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“Only what everyone knows, I suppose,” Frangie says.
“Mother hasn’t ever . . .” He lets it hang.
Frangie has a squirming feeling of discomfort. “She doesn’t talk to me about it. I know she was there at the time, and Daddy was up in Chicago visiting his sister.”
Harder has stood all through his long, fervent political survey, but now he sits on a moss-coated log so he’s at eye level with her. “Haven’t you ever wondered about it?”
“I’ve wondered, but . . . she’s always seemed like she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not surprised. She had a very bad time of it. She won’t talk, but others have, down through the years. I fought many a schoolyard skirmish because of it.”
“But . . . but because of what?”
“My God, you really don’t know.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
His face is serious now, grim even. His gaze meets hers and won’t release her, and the back of her neck tingles.
“Have you never wondered why I look like this?” he asks, almost pleading.
“Look like what?”
“My skin. My nose. My hair. My eyes.”
She stares at him, and the tingling spreads from the nape of her neck down over her shoulders and up her cheeks.
“Good lord, little Frangie, my sweet sister. Do I look like Father? Do I look even a little bit like Father?”
Frangie’s head is moving slowly, side to side in negation, in denial, in a preemptive, protective reaction to what she senses coming. She doesn’t want what’s coming. She begins moving to the music, trying to focus on the Robert Johnson song Willie is now playing.
Woke this mornin’ feelin’ round for my shoes,
But you know by that, I got these old walkin’ blues.
But Harder has never been one to read subtle cues. His voice is relentless, cold, determined to tell it all. “They caught hold of Mother. She was newly married, just seventeen at the time, and they caught hold of her as she was fetching groceries.”
“What do you . . .” But she can’t say more, her throat is swelling shut, her heart pounding like a great bass drum keeping a funereal time. Because all at once, she knows.
“She was raped, Frangie. Many times, by many white men.”
“Jesus, no.”
“She was close to death for weeks.”
“No, no, Jesus no, Jesus no,” Frangie pleads, imploring Harde
r through a screen of tears.
Harder takes her hand but his expression is remote. “Did you think Father kicked me out for my politics alone? No, although he has a fool’s unthinking rejection of the party. No, Knee-high, every time he looks at me he knows. My face is a constant reminder that I am not his son.”
29
RAINY SCHULTERMAN—GESTAPO HEADQUARTERS, NAPLES, ITALY
The slap is backhanded. The ring cuts her cheek, a new cut to join the dozens already there, some partly scabbed over, others fresh and oozing blood.
Her ankles are tied to the feet of the chair. Her hands are tied behind the chair back. Her left eye is swollen closed. Blood clogs both nostrils so she can only breathe through her mouth.
