Listen to My Story
A thousand lives. A single voice.
Chapter 1: Mario "Racetrack" Higgins
I was born in Italy. I don't remember much from our small house, other than the fact that it was overcrowded. I had at least ten siblings, and probably upwards of that. The house always resounded with bustling bodies, clanging pots, screams and shouts and laughter as my dark-haired siblings raced around each other. My mama had soft hair and calloused hands, and Papa had strong shoulders I loved to sit on. But I won't let myself think of these things now. I don't even want to.
My oldest brother's name was Antony. I completely idolized him. Everything about him was the epitome of top-notch, from the way he combed his hair down to the toes of his big black boots. Antony, in my eyes, could do absolutely no wrong. Perhaps that's why I went with him. I'll never know.
He must have been twenty, if I was four. And I was four, that I remember clearly, because my birthday had been the week before and I had been the proud receiver of a grand cake, spilling with spun sugar. When Antony took my hand, I thought nothing of it. He told me we were going to America, and I jumped up and down in excitement. Whenever Papa spoke of America, he did so in a hushed, reverent voice. I couldn't wait to see Papa's sacred land for myself.
We were on the boat before I realized that none of my brothers and sisters were with us. I panicked even further when I saw that Mama and Papa weren't coming. I yelled desperately for my mama, tears wetter than the sea we were harbored in splashing down my face. I clung to the cold wooden railing next to the plank, scrambling to go back down, down to the soft ground, where my mama surely waited. I knew she wouldn't have let Antony just take me from her. Antony grabbed ahold of me strongly, and wouldn't let me go. "My wife just died yesterday," he said apologetically to those who looked most concerned for my benefit. They murmured their sorrows and continued on. And from that moment on, Antony stopped treating me as his brother. I became, instead, his son.
Because of his four-year old "son," Antony was given a room as small as a cupboard for us to be in on the ship. I complained of the lack of space, but Antony kicked at me and hissed to be quiet. Even this small cupboard was bigger than what most people down here in steerage had. There was only one makeshift cot in the room, and Antony took it. He told me to sleep underneath, which I did. Whenever I awoke whimpering, forgetting at the reverie moment just where I was, he would bang his fist upon his thin mattress so that I could feel the vibrations of his fist near my head. He told me that one day, he might not hit the mattress at all.
Sometimes, he would bring in a young lovely of an Italian girl to our little cupboard for the night. On these nights, I'd run from the room with my hands plastered firmly over my ears. I'd run straight to the filthy, stinking common room, where men sat up drunkenly swearing and arguing. These dregs of the human race were far better than my brother on those nights.
But life with Antony wasn't completely horrible. He made sure I had food and water before he himself did, and he began to teach me the little English that he knew. By the time we finally got to America, I could probably have carried on a simple conversation in my new language. Antony told me that Italian was a disgusting language, and that he never wanted to hear it again. Of course, probably because of my love for him, I too decided that Italian was a horrible sound. I can't stand it to this day.
I had hated being on the rocking boat. I had vomited at least twice every day for the first week. Now that I was back on solid ground, however, I found I couldn't walk. I lurched about, and when I cried out to Antony that I couldn't move my legs, he boxed me about the head. "No Italian," he whispered ferociously. "Americans, now."
Clutching onto his arm was an Italian goddess named Camilla. She was stunning to behold. I loved her soft beauty, so like those I knew from home, and unlike these pushing, screaming Americans. Camilla came with us as we searched for an apartment. Finally Antony found one deep in the heart of Little Italy. He hated it there, but it was the only place for a poor Italian immigrant to live. We had a small flat, with one bedroom and one other room for whatever. Antony and Camilla took the bedroom. I was given a corner of the other room, where I slept curled up in a jacket of Antony's.
Antony spent all of his life's savings within a week, and he had to go out to get a job. With time, Camilla left; other girls came to take her place. Some were Italian, others Irish, or Dutch, or German. I didn't bother to remember their names. They were gone nearly as fast as they came. Antony's job kept him away at strange hours, and the girls didn't like being stuck with a four-year old in an apartment. Antony didn't understand them, anyhow.
He liked having a job. At least, he enjoyed it after he'd paid the rent. Then he felt confident enough to go down to Sheepshead Bay and bet the rest of his wages, get drunk, and somehow stumble home within the next few days. This happened once a month. One time he came home with actual winnings, and, oh! how we'd celebrated that day. More often than not, however, he lost all of his money. Sometimes he forgot he had even gone down to Sheepshead, and would accuse me of stealing the money. The girls hated this too, how rough he was with me. Some of the girls began to act as mothers to me, trying to clean up my language and my appearance simultaneously. This was usually when Antony kicked them out. He hated others trying to raise me.
I turned five the day that Antony lost his job. I was so scared of him that day. He was drunk when he came back, at noon. Antony never drank at noon. He went on a tirade, smashing what little furniture we'd accumulated thus far. I remember the girl he was with, a tiny little German girl with dark hair, darker eyes, and skin white as snow which had fascinated me. She had tried to stop him from hitting me, had even thrown her small frame over mine. He had kicked her out, of course, the next instant. It was then that I learned his purpose for bringing me with him from Italy.
He told me that I was now old enough to become a newsie. I was to go out in the morning, using this, the last nickel he had, and sell papers. He'd spoken to a boy on the street that day, and the boy had told him that a nickel would buy ten papers, which would in turn sell for a penny each. What I earned in the morning was to go for the afternoon edition, and then what money I earned from selling the afternoon papers was to go for the evening edition. He did some fast math, considering his drunken state, and said that if I didn't return with twenty cents that night, I might as well not come home.
I was fearful of my brother, but I was more fearful of the streets. Perhaps this fear spurred me on, for I returned that next evening with the twenty cents. It had been hard, my first day. I had thought that perhaps I'd sell right in Little Italy, because people would feel sorry for me. I learned quickly, though, that a skinny Italian kid is nothing to the people of Little Italy. Every child is skinny and Italian. Central Park—that was where to go.
I had to wake before dawn, because the distribution center was so far away. In those first few weeks, I followed another Italian kid, Leo, to the center. I couldn't have found it on my own. I was often pushed to the back of the line, because of my size. But as time went by, I became more and more organized, and how acutely I learned to street fight! By the time I turned six, I was a regular thug. At least, that's how I saw it.
I had seen a kid pull a spectacular trick once and sell many papers on account of it, and through my tough fist, I told the boy that I was now the owner of this trick, thank-you-very-much. It was rather ingenious, really. It worked particularly well along the winding paths of Central Park. I would stumble along for a bit, attracting stares, grunting ferociously from underneath my stack of papers. Then, when I decided enough people had witnessed my walk of shame, I would fall flat on my face, and not move. The first time I did it, nothing happened, and I had had to pick myself up off the ground and angrily dust myself off. But every time from then on, people would rush to my aid, and then, thanks to my pleading eyes and running nose, they would purchase a paper or two to "lighten" my load. In no time at all, I became one of the top sellers in all of Manhattan. And yet, every night I returned to my brother, who squirreled away my profits and made me to sleep in the corner still. I could certainly afford new clothes by now, but Antony wouldn't let me purchase them. He insisted we needed the money, but I still watched him sneak off to Sheepshead Bay once a month.
I think that's where my gambling started, from watching him. One night, I must have been seven, and I pleaded to go along with him. I shouted that I had made the money, I had become the one with the pants up to my knees, I wanted to spend my money. It had caught Antony unawares, but luckily he was in one of his random good moods. He laughed and brought me along.
The excitement I had never known, and Antony even let me sip my first alcohol since leaving Italy. At first, I hated the acrid, burning taste. But I learned to like it. I learned to like a lot of things when I was younger.
Soon enough, Sheepshead Bay became my selling spot. I would grab onto a carriage after buying my papers, ride to Sheepshead, and would easily sell them by afternoon. Since I bought so many morning editions, I didn't have to sell the afternoon one, and would instead while away the hours, watching all the betting taking place. I learned many things, like which bookies to stay away from and how to pick a winning horse. Then I would catch a carriage back to Manhattan, and sell my evening edition on whatever corner was unoccupied. I found myself loving this life, and as my English improved, my sense of home decreased, and I began to forget bits and pieces of my heritage. As the other newsies discovered my love of the Bay and of gambling, they took to calling me "Racetrack." I liked it. It was American.
I finally had enough of my brother when I was nine years old. He still didn't have a job, and he liked to take it out on me. Still holding my family values in tact, I had never before said anything or hit back. I was the obedient "son." Yet something in my snapped that night. I glared right back at him, and then I began to fight as he'd never seen me do. I only fought this way in the streets.
It took him by surprise, I think, that I could fight. He certainly looked surprised. I hit him over and over, taking out my anger that he was such a miserable leech that he could just latch on to me, his younger brother, when he was twenty-five and could certainly do something with himself. The last punch was so hard that it hurt my knuckles. As he slumped to the ground, a thin trail of blood leaking from his forehead, I put my knuckles to my mouth and sucked on them a second, to relieve the pain a bit. A boy had taught me this trick years ago.
I took all of my money, and ran. Away from Little Italy, away from the horrible Italian language that still haunts my dreams today. I kept running, faster and faster, until my side nearly split. I went straight to a lodging house in Manhattan, where I paid for my first night and got a bunk alongside a kid I'd seen many times selling, but never known. His name was Snoddy, he told me sleepily. And I was lucky, because the lodging house was unusually empty this night, and I got my own bunk.
Over the next few years, I would share my bunk many times, with up to four other boys. And sometimes at night, when other boys were crying out for their mothers, I would think and wonder what became of Antony. Had I killed him by leaving him there? I found that I didn't care.
Perhaps all the bitterness is what made me develop my wit, or maybe just the fact that if I was funny, people wouldn't ask me serious questions I didn't have answers for. Before long, for whatever reason, I became known for my sarcasm, my humor. I had a response for everything, and I was now a master at the English language, with all of its inconsistencies and strange rules.
My name is Mario "Racetrack" Higgins. I was Italian. I am American.
[disclaimer: The characters of Racetrack and Snoddy belong to Disney. Antony and Camilla are mine.]