Carmella Commands/Chapter 24
iuseppe and the younger children had been asleep when Carmella lost command. But they quickly noticed that something was changed.
After noting that for several evenings his mother had left the supper dishes entirely to Carmella, Giuseppe delayed his school work to watch her.
“Want any help, kid?” he finally volunteered.
Carmella did not answer.
“Say, kid,” he went on, “how come you’re doing this every night?”
“None of your business!” she snapped.
Joe grinned. He was striking fire sooner than he expected.
“Say,” he asked, “where’d mother learn American so quick?”
“Ask her.”
“Well, I don’t get it. But you’re afraid of her all of a sudden.”
Presently he touched her elbow as she passed, so that she dropped a cup. For answer, she swept a swift hand against her brother’s face. The battle was begun.
Giuseppe was small and dark and wiry. Carmella was much the larger, and fully as quick. In a moment she had him on the kitchen floor and was raining blows on his face. Tommaso appeared in the doorway.
“What’s this?” he demanded. “Stop it!”
“He hit me and made me break a cup,” screamed Carmella.
“She tripped me and beat me,” retorted Giuseppe.
Tommaso sent the boy to his mother. To Carmella he said:
“When you have finished the dishes, you go to bed.”
“But my lessons!” exclaimed Carmella.
“Your lesson is to mind your parents.”
Maria had ordered Giuseppe to bed, speaking in English, and he had gone without reply. Another triumph of language, she knew.
“Did you strap him?” asked Tommaso, returning from the kitchen.
“No, I sent him to bed.”
“Do you wish me to whip?”
“It is not needed, I think.”
Here Maria found still another angle of her new importance. Never before had Tommaso sent a child to her for discipline.
“Che magia!” she thought. What magic!
In the days that followed the children adopted a new motto:
“Mind mother.”
More wisdom than even the trained Miss Sargle of Hope House had ever learned was in this change of front. Mrs. Barrington, patroness of Americanization, would never comprehend it.
Father Carbone could have taught them. Or genial Pat Cunningham, who patrolled the region of Hope House in a blue uniform, and represented law and order to that part of Little Italy.
Unfortunately for the cause, it never occurred to Hope House workers to take lessons from those best qualified to teach.
Nicolo’s mother came to visit Maria, and she was weeping.
“Alas me!” she said. “My Nicolo has left and forgotten me.”
“Where has he gone?”
“I do not know. After he was put on probation Mike told him to leave town. He has gone, but he has not written.”
“He will come back,” said Maria soothingly.
“But if he comes back, he cares not for me,” the woman sobbed. “He will not mind. He has not minded me since his father died.”
“And you did not make him?” asked Maria.
“How could I? He spoke in this new talk, and never could I make him answer in ‘the’ language when he did not want to.”
“Did you speak English to him?”
“Santo Dio! How could I? I do not know it.”
“Then you could not command your boy,” said Maria simply.
“But your children—they behave—and you⸺”
“I spika da Eenglish,” said Maria, in her new tongue.
“What?”
“I have learned to speak the Inglesi. I speak the language of my children.”
“You? When? How long? You!”
“Since a long time,” said Maria, fibbing easily. And she went on:
“You cannot command children who speak other than you do. I tried, and could not do it. So I learned to speak the American. It is a silly language, with many rules. But it can be learned.”
“Mio Dio! Where did you learn, Maria?”
“At Hope House.”
“I go with you next time.” said Mrs. Pieri.