The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [28]
Octavia flared up. Her mother’s calm acceptance of the father’s desertion made her furious. “That’s just it,” she said. “His father left. He doesn’t give a shit.” Even through her anger she was amused at the look the two small boys gave her—a girl using a dirty word like that. But her mother was not amused and Octavia said in a reasonable tone, “It’s not fair. It’s just not fair to Vinnie.”
The mother spoke in grim Italian, asking, “Who are you to be a schoolteacher when you have the mouth of a whore?” She paused for an answer. But she had upset Octavia’s vision of herself. The mother continued, “If you want a house to give orders in, get married, have children, scream when they come out of your belly. Then you can beat them, then you can decide when they will work and how, and who works.” She looked at her daughter, coldly, as at a deadly rival. “Enough. Bastanza,” she said.
She turned on Gino. “You, giovanetto. From morning to night I don’t see you. You could be run over. You could be kidnapped. That’s one thing. Now. Your father has gone away for a time and so everyone must help. Tomorrow if you disappear I’ll give you this.” She went to the cupboard and took out the skinny wooden club used for rolling dough for the holiday ravioli, “The Tackeril.#8221; Her voice became hoarse, more angry. “By Jesus Christ, I’ll make you visible. I’ll make you so black and blue that if you were the Holy Ghost you could not vanish. Now, eat. After, wash the dishes, clean the table, and sweep the floor. And don’t let me see you come down the stairs this night.”
Gino was impressed. Though unafraid, he had been alert and tense through the whole uproar. Out of such noise sometimes would come a wild swing which it was permissible to evade. But nothing happened. The two women went downstairs and Gino relaxed and ate, the fatty sausage, the oily pulpy peppers blending together deliciously on his hungry palate. The storm was over, there were no hard feelings. He would work for his mother tomorrow, help her out.
Vinnie was staring down at his plate, not eating. Gino said cheerily, “Boy, I’ll bet you had it tough working for that bastid Panettiere. I saw you carrying a big basket. Where’d you bring it?”
“Nah,” Vinnie said. “They got a store on Ninth Avenue. It ain’t so bad. Just carrying the flour up the cellar.” Gino looked at him. There was something wrong.
But already Vinnie was feeling better and he took in great mouthfuls of food, not knowing that what he had felt all that day was fear. That he had suffered a common cruelty—a child sent from the warmth of his family to be commanded by strangers to perform their drudgery. It was his first experience of selling part of his being for money, so unlike doing something for his mother, or shining his big brother’s shoes for a nickel.
But school would come in the fall and set him free, and he would forget how his mother and sister had sent him out of the family and its rule by love and blood. He no longer thought of how he could not play stickball in the summer morning sun, or wander aimlessly around the block talking with friends, hiding in the shade of 31st Street as he sleepily licked a pleated paper cup of lemon ice. He felt the terrible sadness that only children can feel, because they have no knowledge of the sadness of others, of the general human despair.
Gino cleaned the table and started to wash the dishes. Vinnie helped him dry. Gino told of his adventures with the railroad Bull, the empty house and rope, and playing cards with Joey; but he didn’t say anything about his boat-sailing all the way around the block, because ten years old was too old for that kind of stuff.
There was one dirty pot caked with grease and soot, which Gino hid in the oven. Then the two boys went into the living room to look out over the Avenue. Gino sat on one window sill and Vinnie on the other. They were both at peace.
Gino asked,