Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century by John Paul Godges Read Free Book Online Page B

every night, “or else I’ll have to throw away the leftovers!” The men could have rented beds elsewhere on Lehigh Row, but they gravitated toward Maria’s munificent meals.
    She calculated the tantalizing implications in her head. Typically, there were four boarders at a time, meaning that she collected $20 a week—twice as much as Serafino brought home in his paycheck. If she could save at least half the money after deducting for the costs of coal, soap, breakfasts, sack lunches, and dinners for the boarders, then she could at least double the household income of $10 a week. At that rate, she could save the astounding sum of a thousand dollars every two years. Money for the electric flour mill in Farindola. Money for an emergency on Lehigh Row. “Maybe someday,” she dreamed, “we could buy our own home.”
    Maria did not deposit her savings in a bank account. She put most of the savings in a cigar box. She hid the cigar box behind a pile of pillows that stuffed the opening of an otherwise unusable chimney in her bedroom. To reduce the risk of storing all her money in one place, she wedged some of the $5 bills into the tight coils of the metal spring beneath her mattress.
     
    In November 1923, the oldest child, Ida, was the budding beauty of Lehigh Row. She was only nine years old, but she already displayed the pensive yearning eyes, the tumbling russet curls, and the carved cresting lips of a Botticelli goddess. She carried her rouge with her wherever she went.
    On the morning of November 16, she gathered with the almost eight-year-old Mafalda and the six-year-old Leonata in the big room downstairs before leaving for school. Mafalda and Leonata were ready to go, but Ida was idling. She seemed to be distracted by something. She hadn’t put her shoes on yet.
    She walked languidly around the staircase toward the bedroom, where Maria was juggling the five-year-old Raffaello and the three-year-old Bice. By that hour of the morning, Serafino and the boarders had already gone to work.
    “ Mama,” Ida called, “I don’t want to go to school today. I want to stay here with you. Because I won’t be here tomorrow.”
    “ Don’t talk crazy like that!” Maria waved her off.
    Ida just stood in the doorway, her eyes fixed on her mother.
    “ Hurry up,” Maria told her. “Put your shoes on. Don’t be late.” Maria was already planning ahead for dinner and dessert. “Raffaello, bring me the sugar from the cabinet.”
    Ida and Raffaello walked together into the big room. Ida sat down on the wooden floor to put on her shoes, positioning herself beside the nine-month-old Algisa, who lay in a blanket on the floor.
    Raffaello shuffled toward the rickety cabinet at the back of the room. He was five years and five days old. He noticed something glinting from the top of the cabinet, which nearly touched the ceiling. He completely forgot about the sugar.
    Lured by the shiny object, he pulled a chair over to the cabinet. He stepped on to the seat of the chair and climbed on to the flat surface atop the cabinet drawers about four feet off the ground. The upper shelves were now at his eye level. The glimmering object still beckoned from above. He reached for it, causing the cabinet to wobble. He almost fell.
    “ You get down from there!” his big sister Ida demanded as she laced her shoes.
    He reached for the object again, pressing his body up against the shelves. This time, he grabbed it. It was a gun that had been hidden there by Red Pete.
    “ Put that down right now!” Ida insisted.
    Raffaello thought the gun was a toy. He just wanted to pull the tab. He fumbled with the heavy object, struggling to hold it in his clumsy hands.
    A gunshot rang through the house.
    Mafalda and Leonata screamed. Algisa cried.
    Maria rushed into the room. She saw Ida crumpled on the floor in a growing pool of blood, Mafalda and Leonata hysterical on either side of her, Raffaello standing stunned atop the cabinet drawers, and the gun lying on