Carmella Commands
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.”
[258]
