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“Basta!” she shouted, barreling toward them, the word coming out in her native Italian. One of her mother’s favorite expressions, versatile enough to be spoken in fear, exasperation, anger ... and right now Martina felt all three.Enough.
The knot of children—some jeering encouragement, others crying for them to stop—parted, giving her a clear view of Gio as he heaved his fist into another child’s stomach. The boy tottered and fell, and in a moment, Gio was down too, wrestling him in the dirt like a mutt in a back-alley dogfight.
“George!”
At the sound of his American name spoken in that tone, Gio faltered, breaking his hold to turn.
“Get him off me!” the towheaded child pinned underneath him hollered. She recognized him as Lenny Higgins, whose mother worked the night shift at Bristol-Banks. Blood dripped from his nose onto his collar.
It wasn’t hard to yank her son up. Gio, his fighting spirit gone with her unexpected appearance, didn’t resist, his breathing coming in hard, sharp bursts. From the swelling on his face, it looked like Lenny had gotten in at least one good blow.
Good, she thought, her anger surpassing even maternal protectiveness.
Martina felt a hand slip into hers. Rosa looked up at her with brown eyes, fringed with long lashes. Silent and sweet at age seven, she’d watched her brother attack another child from the sidelines.
“It will be all right,piccola,”she wanted to say. But now was not the time for empty promises.
The two boys separated, she drew herself up to every inch of her five feet, only a little taller than Gio. “What happened? Tell me the truth.”
“He—” Gio began, but Lenny’s voice, pitched shriller, cut through his. “We got off the bus, and he started whaling on me.”
Over Gio’s protests, Martina heard a deeper sound: a car approaching. Instinctively, she looked over, making sure none of the children were standing close to the road.
The sleek tan roadster, probably worth more than she made in a year, slowed as it passed the trailer camp, and the sight made Martina’s temper flare. She turned, instinctively, to shield her son from the sight of the driver.“You don’t know,”she wanted to shout at the rich person behind the tinted windows gawking at the new government housing.“You have no idea what it’s like to be—”
What? Hunched over yet another munitions mold at midnight, trying not to let your eyes flutter shut? Falsely cheerful when telling people about your enlisted seaman husband?Cramped into an eight-by-twenty-two–foot living space that passed as a home?
Or maybe just ...tired.
Yes, that was what she was. So, so tired.
Lenny’s whining voice drew her attention back. “He’d have killed me if you hadn’t come.”
With Gio still scowling silently, it was up to her to see if the boy was badly injured, promise that Gio would be punished, and tell the other children to go home.
“Mamma,” Rosa whispered as she tugged them both away. “That boy—”
“Not now, Rosa.” Of course there was more to the story. There always was. Some excuse Gio would use to justify hurting someone—usually, given his larger size for his twelve years, someone smaller and weaker.
Her head throbbed as she shut the trailer door and stepped into the galley kitchen. Rosa made for the lone bedroom, a cozy compartment far from the conflict she knew was coming.
Pushing past her, Gio reached for the icebox, but she nudged him away. “No. We don’t have the money to waste meat on that eye of yours.”
The first fight, Martina had fussed over him, asked what happened, assumed the best. The time for that was over.
“You promised me you’d do better.”
“I was defending the family.”
Look at me, son.If he could only see her disappointment, maybe it would move him. But Gio’s eyes wandered anywhere else: the linoleum, the dollhouse-sized stove, those pictures of his, pinned in the space between two of the windows.
Without thinking, Martina edged past her son, grabbed a corner of one of the pages, and yanked. Down went two images torn fromThe Knockoutmagazine, Nick Peters and Joe Louis, with a satisfying tear of tape. Then a headline from theBostonHerald’s sports page about the 1940 heavyweight championship. Next, a two-color trading card of Max Baer ready to strike.
This, finally, was an outlet for her anger. Something she could do. Remove those glowering men, their bare skin glistening with sweat, their fists raised in violence, from her home.
“No! You can’t!” Gio pulled at her arm, and until he shrank back under her glare, Martina wondered if he meant to hit her too.
“These pictures, they aren’t going on the wall.” She waved the stack of them in his face. “You can keep them in the drawer.”
