# Carmella Commands/Chapter 18

nto Hope House, the community settlement, walked Maria Coletta. Into Miss Sargle’s oﬀice, and there she said, slowly and with deference:
“Non parlo Inglesi. To know—I—here.”
“Yes, indeed!” said Miss Sargle, with a settlement house smile. “We can put you in a class next autumn.”
This was in English, for Miss Sargle prided herself on not having to know the language of the country in whose suburbs she dwelt and worked. Maria did not understand the words, but she understood the tone of postponement.
“That be damn!” she cried, and found herself using strange words. “I learn—now—now—now!”
Miss Sargle was annoyed. This was out of routine, and anything out of routine annoys a professional goodwill worker.
“You⸺” she began.
“Madre di Carmella,” said Mrs. Coletta calmly.
Miss Sargle suddenly decided to play safe. In army language, she would seek safety by passing the buck.
​“Perhaps you should see Mrs. Barrington. She’s here now. Come this way, please.”
Miss Sargle led the way to the oﬀice of Mrs. Barrington, now presiding over the welfare not only of the sewing class, but of the entire house.
“This is Mrs. Coletta, mother of Carmella Kid Kate,” said the superintendent. “She wants to learn English.”
Mrs. Barrington beamed.
“I know your daughter very well, Mrs. Coletta. A wonderful girl. And I want to know you.”
She was gracious—gracious—gracious. Brieﬂy through her mind ran the taunt that she was “high hat.” She tried desperately to be otherwise. Almost too desperately. Carmella would have sensed it instantly, but her mother was more responsive to surface impressions.
“Yes-s-s!” Maria answered slowly, resolved now or never to make the most of her few English words.
“Carmella—si, signora!—nice! Me—Inglesi—no spika—you show.”
“I’m sure we can ﬁnd a class for you,” said Mrs. Barrington, calmly oblivious of the fact that the waiting Italian woman had just said “no spika.” “Of course, we must wait till we can organize a beginners’⸺”
Carmella’s mother broke in angrily. The words were nothing, but again that deadly, far-oﬀ tone which meant “wait.” Per Dio! When Carmella wanted to ​do a thing, she did it, or swore if she could not. If that was American, then—she summoned all the English she knew for the battle.
“Me to spik Eenglish!” she shouted. “Spik Eenglish! You learn! Damn’ soon! You bet!”
Mrs. Barrington looked hurt. These foreigners. . . . Still, there was social prestige in being at the head of Hope House.
“Miss Sargle,” she called to the ﬁdgeting ﬁgure in the background. “Will you please form an English class for Mrs. Coletta, immediately?”
“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Barrington. I’ll teach her my- self.”
Miss Sargle was rubbing her hands in the apologetic manner of a ladies’ maid caught pilfering her mistress’s cigarettes. But she beckoned to Mrs. Coletta, and the latter followed her into the superintendent’s oﬀice.
Walking with a new sense of power. She, even she, the humble Maria, had conquered by adopting what she felt to be the spirit of America—the will to go-get. For the ﬁrst time since, timid and afraid, she had landed at Ellis Island, bewildered beyond words, she felt the sense of triumph. So this was what America was—you got what you demanded, if you demanded fortissimo.
She sat down in Miss Sargle’s oﬀice for her kindergarten lesson. And on the instant she resolved to tell Carmella no word of this adventure until—until she ​could—well, until—until once more she, the mother, should be able to command.
Carmella, meanwhile, was busy. There were weeks when she attended school faithfully. There were weeks when she went as she chose. Usually she chose to be there in the morning. When she was absent in the afternoon it was usually because Nicolo was free to take her to the movies. Because much of his work was now after dark, he had much free time in the afternoon.
One day she got her father’s laborious signature on an excuse for absence. This she copied and recopied until she could sign his name almost better than he could himself. Her problem was to avoid writing it too well.
This was useful, although Mr. Carroll, to whom all excuses were turned in by the teachers, noticed that excuses which formerly came scrawled by Carmella’s mother now came convincingly signed by her father. He asked Miss Silva to inquire the reason.
“Well, you see, Miss Silva,” said Carmella conﬁdentially, “it used to be that I had to help mother mostly. Now I have to help both. And mother doesn’t like to write, so I get dad to do it. My dad, you see, is growing up faster than mother is.”
“Growing up?” queried Miss Silva.
“Isn’t that what they do when they learn to be like us Americans?”
​“Perhaps,” agreed the teacher. But to herself she added:
“My soul and conscience! ‘Us Americans’!”
Later she repeated the conversation to Mr. Carroll, adding:
“But she does keep ahead of her class, in spite of her absences.”
“If she’s doing that, all right,” said the wise principal. “I hear the boys telling how her father is becoming a big man in Little Italy, and if she interprets for him, ﬁne! Our job is to see that these kids learn American, before they learn arithmetic or anything else. It’s funny how the parents won’t learn the language they live in. Yet they get along all right. Rich in ten years, some of ’em.”
“I hear her father has a ﬂeet of trucks and hundreds of men working for him.”
“And I’ve heard he drives his own Studebaker. It’s a great world. All I can drive is a Chev.”
Carmella heard the same exaggerations in the schoolyard, and was determined not to sail under false standards.
“My dad,” she declared, “hires his trucks and has only twenty-ﬁve men.”
“Ye-ah! But he works for the Barrington man, doesn’t he?” demanded one shrewd boy of ﬁfteen, who in class never could tell whether Argentina was a place in Africa or the man who discovered the Northwest passage, if any.
​“Sure he does,” said Carmella.
“Well, then!” said the boy, as if this were the last word.
Carmella answered nothing. It occurred to her that there were times when to tell the truth and let hearers disbelieve it was one of the higher forms of diplomacy.
The Contractor Coletta myth grew amazingly in the school, and Carmella discovered that she was being treated in accordance with it. More invitations from the boys, which she steadily declined; more furtive gifts of cake and candy from the girls.
It reached out into Little Italy, until it came to Doty Street and to Nicolo. At ﬁrst he scoﬀed. But he invited Carmella to the movies with a new sense of importance, and was less oﬀended when she declined.
Between ﬁlms, when she had accepted, he told her queer tales of after-dark deliveries of bootleg liquor at the homes of the socially prominent, some of which were based on fact. Carmella found these highly diverting, but once was moved to ask if there was no danger in these transactions.
Nicolo sneered.
“Not a chance! No danger to Mike. Hasn’t he got one captain and two inspectors on his pay roll? And don’t he own the alderman from the ward?”
“But the government crowd?” persisted Carmella.
“Government hell! Ain’t one of the raiders Mike’s cousin? All Mike’s afraid of is that there’ll be a ​shake-up that will make him whisper till he gets a new lay of land.”
“But mightn’t you get arrested, Nicolo?”
“Not a chance! Not a chance!” (Nicolo was learning to talk out of the side of his mouth.) “If they ever nick that wise guy for a booze-peddler they’ll do it with a raid, not a pinch.”
“Where’d they raid?” asked Carmella quite innocently.
Nicolo sat up straight and shot a quick glance of doubt at her.
“If I knew I wouldn’t tell,” he said. “And I don’t know. Neither do you. Watch your step, kid!”
“Good Lord, I don’t care. What’s gnawing you, anyway?”
“In my business, kid, you gotta watch out. You don’t know nothing if they ever ask you, see?”
“If they ever ask me things I’ll decide what to know and what not to know,” said Carmella hotly. “And no half-baked kid like you is going to tell me.”
There was ugliness between them as they walked home from the theater that evening.