Page 65 of Mafia Queen
He’ll come home victorious.
I try to feel it so strongly it becomes a future fact, but I can’t. The opposite belief doesn’t move the vane either. Inside me, the air is hopelessly still.
* * *
My father is a grocer.My mother works at the store. My sister goes to school. I am a child too young to understand what it means when someone asks me how old I am. I will sayquattrountil I’m told to say something different.
If the wind is blowing a certain way, the early morning rumble and whistle of the trains coming into and out of Napoli Centrale wakes me. In the bed next to mine, Rosetta sleeps like a stone right through it all. So I lie in bed and listen until either Mamma comes to wake me or the sun comes up and it’s too bright to pretend.
Nonna put us to bed last night. Mamma and Papino were out. So I’m happy when my father’s coughing wakes me. He just got back from the hospital a few days ago. He says his lungs aren’t clear yet. I imagine them obscured by a veil of snot and green goop. After a loud, throaty growl from my father, I hear my parents whispering in their room.
Without the sound of the trains, I’m bored. Rosetta sleeps openmouthed, dead to the world, even when I poke her nose.
Dragging Raggedy Ann behind me, I pad barefoot across the hall, looking for company. Instead, there’s something strange on the other side of my parents’ open door. Not dangerous or scary but odd. There’s a box on the floor. It’s as tall as my toybox but not as long. It’s dark, but the wood looks bitten and old. There are metal straps belted around it and all over the edges. Is it for me? My birthday isn’t for a long time, but maybe I was so extra good I get a surprise present?
In her pajamas with her hair down, Mamma is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the box. The yellow hat she wore to their favorite restaurant—the one where they wheel the menu around on a school blackboard—is on the dresser. Papino’s chair is opposite her. He’s leaning over with his elbows on his knees, still wearing his day clothes and the shadow of a scratchy beard.
The way they look at each other is frightening and awe-inspiring. I move behind the wall, watching them in the tiny space created by the door hinges.
“Did you ever wonder,” Mamma says, “what it would be like if this thing didn’t exist? Who you’d be?”
“I’d be myself.” Dad shrugs.
“You’d be the same big piece, eh?”
“Yes. And you’d still be mine.”
“Is that all I’d be? Do you ever wonder what I’d be? What Icouldbe?”
He slides off his chair and kneels on the opposite side of the box from her, folding her hands into his. She pulls away her hands, but he grabs them back and kisses each.
“Do I not take care of you?”
She yanks her hands back as if he’s insulted her. My father must see this as a challenge. He takes the box by the metal handles on each side and snaps his hands away.
“Cristo santo.” He shakes his hands and looks at where they touched the handles. “Did you have this by the stove?”
“Idiot,” Mamma says, standing. “Send this monstrosity away. Send it so far away, we can’t even see it if we want to. It’s evil. Even having it here in the house, I canfeelthe horns.”
“My brother will kill for it no matter where it is.”
Daddy has two sisters in America. Zia Madeline and Zia Donna. They bring us Pop-Tarts and Fritos when they visit from the other side. But a brother? I never saw a brother. Maybe he’s in America too?
I’m scared now. I don’t want the box, even if it’s a special present or it means I have a secret uncle.
“If he grows the stones to kill you…” She looks away with a face turned inward on itself—blank from reading the thoughts it’s created as if they’re new.
I’m sure I’m hidden, but she stops, frozen, and I realize that though I’m definitely behind the wall, Raggedy Ann isn’t.
“Violetta.” Her voice is stern and commanding. It’s the tone she uses when she’s about to get really mad. “Get in here.”
I do as I’m told, trying to stay small and far away.
“I’m thirsty.” This is the first lie I remember telling.
“Come,” Papino says, holding out his arm for me.
I don’t move.
