# Carmella Commands/Chapter 21

armella broke the news as gently as she was able, but Nicolo’s mother spent the evening, till well toward midnight, rocking in her chair and moaning.
Like most of her friends in Little Italy, she spoke little or no English, and America was a land of bewilderment. With her only son in the hands of the dreaded police, she was desolate indeed.
“You are a dear girl to be with me this night,” she said to Carmella.
“Let’s go to bed. We must rest,” suggested the latter.
They slept together, ﬁtfully and unrelaxed, as womenfolk have forever slept when their menfolk have brought disgrace upon them. Nicolo, in his cell, slept more soundly than they.
In the morning Mrs. Pieri rose early, declaring that she must visit Nicolo at once.
“We’ll go over and see Mike Laudini,” said Carmella. “He’ll help, because Nick was working for him.”
After a hasty breakfast they stopped at Mike’s, but ​found that he was gone. “For two days,” said his wife. He had left hurriedly the night before. Yes, in answer to Carmella’s question, he had heard that Nicolo was pinched.
Carmella wondered. Never before had she heard of Mike’s leaving the city for so long. He was a retailer, not a “runner.” Business rarely called him far. It looked, Carmella feared, like desertion, and her anger rose.
They were at the police station long before court time. Little Italy’s hours were early. Carmella walked to the desk and roused the dozing sergeant.
“We’ll talk with Nicolo Pieri,” she said ﬁrmly.
“Huh!” said the sergeant, waking heavily.
“Nicolo Pieri. Quick! Here’s his mother to talk to him.”
“Say, kid,” said the sergeant, bending over the desk, “what alderman’s little girl are you? If you own this place, say so. If you don’t, cut out that ‘quick’ stuﬀ. See?”
Carmela threw high voltage into her direct gaze and into her voice.
“Listen, cop,” she said. “I don’t know your name, but I can ﬁnd it out easy enough. The only man around here I know is Captain Conners. But over at headquarters I know half of ’em. I’m a friend of Mike Laudini’s, if that means anything in your baby life. I’m a friend of Tom Barrington, the big real estate man. And my dad is Tom Coletta, and if that ​don’t mean anything to you, you better wise up on your job.
“Now do we see Nicolo quick, or do we not-quick? I want to know quick, because there’s a pay station phone across the street, and if I gotta use it I want to use it quick. Get me? Quick!”
The dazed sergeant lurched to his feet.
“F’r the love of Pete, kid, where’d you get your line of politics?” he asked. “Sure you can see the boy. I think you’re lying, but you’re doing it damn’ well.”
He escorted the two to the detention room, and brought in Nicolo. The boy came gruﬀly and sullenly, looking down. His mother tried to embrace him, but he shook her oﬀ, and took refuge behind the sergeant.
“Oh, my Nicolo!” his mother cried.
“Lay oﬂ' that stuﬀ, for God’s sake,” growled the boy.
“Better watch your step, Nicky,” said Carmella. “You may need your mother yet, you know, you rat! Mike’s out of town for the week.”
Nicolo almost leaped toward her.
“The hell he is! The hell you say!”
All through the hours he had been planning that Mike should “ﬁx things” for him. He winced, and Carmella saw her advantage.
“Mike’s skipped. You ain’t pinched for his job. He knows what you’re pinched for. That’s why he skipped. He didn’t want to be mixed up with a yel
The Boy Came Gruffly and Sullenly, Looking Down
​low pup like you. So I reckon you’d better make love to your mother, for a change, you rat!”
“Aw, you go to hell,” he snarled.
“That’s ﬁne! You’re a yellow pup, I said, and that goes. But your mother’s the only one that can bail you. You better open up and spill the works, or you’ll land for as long as I can land you. Remember, you’re just over age for reform school. You’ll get everything that’s coming to you. And if it wasn’t for your mother, I’d try to have ’em double it.”
His mother, knowing nothing of what Carmella had said to him, but seeing his distress, put her arm about him. This time he did not draw away.
“Why did you do it, Nicolo, my Nicolo?” she asked, sobbing.
“Aw—because.”
“Why? I said.”
“Well, folks thought I was a bootlegger. Kid Kate herself thought so.”
“Why did you steal?” repeated his mother, in the strained voice of anguish.
“I’ve told you!” shouted Nicolo. “I’ve told you. They thought I was a bootlegger. They thought that working for Mike I got a lot of money. Kid Kate thought so. They all thought so. Mike paid me ten dollars a week—ten dollars a week.
“And they all thought I was getting rich because I worked for Mike. That’s the hell of this bootleg busi​ness. They all think it’s a million a minute—and never think of the graft you have to pay.”
Mrs. Pieri sat, stunned. Her boy admitted stealing. She did not understand the reason. But he had stolen. She bowed her head and wept.
“Boy, you’ve got a bum alibi,” said Carmella. “So you stole cheap money to keep up a bootleg front, did you? My God, what a nut!”
Sergeant Donovan, standing near, understood most of the Italian talk.
“Well,” he said to himself, “I will be everlastingly damned! Ain’t they the hellions, these wops!”
A clerk entered and touched his arm.
“Sorry folks,” said the sergeant, “but this here young guy is due in court. Me and him better beat it.”
Sullenly the boy pleaded not guilty. But he had no lawyer, so the case was set for trial a week later.
Because the sum involved was small, the judge placed bail at what he considered a nominal ﬁgure. But to Nicolo, unaided, two hundred dollars was as impossible as twenty thousand.
“Oh, my poor boy!” moaned Mrs. Pieri, knowing nothing of what was happening, except that a big policeman stood beside Nicolo. Carmella tried to explain the situation to her.
“Somebody must pledge two hundred dollars, or Nicolo must stay in the prigione.”
“He didn’t do it,” moaned the mother, forgetting his own admissions.
​“They haven’t proved he did. He pleaded not guilty.”
“Of course he did. My brave boy!”
“But,” said Carmella, “they’re going to keep him for trial, and they’ll lock him up unless somebody oﬀers two hundred dollars to prove he won’t run away.”
“My boy run away! Never!”
“Maybe he won’t, Mrs. Pieri. But that’s the law. Now do you want to keep him out of jail for the next week, by putting up two hundred?”
“Yes, yes! But what do I do? Tell me, Carmella.”
Two policemen darted forward and the judge rapped for order as Carmella jumped to her feet and shouted:
“Say, Mr. Judge, can we bail him now?”
“Sit down!” commanded Judge Lawrence. “You are not a party to the case.”
“But Judge, I mean your Honor, I mean—gosh-all-jiminy, Judge! I’m the one that talks English for that guy’s mother. She wants to give bail. How do we do it? I mean—well, your Honor, this is the ﬁrst time I was ever arrested—I mean was in court.”
Old-timers in the courtroom looked to see the Judge hold the girl for contempt of court. He was a stickler for judicial dignity. But instead they heard him say:
“Come here to the desk, young lady.”
“Who are you?’ he asked, when the dazed Car​mella reached the platform. “Any relation to this boy?”
“For heaven’s sake, no, Judge! A relation to that yellow pup! But I’m a friend of his mother. My father is Tommaso Coletta, the big contractor.”
This last sentence she proclaimed loudly and proudly, that all the court might hear. Whereupon the policemen present scratched their heads as they tried to place the name. They must look up Contractor Coletta. Evidently a new ﬁgure in the Italian colony, and as such to be reckoned with.
Calling the bail oﬀicer to his side, Judge Lawrence arranged to have Mrs. Pieri give a bond based on her sworn equity in the house she owned.
“You may do the interpreting,” he said to Carmella, and added: “What’s your name, young lady?”
“Carmella, in Italian. Kid Kate, in English.”
“Are you a friend of Mrs. Barrington?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” said Carmella ﬁrmly. “But I’ve been to her house.”
The judge smiled. Not in months had he enjoyed so enlivening an incident in court. Nor so engaging an interpreter. He had heard of a girl called Carmella-Kid Kate from Mrs. Barrington, at whose home he played auction bridge once a week. Carmella did not know it, but this was to help make the path of Nicolo easier when he came to trial. Judge Lawrence had small patience with foreign-speaking oﬀenders who were brought into his court—but a defendant who ​had for a friend a friend of Mrs. Barrington’s. . . . That was slightly diﬀerent.
After the bail had been arranged, Carmella went to Nicolo and vented her wrath:
“Now, you dirty rat, take your mother home and take care of her. If you don’t behave decent for the next week, I’ll send you to jail. I’ll come down and be a witness against you. And I happen to know the Judge. You rotten little yellow thief!”
Nicolo, perhaps for the ﬁrst time in his life, was frightened.
“Come on, madre, let’s go home,” he said. “Thanks for bailing me.”
With a smile of utter happiness and faith and love —a smile that made Carmella want to cry for the pathos of it—Mrs. Pieri took her son’s arm and walked proudly out of the courtroom. He had been let oﬀ. That was all she understood of the proceedings.
Carmella reached her home a little before she would have had she gone to school.
“Where have you been?” asked Maria.
“Helping Mrs. Pieri help Nicolo out of trouble.”
“And you have not been to school? And you did not come home to ask? I shall tell your father.”
A dozen ﬂaming answers ﬂashed to Carmella’s tongue. She was moved to defy Maria, but suddenly the picture of the courtroom and of Mrs. Pieri’s anguish the night before blurred through her anger. No! Not for her was it to break a mother’s heart.
​“Padre Carbone at the church tells us to help those in trouble, mother,” she said calmly. “I was trying to do that. Please do tell father, and I will explain it. He will understand.”
Maria looked at her daughter, wondering.
“What happened to Nicolo?” she asked ﬁnally.
As Carmella ﬁnished the account of the morning’s events, the telephone rang. The girl answered, and appeared to hesitate.
“I’ll ask mother,” Maria heard her say, and shortly she came racing back to the kitchen.
“Madre! Mrs. Barrington wants me to come to lunch tomorrow. It’s Saturday. May I go? May I? I wish to very much.”
Maria thought slowly.
“Hurry, mother. She is waiting at the telephone for me to tell her.”
Maria’s slow thoughts ran in this wise: lunch with Mrs. Barrington meant talk of Hope House. It would mean—it might mean—that Mrs. Barrington would slip—would tell of her own lessons in English. She had promised faithfully not to—but sometimes tongues slipped.
“Perhaps,” Maria answered, after what to Carmella seemed an eternity of waiting. “Perhaps not. I will decide this afternoon. Tell her you will give your answer after school this afternoon.”
“But, mother! What is the⸺”
“Go!” said Maria, pointing toward the telephone.
​Carmella did as she was told. Her mother’s poise and tone were exactly as when she had punished Giuseppi. Carmella was puzzled. This world of hers, which once she had thought simple, was growing complex.
Hardly had she left the house for school that afternoon when Maria, nerving herself to the ordeal, went to the telephone. Laboriously she found the name and number in the directory, and for some minutes she practiced the sounds—Beacon four-four-six-eight. She had sent the younger children out to play. For this adventure she wished the house to herself.
Her heart almost failed her after she had lifted the receiver from the hook, but the operator’s voice was unexpectedly friendly.
“Bea—con—four—four—six—eight,” Maria said slowly and painfully.
“Beg pardon. Number, please!” said the pleasant voice.
Maria groaned, for she did not understand the formula. But before she could try again, the voice said, this time in her own language:
“Don’t you wish to give it in Italian?”
Maria sighed with relief. The voice was that of an Italian girl, chosen for the place because she could speak both languages. And through that exchange went many conversations, wholly in the tongue of Italy.
Presently a man’s voice answered the call.
​“Yes! Mrs. Barrington’s residence.”
“Hel-lo!” panted Maria.
“Whom do you wish, madame?” asked the voice.
“I veesh spik Mees Barringtone—talk with she.”
“Who is it speaking, please, madame?”
Maria’s English lessons had progressed to a point where she understood much more than she dared try to speak. She gave her name.
“Pardon, madame,” came the voice. “I do not quite understand. Would you please be so good as to repeat the name?”
“Mees Coletta. Col-et-ta! Less’n! You tell Mees Bar-ring-tone it ees mother of Carmella. She know.”
“Please hold the wire,” said the voice. Maria panted with fatigue as she waited. Then came Mrs. Barrington’s voice:
“Yes, Mrs. Coletta. This is Mrs. Barrington.”
Maria took a long breath and began:
“Mees Bar-ring-tone. You ask Carmella to you to-mor-row. Ees it not?”
“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Coletta, and I hope you’ll let her come.”
“Mees Bar-ring-tone, if she come you not say I spika Een-glish? You not say I taka de les-sone? You not say eet? No?”
There was an instant’s hesitation as Mrs. Barrington deciphered the language and accent. Then:
“Of course not, Mrs. Coletta. I will not say one ​word about it. Now, may she come? I want to talk with her about Hope House.”
“You spika Hope House—no spika me spika Eenglish.”
“No, Mrs. Coletta. And please let her come.”
“Si!” exclaimed Maria, and hung up the receiver with no further word of closing.
Sinking exhausted into the Morris chair, she fanned her face with her apron. She was worn out nervously, but happy. Her ﬁrst adventure in American had apparently been a success.
Carmella, after school, telephoned to Mrs. Barring- ton that she would come, and rejoiced that she would have a chance to learn why Dixon had not taken her to the Peggy Dorr ﬁlm at the Gaiety the week before.