The Queen of Steeplechase Park, page 1
ADVANCE PRAISE
“David Ciminello has written a great big rollercoaster of a novel.… Read this book! Hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.”
—Fannie Flagg, best-selling author of
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
“The brilliant David Ciminello’s hilarious and moving novel The Queen of Steeplechase Park is a crazy Italian circus with a heart as big as Sicily. I loved Belladonna Marie Donato and her merry band of misfits, outcasts who become chosen family as she makes peace with her family of origin. A glorious Italian American feast! Bravo David!”
—Adriana Trigiani, best-selling author of The Good Left Undone
“Ciminello is a master of delicious wordplay. His lusciously cinematic story is a veritable carnival ride culled from his family’s kitchen history. The Queen of Steeplechase Park is a tasty tale of love, sex, and the holy magic of homemade Italian cooking.”
—Blair Fell, author of The Sign for Home
“Open your mouth and ready your heart because Belladonna Marie from The Queen of Steeplechase Park is about to serve you some unforgettable tales of love and loss, with a side of meatballs. David Ciminello has reanimated Depression-era Coney Island with such vivid and dazzling detail that I wanted to laugh, cry, eat a hot dog, and go for a swim all at once. A phenomenal story of a burlesque queen searching for her lost baby in the glitz, ooze, and hum of sideshows from Brighton to Gravesend. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust
“David Ciminello is a writer with an ear for gritty urban rhythms, a love of wordplay, and a gift for making the nostalgic past relevant today. His prose is earthy and incantatory all at once. His novel is a delicious stew—an operatic fan letter to the real-life aunt who inspired the titular character, a paean to the Italian immigrant experience, a quest for a missing child, a family cookbook—and always a comedy heightened by its tragic elements. The Queen of Steeplechase Park crackles with the hyper-real comic book energy of a graphic novel, and the recipes are a primer on how to live your best life. Buon appetito! Mangiare bene! Delizioso!”
—Stevan Allred, author of The Alehouse at the End of the World
“Meet Belladonna Marie, the force of nature plucked from the historical and culinary passions of David Ciminello. Set in depression-era Coney Island, the novel whips up a bevvy of queer, memorable eccentrics, served with a heaping side of sumptuous language. From Melanzana to Puttana, The Queen of Steeplechase Park is a whimsical, gastronomical delight.”
—Suzy Vitello, author of Bitterroot
This is a work of fiction. The events described herein are imaginary. The settings and characters are fictitious or used in a fictitious manner and do not represent specific places or living or dead people. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
© 2024 by David Ciminello
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form, with the exception of reviewers quoting short passages, without the written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ciminello, David, 1962– author.
Title: The queen of Steeplechase Park : a novel / David Ciminello.
Description: Portland, Oregon : Forest Avenue Press, 2024. | Summary: “The Queen of Steeplechase Park is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato. Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, she is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis and her top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peek-a-boo striptease routines, a queer mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love. It all leads Bella back home, to the scene of her Original Sin, where she boldly faces matters of life and death, questions of forgiveness, and a holy mess only the healing properties of great Italian cooking can fix”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023050727 | ISBN 9781942436614 (paperback) | ISBN 9781942436621 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Donato, Belladonna Marie--Fiction. | LCGFT: Biographical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3603.I45 Q44 2024 | DDC 813/.6--dc23/eng/20231211
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050727
Forest Avenue Press LLC
P.O. Box 80134
Portland, OR 97280
forestavenuepress.com
Printed in the United States
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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For Mom, Dad, and Brian
And for Auntie
NO ONE LIKE HER
HAD WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST known about her, he would have inked her onto the front pages of his newspapers directly above the banner headlines barking about the war crawling across Europe. Walter Winchell would have broadcast about her on This Is Your World! They would have told you how beautiful she was. How men dropped in front of her and howled. How Einstein created a brand-new theory, and how Freud folded his cards after she lit one of his cigars. Hollywood could have made her a great big star. She would have taken Bette Davis and wrung that bug-eyed hambone dry. King Kong would have let go of Fay Wray, dropped that dizzy dame those one hundred and two Empire State stories, just so he could hold her in his gargantuan hand. Glenn Miller would’ve raised his baton and crooned, “Come on, baby! Front my band! You can swing! I know you can!” Pity was never a song she chose to sing. Her anthems were always “Shoo Shoo Boogie Boo” and “All of Me.” When she Coney Island cooch-danced, air-raid sirens rang, Lucky Strikes lit themselves, and palm trees sprouted out of Coney Island’s sand. After her Cooking Spirit swooped in, meatballs were never the same. Everyone wanted to taste her tomatoes and dip their bread in her Sunday gravy. Had he met her, David O. Selznick would have ceased his search for his silly Scarlett O’Hara and cast her in a Technicolor epic all her own. Fiddledeedee! Frankly my dears, there was no one like her!
CONEY ISLAND, 1938
SHE STANDS IN FRONT of the roiling Brooklyn sea. Alone. A devastated girl of eighteen. But she is timeless. Ageless. She is a Queen. Almost two years after having lost her baby, not long after losing the love of her life, her gorgeous Jesus-boy, her Hero, her Coney Island King, she rises up from the December sand battered and shivering and weak. Behind her, the amusement park rides sleep, tucked and tarped and snoring. Before the frozen day she had lost her King, death was something she’d only experienced with the messy slaughter of dirty backyard animals. Chickens squawking, goats bleating, pigs screaming. Like her broken heart. Flapping and jerking and bleeding and ready to stop beating. Forever. Her toes touch the frigid water. The starving ocean opens its salty mouth and bears its foamy teeth.
HER NAME
ON THE FIRST DAY of first grade at Saint Anthony’s Catholic grammar school in Clifton, New Jersey, in our good Lord’s year of 1926, every immigrant student in Sister Mary Cara Malloy’s classroom got a good ole U-S-of-A American name.
Elvira became Ellen, Giacomo became Joe, Igor became Eric, Rosaria became Rose, and so on.
“And what is your name, please?” the ruler-wielding nun, an odious old penguin, asked six-year-old Italian factory mouse Belladonna Marie Donato.
Bella’s mamma had given her the name Belladonna (beautiful girl) because when she was born she was so goddamned ugly. Her papa sometimes called her gabadost because she was so goddamned stubborn and strong-willed.
She was also fiercely intelligent and incredibly independent.
Full of the guile and charm of a Sicilian folk-tale fox.
She had the fortitude and strength of ten Italian elephants.
She could charm the socks off rocks.
“My name is Belladonna Marie.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
The fierce-looking old Irish nun, one of a bitter baker’s dozen farmed down from an ancient abbey in Singac, slammed her ruler onto Bella’s desk with the force of one of Lucifer’s better demons.
The entire class jumped out of their skirts and knickers.
“Young miss, we do not talk back in God’s classroom!” The penguin’s rheumy eyes traveled up to the fractured ceiling like she was searching for something. “Now, let me see …” She tapped her ruler on Bella’s desk while squinting up through the cracks. No one was breathing. “BARBARA!” she suddenly screamed. “From now on, in God’s classrooms your name will be Barbara Mary!” She extended her skeletal hand and smiled, baring green, tobacco-stained teeth. “Now thank me and kiss Christ’s ring.”
No one, except maybe Belladonna Marie Donato’s papa, was ever able to make Bella do anything.
The little girl crossed her arms. “No!”
“What did you say to me?”
“I said NO!”
The stunned nun’s feathers puffed out of her habit. Her beak snapped open. “Barbara Mary, if you do not thank me and kiss Christ’s ring this very instant you will be one very sorry little EYE-talyan monkey.”
“Vaffanculo, vecchio pazzo pinguino irlandese!”
“What did you say to me?”
“FUCK YOU, YOU CRAZY OLD IRISH PENGUIN!”
Al l twenty-seven students—all the Stevies, the Charlies, the Carols, the Harrys, and the Shellys, bolted to the outskirts of the room and started praying.
“YOU GREASY LITTLE ROACH OF A WOP!”
The old bird’s hands flew, but quick as a whip, Bella ducked and plowed into the nun’s wool-sheathed shins. Teeth sank, warm blood bled.
“IN THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, LET GO OF ME!”
While the students stomped and cheered, the Italian monkey and the old Irish penguin flailed up one side of the classroom and toppled down the next. They plowed through chairs and flipped desks. They slammed into the blackboard and tumbled out the door. They rolled together like a two-headed, four-armed, four-legged bowling ball down a long, waxed corridor. They bounced down thirty-seven marble stairs, splintered through two more doors, pinwheeled past the school’s front offices, and crashed into Reverend Monsignor Teschio’s formidable desk.
That’s when Bella unlocked her jaw, stood up, spit out a mouthful of wool, and wiped her lips.
“MY NAME IS BELLADONNA MARIE DONATO!” she panted. “AND I AM NOT KISSING ANYTHING!”
HER COOKING SPIRIT
THE DAY BELLA’S SOUL-TORTURED mamma, Lucia Medina Donato, gave birth to her final child, Little Luigi, she threw the steaming baby into Bella’s seven-year-old arms. “You have to be the mamma now,” she spit. Hair crazing, eyes blazing, she grabbed her daughter by the ears and yanked her close. “I never loved your papa,” she hoarsely whispered. “I only ever loved Tino Scarabino. That’s it.” Then she took a deep breath, stopped talking forever, and never left her bed.
Manolo Antonio Donato, Bella’s too-proud papa and the always-tired night watchman at the Robertson Scale factory where the family lived, went his own kind of crazy. He had a smiling scar that started in the right corner of his mouth and sliced up his cheek, but he always looked mean. “Who’s gonna cook? What the fuck are we gonna eat?”
“I’m starving!” Bella’s big brother, the firstborn, Manolo Antonio Junior, hollered.
“We’re hungry too!” Bella’s sisters, pretty Concetta Regina and addle-brained Lucrezia Angelina, screamed. The two girls had tried like hell to cook but they destroyed everything. Chickens met charred ends. Pigs were boiled down to grizzle. Tomatoes never stopped bleeding.
After cursing her life and the world God created, Bella wrapped and plopped her yowling baby brother into a makeshift wooden wagon. She crossed herself, dragged it out of the factory complex and pulled it four long blocks to LoMonico’s corner market while singing,
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, ooh,
Who will I give this baby to?
Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby, eee,
I will keep this baby for me …
“I gotta make a big pot of tomato gravy for my starving family!” Bella yelled over the infant’s wailing as she yanked the wobbling wagon into the store’s warm belly.
The owner’s giant wife, Big Betty LoMonico, lumbered out from behind the register. She towered over the little girl like a Coney Island elephant lording over a mouse.
“What’s your name?”
“Belladonna Marie Donato.”
“From the Robertson Scale factory. What’s your baby’s name?”
“This is my mamma’s baby, but she gave him to me. I’m his Bellamamma. His name is Little Luigi.”
“Where is your mamma?”
“She’s in bed.”
“What is she doing there?”
“She’s got the great depression.”
“What about your papa?”
“He says if I don’t make something for my family to eat right away, he’s gonna kill me.”
Big Betty knew little ones in need of an angel when she saw them. She lifted the bawling infant out of the wagon and grabbed Bella by the hand. The shock of it made Bella wince. But the little girl’s arm tingled in a way it had never tingled before, and she decided she liked it.
“You come with me.”
The colossal woman tugged Bella past Big Bud, who was busy butchering behind the meat counter.
“Where are we going?”
She marched her through the crowded store and into a sprawling kitchen, where bright white Jersey sunshine blasted through billowing lace curtains; where a monster stove crouched warm and ready to roar; where a weathered butcher block stood warped and clean; where a vased bouquet of fresh basil rested in the middle of a linened table, lush and inviting; where a Radiola was softly crooning Paul Whiteman’s “My Blue Heaven.”
Bella never wanted to leave. “You really live here?”
“When was the last time this baby had something in its belly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mary, Mother of God, help me. Please.”
Muttering the Lord’s Prayer, Big Betty rummaged through overstuffed drawers until she found an empty glass bottle and an old rubber nipple. As she boiled them, she poured water into another pot, added unsweetened evaporated milk and Karo Syrup, and snapped a flame on under it. Once the mixture cooled down, she funneled it into the bottle and thrust it into Bella’s hand. “Shove the nipple in that baby’s mouth and feed him!”
Luigi suckled like a starved calf.
The bottle drained fast.
“Now rub and pat his back!”
While Bella did as she was told, Big Betty gathered several mason jars of summer-ripened tomatoes, canisters of spices, a softball-sized onion, a ring of garlic, and a rough-edged wedge of Pecorino cheese. After carefully placing the burped baby in a soft pile of dish towels, she clutched her big chest. “Sometimes I have a little trouble breathing,” she said. She pinched off a small chunk of the cheese, popped it into her mouth and worked it around. After a moment, she took a deep breath. “There. Now I feel better.” With renewed strength, she slammed a thick cutting board onto the kitchen table in front of the basil. “Garlic heads. Always smash them to loosen the skin. Then pop out the cloves.” She handed Bella a wooden mallet. “We need at least ten of them.”
As Bella got to work, Big Betty poured a heaping glug of Montebologna Olive Oil (the Olive Oil of Italian Kings!) into a cauldron-sized pot she had slapped onto the stove. Then she took a healthy swig and patted her bountiful breasts. “Keeps the insides greased. Keeps the old clock ticking.”
After frying the garlic cloves and tossing in a pinch of chili flakes, Big Betty had Bella hand crush the tomatoes and throw them into the pot too. Then she grabbed a huge handful of basil from the vase on the table and thrust it into Bella’s face. “Take a good, deep sniff,” she said. “That’s it! Drink it in! Ain’t it delicious?”
It made Bella sneeze, but she loved the fragrant spiciness of it.
After they chopped and added the pungent leaves, Big Betty ordered Bella to measure the spices, one at a time, with her hands and toss them in too. Salt. Pepper. Oregano. She didn’t tell her how much. But she watched carefully.
“That’s it! You got it!” The giant woman gripped Bella’s little chin in her big hand and squeezed. “The Cooking Spirit is inside you! Can you feel it?”
The only thing Bella felt was her starving stomach grumbling. “No,” she said through squashed lips.
“Don’t worry. You will. Believe me,” the big woman said as she drizzled a spoonful of honey into the simmering tomato gravy. “My secret ingredient. Don’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
As the tomato gravy sent its Italian perfume into the room, Big Betty plated a fistful of chocolate biscotti. Then she sat Bella at the kitchen table and asked her about her home.
“We live in the caretaker’s house at the Robertson Scale factory.”
“Tell me about your family.”
With a mouthful of chocolate crumbs, Bella gave Big Betty the rundown. “My oldest brother is Manolo Antonio Junior. But we call him Tony. He’s ten. He likes boxing. Sometimes he tries to box me.”
“Don’t let him do that.”
“When he does, I grab him by his coglioni and squeeze until he begs for mercy.”
“Bravissimo!”
“I also have two sisters. Concetta Regina. We call her Connie. She’s very pretty. And Lucrezia Angelina. We call her Lulu. She’s stupid. They are nine and six. I will be eight next week.”
