The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [62]
After supper Octavia gave them all a lecture—Sal, Gino, and Vinnie. It was familiar. “Now,” she said, “none of you kids are stupid. I want to see good report cards this term, and in conduct, too. Vinnie, you did all right last year, but you have to do better now you’re in second term high. You want to go to C.C.N.Y., don’t you? If your marks are good enough you can go free.” There could never be any question of paying for college. Vinnie would be lucky if he didn’t have to go to work right after high school. But Octavia had her own plans and her own money on this score. Vinnie would go to college, to C.C.N.Y. She would take care of the family. It was this that had made her at last give up any ideas of teaching.
She went on. “Gino, if you get conduct marks like last term, I’ll put you in the hospital, I’ll beat you black and blue. And your school work could be a lot better. Now behave, or you’ll wind up in reform school and disgrace the whole family.” She was laying it on too thick; Gino had never behaved badly enough to go to reform school, he never failed in conduct, and never got any D’s.
She had her audience. Even Baby Aileen sat up in her crib and climbed out to sit on a chair by the table. Octavia reached over and put the baby on her lap. “Sal,” she said, “you did all right last term. But now school will get harder for you. I’ll help with your homework, so don’t worry. I’m nearly as good a teacher as the ones in school,” she said with almost a little girl’s bragging pride. “One thing. I want everybody upstairs from the street when I come from work. By that time it will be dark and there’s no reason for you to be out anyway. Anybody not in this house by six o’clock will get the hell knocked out of them. And no card playing or fooling around until the homework is done and I check it. And you, Vinnie, Gino, Sal, take a night each helping your mother with the dishes. Give her a break.”
She gave one last warning, blood-chilling in its simplicity and sincerity, delivered without any flourish or preamble. “If you don’t get promoted, if you get left back, I’ll kill you.” Aileen moved uneasily in her lap. “Nobody is going to disgrace this family name, and you’re not growing up ignorant guineas to live on Tenth Avenue the rest of your life.”
Lucia Santa broke in, irritated by her daughter’s phrase. “Bastanza. Enough. They’re not going to a war, after all.” Then, to the kids, “But remember this, mascalzoni that you are. I would give anything to have gone to school, to be able to read and write. Only the sons of the rich went to school in Italy. At your age I was chasing goats and digging vegetables and shoveling manure. I killed chickens and washed dishes and cleaned houses. School to me would have been like movie pictures. If your father could have gone to school he would have had better work, and—who knows—might not have become ill. So: know your good fortune, or you will be taught how lucky you are with the Tackeril.
Sal was wide-eyed. Gino and Vinnie were composed, though a little impressed. Sal said in a scared voice, “But, Ma, what if I can’t learn, what if I’m not smart enough? That ain’t my fault.” He was so serious that the two women smiled.
Octavia said gently, “Don’t worry, everybody in this family is smart enough to pass. You just do your best. I’ll help you, and I was the smartest girl in my graduating class from high school.”
Vinnie and Gino said, “Ha, ha,” together, lured by her gentle, sad tone into teasing her. Octavia’s great dark eyes flashed, but she smiled and said to Lucia Santa, “Well, I was, wasn’t I, Ma?” This wistfulness for some glory unknown to them did more to persuade the children than any of her threats, except the one to kill them if they got left back. That threat they did not doubt for a moment.
Lucia Santa watched her daughter. She remembered how Octavia