# Carmella Commands/Chapter 23

or a few days Carmella curbed her desire to rush again to Dixon. By the end of the week, however, she could wait no longer. What if he should leave, and wander out to ﬁnd another job? What if he had not taken her seriously? He had! He had! But . . .
She found him dressed and sitting on a piazza.
“Hello, Kid Kate!” he exclaimed, so warmly that her fears ﬂed. They chatted a moment before she asked:
“How soon can you leave the hospital?”
“In a few days, they say. Then I’m coming over to see your dad.”
“I’m sorry he wouldn’t come here. But he simply would not.”
“Very wise of him. He knows better than to talk business with a sick man. I like him better for waiting.”
Carmella looked at him in surprise. Her own theory was that any idea that seemed good should be put through instantly—the more instantly the better. Per​haps—she resolved to think this over—there was virtue in waiting for the right moment.
“—and what’s the best time of day to see him?” Dixon was asking.
“Who? Dad? Most any evening. He’s been elected to something in the Sons of Italy, so he goes to the clubrooms some evenings. Better telephone, when you know when you can come.”
“I’ll do that. Listen, kid, can you keep a secret?”
“Oh, splendid!”
“Then what would you say if I told you Mrs. Barrington had been here?”
“She has? She didn’t! Tell me!”
“She sure did! Yesterday. You said you boiled her for ﬁring me. Maybe that helped. Anyway, she asked me to take the job back.”
Carmella gazed in dismay.
“But—you’re not going to! You’re going to be with dad.”
“That’s to be seen. I hope so, sort of. But she’s crazy to have me. It seems the new Englishman jammed her into a crash the other day, and she’s ﬁred him. She almost teased me to come.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Told her I had a chance to go into business. She oﬀered to raise my pay, and apologized for having ﬁred me at all. Oh, yes, she did! Funny to see a dame like that apologizing to me!”
​“You’ve got what she wanted,” said Carmella sagely. “Was she mad?”
“As mad as she dared to be,” he laughed.
“Don’t you ever go back there!” cried Carmella explosively. The force of her emotion stood her on her feet. “Don’t you dare! Come with dad! Do anything else you want to. Go to bootlegging. Or start an honest garage. But don’t you ever, ever go back to that woman. She ﬁred you for being sick.”
“Soft pedal,” said he, smiling. “Remember, this is a hospital.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Dixon,” she said, ﬂaming hotly. “I’m sorry I blew up.”
“Aw, don’t go oﬀ mad. I’m with you on everything you said except running an honest garage. That’d be too strenuous for a man just out of the hospital. Sit down again! How’s school?”
They chatted a few minutes, but Dixon saw the girl was ashamed of her outbreak. So he did not protest again when she started up to go.
As Carmella approached her home she was hailed by Mrs. Pieri.
“Come in and tell me what to do,” she pleaded.
“About Nicolo?”
Mrs. Pieri nodded.
“Hire a lawyer,” said Carmella.
“But I do not know. I do not know anything. My Nicolo, he stays away and will not talk. He—he swear at me when I ask.”
​“The pup!” said Carmella to herself, in English. “He’s worse than I thought.” Then, to the stricken mother, she said in Italian:
“Better let him take his medicine and go to jail.”
But so deep a wail of grief answered her that she repented.
“Come with me,” she commanded.
Together they went to Mike Laudini as he idled on the front steps.
“Listen, Mike,” began Carmella, “Nicolo’s in a jam.”
“Is that so?’ asked Mike innocently.
“Yes, and you damn’ well ran away when you heard it,” shouted the girl ﬁercely. “You got scared before you knew why he was pinched.
“Now listen, Mike Laudini, you’re going to help this kid. He ain’t worth a damn, but his mother is, see? I’m helping her, and you’re going to.”
“Say, kid,” he said angrily, “who you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m talking to a guy that can’t aﬀord to have an enemy that knows as much as I do. You threw Nick down, when he got into a jam. But you ain’t going to throw me down. Get me?’
“Is that so! And suppose I do?”
“Then,” said Carmella, in an undertone that made him listen closely, “I’ll get you hooked, Mike Laudini. I know you own the police and the Feds. I know you think you’re bomb-proof. But listen to this, Mike! ​You don’t own the uplifters. You forgot them. But I’ll squeal to them. And they’ll get you. You know what’ll happen if they pick you for one of their grandstand plays. Even your own private judge wouldn’t dare turn ’em down.”
Mr. Laudini wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
“Say, kid,” he demanded, “where the hell did you get all that stuﬀ? You don’t know a damned thing, anyway.”
“Try me!” jeered Carmella.
“Who’d I ever sell a drop to, then?”
“My dad and Mr. Barrington, for two folks. Want the dates?”
Mike shook his head sadly, the victim of circum- stance.
“What do you want me to do for the kid?” he asked.
“Get him a real lawyer. Get him a soft judge. Get him probation. Get him anything but the hoosegow. And then get him to beat it away from here.”
“All right! You win,” he said weakly. “I’ll do it.”
Mike Laudini kept his word, as he always did. This was the quality which made him a trusted leader in Little Italy’s aﬀairs It was the quality on which Carmella had counted.
And so it happened that on the same day Nicolo Pieri was put on probation, with instructions to go elsewhere forever, Richard Dixon became a partner of Tommaso Coletta in the contracting business.
​Dixon came to the house that night, shortly after supper. The interview, with Carmella as interpreter, quickly developed the fact that both men were in favor of the partnership. But they discussed details until Carmella was tired.
“It’s a bargain, then,” said Tommaso ﬁnally.
“It is a bargain,” answered Dixon.
The two men shook hands, while Carmella danced.
“Now,” she said, “you shall have lawyers to make papers.”
“Why papers?” asked Tommaso. “We need no papers.”
“In America,” said Carmella, “everything needs papers. You cannot do business together without them.”
“She’s right,” said Dixon. “It is the better way.”
Carmella interpreted with obvious glee.
“Oh, you say so too,” growled Tommaso. “Very well! So we shall do.”
Within a week the ﬁrm of Coletta and Dixon was announced.
Across the city, on Laurel Avenue, Mrs. Barrington, who never in the world read the oﬀicial notices, nevertheless saw it, and sniﬀed, if such an expression can be used of so reﬁned a lady.
She called it to the attention of her husband, who chuckled softly.
“Ought to be a good ﬁrm,” he commented.
​“All the doings of that girl,” said Mrs. Barrington, registering contempt.
“Like enough,” agreed her husband, returning to the sporting pages.
Carmella’s elation over a dream-come-true kept her buoyant for many days. She visioned Tommaso as one of the big business men of Little Italy. Perhaps, in time, he would grow beyond its boundaries and establish a home in a fashionable part of the city. Other Italians had. But her mother! Carmella could not see Maria ﬁtting such a setting.
Yet of late, she reﬂected, she had been vaguely puzzled by a look of comprehension on her mother’s face when she and the younger children were speaking English.
Maturing perceptibly in her sense of triumph over the new ﬁrm, Carmella began to display an increasing independence. Maria watched anxiously, afraid to speak, yet afraid of the consequences if she did not. She had seen many daughters of Little Italy wander in strange and perilous paths for lack of guidance.
One evening Carmella did not wait for the telephone to ring, but went to it herself, leaving the dishes untouched. Tommaso was at a lodge meeting. Sitting in the kitchen, Maria heard her call Amelia, and then:
“I’m coming over to study.”
“What’s that? Stay all night. Fine!”
“What? Oh, yes, I’ll bring my things.”
​“Oh. she won’t say anything. I’ll just tell her I’m going.”
Carmella danced back to the kitchen. It surprised her that Maria was sitting idly, instead of beginning the dishes. But she was too prancing to reﬂect on this.
“Madre!” she said in Italian. “I’m going over to Amelia’s for the night.”
And she turned to race upstairs for her night things.
“Carmella, you come here!”
The girl stopped short. It was her mother’s voice, but using English.
“Quick, I say!”
Maria’s words were sharp. The time had come!
Bewildered, Carmella walked back to the kitchen. Her mother sat as before, outwardly placid. She had rehearsed this scene so often that she had become an actress. The daughter never knew the turmoil that raged in her mother’s heart. But this was Maria’s moment.
“Che cosa?” asked Carmella.
“You—are—not—go!” said Maria, slowly but ﬁrmly.
Carmella thought quickly. Something had happened, she did not quite know what, but it was necessary to ﬁnd out. Her language remained Italian.
“What do you mean, care madre? I’m just going to Amelia’s.”
“You—are—not—go!”
​Carmella’s wrath ﬂamed suddenly high.
“I will go!” she shouted.
“You—are—not—go!”
“But I will!”
For a moment, in her excitement, Maria could think of none of the other phrases she had planned. But so far Carmella had not laughed at her language. This gave her courage to go on.
“You have not ask. So you do not go. You wash the deesh.”
“Listen!” cried Carmella angrily. “Where do you get that stuﬀ? Just because you can say a-b-c in our language! I’m going to Amelia’s!”
Maria felt herself powered to eloquence:
“Leesten! You try to skeep. No for you! You washa the deesh! You act bad when you dare. Now you mind me. You aska me when you weesha go out.”
“But I promised.” Carmella realized that she was on the defensive.
“Pro-meese? Be damn! For long time you act bad. You no theenk madre she know nothing. Now you know. You ask when you weesh go. I tell you.”
The front door opened and Tommaso entered. Maria seized the moment with true dramatic instinct. Raising her voice she cried:
“You not go! You washa deesh! You help! I say so!”
“You go to hell!” shouted Carmella, furious with anger.
​Tommaso understood that phrase. Striding into the kitchen he seized Carmella by the shoulder.
“Who you say that to?” he demanded. And, to her bewildered surprise, he spoke English. She burst into tears.
Tommaso turned to his wife, and asked in Italian:
“What happens? What does this girl say? Tell me quick!”
Maria wiped her eyes with her apron and answered:
“She say ‘Go to hell!’ to me—to me, her mother. She refuse to do her work, so I scold her. And she say this.”
Tommaso held Carmella ﬁrmly in his grasp and looked her in the eye. Speaking in Italian, slowly and deeply, he said:
“You, girl, shall mind your mother. I shall teach you, if it must be. For a week, as punishment for what you have said, you shall both wash and wipe the dishes at night. And whatever your mother says, you shall do. If you do not, I shall teach you.”
“Si, padre!” said Carmella, bewildered and frightened.
“Now you washa the deesh!” commanded Maria, in English.
“Si, madre!” said the girl, and went to work.
Tommaso looked at his wife in surprise.
“You speak the English to her and she understand? How have you learned? Come here!”
He walked to the sitting room and sat in his chair, ​Maria following meekly, wondering what his mood was to be.
“Where did you learn?” he asked again.
“At the Hope House.”
“And you surprised Carmella?”
“Yes!”
“How long did it take you to learn?”
“I began ﬁve—six months ago.”
Tommaso suddenly threw himself back in his chair and slapped its broad arms with his heavy hands.
“By God! Then I learn.”
Maria slipped into his lap, and her husband’s arms crept around her. It was the ﬁrst love scene they had had for many a year.
Out in the kitchen Carmella washed dishes and wiped them and wept.