One of many peculiar features of tenement-dwellers is that few of them know the names of their neighbors, even when on intimate terms. A janitor knows the names of the persons occupying flats in her house because, on receiving rent, she has to give a receipt. This house on Sullivan Street was occupied exclusively by Italians. Though I called at every one of the twenty-four flats no one could tell me anything about the LaCastro family.
On the fifth floor my knock at one of the doors was not answered. Deciding that this must be the flat occupied by Francisco’s parents, I made a second trip through the house looking for some one who could tell me anything about the persons who lived in it. After many questions I finally learned that the silent flat had been occupied by the family of a man who brought home bread each night, “grand bread.”
Nobody could tell me what had become of the man or his wife, only that two of his children had been taken away by their grandmother. Where did this grandmother live? Then recalling that a notification had been sent by Bellevue to Francisco’s parents, I went after the postman. Fortunately, I found him on the block. He gave me an address on Bleecker Street.
I found the grandmother, an ancient Spanish dame, and with the aid of a five-year-old neighbor learned that she was treasuring six, to her unreadable, communications from Bellevue. Five of these were black-bordered, and announced the death of her daughter and four of that daughter’s children. Francisco was the only member of her daughter’s family left.
“But your daughter’s husband, Francisco’s father, what has become of him?” I asked.
When this was translated to her she shrugged her shoulders. When I asked my five-year-old interpreter what the old woman’s shrug meant I received another shrug for my pains. Near my wits’ end I hit on the plan of taking both ancient dame and interpreter to the bake-shop on the street floor of the house.
“Sure, I can speak to ’em,” the young Russian woman behind the counter assured me. “I speak ten languages and about as many gibberishes.”
Through this woman I learned that Francisco’s father had gone to work the same as usual one day about two weeks back, and had never again been heard from. He was a baker’s helper, that everybody knew, but not one of them could tell, or even make a guess, where he worked. Only one of his children had been taken to the hospital before he disappeared. Again that shrug.
The next instant there came a wild jumble of sounds. As ignorant as I was of Spanish I recognized that the old woman who was filling the door of the bake-shop was cursing that other old woman, Francisco’s grandmother. It was the other grandmother, the mother of Francisco’s father.
She called down vengeance from heaven to punish the detractors of her son. He had not left home, deserted his family because a new baby was expected, nor because his eldest boy had been taken to Bellevue and the other children were ailing. Then wringing her hands she bewailed the loss of her son; she had worked, she had brought him to America, and now he had been murdered by some unknown enemy. How was she to find her boy?