A Heart Most Worthy by Siri Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

muttering to herself.
    “What did your mother say?”
    “She say . . . that’s good idea, but . . . she got to think about it.”
    “Think about it?”
    “She got to think about . . . about . . . what we have for dinner now we can’t have vegetables.”
    “It’s not that you can’t have vegetables. It’s just that you shouldn’t have so many of them.”
    “ Pazza! ” Mama had brandished her wooden spoon along with her words.
    “She say, Thank you for coming.”
    “Italian’s a very strange language, isn’t it? It uses so many less words.”
    “Crazy! E’ proprio fuori! ” Mama poked herself above the temple with a finger.
    “Please . . . she say, Don’t trip over the door.”
    The lady turned and flashed a smile toward Mama Giordano.
    “Thank you.”
    Mama placed her hand beneath her chin, palm down, and then flicked it away from her face toward the woman.
    Julietta blanched at the gesture. Turned to push the lady out the door. “That mean God bless you.”
    That was a gesture the Settlement House lady hadn’t seen before. The southern Italians were such a strange race of people. Always using their hands whenever they talked. She sighed and then lifted her shoulders, endeavoring to be as pleasant as she could with these destitute illiterates. She put her own hand beneath her chin, repeating the gesture. “And God bless you too.”
    Julietta waited until the door had shut before she turned on her mother. “What are you thinking?”
    Mama looked up from her pot. “What was she thinking, that’s what I want to know.”
    “You can’t treat them that way! I had to tell her you had blessed her.”
    “Blessed her?”
    “That’s what I told her. That you’d said God bless you.”
    “God bless you? To that woman? ‘God curse you,’ more like. God curse these people who think they can come into my house, my own kitchen, and tell me what to do! Did you see her? Did you see that hat she wore? In Chiusano San Domenico only two kinds of women wear hats – ”
    “Ma!”
    “You should be thanking me I got rid of her.”
    “She’s only trying to teach us how to be American.”
    “Why do I have to be American? What’s wrong with being Avellinesi?”
    “Everything!” Julietta said the word before she could think not to. But once she’d said it, she was glad. “If Avellino was so good, then why did we leave? And if America is so bad, then why do we stay?”
    Mama Giordano put her spoon down and turned to face her girl. “Why do we stay? Why did we leave? We left la miseria because it offered only one thing: misery. That’s why we came here.”
    “But you brought the misery with you!”
    “What is this? What’s wrong, cara mia ?”
    “You! You’re what’s – ” This time Julietta had the grace to put a hand over her mouth, but not before she saw hurt color her mother’s eyes. “Look around. Is this why we came? Is this all there is? Two crowded rooms and a pair of raggedy old curtains? Is that all we get for living in a pig’s pen and working like slaves, turning our paychecks over to Papa every week? That might be fine for you, but not for me. I want more. The only thing wrong with this country is people like you!”

7
    As Luciana walked up Salem Street that evening, a piece of pink paper, buoyed by a sly and lazy wind, twirled up toward her hand. When she brushed it away, the wind abandoned it and the paper fell to her feet. She began to step over it when a symbol on it caught her eye. She bent over and grabbed it with one hand. Then she spread it flat on her thigh and tried to read it.
    She couldn’t understand the words, but she did comprehend the color of the paper. Pink. And though she couldn’t translate the sentences into her language, she did grasp the message of those blaring black phrases. Her hands shook as she stared at them.
    Anarchists? Here? A shiver crept up Luciana’s spine.
    She’d known that her father’s murderer had followed her to America’s shores, but