The Black Madonna Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sullivan. Then he made his way to the back to call Salvatore.
    Salvatore’s bedroom window was open. Nicky could see him in front of the mirror over his dresser knotting the blue tie he wore to school. His hair was wet and slicked back. Magdalena was shouting for him to hurry. Her voice carried across the alley.
    Nicky cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled Salvatore’s name over the din of voices and sounds from the open windows. Salvatore turned when he heard him and waved.
    â€œCome over,” Nicky said.
    Salvatore leaned out the window and looked up. “I’m late, Nicky. What is it?”
    â€œI said, come over. Don’t go to school. My mother’s gone. See if you can find Jumbo.”
    â€œJumbo? That’s easy. He’s in Sam and Al’s stealing candy. He’s in there every morning, pays for three Hersheys and takes six.”
    â€œSo get him and come over.”
    â€œI don’t know, Nicky. I got caught cutting school last week.”
    â€œC’mon, Sally. I can’t take it in here much longer. Besides, the old lady’s gone for the whole day.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œShe told me she was going uptown, to see that doctor about my legs.”
    Magdalena shouted, louder than before. “I gotta go,” Salvatore said. “Before she gets serious.”
    â€œYou coming over?”
    â€œOkay, okay.”
    Nicky went to the front window to wait. He pulled the shade up as high as it would go. He put a pillow under his elbows and leaned far over the windowsill and looked out on to the street. He didn’t care who saw him with his tongue hanging out.
    O n the corner of Prince and Sullivan, Salvatore caught up with Jumbo and his five sisters. Before they turned down the street toward the subway, Jumbo’s sisters petted and kissed him goodbye until he cried. When they left, Salvatore had to give him a handkerchief to wipe off all the lipstick. “Christ, Jumbo, I’d whack them if I was you.” Jumbo didn’t answer. He took the wrapper off a Mounds bar. “I thought you ate Hersheys in the morning.”
    Jumbo shrugged. “I mix it up.”
    â€œWe’re cutting school,” Salvatore said. “We’re going over Nicky’s.”
    Jumbo nodded. His mouth was full of coconut. He was looking over Salvatore’s shoulder. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Fat Augustina . . .”
    Salvatore turned and saw the seventh-grade nun coming down Sullivan Street. Her arms were folded across her chest, her hands hidden in the sleeves of her habit. A silver crucifix swung at the end of the oversized black rosary she wore wrapped around her waist.
    Sister Augustina was built like the truck that delivered coal, and they called her Il Duce behind her back. Jumbo said she was bald underneath the veil and Nicky had drawn cartoons of her naked on the wall in the boys’ bathroom.
    She had always been a “boys’ nun,” and after Father Tom mixed the classes, she was never really happy again. She sat the boys and the girls on opposite sides of the room in an effort to recapture the past. Some years she put the boys in front and the girls in back. The girls annoyed her. They made her wince. They fawned and whined and went home to cry to their mothers.
    Salvatore pulled Jumbo into LaCapria’s building and they ditched their books under the stairs and doubled back through the alleys and up the fire escape ladder of Nicky’s building. Jumbo stopped in front of Vicky Palermo’s window on the second floor to catch his breath. She had nailed it shut after Nicky’s fall. She said she didn’t want any more surprises.
    Jumbo was breathing hard. He grabbed Salvatore’s arm and held him back. “Did she see us?” Jumbo said. A drop of sweat hung at the end of his nose, another at his chin.
    â€œNo point worrying about it now,” Salvatore told him. He kept climbing. He was