AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe that’s how it had been with her ma and pa. Just two people who found themselves in the same place wanting to stay there, getting hitched and scrapping out a life. They’d gone through their share of trouble—most of it caused by Ma—but they stuck together.
By now, Ginny had reached the gate of the house. Everything was so ... quiet. Funny. Right before supper, her younger brothers usually tussled in the yard like gulls after the same fish.
Inside, Pa sat at the kitchen table, head clutched in work-worn hands, and her heart nearly stopped beating. “Pa? What’s going on?”
Was something wrong with Ma? Had she been taken to jail again? She’d been better these past few years, once Pa cut her off from the family’s money to guard her from herself.
Barely lifting his head, Pa thrust a notice at her. Printed in tall, neat letters that she struggled to read were phrases includingcoastal fortificationsandvacate immediately.
She scowled at the paper. “What doeseminent domainmean?”
“It means they can do whatever they want, and folks like us haven’t got a chance.” Pa’s voice was cold as the wind battering the door as he took the paper back, crumpling it. “The government’s buying our home, Ginny. Making the whole place into a navy base.”
No. They couldn’t. Her family could fight this.
But her pa went on, voice as helpless and hopeless as she’d ever heard it. “We’ve got to leave the island.”
MARTINA BIANCHINI
JANUARY 31, 1942
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Martina ran her thumb over the worn spines of her books, swiping at the tears that threatened to pock the covers with wet blotches.
“Affogare in un bicchier d’acqua.” She scolded herself using one of Mamma’s tried-and-true phrases from the old country. “Do not drown in a glass of water.” After all she’d gone through, was she going to cry over a few dusty books?
She took a deep breath. Rosa’s collection of fairy tales, tattered and threadbare like Cinderella’s rags, would need to come.Swiss Family Robinsonfor Gio, with a hope that he wouldn’t outgrow that too, as he had with two pairs of shoes this year.Emma, of course, her most reread of Jane Austen.
A glance over her shoulder revealed that the faux-snakeskin suitcase she’d allotted herself for personal items was mostly full already.
SoJane Eyrewould stay behind. It was easier to abandon the biographies and history books she’d used to study for her citizenship test, butOliver Twistwas a loss.
Still, it had to be done. The hiring manager at the foundry had given her the dimensions of the one-bedroom trailer home. She’d marked it out with chalk and her sewing tape. Sosmall. With two growing children and all of their possessions, she would have a single shelf at best for her own nonessentials.
“Iwillcome back for you,” she whispered to the forlorn books. Better not to wonder when.
“No!” Past the thin door, the floorboards of the apartment creaked with hurried footsteps and her son’s voice. “I won’t give it to you! Iwon’t.”
She closed her eyes, longing to kneel by the books a little longer and let the latest trouble run its course. But only for a moment, because deeper than the weariness was the knowledge that she was a mother, so all trouble in the family was her trouble.
When Martina stepped into the hallway, Gio rammed into her, wiry arms wrapped around his prized possession: a portable Motorola radio.
At the end of the hallway, Martina’s mother stood with arms folded and dark brows set in a look ofWell? He’s your son. Do something.
What could Mamma want with Gio’s radio? She hated the noisy thing.
“Gio! Show respect to yournonna.” At times like this, Martina couldn’t bear to call him George, the name she insisted he use for school.
“It’s notherI’m disrespecting,” Gio shot back, “it’s the officer.”
Officer?A glance at her mother—who, for all the wrinkles gently scoring her face, looked like a girl caught sneaking cookies before dinner—told Martina there was some truth to Gio’s words.
“To your room, Gio.” Martina used the tone she heard from matriarchs on every stoop and street corner in Boston’s North End, whether the words were in English or Italian. “Finish packing.Withoutthe radio.”
He reluctantly surrendered it with one last pleading lookbefore she shooed him away and turned her attention to her mother. “What haven’t you told me, Mamma?”
“Calmati.” Mamma bustled down the hall, and Martina followed her into the kitchen, where miracles were produced under Angela Bianchini’s wooden spoon. “A nice young man came by yesterday to tell me where to get a registration card. He also said I should not travel far from home, and I must turn in any cameras and radios. That is all.”
