‘Is he here – the Abruzzian dog?’
Maria hurried from the kitchen and threw her arms around her mother. Donna Toscana was now a huge woman, always dressed in black since the death of her husband. Beneath the outer black silk were petticoats, four of them, all brightly colored. Her bloated ankles looked like goiters. Her tiny shoes seemed ready to burst beneath the pressure of her two hundred and fifty pounds. Not two but a dozen breasts seemed crushed into her bosom. She was constructed like a pyramid, without hips. There was so much flesh in her arms that they hung not downward but at an angle, her puffed fingers dangling like sausages. She had virtually no neck at all. When she turned her head the drooping flesh moved with the melancholy of melting wax. A pink scalp showed beneath her thin white hair. Her nose was thin and exquisite, but her eyes were like trampled concord grapes. Whenever she spoke her false teeth chattered obliviously a language all their own.
Maria took her coat and Donna stood in the middle of the room, smelling it, the fat crinkling in her neck as she conveyed to her daughter and grandsons the impression that the odor in her nostrils was definitely a nasty one, a very filthy one. The boys sniffed suspiciously. Suddenly the house did possess an odor they had never noticed before. August thought about his kidney trouble two years before, wondering if, after two years, the odor of it was still in existence.
‘Hi ya, Grandma,’ Federico said.
‘Your teeth look black,’ she said. ‘Did you wash them this morning?’
Federico’s smile vanished and the back of his hand covered his lips as he lowered his eyes. He tightened his mouth and resolved to slip into the bathroom and look in the mirror as soon as he could. Funny how his teeth did taste black.
Grandma kept sniffing.
‘What is this malevolent odor?’ she asked. ‘Surely your father is not at home.’
The boys understood Italian, for Bandini and Maria often used it.
‘No, Grandma,’ Arturo said. ‘He isn’t home.’
Donna Toscana reached into the folds of her breasts and drew out her purse. She opened it and produced a ten-cent piece at the tips of her fingers, holding it out.
‘Now,’ she smiled. ‘Who of my three grandsons is the most honest? To the one who is, I will give this deci soldi. Tell me quickly: is your father drunk?’
‘Ah, Mamma mio,’ Maria said. ‘Why do you ask that?’
Without looking at her, Grandma answered, ‘Be still, woman. This is a game for the children.’
The boys consulted one another with their eyes: they were silent, anxious to betray their father but not anxious enough. Grandma was so stingy, yet they knew her purse was filled with dimes, each coin the reward for a piece of information about Papa. Should they let this question pass and wait for another – one not quite so unfavorable to Papa – or should one of them answer before the other? It was not a question of answering truthfully: even if Papa wasn’t drunk. The only way to get the dime was in answering to suit Grandma.
Maria stood by helplessly. Donna Toscana wielded a tongue like a serpent, ever ready to strike out in the presence of the children: half-forgotten episodes from Maria’s childhood and youth, things Maria preferred that her boys not know lest the information encroach upon her dignity: little things the boys might use against her. Donna Toscana had used them before. The boys knew that their Mamma was stupid in school, for Grandma had told them. They knew that Mamma had played house with nigger children and got a licking for it. That Mamma had vomited in the choir of St Dominic’s at a hot High Mass. That Mamma, like August, had wet the bed, but, unlike August, had been forced to wash out her own nighties. That Mamma had run away from home and the police had brought her back (not really run away, only strayed away, but Grandma insisted she had run away). And they knew other things about Mamma. She refused to work as a little girl and had been locked in the cellar by the hour. She never was and never would be a good cook. She screamed like a hyena when her children were born. She was a fool or she would never have married a scoundrel like Svevo Bandini . . . and she had no self-respect, otherwise why did she always dress in rags? They knew that Mamma was a weakling, dominated by her dog of a husband. That Mamma was a coward who should have sent Svevo Bandini to jail a long time ago. So it was better not to antagonize her mother. Better to remember the Fourth Commandment, to be respectful toward her mother so that her own children by example would be respectful toward her.
‘Well,’ Grandma repeated. ‘Is he drunk?’
A long silence.
Then Federico: ‘Maybe he is, Grandma. We don’t know.’
‘Mamma mio,’ Maria said. ‘Svevo is not drunk. He is away on business. He will be back any minute now.’
‘Listen to your mother,’ Donna said. ‘Even when she was old enough to know better she never flushed the toilet. And now she tries to tell me your vagabond father is not drunk! But he is drunk! Is he not, Arturo? Quick – for deci soldi!’
‘I dunno, Grandma. Honest.’
‘Bah!’ she snorted. ‘Stupid children of a stupid parent!’
She threw a few coins at their feet. They pounced upon them like savages, fighting and tumbling over the floor. Maria watched the squirming mass of arms and legs. Donna Toscana’s head shook miserably.
‘And you smile,’ she said. ‘Like animals they claw themselves to pieces, and their mother smiles her approval. Ah, poor America! Ah, America, thy children shall tear out one another’s throats and die like bloodthirsty beasts!’
‘But Mamma mio, they are boys. They do no harm.’
‘Ah, poor America!’ Donna said. ‘Poor, hopeless America!’
She began her inspection of the house. Maria had prepared for this: carpets and floors swept, furniture dusted, the stoves polished. But a dust rag will not remove stains from a leaking ceiling; a broom will not sweep away the worn places on a carpet; soap and water will not disturb the omnipresence of the marks of children: the dark stains around door knobs, here and there a grease spot that was born suddenly; a child’s name crudely articulate; random designs of tic-tac-toe games that always ended without a winner; toe marks at the bottom of doors, calendar pictures that sprouted mustaches overnight; a shoe that Maria had put away in the closet not ten minutes before; a sock; a towel; a slice of bread and jam in the rocking chair.
For hours Maria had worked and warned – and this was her reward. Donna Toscana walked from room to room, her face a crust of dismay. She saw the boys’ room: the bed carefully made, a blue spread smelling of mothballs neatly completing it; she noticed the freshly ironed curtains, the shining mirror over the dresser, the rag rug at the bedside so precisely in order, everything so monastically impersonal, and under the chair in the corner – a pair of Arturo’s dirty shorts, kicked there, and sprawled out like the section of a boy’s body sawed in half.
The old woman raised her hands and wailed.
‘No hope,’ she said. ‘Ah, woman! Ah, America!’
‘Well, how did that get there?’ Maria said. ‘The boys are always so careful.’
She picked up the garment and hastily shoved it under her apron, Donna Toscana’s cold eyes upon her for a full minute after the pair of shorts had disappeared.
‘Blighted woman. Blighted, defenseless woman.’
All afternoon it was the same, Donna Toscana’s relentless cynicism wearing her down. The boys had fled with their dimes to the candy store. When they did not return after an hour Donna lamented the weakness of Maria’s authority. When they did return, Federico’s face smeared with chocolate,