One late night at the kitchen table, my mother told me this story, slowly and quietly, haunted by the images of her mother’s death. For years, she had hinted that something tragic had happened but she had never put it fully into words until then. She remembered her Aunt Margarita whispering to her mother, coaxing her, while she played with her doll.
My grandfather worked at the Hanan Shoe Factory in Brooklyn for $35 a week. After my grandmother’s death, the Brooklyn Department of Welfare sent all the children to City Hospital. None of the immediate relatives was able to take in any of the children; after every family name — maternal uncle, aunt, grandmother — the official report says, simply: “Cannot assist.”
On June 2, 1927, my mother was taken away screaming and admitted to St. Joseph’s Female Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. The reason for admission: destitution. She remembered being locked in a clothes closet because she could not stop crying and asking for her mother. Her younger brother Fred went to the boys’ section of St. Joseph’s Asylum. Her two older brothers, Anthony and Nicholas, were sent to St. John’s Home — one of them soon ran away, only to be returned. Her older sister, Margaret, went to live at St. Germaine’s Home in Peekskill, N.Y. Her baby brother, Carmello, remained at home with my grandfather and died when he was 4.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member