"Then they won't give you nothing. You got to look poor."

"There's no way I'll beg."

His cheeks flushed. "You don't listen good." He spat. "So what," he said in English. "No one cares what you think."

"Which way Chatham Square?" I said jokingly, trying to make up.

"Get out of here. You'd only get me in trouble with my padrone anyway." He pointed. "Turn right at Park." And he went back to playing his triangle.

"Thanks," I said.

He turned his back on me and whistled that second tune.

I walked the way he'd pointed. At every corner I asked, "Park?" After several blocks someone finally nodded yes. I looked at the street sign. P-A-R-K. That was how you spelled park. It was almost the same as how I'd have spelled those sounds in Italian. In the top right corner of the sign were the letters S-T. Could that be a word?

I turned right. It wasn't long before I was passing all kinds of factories. They made silverware, jewelry, billiard tables. They made umbrellas, lightning rods, false teeth, paper, medicines, guns. I passed a piano factory and a carriage factory and one for ship propellers. I stood outside the windows and watched and listened. I heard so many languages, even one that sounded sort of like singing, out of the mouths of gaunt men wearing funny quilted jackets in a cigar factory. But no one spoke Italian.

It didn't seem possible. I knew where Chatham Square was-I'd passed Mulberry Street to get here, so it was right at the bottom of the street where all the Italians lived. Where were the Italian workers?

A boy stood on a corner with a tin cup on the ground. He played a small harp. I went up to him. "Where are the factories that Italians work in?"

He turned his back to me. Red welts showed under the collar of his shirt. I stepped away in a hurry, praying his padrone hadn't seen me, that I hadn't gotten him in trouble.

I hurried to Mulberry Street and went up the block, past the hanging sides of beef and pork in front of the butcher's, past the pharmacy, past the ratcatcher who stood by a wall, holding out a string with dead rats attached by the tail. He was good! I hurried along listening for someone I could talk to, anyone who could explain how I could earn money.

And he appeared, the boy who had thrown the dog turd at me the night before. He stepped out of an alley into my path, legs planted. "I told you to get out of here."

"I'm glad the policeman didn't catch you," I said.

"How'd you know about the policeman?"

I shrugged. "I need to find a factory with Italian workers so I can earn money."

"That why you were in Chatham Square?"

"How'd you know I was there?"

He crossed his arms on his chest. "Even if you weren't a little squirt, you couldn't get a job there. Chatham Square factory managers don't hire from this neighborhood. They think they're too good for Five Points people. Italians can only work laying bricks or breaking stones or digging ditches."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't know anything, do you?" The tough guy walked around me. "Where'd you get those shoes?"

"My mother bought them for me."

"Where's your mother?"

"At home."

"Where's home?"

I shrugged.

"I bet you live in Brooklyn, and you got lost in the city, right? So now you want to do some piddling errand so you can make enough money to take the streetcar home. Or, no, you live in the Bronx, that's it, right? The Italians in the Bronx make good. That's how your mamma got money for those shoes." He smirked. "That, or she works at home."

"Of course she works at home," I said. "She helps Aunt Sara with laundry and mending."

He laughed. "You really know nothing. That's not what 'working at home' means. You want to know how to get a job?" He leaned toward me and beckoned with a curled finger.

I stepped forward.

"Turn Irish," he whispered.

"Irish? How?"

He laughed again. "You don't. You can't turn white just by wishing. Irish boys get all the bootblack jobs. They deliver all the newspapers. There's no way an Italian boy like you can get a penny without begging or stealing. And if you beg around here, the padroni will beat you to a pulp. They own every street corner worth begging on. And if you steal, you have to give half of everything to me."

"I don't steal. And I'd never beg. And why would I have to give you half, anyway?"

"So I wouldn't turn you in. That's how it works."

My stomach hurt. "I'm hungry."

"Who isn't? Give me your shoes and I'll give you fare for the streetcar."

I knew what a streetcar was. They were building one in Milano, up in the north of Italy. Uncle Aurelio had talked about it.

"My shoes wouldn't fit you," I said.

"You think I'd want to wear them? I'd sell them in a second."

"If I wanted to ride a streetcar, I'd sell them myself," I said.

"You don't know who to sell them to," said the boy. "I do."

I walked around him. I passed a shoemaker and a barbershop and a candy maker, and from each of their doorways I heard Italian. So that boy was wrong. Italians could get jobs-at least on Mulberry Street.

A produce vendor was taking oranges from a bushelbasket and arranging them in piles on a low table outside his shop. "Want me to do that for you?" I asked.

He glanced at me. "Go home."

I stepped closer. "It'll only cost you an orange."

"Didn't you hear me? Don't bother me. Don't bother my customers." He didn't speak Napoletano, but I could understand him pretty well. And his tone wasn't mean, just wary.

"You've got better things to do," I said. "And I can do it perfect."

"Perfect?" He looked at me again, amused.

I made a circle of my thumb and index finger and drew my hand across the air in front of my chest in the gesture that meant perfect.

Was he almost smiling?

I lifted my chin and looked straight into his eyes, hopeful.

"What do you know about stacking fruit, a little kid like you?"

"If you don't like the job I do, you don't pay me."

"If I turn around and you run off with an orange in each hand, I'll come after you and make you sorry you were ever born."

"I don't steal."

He pushed the bushel of oranges toward me. "You get a tomato, not an orange," he said.

So I stacked the oranges, the way I stacked Nonna's yarn balls at home. I was careful; not a single orange rolled away. I imagined Nonna watching me, saying some proverb-maybe the one about how the eye had to have its part in everything. That was why it was worth it to makeeven the smallest thing beautiful, even a plate of food that would be eaten in an instant. I stacked the oranges for Nonna's sake.

The man was standing behind me when I finished. "Do these tomatoes and the zucchini and the onions, and I'll give you two tomatoes."

Amazed, I stacked them just right. "Can I come back tomorrow?"

"Sure, but it's Sunday. I'll be closed. Here." He handed me a bruised orange, as well as two tomatoes.

"I wonder, do you know a widower named Tonino?"

The man shook his head.

I put the food in my pocket and walked back to the mouth of the alley. I knew the tough guy would show up sooner or later.

It was sooner.

Before he could speak, I handed him a tomato-a tomato my own mouth was watering to eat.

"That's right," he said. "Half of everything."

"I didn't steal them," I said. "And I didn't give you one because you said I should. I gave you one 'cause I wanted to."

He looked me up and down. Then he leaned over and bit his tomato. Juice squirted out and landed on my shoe.

"Watch it!" I pushed him away, squatted, and wiped off the mess with the hem of my shirt.

When I stood again, he stuffed the rest of the tomato in his mouth and grinned as he chewed. "I knew it. You wouldn't sell those shoes no matter what. What were they, a birthday present?"

I ate my tomato.

"So why'd you want to give me a tomato, then?"

I thought of how Nonna had made me bring the bowl of meatballs to the Rossi family next door the night before I left home. "You get, you give."

"Magari. What gave you such an idea? Look at you: the king of Mulberry Street, just giving things out right and left. Well, listen good. In this neighborhood it's everybody for himself."

Magari. I had to shut my eyes hard against the surge of longing; I could see Nonna sitting at the kitchen table sighing, "Magari." I could smell her garlic hands, see the thick knobs of her knuckles. And now I realized I'd given this guy the tomato for another reason, too. Mamma said survive. This guy could be an ally. As Nonna's proverb went: "A chi me da pane io 'o chiamme pate"-Anyone who feeds me is like a father to me.

I took out the orange and peeled it. It smelled like flowers. The boy watched me closely. Before I had a chance to think, I gave him half and ate a section of my half. It tasted wonderful. Juicy.

He ate his orange fast. "So you think you're a big guy 'cause some jerk from Calabria paid you, huh? Big deal, tomatoes cost next to nothing. And that orange was too bruised to sell. Yo u still don't have your streetcar fare."

I finished my part of the orange and licked my fingers. This guy was older than me, but he wasn't that tough. The way he devoured the food told me that. Really tough guys were never that hungry-not in Napoli. A bad guy would have simply knocked me down and stolen my shoes. "I don't want money. I just want enough food to last me two days."

"Two days. I'm supposed to put up with you for two days?"

My heart banged; I could stay with him. "Yeah. Where do you sleep?"

"Whoa. You're not sleeping anywhere near me. And don't ask where I sleep. Look. I like being alone. There are gangs of boys around here-but they're always noticed, so they're always getting in trouble. I stay alone, and I don't stay in one place too long, so no one hassles me. The most I'll do is look out for you. But if you want my protection, you're going to have to show you're worth it."

"How?" I said.

"In the next block Pasquale Cuneo runs a salami shop. Go do a chore for him, and bring me back prosciutto-the raw kind."

Prosciutto was pig meat. "No."

"Don't make me mad, kid."

That was the last thing I wanted to do. "What's your name?" I asked.

"What's yours?"

"Dom."

"Mine's Gaetano."

"I can do lots of work, Gaetano. But not in a shop that sells pig meat."

"Why not?"

I shrugged.

"If you don't do what I say, you'll be alone. You can't make it alone. Not in Five Points."

I was sick of being alone. It couldn't be that bad to be around pig meat, so long as I didn't eat it. "I'll do it."

"You bet you will. You're lucky it's a slow day, or I wouldn't pay any attention to you at all. Understand?"

"Yeah."

Gaetano rubbed his mouth in thought. "Okay. I got a better idea. On Park Street there's a big store run by Luigi Pierano. He's got every kind of Italian food." He slapped me on the back. "Go work for him and bring me four pennies."

I wanted to ask him to show me a penny, so I'd be sure to bring him what he wanted. But then he'd know I wasn't from that place he said-the Bronx. I felt safer having him think I had a mother close by who might show up on a streetcar at any minute.