Carmella Commands
She noticed that he said nothing to Maria about the morning’s work. She wondered if he never reported his business successes to her mother.
Just before the family sat down to a late dinner of meat balls with red wine he handed Carmella a ten-dollar bill, without saying why. It was the largest sum he had ever given her, for her own. There was no chance to do more than whisper her “thank you,” but she beamed at him across the table, so that he understood.
After dinner she went to the sitting-room table, which was the family desk, and wrote the following note:
“Miss Kelly, Teacher—
“Please excuse Carmella for not going to school today. I used her for to interpret.”
“Come here and sign this, dad!” she called.
Tommaso looked at the message and asked Carmella to read it in his own tongue.
“It’s just an excuse for not being in school this morning,” she explained, and translated it literally. “You have to sign it, you know.”
Laboriously Tommaso signed his name.
It was natural for Carmella to ask her father to sign the note. He was the one who had kept her out of school. Yet, curiously, this was the first time that she had not had her mother furnish the excuses.
[108]
