by John Fante
My Uncle Tony was in the grocery business too, but his store was a little one and he didn’t sell Italian stuff, and he had it all figured out that when my mother and Pasquale got married he would merge his store with Pasquale’s and they would all clean up. But Pasquale never came back to the house again. Before long he married a girl, and she wasn’t an Italian either. She was an American and he didn’t love her either. Grandma Toscana said it was a spite marriage. The Italians do that sometimes. A spite marriage is when you marry somebody else to get your real girl’s goat and try to make her sorry she didn’t marry you. But my mother wasn’t sorry at all. The whole thing tickled her pink.
In North Denver is the Church of St. Cecilia’s. This was where my mother spent all of her time. It is across the street from the high school, an old red church without a lawn in front of it or anything, just the street, and not even a tree around. Once I went there for Christmas Mass with my mother. It was a long time after she got married. I mean, it had to be. The church is a big, sad church and the incense smells like my mother. It is a leery church. It scared me. I kept thinking I was not born and would never be born.
My mother knew all the nuns at St. Cecilia’s. She used to bum around with them, and they put her in charge of the altars and she decorated them with flowers. She washed and ironed the altar linen and things like that. It was more fun than getting married. She was there all afternoon, so that Uncle Jim or Uncle Tony had to come for her at supper time. Uncle Jim didn’t mind because it was only a block away, but Uncle Tony raised hell. He thought church was a lot of boloney.
He said, “Instead of fooling around here all the time, why don’t you stay home and help your mother?”
But my mother was a good worker and she told him to be careful what he said. She did all the washing and ironing around the house, and Grandma didn’t have any kick coming, and once in a while she cooked the meals, but not often because she was not a good cook. She always did her work before she went to St. Cecilia’s. Her garden was in Grandma’s back yard, and she grew peonies and roses for the altars. Uncle Tony told her to cut out the church stuff or he would wreck her garden.
“You go to the dickens!”
Oh oh, that got him mad. Italian girls are not supposed to sass their big brothers. Uncle Tony wouldn’t allow anything like that.
“By God, I’ll show you!” he said.
He ran out to the coal shed and got the spade. Then he took off his sweater and spaded every flower in the garden to pieces. It hurt my mother. She stood on the back porch and it hurt her. She was crazy about her garden, and when she saw him hacking it up she hung on the door and almost fainted. Then she ran out and screamed and screamed. She fell on the ground and kicked with her feet and hit with her hands. It scared Uncle Tony. He called Grandma. She kept screaming. He tried to lift her. She screamed and kicked him.
She was very sick. They carried her upstairs and put her to bed. The doctor came. He said she was a very sick woman. For a long time he came every day. They had to have a nurse. For a year she was sick and nervous. Everybody in the house had to be quiet and walk on tiptoe. It cost a lot of money for doctor bills. My mother cried and cried night and day. They couldn’t stop her. Even the Sisters came, but they couldn’t do anything. Finally Grandma Toscana called the priest. He gave her Holy Communion. Right away she felt better. Next day she was better than ever. Next day she was swell. Pretty soon she was able to get out of bed. Then she moved around more. All at once she was well again.
Grandma Toscana said it was a miracle. Uncle Tony felt like the devil. He told my mother how sorry he was, and he planted her a new garden. Everything was fine again. My mother liked the new garden better than ever, and Uncle Tony left her alone. Nobody bothered her any more.
She went on decorating the altars at St. Cecilia’s. Also she taught school. She went on retreats. A retreat is when you pray and meditate for three days without talking to anybody. Once she went on a retreat for six weeks. Whatever the nuns did, she did. She was crazy about them. All they ever did was wash clothes, decorate altars, scrub floors, and teach kids.
Before long, sure enough Uncle Tony started kicking again, but not like before. He was afraid my mother would get sick again. He even brought more men to the house. He brought Jack Mondi, who was the biggest bootlegger in North Denver. He isn’t any more because he got shot, but he was important when Uncle Tony brought him to meet my mother. He scared the whole family stiff. Before sitting down, he always put his gun on the table. Every few minutes he jumped up and peeked out the front window. He brought gangsters with him, and they waited for him on the front porch. Even Uncle Tony didn’t know it was going to be that scary, so he tried to get rid of Jack Mondi, but he didn’t try very hard. He was afraid he would get hurt.
Once Jack Mondi came to the house drunk and he bit my mother on the cheek. It was the first time anything like that ever happened to her, and she got mad and hauled off and slapped him. The whole family held their breaths and waited for Jack Mondi to shoot them down. Uncle Tony made a sign to my mother to go easy and not make Jack mad. But my mother didn’t think he was so tough. She told him to get out of the house and never come back. He did it too. He stuck his gun in his pocket and walked right out without saying a word. For a long time they thought he would come back and shoot the whole family, but he never came back again. Uncle Tony was so scared he even went to church. But Jack Mondi never showed up again. After he got killed they read about it in the papers. My mother went to his funeral and prayed for the repose of his soul. She was the only woman in the church besides Jack Mondi’s mother. Which proves my mother was a good sport.
Another guy with a crush on my mother was Alfredo di Posso. Uncle Tony brought him too. Whenever he found a guy he thought would make a good husband he brought him to dinner. There were others too, but I only know about Pasquale Martello, Jack Mondi, Alfredo di Posso, and a man named Murphy, but Murphy didn’t cut much ice because he was Irish. Uncle Tony never did like the Irish.
Alfredo di Posso was a salesman for lima beans. Once in a while Alfredo comes to our town, so I know him. He doesn’t sell beans in cans or anything like that. He sells them by the carload. When he comes to our town he stops to see my mother. He is a swell guy, always laughing. He gives me money, usually four bits. When my mother met him, he didn’t have a religion. She made him join the Catholic Church, but he made fun of it; he made fun of everything. My mother got tired of it. She told him she could never marry him.
When my mother was twenty-one everybody in North Denver knew she was going to be a nun. Her favorite order was the Sisters of Charity. You have to take the train to their convent in Kentucky. For a long time you study stuff. Then you become a real nun. They cut off your hair and you wear black dresses, and you can’t get married or have fun. Your husband is Jesus. Anyway, that’s what Sister Delphine told me.
It was all set. My mother was ready to go. Uncle Tony hated it and so did the rest, but they couldn’t do anything. Grandpa was disappointed. He had a shoe shop on Osage Street. He liked nuns. He thought they were swell people, he even did their shoe work for nothing, but he couldn’t see why his own daughter had to get mixed up in it.
He promised to send my mother to Colorado U. if she would forget it. My mother wouldn’t hear of it because she thought Colorado U. was an awful place. Right now my mother knows a Catholic who doesn’t believe in God. He went to Colorado U. He was all right until then. Now the Catholics in our town are off him for life. They even kicked him out of the Knights of Columbus because he made smart cracks. So my mother wouldn’t go to a school like Colorado U. It was Kentucky or nothing.
All day long Uncle Tony yelled at her, calling her a dumb cluck and a stupe. She almost had another nervous breakdown. He followed her around the house, yelling at her and trying to make her change her mind. Next door to Grandma Toscana’s the Rocca people were building a new house. Uncle Tony had a big voice and he yelled so loud the bricklayers heard every word he hollered. T
hey used to stop work on the scaffold and listen to him.
One morning two months before she was to leave for Kentucky my mother was eating breakfast, and Uncle Tony started right in on the same old argument. She didn’t have any sense. Weren’t they treating her all right at home? She wanted to bury herself in a hole and forget all the fine things her family did for her. Didn’t she get enough to eat and plenty of clothes to wear? Then what more did she want? Why did she have to be so selfish? Think of her poor mother getting old without her around. Why couldn’t she think those things out and realize the mistake she was making?
My mother put her head down and started to cry.
One of the bricklayers was watching from the scaffold. He climbed down the ladder and walked over to the kitchen window. He was an Italian too, but not the ordinary kind. He had a red mustache for one thing, and red hair. He knocked on the screen and my mother looked up. Uncle Tony wanted to know what he wanted. The man had a trowel in his hand. He shook it in Uncle Tony’s face.
“If you say another word to that girl I’ll knock your head off!”
The minute my mother saw him something happened. Uncle Tony got so mad he went into the front room without speaking. My mother kept looking at the man with the trowel and the little red mustache. All at once they both started laughing. He went back to work, still laughing. At noon he sat on the scaffold looking down into the kitchen window. My mother could see him. He whistled. !She laughed and came to the window. What he wanted was some salt for his sandwich. That was how it got started. The man was my father. Every day he laughed and asked for something. If it wasn’t salt it was pepper, and my mother laughed and got it for him. Another time he asked for some fresh fruit to go with his lunch. One day he came to the window and laughed and asked if she had any wine. Then he wanted to know if she could cook. My mother laughed and laughed. Finally she told him not to bring his lunch any more but to come over and eat with her. He laughed and said sure. Two months later, instead of going to Kentucky, my mother came to our town and got married.
My Father’s God
UPON THE DEATH of old Father Ambrose, the Bishop of Denver assigned a new priest to St. Catherine’s parish. He was Father Bruno Ramponi, a young Dominican from Boston. Father Ramponi’s picture appeared on the front page of the Boulder Herald. Actually there were two pictures—one of a swarthy, short-necked prelate bulging inside a black suit and reversed collar, the other an action shot of Father Ramponi in football gear leaping with outstretched hands for a forward pass. Our new pastor was famous. He had been a football star, an All-American halfback from Boston College.
My father studied the pictures at the supper table.
“A Sicilian,” he decided. “Look how black he is.”
“How can he be a Sicilian?” my mother asked. “The paper says he was born in Boston.”
“I don’t care where he was born. I know a Sicilian when I see one.” His brows quivered like caterpillars as he studied the face of Father Ramponi. “I don’t want any trouble with this priest,” he brooded.
It was an ominous reminder of the many futile years Father Ambrose had tried to bring my father back to the church. “The glorious return to divine grace,” Father Ambrose had called it. “The prodigal son falling into the arms of his heavenly father.” On the job or in the street, at band concerts and in the pool hall, the old pastor constantly swooped down on my father with these pious objurations which only served to drive him deeper among the heathens, so that the priest’s death brought a gasp of relief.
But in Father Ramponi he sensed a renewal of the tedious struggle for his soul, for it was only a question of time before the new priest discovered that my father never attended Mass. Not that my mother and we four kids didn’t make up for his absences. He insisted that it had to be that way, and every Sunday, through rain, sleet and snow he watched us trek off to St. Catherine’s ten blocks away, his conscience vicariously soothed, his own cop-out veiled in righteous paternalism.
The day after the announcement of Father Ramponi’s appointment, St. Catherine’s school droned like an agitated beehive with rumors about our new priest. Gathered in clusters along the halls, the nuns whispered breathlessly. On the playground the boys set aside the usual touchball game to crowd into the lavatory and relate wild reports. The older boys did all the talking, cigarettes dangling from their lips, while second graders like myself listened with bulging eyes.
It was said that Father Ramponi was so powerful that he could bring down a bull with one punch, that he was structured like a gorilla, and that his nose had been kicked in on an historic Saturday afternoon when he had torn apart the Notre Dame line. We younger kids stiffened in fear and awe. After the gentle Father Ambrose, the thought of being hauled before Father Ramponi for discipline was too ghastly to contemplate. When the first bell rang we rushed to our classrooms, dreading the sudden, unexpected appearance of Father Ramponi in the halls.
At 11:30, in the midst of arithmetic, the classroom door opened and our principal, Sister Mary Justinus, entered. Her cheeks shone like apples. Her eyes glittered with excitement.
“The class will please rise,” she announced.
We got to our feet and caught sight of him in the hall. This was it. The awesome Father Ramponi was about to make his debut before the Second Grade class.
‘Children,’ Sister Justinus fluttered, “I want you to say ‘Good morning,’ to your new pastor, Father Bruno Ramponi.” She raised her hands like a symphony conductor and brought them down briskly as we chanted, “Good morning, Father,” and the priest stepped into the room.
He moved forward to stand before us with massive hands clasped at his waist, a grin kneading his broken face. All the rumors about him were true—a bull of a man with dark skin and wide, crushed nostrils out of which black hairs flared. His jaw was as square as a brickbat, his short neck like a creosoted telephone pole. From out of his coat sleeves small bouquets of black hair burst over his wrists.
“Please be seated,” he smiled.
The moment he uttered those three words the myth of his ferocity vanished. For his voice was small and sibilant, surprisingly sweet and uncertain, a mighty lion with the roar of a kitten. The whole class breathed a sigh of deliverance as we sat down.
For twenty seconds he stood there lost for words, his large face oozing perspiration. With the uncanny intuition of children we were on to him, knowing somehow that this colossus of the gridiron would never loose his terrible wrath upon us, that he was as docile as a cow and harmless as a butterfly.
Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at his moist neck and we grew uneasy and embarrassed waiting for him to say more, but he was locked to the spot, his tongue bolted down.
Finally Sister Justinus came to his rescue, breaking the silence with a brisk slap of her hands. “Now children, I want each of you to rise and give Father your name so that he can greet you personally.”
One at a time we stood and pronounced our names, and in each instance Father Ramponi nodded and said, “How do you do, Tom,” or “How do you do, Mary,” or “How do you do, Patrick.”
At my turn I rose and spoke my name.
“Paisan,” the priest grinned.
I managed a smile.
“Tell your folks I’ll be around to meet them soon.”
Even though he told most of the students the same thing, I sat there in a state of shock. There were some things I could tell my father and others I preferred to delete, but there was one thing I didn’t dare tell him—that a priest was coming to visit him.
With my mother it didn’t matter, and upon hearing that Father Ramponi was coming she lifted her eyes to heaven and moaned.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t tell your father. We might lose him for good.”
It was our secret, my mother’s and mine, and we paid the price, specially Mamma. All that was required of me was to keep the front yard clean, raking the October leaves and sweeping the front porch every day. S
he took on the rest of the house alone, and in the days that followed she washed the walls and ceilings, she washed the windows, she laundered and ironed the curtains, she waxed the linoleum, she dragged the frazzled rugs out to the back yard, flung them over the clothesline and beat them with a broom.
Every evening, home from work, my father strode through the house and paused, the smell of ammonia in his nostrils as he looked around and found some small new change. The gas heater in the living room polished and shining, its chrome gleaming like a band of dazzling silver, the furniture luminous as dark mirrors, the broken rocker repaired, the worn needle-point replaced with a piece of blue wool from an old coat.
He crossed the linoleum that sparkled like a sheet of ice. “What’s happening?” he asked. “What’s going on around here?”
“House cleaning,” my mother said, her face careworn, her hair coming loose from the bun in back, her bones aching. He frowned at her curiously.
“Take it easy. What’s the good of a clean house if you end up in the hospital?”
Days passed and November showed up, bringing the first snow of winter. But Father Ramponi did not visit us. I saw him almost every day at school, and he always tossed a word or two my way, but he made no mention of the visit.
The snow fell steadily. The streets disappeared. The windows frosted. My mother strung clotheslines around the stove in the living room, in order to dry the washing. The cold weather confined the little ones indoors. Crayons were crushed underfoot, toys kicked beneath the furniture. My brother spilled a bottle of ink on the linoleum, my sister drew a pumpkin face with black crayon on the best wall in the front room. Then she melted the crayon against the side of the hot stove. Mama threw up her hands in defeat. If Father Ramponi ever visited us, he would have to take us for what we were—just plain, stupid peasants.
The snow was my father’s deadly enemy, burying his job in desolate white mounds, engulfing brick, cement and scaffolding, robbing him of his livelihood and sending him home with an unopened lunch pail. He became a prisoner in his own house.
