Looks Like We've Never Met
"Whoa, a teddy bear! It looks exactly the same!!"
That was Roa's reaction the instant she opened the gift box.
I'd gone all the way to the department store to buy her the original, and here she was treating it like some knockoff Santa Claus had picked up off the street. She even checked it over meticulously with her tiny hands, making sure none of the seams were coming undone.
"Santa only deals in the real thing."
"There are so many kids like Roa. How's he supposed to buy one for every single one of them? Roa understands."
What exactly was she understanding?
If this was how it was going to go, I should've just bought one off the street.
Roa clutched the teddy bear tight, rubbing it against her cheek, planting kisses on it, and even giving it a name.
"You're Roa's little brother Teddy now. We're always gonna be together! Mm, you're hungry? Big Brother, Teddy says he's hungry."
"And his mouth just happens to open?"
I dodged Roa's sideways glare and looked over at Liam. He was stuffing books into his bag.
"You like it?"
"Santa's taste isn't half bad."
"Talk that cocky and see if he brings you anything next year."
"……Santa's got killer sense."
"Guess that'll be your last present, then."
"……Santa, good job."
While the kids were completely absorbed in their gifts, Mother came home. Roa scurried over with Teddy held out in front of her.
"My goodness, what's all this?"
"Santa Claus gave this teddy bear to Roa. Doesn't it look real?"
Mother checked the stitching and let out a little gasp of admiration.
"He must have looked it over so carefully before buying it for Roa."
It is real. I scowled and held out the gift box meant for her.
"And what's this?"
"Santa's gift, of course."
"For me too?"
Mother looked up at me with damp eyes and untied the ribbon. When she saw what was inside, her eyes went as wide as Roa's.
"Oh my—what is this?"
"It's Mom's clothes! Like, the kind you wear to a party! There's even a hat, ooh!"
She checked the fabric and the cut, holding the pieces up against herself this way and that, then worked her mouth at me soundlessly.
Roughly translated: Why did you buy such an expensive gift?
"But that gift box over there is Big Brother's, right? So Santa bought something for himself—I mean, for Big Brother too!"
"Oh, is this really mine?"
Playing dumb, I opened the box. A sharp suit came out, and Mother and Roa clapped their hands in delight. Liam, on the other hand—
"My present feels cheap. Maybe I aimed too low."
"Little Brother's dreams are too small. Roa's already decided on next year's present."
And then, quietly, I whispered to Liam that we'd be able to move.
So now he wanted a house.
The scale of Roa's wishes was staggering.
"All right, let's roughly clean up this mess and get ready to head out."
Our family arrived at Canal Street Station to catch the IRT Lexington Avenue Line.
We bought five-cent one-way tickets and headed down to the subway platform. Roa held the teddy bear in one hand and Mother's hand tightly in the other.
I frowned at Liam.
"Why are you wearing a backpack?"
"If there's nothing to do, I might as well read. Who knows—maybe someone will think I'm such a good kid they'll slip me some pocket money."
"Solid strategy."
It was still early afternoon, but plenty of people were already waiting for the train.
Most of them carried boxes or large paper bags, heading off to spend Christmas with family.
I had prepared a gift of my own for the maternal grandparents I was meeting for the first time: a full ten kilograms of steak-ready meat.
In America, families gathered for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And since most people weren't exactly flush with cash, they either pooled money or each brought something of their own.
I'd have to see for myself, but Mother had quite a few siblings. Add in all the kids they were bringing, and even she didn't fully know how many people would turn up.
"We'll be able to sleep, right?"
"……I don't know either."
Her parents had moved houses, so this was Mother's first visit as well. All she knew was that her eldest brother was running a boarding house with them.
I was staring at a timetable that meant nothing when a group of men in pitch-black suits appeared on the platform.
They spoke in low, measured voices, Italian mixed in. One scrap of conversation snagged my ear.
"There's a rumor a gambling den opened in the basement of Rosie Hertz's building. You hear about that?"
"L'ho sentito anch'io. Under the newly opened Pumpkin Dance Hall, they say. Every last employee is a Paddy."
Paddy—slang for the Irish.
They traded theories about which gang was backing the gambling den. Without much solid information, the talk soon shifted to the recent newspaper coverage of a Naples gang leadership trial.
A short while later, the train pulled in.
Everything was new to Roa; she boarded with an excited face.
"Teddy, this is a subway. It's Roa's first time too, so don't be too scared."
She whispered back and forth with her teddy bear.
Come to think of it, it was Liam's first time on the subway as well.
The way his eyes darted in every direction, he wasn't any different from Roa.
My brother's world and mine had never left the Lower East Side, that neighborhood where the only diversity was racial.
I kept half an eye on the Italian gangsters who had boarded the same car, but with so many passengers packed in, they all kept their mouths shut.
With nowhere particular to look, I studied their style. Not all that different from the Irish gangs, but a little more uniform.
Fedora hats, all-black suits, polished shoes—they'd put some care into the look.
About thirty minutes in, I noticed something interesting. The farther uptown we went, the more Black passengers there were.
In 1876, the southern states had passed Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation.
New York hadn't adopted those state statutes, of course, but invisible discrimination still existed.
Many Black riders avoided certain cars and certain sections.
In return, white passengers openly shifted seats or fixed them with hostile stares.
The same thing was happening in the car I was in right now.
Left side Black, right side white. Roa had discovered an invisible wall.
"Teddy, Roa just found something amazing."
Standing in the middle of the aisle, she swung Teddy's head left and right.
Awkward, uncomfortable eyes fixed on her—and then the Italian gangsters rose as one and started toward us.
Mother flinched, pulled Roa down into a seat, and I slid a hand inside my coat, ready to draw a knife at any moment.
Just as the Italian gangsters came right up to us, the train shuddered to a stop.
The doors opened and they poured out. Just getting off, nothing more.
The station was East Harlem in Upper Manhattan.
Black residents were concentrated in Central Harlem; East Harlem was majority Italian and Jewish.
And the Sicilians had used East Harlem as their base to expand their power—up into the Bronx, down into the Lower East Side, steadily pushing their territory.
So the Italians who had just gotten off were almost certainly Sicilian gangsters who ran this district.
Meanwhile, Liam whispered to Roa.
"Don't you move an inch from that seat."
"Mm, what about Teddy?"
"Him too."
"Roa has no idea why, but she'll listen to Little Brother."
Only after we left East Harlem behind could we finally look out the window and enjoy the view.
Between Manhattan and the Bronx, the Harlem River came into sight.
And right after we crossed the bridge, our family got off at East 138th–Grand Concourse Station.
In the late nineteenth century the Bronx had been a sparsely populated suburban fringe, still underdeveloped.
Then it was consolidated into New York City and everything changed at once. Bridges and rail lines linked it to Manhattan, and immigrants poured in by the thousands.
By 1900 the population had exploded, and the neighborhoods closest to Manhattan were already urbanizing.
My maternal grandparents had moved to the Bronx around 1907.
South Bronx.
Near the intersection of East 138th Street and Third Avenue.
Mother stopped in front of a five-story building, her face flushed with feeling.
"Is this Grandpa and Grandma's house?"
"Yes. Probably…"
The voice that answered Roa didn't sound normal. It wasn't just her voice—her shoulders were trembling. She was that nervous.
The ground floor of the red-brick building held a grocery and a general store, with a staircase between the shops leading upstairs.
From the second floor up it was a tenement house, newer than where we lived and looking a good deal more comfortable.
Mother was taking a deep breath, about to step inside, when the grocery door opened and an elderly couple with gray-streaked hair appeared.
Their eyes, already glistening, moved from Mother to me to Liam and finally locked on Roa.
Then Grandmother opened her arms, tears spilling over.
"Come here, sweetheart."
The maternal grandmother I was seeing for the first time in my life.
Roa didn't hesitate; she ran straight into the embrace.
Grandfather, for his part, wrapped his arms around Mother as she broke down crying and patted her shoulder.
"I'm so sorry."
"No…… I was the one who was truly wrong."
Sorry and I'm sorry went back and forth. Grandmother moved on to hug Liam and stroke his face. I stood there blankly, watching the family reunion like an observer.
And then, at some point, both Grandfather and Grandmother turned tear-filled eyes on me.
For a second I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the reason the relationship had broken, the reason for the estrangement. Their own words confirmed it.
"Look how well you've grown, how upright. And we…… We're truly sorry."
I'm not as upright as you think, Grandfather, Grandmother.
My lips were twitching when they pulled me into a fierce hug, as if they already knew what I was thinking without being told.
Awkwardly, I patted both their backs.
And right then the shop door opened again.
"Hey, old man, what are you doing? You gonna ring us up or what?"
"What the hell, you running a business or not?"
Look at these rude little bastards.
Can't you see what's going on here?
"Oh, good heavens, look at me."
Grandfather hurriedly wiped his tears and hurried over to the customers.
My grandparents ran the grocery store.
"All right, everyone, let's go on up."
Grandmother led us into the house.
The place at the far right end of the second floor was theirs.
It was easily twice the size of our tenement flat, with two whole rooms.
The living room was fairly spacious too; they had clearly shoved every piece of furniture hard against the walls to make room for family.
I set the bundles I was carrying down in the kitchen, and Grandmother asked what they were.
"Steak meat."
"All of it?"
I hadn't known how many people would show up, so I'd prepared plenty.
Mother had brought gifts of her own.
"Oh, you. Buying things like this. You could have just come as you are……"
"Mom, I didn't buy this. We made it at our company."
"Is that so? When I heard there was trouble at the clothing factory I was so worried. You must have had such a hard time……"
"Hard time, nothing. I'm the one who—"
Click.
Just as Mother was about to boast, another set of relatives arrived. Uncle Larry's family.
"You're here."
"Nora!"
Larry broke into a huge grin. The aunt I'd never met came running with tears in her eyes and threw her arms around Mother.
Not having been able to see each other at the hospital must have made the feelings run even higher.
"I thought we were the first ones here. You got an early start."
"Work finished early."
Larry's oldest son, Stanley, smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. His daughter Amy ran straight to Roa.
"Oh my, so you're Roa. Aww, you're adorable!"
"This is Roa's little brother Teddy."
"Wow, is that a teddy bear? Who bought you something this expensive?"
"Santa Claus. We don't have a chimney, so he left it in front of the house."
"Aww, so cute!"
Amy stretched Roa's cheeks and rubbed their faces together, pouring out affection.
It took her a while longer to notice Liam.
"Hi, you must be Liam. I'm Amy."
The temperature difference from how she'd treated Roa was night and day.
Not that fifteen-year-old Liam was exactly warm either.
While we were exchanging greetings with the cousins, Grandmother asked Larry,
"Is it because your little sister's here? You look like you're in an especially good mood today."
"Nora being here is part of it, and I've had some good personal news too. Don't be shocked, Mom. No—I should wait till Dad comes in to say it."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell everyone once they're all here!"
So Uncle Larry had something to brag about as well.
Of course, I already knew what it was.
Still, once everyone showed up, I wondered if there'd even be room to sit in this house.
Mother was the third of three sons and three daughters.
Noah, Larry, Mother, Ted, Anna, Catherine.
When they all gathered, how many people would that even be?
"Noah seems late this time, though. He always used to get here first."
"Must be busy with company work."
"Busy is good, I suppose."
"Anyway, there's food down in the shop. Someone want to go fetch some?"
"I'll go."
I volunteered, partly for a look around the grocery.
I stepped out of the apartment and was about to head down the stairs when I nearly collided with a solidly built man coming the other way.
A familiar smell hit my nose.
Blood.
As we brushed past each other I glanced at his sleeve.
There was blood on it. Suspicion was rising hard when the man climbing the stairs suddenly stopped.
"I don't think I've seen you before. You a customer of old man Matthew's?"
My maternal grandfather's name.
I nodded, and the man let out a short snort.
"Damn Christmas. Gonna be noisy again today."
I had to agree with him there.
Once everyone piled in, it was going to be deafening.
But who the hell are you?