People Gotta Eat

by Paul Teodo and Tom Myers

Steam drifted lazily, circling the enormous white serving bowl; the story behind each chip and crack handed down with the platter from nonna to nonna. A box and a half of spaghetti, nestled in the family relic, was now covered in red sauce under neck bones. A rusty grater, balanced on its side, waited with sharp claws, to shred a pungent wedge of Asiago.

His mother, the straps of her blue flowered apron tied over her shoulders, looked antsy, as if a word in her mouth was trapped like a caged sparrow waiting to escape.

His father, a powerful eater, face down in his plate, attacked the meal like a man just returned from battle: a piece of crusty bread in one hand, his favorite fork in the other. 

His sister, 11 and more worldly than him, hummed something from the radio to herself.

The boy was just 8, but could tell this was different.

His mother cleared her throat.

He knew it. What was up? What was she going to say?

His father, focused on his plate, tore a piece of bread from the loaf and slopped up some gravy. Ten hours in the factory made him like that. His gastric eruptions could be heard from the bathroom while he changed from his baggy, sweat-stained pants and scrubbed his face and hands with Lava soap, futilely trying to remove the dirt and grime. She cleared her throat again. His sister stopped humming. They were silent, except for his father’s fork extracting strands of meat from a neck bone while crunching bread between his powerful jaws.

“I bought a store.” 

His father stopped mid-scoop, spaghetti and neck bone dripping with sauce dangling only a few inches from his bristly chin. “A what?” Sounding as if the neck bone of the pig slaughtered for the family was now lodged deep in his throat. 

“Rose loaned me the money.”

“Rose?” His father’s voice burst through the food to bounce off the walls. He grabbed his wine glass and swallowed hard. “She cuts ladies’ hair. What’s she know about stores.”

“She’s successful. And she knows how much I want this.”

“You bought a store, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice low but confident.

“We talk about things.”

“If I had told you, you would have yelled and said no. And I didn’t want to waste time arguing. So she loaned me the money.”

“What money?” His father’s voice commanding, slamming his fork down, the cheese grater and the Asiago falling to the floor. Bruno, their ninety-pound alley dog, who’d been lurking in the corner, went for it. The cheese, like a magic trick, vanished; the dog’s snake-like tongue slithering over its jowls.

“Three hundred dollars,” she said, clear as a bell. “I’ll pay her back.”

“Rose loaned you the money?”

“I’ve always wanted to own a store.”

“Whatta you gonna do with a store?” His father was direct, practical. “We’re not those kinda people. We work for those kinda people.”

“I’m gonna sell things,” she said, not giving ground.

“Sell what?” His father shot back in the chair, his meal now forgotten. “Whattaya gonna sell?” He stood, not able to contain himself, face crimson, biting his lip, red sauce spotting his white t-shirt.

“Nice things. Holy cards, statues, rosaries, maybe some candles.”

“For Chrissake! We got nothing. And you go out and…” His mother’s face turned ashen.

His father stopped. He was a yeller. He spoke loud, he yelled louder. It was a yell he’d gotten down good, a staff sergeant in the army. The war was a bitch. When she’d ask him to lower his voice he’d say - when I was scared that voice saved lives. I yelled over the bullets, the bombs, and the crying.

The war is over - she would reply.

He stood silent, his face softening. Lost.

His mother’s sigh was weighted with sadness, filling the room with disappointment. 

His father remained standing, fork still in hand. Once more he began, but it was a yell. He stopped. His breath heavy and wet. Sweat bloomed the gravy stains on his shirt.

Silence.

His mother looked fragile, alone, wounded.

Please God, make it okay, he said to himself.

The little boy’s eyes darted between the two of them.

His father’s love for her burrowed deep into his existence. When she looked like this he knew he’d hurt her. He couldn’t stand to see her in pain. Especially if caused by him.

Hands trembling, she found a white lace handkerchief under her apron and dabbed her eyes. She began slowly, “I have a name for….” Trying to catch her breath, she stumbled over her words. After a labored pause, she whispered, “…the store.”

“What name?” The little boy could tell Daddy was trying not to yell.

“Enzio’s,” she said, her voice now soothing, supportive.

“After Daddy!” his sister blurted.

The little boy’s head spun towards her, wanting to shove a napkin in her mouth.

“Yes, after Daddy,” his mother said, blotting her tears, a sly smile lighting her face. “Enzio’s.”

His father shook his head like a dog with something stuck in its ear. “Enzio’s,” he said, barely audible. “Enzio’s,” he repeated, as if he hadn’t heard it the first time.

“Look,” his mother said. She slid a piece of paper from her apron pocket. Unfolding it with great care, as if it held a precious stone, she presented it to him. His father scowled.

The little boy could see an “E”, then an “N”, then a “Z”… and in bold letters it was all there. Enzio’s.

“Daddy,” his sister squealed, “Momma named her store for you!”

“Her store?” His father’s voice sly with sarcasm.

“Yes. Rose gave her the money. It’s hers.” His sister never shy about adding to any conversation.

“Rose made the sketch for the sign,” she spread the paper on the table. “We’ll hang it over the door.”

The sketch stared up from the table. His father stared back. “Enzio’s” his mother said softly. “I’ve always wanted a store.”

“When are you gonna open?” his father asked, returning to his chair. He pushed Bruno’s inquisitive nose from the table.

“Next week.” 

“Next week?” His father shook his head. “Next week?”

***

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Dozens of people came.”

“How much did you take in?” His voice like a curious inspector.

“Do you like the roast?” 

“It’s great. How much did you take in?” Bruno lingered at his side, large snout surveying the scene.

“It’s a new recipe. Rose gave it to me.”

His father cringed like he’d been jabbed with Grandma’s knitting needle. 

“Did you sell a lot of statues or holy cards or rosaries?”

“Rose says it takes time.”

His father mopped the napkin over his chin and tossed it on the table.

“Rose says…”

“Rose this! Rose that!” He yelled.”Rose dyes womens. What does she know?”

Bruno roared a bark that rustled the curtains. 

“How much time?”

“Time, just time, you know. Have some more roast.”

His sister chimed in. “You should see it, Daddy. The statues are in one spot. Big ones, little ones. The holy cards are so nice. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, all lined up. Even some saints. And Momma has some rosaries too. And the candles, they smell so good.”

His father shook his head slowly, his face contorted, like a man determined not to cry out while being disemboweled. “Honey,” he lowered his voice, struggling to infuse sweetness into his tone, “how much did you sell?”

The little boy wanted to help his mother, who looked as if she was in the pool at the park, in the deep end, just realizing her toes couldn’t touch the bottom. “Rose…” she began.

“Rose!” He slammed his hand on the table, a piece of roast dropping to the floor; Bruno, reverting back to the alley, ripped at the meat, gleefully wolfing down the damage Rose, the hairdresser, had caused.

“Why are you like this?” His mother stood.

“What? Like what?” His father ripped the meat from Bruno’s mouth. 

“Yelling, angry.”

Why was he like this, his father thought. Yelling? Angry? Because he was scared and ashamed. Like a man who had just pleaded guilty to stealing a loaf of bread, loathing himself for not being able to feed his family without breaking the law.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his pain, fear, and sadness no longer hidden by his rage. “I am, so sorry,” his voice diminished, humble.

His mother took his father’s hand, put it to her lips, kissing the rough gnarled knuckles. She took a deep breath. “Nothing,” she said softly. “I sold nothing.”

***

The little boy stood on his toes peering over the weather worn banister framing the second-floor porch of the two-flat. He liked it high up here. It was scary, but he got a good view of the neighborhood. Mr. LaManto’s fig tree grew like a stately statue in the middle of his backyard and when it was cold, he’d cover it with a big blanket. Mrs. DiNardo soaked stinky fish in a bucket on her porch, and Freddy Farraro’s bathtub, filled with dirt, growing tomatoes, rested on the roof of his rickety old garage. Smells lingered, thick and heavy throughout the air: olive oil, garlic, basil, and onions.

He studied his father sitting on a bucket turned upside down below. Stones and pieces of broken glass littered the brown grass scattered in the dry gray dirt. His father looked old, tired. His head down as if a weight pulled his thick neck towards the earth.

Momma’s store wasn’t doing so good. His sister loved being there. Momma made him come. His sister and momma were a team. The women who came in talked and laughed, holding up the cards and examining the statues. But they’d put them back on the shelf and leave with nothing in their hands. He hated it. He lingered behind the counter listening to the endless chatter, ready to make a sale. Momma had trained him with real money, a cigar box under the counter where he was supposed to put the cash. But the box lay empty, day after day.

No boys ever came in, just mothers, sometimes with their little girls, cooing and clucking, admiring a statue, telling a story about a saint, or bowing their heads piously as they fingered a rosary.

He thought of his mitt hung on his bedroom wall stiff from lack of use. As he walked through the park each morning he longed for the dusty diamond. 

The slam of the wooden gate startled him. He stood taller to see who it was. Momma, looking tired, trudged into the barren backyard.

His father looked up. “How was your day?” His voice low, heavy with concern.

“It was good. And yours?” she said, matching his tone.

“Fine. Hot, but fine. I make tape. It pays the bills.” He shrugged. “It’s just tape.”

“It does,” his mother said.

“We’re running three lines and there’s at least two hours overtime whenever I want it. Time and a half. Who can complain?”

“What’s this?” She pointed at the bucket.

“Just thinking.” His father rose gingerly, stretching. 

“About?” 

His father did not reply. He watched a bird picking stop-start at strands of straw, chirping wildly, fluffing its nest in the gutter of Mr. LaManto’s house. He nodded to the bird, speaking slowly, barely audible. “He’s working hard.”

“I thought it would be different.” Her eyes still fixed on the bird.

The little boy strained to keep his balance, his calves aching. 

His father looked at his mother, nodding. “It’s not easy,” taking her hand in his.

“I don’t know what to do,” a catch in her throat. “I feel so bad.”

He pulled her close. She rested her head on his chest.

She looked up at him. “Will we have to close? Bankrupt?”

He lightly held her shoulders studying her as if trying to figure how to say what he was going to say. “People gotta eat.”

“They need to eat?”

“They need to eat. Statues, candles, holy cards. They are…” he paused, “you can’t eat them.”

“What are you talk--?” 

His father placed his crooked finger on her lips. “Aspetta, mi amore, wait,” his voice straining. “You cook the best. Your gravy, peppers, the sausage, meatballs, eggplant, nobody can compare. People need food. You make the best.”

“You’re trying to cheer me up.”

“No. It’s the truth. People want food. Good food. Yours is the best. I will help.”

“With what?” 

“Cooking, the store. I can help. You can teach me.”

“I wanted the store for….”

“We can keep a place for the statues, rosaries, the cards, candles, all of that, a special shelf. But we must sell food.”

“Do you really think…?”

“It’s been four weeks. We’ve sold nothing. The people that come in and look, they talk,” he made a little flapping gesture with his hand. “They feel good, but they don’t buy. They like the store. They like you, but they leave with nothing. With your store they’ll come in and buy your food” He held her face in his hands. “If we don’t do this, we’ll lose the store.”

“How can I do it? We have kids.”

“The kids will be in school. You do the days. I’ll do the nights.”

“You work.”

“I’ll work more.”

“You can’t do that.”

His father stepped back slightly. He held her shoulders in his hands. “I want you to be happy. You want this. You deserve it. We can do it. Together. A team. The kids will help. It’ll be good for us. A family store.”

***

“Here.” His father handed him a big black marker. “This too.” He removed a large piece of red construction paper from a bag that lay on the dining room table. “Write this, salami.”

“I don’t know how to spell it,” the little boy said.

His father looked around like he’d lost something. “Where’s your sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“Serafina!” His father’s voice boomed through the tiny flat.”Serafina!” Again, louder. His sister, still in pink PJ’s, stumbled out of her bedroom. “Here.” His father pointed to the table covered with red paper. “Sit. You’re a good speller. Help your brother.”

“I’m tired.”

“Spell salami,” his father ordered.

“Why?”

“We’re making signs to hang, in the building, for the store. All over.”

She sat, scanned the table, then rubbed her sleepy eyes. “We need more colors.”

“What?” her father yelled, gulping coffee like it was his first cup after Lent.

“You can’t make signs with just one color. It’s prettier if you have more.”

“Prettier!” His father’s voice rose. “We don’t need…,” he paused, inhaling. “Fine, get more,” pointing in the air, befuddled, like a man who hoped multicolored paper would magically appear.

She smiled, and with new found enthusiasm, hopped from the table, swung open the lower door of the china cabinet, and yanked out a box overflowing with paper. “There, look, now that’ll be better,” she said, holding up a handful of green, yellow, blue, and orange construction paper.

“Salami,” his father said. He sat his daughter down and pointed to the paper, his son poised ready to go to work. “Spell it.”

After an hour, a staggering array of colored construction paper, printed with a variety of lopsided advertisements for Italian staples, covered the table. Salami, Gabagool, Mortadella, Soppressata, Gravy, Sausage, Meatballs, Subs, Melanzane.

“It’s not right.” She said, chastising her father.

“Whataya mean?” He snorted.

“That word.”

“Which one?”

“Gabagool. That’s not what Momma calls it.”

“That’s how my people say it.”

And printed on three pieces of paper taped together, green, white, and red was: “Grand Opening. Come Buy at Enzio’s and Wife Italian Foods. It’s THE BEST!”

“Let’s go,” he said, grabbing a roll of tape he’d pilfered from work. “Now we hang, in the whole neighborhood.”

***

“Big day.” His father hugged his mother. They stood arm in arm in the tiny store. His mother wore her blue flowered apron, his father’s, blood-spattered and white, draped across his belly. 

“Will anyone come?” she asked, head down, smoothing her apron.

“They’ll come,” his father said as if it were a threat. “You cook good. You’ll see.”

The tiny bell over the door jingled. A woman with two small children trailing pushed through. She stopped. Closing her eyes, she inhaled. “My god,” she said clutching her chest, “what’s that smell?”

“What do you want to buy?” his father snarled like she was a buck private.

The woman backed away, protecting her children, as if they were about to be assaulted by a man in a bloody white apron.

“Let me,” his mother said. She turned to the woman. “Your children are beautiful. I love that little dress. You must be talking about the sausage and peppers. My mother’s recipe.”

The woman’s face softened. “I’ll take some, and do you have any frittatas?”

“Yes, we do.” His mother’s happy voice lifted into the air.

The bell above the door jingled again, and again, and again. It jingled all day. The odd sight of a steady stream of awkward, not-knowing-what-to-expect customers, carrying red, green, and orange, hand printed signs continued throughout the day. 

“What’s a Gabagool?” a short bald man said, holding a sign. 

“It’s good, you’ll like it,” his father barked. 

“Gimme two pounds of Mor tee dalia,” another said, raising the sign he held in his hand, his lips contorted as if the dentist had just finished digging around in his mouth.

“I teach you right word,” his father responded like a professorial maestro standing before his obedient symphony, “Mortadella” the word rolled off his tongue like lava down Vesuvius.

And “I’ll take a dozen meatballs to go,” one guy with a huge mustache yelled over the throng. 

“A dozen balls, for the mustachio!” His father’s voice rose above the crowd.

One after the next, shoulder to shoulder, the store was packed from open till close. Yelling, laughing, and buying. Some even trying to outbid the other on a container of gravy or a tray of lasagna. The place was a madhouse. 

The day ended with all the salami, gabagool, sausage, peppers, gravy and meatballs gone. Everything they made was gone. Serafina stood in the center of the store, hands on her hips, announcing, ”Like a pack of wild dogs, like Uncle Frank and the cousins were here.”

***

And it was like that for five years. Everything she made flew off the shelves or out of the cooler. Enzio’s and Wife Italian Foods was the talk of the neighborhood. 

Rose was paid off a week after the Grand Opening and Momma never looked so happy.

“People need to eat.” His father would say as he struggled to make small talk with each customer that entered the store.

And it was good for the family.

The little boy, however, rarely saw his father, who still worked at the tape factory 7 in the morning ‘til 4, Monday through Friday. At 4, he’d walk from the factory to the store. On Saturdays and Sundays the whole family worked there. The little boy’s mitt, still hanging on the wall, grew stiffer with disuse. 

He, his sister, and his mother would walk through the park to the store at 6 every morning to open. At 5 they all ate supper in the back; during the meal, his mother and father took turns waiting on customers. At 6:30, the little boy, his sister, and his mother would walk home through the park to their second-floor flat. 

His father closed the store at 10, walked home, and collapsed in bed.

Five years, every day.

***

The school bell rang at 3. The little boy was glad to get away from Sister Lilliana, the worst nun ever. He began his daily trek to the store. Momma was there and Serafina would be there soon. His job every day was to throw the garbage. It was heavy but he could lift it. He’d get the big key and unlock the metal gate that made him feel like he was in jail, then drag the big bags into the alley. It smelled bad, but it was his job.

This time, as he approached the store, it was different, he could tell. He walked in. The bell did not jingle. No greeting, no smile. No Momma. He couldn’t breathe. He looked around . He tiptoed towards the back. One foot, then the other. Hands trembling. His stomach felt like he’d been punched.

He saw her feet first. Then her legs. Then her blue flowered apron. She was on the floor, arms crossed as if she was praying. Her lip bleeding, her eye swollen. He kneeled next to her. He tried not to scream. His insides exploding, he crossed himself. He prayed.

They’d been robbed. Momma was taken to the hospital. The doctors asked her questions. She said she was fine. She came home, moving slowly. Daddy and Momma talked in the bedroom. Their voices muffled, then rising, then lower.

Two days later, Daddy announced the store would close. His eyes were wild, but filled with tears. He was short and stern. “We will close. No arguments. Close.”

***

The little boy stood in the tiny store, surrounded by the customers who had come and bought the food Momma had made the last five years. He was barely able to see in the jam-packed space. His father, in his blood-stained apron holding a bottle of wine, his mother in her blue flowered apron, her eye still bruised and swollen. 

His father’s voice boomed, as if yelling at his friends would help keep him from crying, “Thank you for making this store a good store.” His father wiped his eyes. “Thank you so very much. And to my wife, she made this happen. I was afraid.” Now his voice cracked. “She made this happen. She is a good woman. A great woman. And I am a lucky man.” He shook his head slowly, prompting the little boy to remember standing on the porch way up high watching Momma and Daddy and the little bird, in the gutter, working so hard on its nest. His father’s voice trailed off. “So much work,” he said, “she did everything.”

The customers cheered. “Bravo! Bravo!”

A man with a red beard raised the little boy up so he could see. The little boy’s father turned to his mother. He took her in his arms. He smiled and kissed her as gently as the little boy had ever seen.

His father raised a glass. “People gotta eat.” He boomed in the tiny store. “They gotta eat.”

A joyful but somber mood filled the air. The store began to empty.

“Wait!” He heard his mother say. “Wait.”

She rushed to the front of the store, “Now you can leave.”

And as the crowd began to disperse, they passed his mother standing in the doorway of Enzio’s and Wife Italian Foods, in her blue flowered apron, handing everyone, as they filed out, a holy card, a statue, and a rosary.