke.
“I do. This is my first time eating olives.”
Frankie smiled. “Hang out with me and my family, and after a while you’ll become an unofficial Italian.”
“What do you call this?” Kenny questioned, pointing to the plate with some food that was unfamiliar to him.
“Antipasto salad. We usually serve it before the main meal. It’s made with chunks of Italian cold cuts, provolone cheese, green olives, pickled giardiniera, which are vegetables and pepperoncini.”
“It’s delicious,” Kenny said, filling a small plate.
“I agree,” Ray said, after he’d swallowed a mouthful of the salad. “What else are we eating for dinner?”
Frankie smiled. “Of course, there’s going to be pasta with gravy and meatballs.”
A slight frown appeared between Kenny’s eyes. “You put gravy on pasta? Why not tomato sauce?”
Frankie’s smile grew wider. “Italians call sauce gravy. Nonna starts making her sauce on Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday, she has enough for dinner and leftovers for the rest of the week.”
“You have pasta every night?” Kenny had asked Frankie yet another question.
“Yes. It’s like a side dish, like rice or potatoes.”
“Your grandmother is like mine,” Ray said.
“She does most of the cooking for my family, because my mother works. I love her rice and beans, and my favorite is pernil, which is Puerto Rican roast pork shoulder. But the best part is the crispy skin we call chicharrón. Whenever she makes it, the whole apartment smells like pork for days.”
“When are you going to invite us to your house?” Frankie asked, laughing.
“I’ll have to ask Mami and Papi if I can invite my friends over during the summer. She has two weeks’ vacation, and she always takes one week in the summer and the other in December.”
“Kenny doesn’t have to ask his mom, because whenever we come over to study, she always feeds us,” Frankie said. “Your mother makes the best fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread I’ve ever had.”
Kenny nodded, smiling. Justine Russell told him she didn’t want his friends to go back and tell their parents that she wasn’t hospitable enough to feed their children after they had spent hours in her home.
He’d always told her in advance that they were coming over, so she would cook enough for everyone.
“Don’t forget her peach cobbler and sweet potato pies,” Ray added.
“You’re right, Ray,” Frankie said. “You guys will get to taste my Nonna’s cooking, and the only one left is Ray’s grandmother’s.”
“Abuela loves to cook, so I’m sure she wouldn’t mind having two more kids around the table.”
Kenny stared at Ray. “Are you certain? After all, your folks have six kids.”
“Two more is not a big deal. Frankie’s grandmother makes a big pot of sauce, and my abuela makes rice in a large caldero that will last for days. Rice, beans, plantains, and some meat is all you need to feel full.”
Kenny pointed to Ray. “Your house is next.” He turned to look at Frankie. “I meant to ask you if your grandfather is still alive.”
Frankie drained his glass of lemonade. “No. The mean, old sonofabitch died seven years ago. No one, and I repeat, no one cried at his funeral. Not even Nonna. My mother refused to come here when he was alive. She allowed my father to bring us for family gatherings because she wanted her children to know the other side of their family.”
Ray slowly blinked. “He was that bad?”
“May God forgive me, but I hated him,” Frankie said, as he made the sign of the cross over his chest. “He was known as Sal the Serpente, because he was like a snake who would strike without warning. I don’t know why he was so mean, especially to his four daughters.
Poppa told me his father changed when his oldest daughter died from diphtheria.
Then he began to beat the others because he claimed he didn’t want them to grow up to become puttane or whores.
What he did was drive them away. One joined a convent to become a nun; another got hooked on drugs and eventually overdosed.
The police found her decomposing body in an abandoned building in West Harlem. ”
Kenny gasped. “Oh, how horrible!”
“Her death really hit Nonno hard, and my father said he wouldn’t let anyone say her name in his presence.
The youngest girl met a boy on Mulberry Street during the Feast of San Gennaro, and when my grandfather discovered they were meeting in secret, he threatened the boy.
He didn’t know the boy was the nephew and godson of an underboss in the Lucchese family. ”
Kenny hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath when listening to Frankie talk about his family until he felt tightness in his chest, which forced him to exhale. “What happened?” he asked, breathlessly.
Frankie let out an audible sigh. “I’ve only heard people whisper that Nonno had been set up, and whoever killed him wanted it to look like a robbery. His body was found along the East River Waterfront, not far from the Fulton Fish Market. He’d been stabbed in the throat and heart.”
Kenny felt a chill race over his body. His mother told him that his father had been killed in an attempted robbery.
Former Army Private Kenneth Russell was left to die along a deserted street not far from the Bowery, where he worked in a beer factory.
He’d lost his life for less than seven dollars in his pocket.
“Was there any evidence it had been a robbery?”
Nodding, Frankie said, “His watch, wallet, and a gold St. Christopher medal he always wore around his neck were missing.”
Ray leaned forward. “What do you think happened, Frankie?”
“I don’t know, Ray. I suppose, like everyone else I believe, he’d messed with the wrong person.”
“What happened to his daughter?” Kenny asked. “Did she end up with her boyfriend?”
“No. She met some Greek kid from Astoria, married him, and went to work in her husband’s family diner.”
“It sounds like mob justice to me,” Ray said under his breath.
“I can’t say if it was or wasn’t,” Frankie countered. “I just know that if he had still been alive, my mother would not have stepped foot here.” He paused. “It was different with her parents, because when Poppa began dating their daughter, they welcomed him like a son.”
Kenny stared out the window facing the rear of the brownstone. There was a picnic table, benches, and several more beach-type webbed chairs positioned in a corner. A small space was set aside for a garden with green stakes for growing tomatoes and peppers.
I wonder if they would have been so welcoming if her boyfriend had been Black? There was no doubt Frankie’s Irish grandparents would have been just as threatening as his Italian grandfather had been. That’s why I plan to stick with my own kind.
Although he didn’t want to think about race, Kenny realized he’d been unable to ignore it completely, because his mother always talked about what Black people had to go through in the United States to grasp a tiny piece of the so-called American dream.
Earlier that year, heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay had announced that he was changing his name to Muhammad Ali after converting to Islam.
Then Malcolm X, the spokesman for the Nation of Islam who’d been suspended from the organization, announced he was forming a Black nationalist party.
Kenny recalled his mother crying after hearing that an all-White jury in Jackson, Mississippi, trying Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, was unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial.
All of the ongoing talk about Kennedy’s assassination, the growing anti-segregation demonstrations, and the recent news of twelve young men publicly burning their draft cards as an act of resistance to the Vietnam War, made it difficult for Kenny to focus on his schoolwork.
Newspapers, magazines, and televised news constantly bombarded everyone with nothing but bad news.
He was just a kid who shouldn’t have to worry about wars, demonstrations, and civil unrest.
He wanted to go to school and hang out with his friends in Central Park. It was there they could be themselves as blood brothers who liked and wanted the same things. They all had professed to wanting to go to college, fall in love, marry, and have families of their own.
Kenny had decided he wanted to become a social worker, because he’d witnessed the ones who’d given his mother the assistance that she needed to raise him after losing her husband.
Ray talked constantly about going to medical school to become a doctor. Not only would he become the first one in his family to graduate college, but also the first Dr. Torres.
And it was obvious that Frankie would become an accountant, because he was a math genius.
Kenny’s two friends had discussed taking the qualifying test to get into the Bronx High School of Science, while he wasn’t certain which high school he would apply to.
However, he had two more years in which to make that decision.
And when he, Frankie, and Ray had made their blood oath to become brothers, they had also agreed to become friends for life.
They’d eaten most of the antipasto salad when they were summoned to come into the dining room for the dinner meal.