| Chapter 3: | Stores, Houses |
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my block looked down on these facilities.
My tenement was infested with pests. Grandma tried to keep her apartment clean but pests found their way there. Mice and roaches were a problem. One of the most terrifying moments of my childhood was the morning I woke up to find bedbugs crawling all over my body. I screamed for grandma. She attacked the bloodsuckers that morning and I never again shared my bed with these insects. There were hushed rumors that rats lived in the darkness of the cellar but I never saw them.
The largest store on One Hundred and Seventh Street was a slaughterhouse near First Avenue. Grandma bought her freshly killed chickens there but never entered the store. She would shout her order to the butcher from the door of the establishment and he would hand her the newspaper-covered chicken at the door and collect his money.
St. Benedict was housed in a small store near our tenement. I asked grandma why he was not taken into St. Ann’s Church but was held outside the church while the mass was being said for him on his feast day. “Wasn’t he a Catholic?” I asked her. She told me that years ago during his feast day he was taken into the church for mass but the priests refused to allow him to leave. The San Fratellesi had another statue of the saint built for them in Italy and never again allowed this statue to enter the church. After my conversation with grandma, she took me to St. Ann’s and sure enough there was the original statue of St. Benedict.
The people of San Fratello worship other saints, including Alfio, Filadelfio, and Cirino, but only one of their saints, Benedict, came