Carmella Commands
At home she spoke Italian to her parents, and a pidgin-mixture with her younger brothers and sisters. Elsewhere she spoke a haphazard jumble of the two, American slang preferred, as with Mrs. Barrington—a very unbookish jargon.
She knew that her command of the speech of the country gave her an advantage over her mother. In a vague way she felt that it did over her father. But Tommaso Coletta was not so easily bluffed as was his wife. He mingled more with men and affairs. Once Carmella had threatened him by saying that she would forget English. And he had responded by punishing her with a severity that was unusual even for him.
It would have amazed them both to know that his daily questioning of his wife about the children’s behavior, and the severity of his whippings when they had misbehaved, were reactions of his unformulated fear—his fear of children who dwelt in another language—the fear of the hen which has hatched duck’s eggs and sees her offspring swimming.
Carmella had watched her father come down the street and turn into the yard. He was tired—she could tell by his walk. A bullet wound he had received at the Piave never troubled him except when he was tired. Then it gave him a slight limp. He had come to America only after he had served his country in the war. Carmella and Giuseppe were only babies then. There had been three others since.
“Buona sera, papa carissimo!” she cried at the door.
[33]
