The Black Madonna by Louisa Ermelino

She thought she would like it here, if things had been different. She thought about all the other places where she had never been, only a train ride away. When Nicky could walk again, she told herself, they would go places, take the train and see things.
    Downtown on Sullivan Street, she went into Nucciarone’s funeral home and told the undertaker to expect her husband’s body. She told him she wanted the best for Angelo and she told him where to send the bill. The undertaker told her how sorry he was, how death was always so terrible and unexpected, and when he took her in the freight elevator to the room downstairs, she chose the bronze casket, the one lined in white velvet.
    He complimented her on her choice. He smiled at her and held her hand. The body would be ready tomorrow afternoon, he said, and he left to call the newspapers.
    T he next afternoon, the people waited outside the funeral parlor. There was no more room on the sidewalk and they stood in the street. The men laughed and ground out cigarettes underneath their polished black shoes. The women whispered, heads covered. They waited for the widow and her son to arrive, to go in first. The children held their mother’s hands, restless, wanting to go in, to get it over with, to go to the park, to get ice cream, to do all the things they were promised after they had visited the dead.
    JoJo Santulli drove Teresa and Nicky to the funeral home in his uncle’s car. Dante was in the car, too, sitting in the front next to JoJo, and he opened the door for Teresa and helped her carry Nicky into the funeral parlor. Teresa and Dante held Nicky between them. His feet dragged along the ground. Everyone followed behind and held their breath.
    â€œPoverino,”
someone said.
    â€œAnd now this,” someone else said.
    The wake was in the back room, the big room, and the procession moved slowly along the narrow hall, Nicky and Teresa and Dante in front, following the undertaker in his long black coat, striped trousers, and top hat.
    Over the coffin was an American flag in red and white and blue carnations. “He was a hero in the war,” Teresa told the florist when she ordered it. There was a bleeding heart of red roses that said “Beloved Wife,” with red satin ribbons streaming from its center, and a ship of white roses from Nicky. Underneath the ship was a sea of carnations dyed blue.
    Angelo Sabatini lay inside the coffin in a double-breasted pinstriped suit, a small diamond stickpin in his tie, and the white velvet lining tucked under so that everyone could see that the coffin was bronze. He was still young when he died and he had died suddenly. “The perfect combination,” old man Nucciarone told Teresa when he saw the body. “I’ll make him look so good, no one will believe he’s dead. Trust me,” he said, and he patted her hand.
    N icky came into the room where his father was laid out. His mother and Dante were on either side of him, his arms over their shoulders, their arms across his back. Nicky had seen his father only that one time, when he came to Spring Street and showed him how to tie that knot. He stretched out his neck to look, saw the open casket, and smelled the flowers, and then he started to scream and cry.
    The crowd behind pushed forward and Teresa lost hold of him. She shouted to God and to Dante, who reached out to grab him in an embrace before he fell.
    But Nicky didn’t fall. He put one foot in front of the other and he walked. He looked straight ahead and walked up the aisle to the coffin. Teresa shouted out and the crowd fell back. She moved toward Nicky, toward the coffin, but Dante held her. He dropped to his knees and pulled her down next to him.
    The crowd began to mumble. The undertaker jumped on a chair in the back. “A miracle,” he shouted. “God has performed a miracle . . . here . . . in this funeral parlor on Sullivan Street.”
    Teresa tried to get up. She still