Two other vivid memories of 609 Metropolitan Avenue stand out. The first is that directly across the street, the "man with one leg" sat outside a store every day and sold Italian ices in paper cups. For two cents I could get my favorite - chocolate!
The other was the day President Harry S. Truman drove down Metropolitan Avenue in an open car, waving all the way. We lined the street early, shouting to people that passed by that a President was coming to our neighborhood! It meant a lot to the grownups.
When I was five, we moved into the downstairs apartment in Grandma Normandia's house at 37 Conselyea Street between Lorimer Street and Union Ave. It had been converted into a two-family house, complete with scary attic, coal cellar, and a rear house that was rented out to an ancient woman who spoke no English, whom we referred to as "The Old Lady."
Grandpa's basement was full of intrigue. You entered from cellar doors on the ground to discover Grandpa's wooden wine press and his forbidden workshop. And that locked room with chicken wire walls. What was that all about? Why was it locked? Everyone knew the skeleton key was on top of the door jam. [Note: I just found out he made whiskey there during Prohibition!! No wonder it was locked!]
But the best part of 37 Conselyea Street was that Grandma lived upstairs from us and she was always there. And she loved me.
Grandma was a tiny Italian woman, maybe 4'9" although on her legal papers she said she was five feet tall (no way). She was totally fascinating to me. She came to this country in early 1898. She got married at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church on April 17th of that year and had my father in 1899.
Grandma was a healer who did "the eyes," called "mal'occhio" in Italian, a language I am sorry to say I resisted learning. Mal occhio literally means the bad eye, also called the Evil Eye. Some call it "jettatura." The belief behind it is that a person can harm you, your children, your animals, or your fruit trees, by either looking at you or them with envy and/or by praising them too much. Mom used to say someone "overlooked the baby," implying that a person's gaze on a coveted person, usually a child, had lasted too long. The resulting sickness could be healed by women like my Grandmother who learned the secret healing ritual of "the eyes."
Many neighborhood women brought Grandma Normandy articles of clothing from their sick children and begged her to help them. Grandma would diagnose the illness and then perform a cure which looked to me like a secret prayer ritual with hand gestures that she did over the child's clothing. Finally she would start yawning, a signal that she was done. Then she would say, "Go home, your baby is better," and most of the time, it was so.
At
times she suggested an amulet or charm for the child to wear to ward off
the power of the Evil Eye in the future. My sister had to wear a red coral
horn for protection when she was little. When she had her first son, Peter,
she pinned the same coral horn to his diaper. I don't think she really
believed in the old superstition by then, but she said she did it "just
in case." Some wore a manofico, a charm of a closed hand with the thumb
tucked under the index finger but sticking out between the index finger
and the middle finger. I noticed in her later years, my Mom often held
her hands this way. I thought it was a tension habit but now I wonder if
she was still warding off the Evil Eye.
Mom explained Grandma's odd behavior to me by saying Grandma
was "like a practical nurse." I wonder if it was anything like the Reiki
healing I do now.
