The Americanization ot Tony
- Author:
Marion H. Blood, B. S.,
Graduate Student, University of Pennsylvania.
Tony was my first social service case; the child had failed to attend the clinic regularly, and the hospital sent me into the crowded back street where he lived to visit his home and discover what kept him from his treatments. The house at the address given me proved to be a dilapidated, tipsy looking, two story affair, with a front porch that tilted rakishly forward, and a patch of front yard that was hard packed and bare. The place looked more like a shack in a mining village than a city tenement. An Italian woman sat on the stoop; three young children climbed or toddled about the porch and tiny yard. A shy, ragged, apparently undersized boy, whom I afterwards learned was Tony, stood in the doorway. When I advanced and timidly asked for Mrs. Sarsoni the woman on the porch rose and came toward me with a weary smile. As soon as I saw her I knew the cause of Tony’s absence. Tony was soon to have a wee brother or sister. I talked with Mrs. Sarsoni and she explained that she would not be able to take Tony to the hospital until the expected baby was several weeks old, and that there was no one else with whom to send him, his father being fortunate enough to have regular work.
“Why not a neighbor?” I inquired.
At this suggestion Mrs. Sarsoni shook her head violently. “Tony afraid” was all the explanation I could get at that time. Later, from Tony’s attitude toward the boys of his block, from his mother’s conversation and from what I myself observed of the people on the street, I pieced together the truth; the neighborhood was made up of native Americans of the type who bray their nationality to the smoky heavens and question the Lord’s wisdom in placing other people upon the earth; the adult members of this group treated their Italian brothers with such superiority and contempt, the younger ones employed such scathing invectives and such barbaric behavior, that Tony looked upon all my countrymen as creatures to be feared. However, I lacked this knowledge upon my first visit; the facts that confronted me were these: if Tony were to become a healthy citizen, he must have regular treatments at the clinic, and that some one must be found to take him to the hospital. As no other volunteer seemed available at the moment I offered myself as escort, and arranged to call for him the next Monday afternoon. While I was negotiating with Mrs. Sarsoni on the front porch Tony eyed me suspiciously from the hallway. When, just before leaving, I advanced toward the doorway to speak to Tony, the small boy backed into a dark corner and his expression reminded me for all the world of a rabbit caught in a hedgerow. I made my pleasantry as brief as possible and hastened away leaving the child in peace.
As I came within sight of Tony’s home on the following Monday I saw Tony sitting dejectedly on the door-sill and no sooner did he spy me than he hopped up and scuttled off into the house, only to reappear in a moment clinging to his mother’s apron. After greeting Mrs. Sarsoni, I held out my hand to Tony and suggested that we should be on our way; he only regarded me with terror-stricken eyes. My attempts at reassurance had no outward effect upon him, and only when his mother spoke to him in Italian (and at that moment her tone held none of the “liquid music” of southern European tongues) did he release his clutch upon his mother’s garment and approach me. After further hesitation he took my outstretched hand and trudged off at my side. He was outwardly sulky, but my intuition told me there was some real cause for his behavior, either shyness or actual fear, and so I tried to ignore his silence and talk of matters that might interest him.
It was not, however, until we neared our destination that Tony spoke. As we approached the entrance to the hospital his grimy little fist squirmed uneasily in my hand and he croaked through the silver tube in his throat, “How many things are they going to make me swallow today?” I was encouraged, and took this as a sign of advancement until I realized the truth?it was only that his fear of me had been overshadowed by his deeper fear of the great surgeon. Tony had been the “pet case” of my predecessor on the social service staff, and now as I looked into the child’s frightened, appealing eyes I began to understand Tony’s hold on her. There was in the expression of those dark eyes something of the rabbit-in-thehedgerow look, and it made my throat ache. I gripped Tony’s fist more tightly and with my free hand fished about in my pocket for the pennies I had received as change when I paid the car fare. As I passed the pennies to Tony his face changed. It could scarcely be said that he smiled; there was just a quiver at the corners of his mouth and his eyes lost their frightened expression. He released his hand, reached for his trousers’ pocket, and gravely brought forth an empty cigarette box, into which he put his newly acquired wealth. He returned this improvised purse to his pocket, and we entered the hospital; when the door closed behind us he gave me his hand with an almost trusting air, although the old expression came back to his eyes and the harsh voice croaked, “Do you think they’ll make me swallow more than one thing?” I tried my best to be reassuring; but as the “thing” that Tony had such dread of “swallowing” was the bronchoscope through which the doctor investigated and treated the interior of Tony’s chest, and I knew practically nothing of the treatment, my words lacked positiveness and brought no sign of conviction to Tony’s face. However, my attempts at kindness (whether it was my conversation or my coins I shall not try to determine) seemed to give the child confidence in me and brought about a decided change in his attitude toward me. Both in the waitingroom and in the clinic Tony exhibited a distrust of the surgeon and his attendants, and turned to me for help; he screamed and kicked and clung to my skirt when his turn to enter the operating room came, but upon my saying that I should like to see how brave he was and upon my offering to accompany him, he permitted himself to be placed upon the operating table with nothing more than a frightened little catch in his breath. In fact his behavior so accentuated the difference in his feeling toward me and his attitude toward the rest of the world, that as we were about to leave the clinic the assisting interne turned from Tony (ragged, frightened, and not fresh from his bath) to me and spoke with the stern professional dignity of the newly fledged physician.
“Tony has not been coming to the clinic regularly.” . “No-o?” I replied in a somewhat noncommital, slightly rising tone?I was very new in the work.
“He has not,” said the surgeon, “and he should be here every week.”
“I’ll see that he’s here again next Monday,” I promised. The young man’s voice grew so kindly that Tony crept round from behind my skirt, and I am sure he would have patted my shoulder had I been a small woman.
“Do,” he said, “and in a few weeks you’ll have a perfectly well little Tony.”
I bowed deferentially, took my supposed small son’s grimy fist, and departed?but not in peace. I was in a quandary to know how I could get Tony back the next Monday and the Monday after that, and so on.
When we arrived at Tony’s home, his mother regarded our friendly relationship with wondering eyes, but she smiled a true Italian smile.
” You been kind to my Tony. He no more afraid of you. He? all the time?fear people?much.”
Tony himself gave me a shy smile when I said goodby and lingered in the doorway as I started up the street. That night after I went to bed the solution of the problem came to me?I would ask the master of the Boy Scout Troop in Tony’s neighborhood to see that the young Italian got to the clinic each week. The next morning I started action on my plan and by the following Monday I had the assurance of the Scout Master that Tony should be properly looked after. Our arrangements had been made by telephone, and toward the end of my conversation with the young philanthropist, the connection had been poor and I had only partially understood something about his having “to send a new scout … so many of the boys in that section worked … he didn’t know … hoped everything would be all right.” I had assured him I was sure it would be, and left the telephone feeling greatly relieved.
When, in the middle of the Monday forenoon on which the new plan was to go into effect, I stopped at Tony’s home to tell Mrs. Sarsoni that everything was arranged I found Tony in tears; the Scout Master had preceded me and my young friend was overcome by distrust. I reasoned with him to no purpose; I explained that he would be taken to the hospital by a boy a little older than himself?that the boy would be kind to him and “would wear a suit something like a soldier’s uniform.” Tony only shook his head stubbornly, yet with a dejection that touched my heart. He sobbed, “I don’t want to go with ‘Merican boy. He call me dago?Italian rat?bad names. I don’t like ‘Merican boy. I? want?to?go?with?you.” And he ended with such a howl of woe that his mother fled from the room.
Tony and I spent a bad half hour together and at the end of that time Tony was not convinced but he was partially reconciled to his fate. He agreed to trust his welfare to the young American on the condition that I should see him in the clinic and that, when I saw him there, I should have “something nice” to give him. We parted with a trustful, although somewhat soggy, smile on Tony’s face, and a hopeful, almost moist, one on mine.
At three o’clock I put in my appearance at the waiting-room of the clinic. I glanced anxiously along the crowded benches, nodding absently to several eager faces that turned to me for recognition. Tony didn’t seem to be there; perhaps after all?but no! On the farthest bench, in the farthest corner of the big room sat my little Italian boy and by his side sat a boy scout, the blood of whose ancestors had in no wise been adulterated since the happy days when they had roamed the African jungles. Tony attempted to greet me with a smile, but the effort ended in a fearfully twisted expression; as I placed my hand on his shoulder, he hid his dark little face against my coat; he didn’t cry but his breath whistled fearfully through his throat, and his shoulders heaved rather pitifully. I patted him reassuringly the while I turned to his black protector who was scarcely taller than Tony.
“It was good of you to bring Tony,” I said in my best social service voice (I’m afraid we all have a professional tone at times), a tone that is ever so faintly patronizing, and not as warm as it might be.
Instinct?or something that is less scientific?warned the young guardian that all was not well. His voice had a degree of apology in it. (I make no attempt to reproduce his inimitable dialect). “I was the only one of the troop that could come. Mammy said it wouldn’t do?you’d laugh or scold, and I didn’t want to come?I was afraid you’d not like it, but Mr. Blank said I was just the ‘chap’ for the job, that a scout must do kind acts, and you’d be glad to see me. Are you? We’ve just come from the South?we’re new to Northern ways.” Throughout the speech he looked at me with eyes not unlike Tony’s, yet with a dawning hope that Tony’s lacked? plainly he too was frightened, yet he hoped it was without reason. He had a kind of dignity that the overcoming of fear imparts. I dropped my professional air and until the surgeon put in his appearance I “sat at the feet” of these two small “aliens” (for regardless of where his birthplace may have been the negro is scarcely made to feel himself other than alien) and learned the vulnerable points of my native land, and the remedies for her weaknesses. To be sure we talked only of Tony’s neighbors and of his guardian’s new found boy scout friends. I saw the narrow superiority and lack of understanding that caused Tony’s timidity and distrust; I saw the tone of equality and kindliness that was giving the young negro hope and dignity. In the fifteen or twenty minutes that we waited I found myself understanding my two companions better and better, and through them their parents and their grandparents. Tony, too, forgot himself as he told his own woes and heard his companion tell the wonders of his brief experience as a member of a truly democratic group. When Tony’s turn came to enter the operating room, he hesitated only an instant, then put his hand in mine and entered without even so much as a whistle. When the treatment was over I escorted my two friends down the corridor and parted from them with the understanding that they would return the next week. Before going, the darker of the two lads asked me rather timidly what I thought of getting Tony into the scouts. If the assistant surgeon had seen us at the moment of parting I’m not sure whether he would have taken us for mother and sons or for fellow countrymen,?neither do I care. My work kept me from seeing Tony again for more than a month, then I met him with his escort at the door of the hospital; they both whipped off their caps and grinned. I greeted them with handshakes which they returned shyly, but with pleasure in their eyes. Neither one showed the slightest evidence of fear or distrust. We talked for a moment, then Tony put his finger on the hole in his throat and said to his companion with scarcely a croak, “You talk to the lady?I’ll go on?I’m late.”
“You like to come to the clinic, now, Tony?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. “It don’t hurt?I’m an American and an American ain’t afraid of nothin’.” And he swaggered through the doorway and up the corridor.
His guardian watched him with a rather proprietary air, then he smiled at me proudly, “He’s a good scout,” he said, “but I guess I’d better go with him. He is such a little fellow, you know, and he might get scared if I’m not there,” and he trotted on to protect his fellow countryman.
A few days later I went to see Tony’s new brother. Tony stood by while Mrs. Sarsoni and I admired the baby in our individual ways; when that ceremony was completed we turned our attention to Tony and I remarked not only upon his improved health, but upon his changed attitude toward life?only I didn’t speak in those terms. The mother beamed on Tony, on the baby, on me.
“My Tony no longer afraid. The American boy good to him.
They say he American boy, too, and my Tony say he be good American?him and his brother Patrick.” She patted the baby’s head and smiled as Tony and I left the room to join Mose who was whistling gaily on the front steps.
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