and all the wonderful things in America. I want to hear that you and Teresa are happy.”
“He won’t last long, she can hope,” Mamma observed.
“What should I write about?”
“Anything except that bastard.” I wrote about Cleveland, the parks and grand stores and the noisy immigrant quarters. I described Central High School. Students constantly left to find jobs in the factories, mills, and limestone quarries south of Cleveland. Little was done to keep them. Only eight in one hundred Americans had high school diplomas, our teacher told us. I was determined to be one of those eight.
Having skipped tenth grade, I was now in eleventh, gorging on speeches and poems to memorize, chapters to read, essays to write. When my first dictionary broke into pieces from constant use, I won another for reciting Mark Antony’s speech to the Romans. I wrote to the countess about algebra’s secret language of x ’s and y ’s . My geometry lessons made the city an intricate mosaic of shapes: arches of doorways, cones and pyramids of gaslights, cylinders of smokestacks, tangents and trapezoids of pathways and streets. In those days, I dreamed less of finding a fella than of holding a diploma in my hands.
“Don’t waste your chances,” Yolanda warned. “You need to get married in high school. Your friend Henryk’s family wants a Jewish girl, so don’t bother with him. Maybe Charlie knows somebody good for you. Should I ask?”
“Not yet. I don’t have time anyway, with school and scribing and work in the boardinghouse.” I saw Henryk often, for he too had skipped a grade, and we sometimes worked in the public library together. Sitting across from him at a long oak table, each in a pool of light, I tried to nail my eyes to books, away from the glossy falls of his black hair, wide mouth moving slightly as he read and long fingers scribbling. When we did our math together, droll little stick figures marched up and down his notebook pages. “They help me think,” he said, but they couldn’t help him think how to keep up these library hours when he had to work more afternoons with his father.
“Charlie wants me to graduate,” Yolanda was saying, “but school is so boring. I want my own hat shop. Charlie says . . .” She talked constantly of him: where they’d gone, what he said, how he’d own a factory or limestone quarry one day and they’d have servants.
“Have you met his family yet?” I interrupted.
“No, but I will at Christmas.”
“Why not now?”
“Because Protestants announce big things at Christmas. That’s how they are. Lucia, you should be worrying about your mother, not about me. She keeps saying things about Little Stingler, crazy things she shouldn’t say, even in Italian.”
I fretted for days about how to ask Mamma about the “things,” afraid she’d slip into another of the dark silences that often encased her. Finally one night I blurted my worry. She backed away from me and snapped: “The girls make up stories. Everyone’s crazy with this cold. And your friend Yolanda is crazy with Charlie.”
It’s true that the cold pushed into every corner of our lives. The last winter had been mild, with barely more snow than we saw on Vesuvius. Now ice froths rimmed the lake; we stuffed paper in our shoes and wore coats in the house. I wrote to the countess that the Alps couldn’t possibly be this cold. Even Miss Miller, born in Cleveland, remembered no winter so hard.
By December Lake Erie had frozen in ragged silver-gray waves as the wind drove icy chunks into hummocks. The sky shook down snow, paused for breath, and shook again. Frigid gusts raced down the streets, drilling through the boardinghouse walls, laughing at our coal stove. Every floor, table, door, book, and plate was cold. “Even the fire’s cold,” said Donato. Much as I missed Irena, I was grateful she was spared this suffering. Like a great plug pulled from a washtub, color drained from the city. Green was long
“He won’t last long, she can hope,” Mamma observed.
“What should I write about?”
“Anything except that bastard.” I wrote about Cleveland, the parks and grand stores and the noisy immigrant quarters. I described Central High School. Students constantly left to find jobs in the factories, mills, and limestone quarries south of Cleveland. Little was done to keep them. Only eight in one hundred Americans had high school diplomas, our teacher told us. I was determined to be one of those eight.
Having skipped tenth grade, I was now in eleventh, gorging on speeches and poems to memorize, chapters to read, essays to write. When my first dictionary broke into pieces from constant use, I won another for reciting Mark Antony’s speech to the Romans. I wrote to the countess about algebra’s secret language of x ’s and y ’s . My geometry lessons made the city an intricate mosaic of shapes: arches of doorways, cones and pyramids of gaslights, cylinders of smokestacks, tangents and trapezoids of pathways and streets. In those days, I dreamed less of finding a fella than of holding a diploma in my hands.
“Don’t waste your chances,” Yolanda warned. “You need to get married in high school. Your friend Henryk’s family wants a Jewish girl, so don’t bother with him. Maybe Charlie knows somebody good for you. Should I ask?”
“Not yet. I don’t have time anyway, with school and scribing and work in the boardinghouse.” I saw Henryk often, for he too had skipped a grade, and we sometimes worked in the public library together. Sitting across from him at a long oak table, each in a pool of light, I tried to nail my eyes to books, away from the glossy falls of his black hair, wide mouth moving slightly as he read and long fingers scribbling. When we did our math together, droll little stick figures marched up and down his notebook pages. “They help me think,” he said, but they couldn’t help him think how to keep up these library hours when he had to work more afternoons with his father.
“Charlie wants me to graduate,” Yolanda was saying, “but school is so boring. I want my own hat shop. Charlie says . . .” She talked constantly of him: where they’d gone, what he said, how he’d own a factory or limestone quarry one day and they’d have servants.
“Have you met his family yet?” I interrupted.
“No, but I will at Christmas.”
“Why not now?”
“Because Protestants announce big things at Christmas. That’s how they are. Lucia, you should be worrying about your mother, not about me. She keeps saying things about Little Stingler, crazy things she shouldn’t say, even in Italian.”
I fretted for days about how to ask Mamma about the “things,” afraid she’d slip into another of the dark silences that often encased her. Finally one night I blurted my worry. She backed away from me and snapped: “The girls make up stories. Everyone’s crazy with this cold. And your friend Yolanda is crazy with Charlie.”
It’s true that the cold pushed into every corner of our lives. The last winter had been mild, with barely more snow than we saw on Vesuvius. Now ice froths rimmed the lake; we stuffed paper in our shoes and wore coats in the house. I wrote to the countess that the Alps couldn’t possibly be this cold. Even Miss Miller, born in Cleveland, remembered no winter so hard.
By December Lake Erie had frozen in ragged silver-gray waves as the wind drove icy chunks into hummocks. The sky shook down snow, paused for breath, and shook again. Frigid gusts raced down the streets, drilling through the boardinghouse walls, laughing at our coal stove. Every floor, table, door, book, and plate was cold. “Even the fire’s cold,” said Donato. Much as I missed Irena, I was grateful she was spared this suffering. Like a great plug pulled from a washtub, color drained from the city. Green was long
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