East Harlem

This was a submission to NYC Midnight with the parameters:

Genre: Historical Fiction

Location: A Newsstand

Object: A Parking Meter

Sal’s father, Antonio, opened the newsstand at the corner of 103rd Street and Lexington Avenue in 1921. Arriving in New York City in 1901, he and his wife, Theresa, settled in East Harlem, nearby to several cousins who had left Sicily and come to America before them. Antonio found work on the docks during the week, as a bricklayer on weekends and as a janitor sometimes in the evenings. Theresa cared for their five children while earning money by mending and altering clothes for neighborhood families, sometimes working through the night at the kitchen table.

For most of those years, the family of seven lived in a cramped three-room apartment on the floor above the S&S Market, which had its benefits. Theresa became friendly with the Jewish market owners and would bake them traditional Italian desserts. In return, they would give her day old bread or produce that was just past its prime, which went a long way in feeding their brood. Those days of grueling labor and sacrifice eventually paid off.

Sal was nine years old when his father opened the newsstand. His brothers and sisters, 15 and older by then, didn’t have much interest in the newsstand, but Sal loved it. To him it felt like the center of the universe, with strangers and neighbors alike seeking news about the world and perhaps some gossip on the side. After church on Sundays, he would spend the day there, perched on a wooden apple crate, listening to his father’s conversations with customers, watching the people enter and exit the subway station across the street.

Through his teenage years Sal would help his father before or after school, and as he grew older Sal often managed the newsstand by himself. Through the good years, conversations with customers were lively; there were numerous good-natured arguments about where one would find the best cannelloni or how to make the best arancini. As the years turned tough and more people lost their jobs and were scraping by, conversations were more subdued. No one wanted to argue about silly things during these times. Sal found himself in the role of therapist to many of his customers and neighbors, there to provide a caring ear.

As Sal approached his mid-twenties, Theresa began to pressure him about finding someone and settling down. There seemed to be no end to the girls that his mother introduced to him at Church or invited over for Sunday dinner. They were, of course, all local, all Italian, all able to cook and clean and have babies — raised to be proper wives.

Sal didn’t want to tell his mother that he was interested in someone already. He had spied her exiting the subway station one spring afternoon. She was impeccably-dressed as if she worked downtown. She had a slight frame and a graceful gait, he observed as she walked across the street to his newsstand, looking to purchase a LIFE magazine. It turned out she did work downtown, as a secretary in a small publishing house and her name was Dorothy.

Over the next three months, Dorothy would stop at Sal’s newsstand every weekday afternoon on her way home from work. She was unlike any of the girls Sal had grown up with — she was well-read, knowledgeable about many subjects, confident, witty and easy to talk to, with a beautifully musical laugh.

She was born in Oklahoma City, which apparently had just installed the world’s first parking meter she told him (a fact that led to a playful conversation about whether charging for parking was un-American as some claimed). She was an only child, her father was a musician and her mother was a teacher. And, she happened to be one-quarter African American.

Dorothy didn’t look black at all. Not that it mattered to Sal, but he wasn’t naive enough to think it didn’t matter to other people. Many Americans were racist, including Italian Americans, and quite possibly his own family and friends. Racial tensions in the city were high, especially in Harlem, and especially during these years of economic strife.

Dorothy’s openness about her heritage was one of the things he admired most about her, but it was also what prevented him from asking her out. His world was small and he knew he would run into any number of friends if he took Dorothy out for dinner. Not soon after, word would reach his mother and then he would have to invite her home for Sunday dinner, and then…he wasn’t sure. Opinions were strong in his family and simple conversations could turn ugly very quickly.

And so, the weeks went by and the highlight of his day was those daily conversations with Dorothy at the newsstand. As his hesitation continued, she began to visit less frequently, at first missing a day here or there, and then missing days in a row. Sal knew he was losing her because of his fear, but he remained fearful.

Each day, as he stocked the newsstand with newspapers and magazine, he read the shouting headlines about the economic strife across the country, about the dust storms in the Midwest, about the Nazi Party in Germany. Life could be short, unpredictable and difficult.

He thought about what it took for his parents to leave Sicily over 30 years ago and board that steamer to America. To labor daily for over twenty years and then open the newsstand with their hard-earned savings. Faith in oneself, one’s family and in God was powerful.

He thought about Dorothy and her strength, confidence and ability to find her place in a world that might not value her as she deserved to be valued. It’s possible to create your own reality in the world, and he wanted to create his reality with Dorothy.

And so, as she approached his newsstand that afternoon, her smile bright and full, he asked her, “Hello, Dorothy, would you like to go out to dinner with me?”