Translation:
donna = woman
Chapter 4
Reason
Bari, Italy - January of 1960
Upon returning from a tiring shift at the slaughterhouse, Joseph Fratelli trudged for the doorstep of his withering cottage with the usual dinner: cow tongue, steak and a container of antipasto. Size fourteens imprinted the front yard's layer of snow in a haphazard line from his truck to the porch steps. The contents of the half-empty bottle of whiskey in his grip sloshed around in sync with his hefty walk.
The goosebumps that had sprouted along his arms shrunk as he entered his moderately toasty house. The fireplace hadn't warmed up the place as he, the wife and boys would've preferred, but it emanated a heat that got them by without going frostbit.
"Home, Agattthhha, muh sweet," he slurred, hanging his coat up on the rack between Jake's and Lotney's. On another hook dangled the limp body of a rat, hung by some string around its broken neck. Joseph's hoarse snicker filled the entryway at the morbid sight. His eldest son Francis was the probable culprit behind this act of cruelty, as he'd caught the boy torturing other critters in even sicker ways in the past. The father shrugged the kid's hobbies off as him creatively exercising boredom out of his system, just as Jake did so by singing and Lotney by hopping around in his cape-blanket pretending to be Superman.
"Work let out fifty-five minutes ago," Agatha said gruffly from the kitchen, where she was brewing a pot of tomato soup. "Where've ya been?"
"Jus' the market, pickin' up some antipasto," Joseph replied, tucking his whiskey into an inner pocket of his coat, then untying his boots and slipping them off. "Meant to buy a loaf of bread, too, but I came up a bit short on chan-"
"Oh, don't ya lay that shit on me, Joe!" Agatha said sourly, marching to him with her hands on her hips. "I could smell the booze on your breath from the stove, you bloodshot-eyed, alcoholic stupido!"
"Hey, I wasn't here sitting on my ass with the duty of just a few household chores, woman!" the middle-aged Italian argued down at his wife, towering over her stout frame by a foot and three inches. "After a day of hacking up cattle and swine, the hard stuff is what I could use!"
"What a valid excuse you make, darling! You're absolutely spot-on," Agatha snorted up at him defiantly, as unafraid of her big and frightening husband as the day she met him, as a halfway homeless twenty-one-year-old barmaid in the slums. "Yeah, it's OK for ya to bring home your bottles instead of bread or milk when we have three hungry boys! Your unquenchable thirst for the shit ain't havin' any sorta bad effect round here at all!"
"You'd be dead or goddamn near it if I wasn't on my aching feet for eleven hours every fuckin' day of the week," Joseph growled, poking his thick and long right index finger into Agatha's chest. "I oughta have you bend over on the counter and drop 'em for me this instant for your cheek."
"If ya dry out for a fortnight, I'll think about lettin' ya have at that, but as of this moment, your loins are in your drawers to stay, bub."
"Why you raspy-voiced, mutt-looking-"
Her smaller, chubby hand landed on his cheek with a smack, her stubby fingers then jerking on the black hairs of his beard. "Cram it, or else there's no supper or television for ya tonight!"
Before a muscle of the borderline colossal man's flinched, their first and second children fussily wrestled each other out of their shared bedroom. The parents glared at the pair who were tossing knuckles and muttering swears, their object worth squabbling for: a box of stale hard candies.
"I saw it first, dammit!" their nine-year-old Jacob screeched, bashing his older brother's head against the wall.
"Lyin' asshole! I did!" the soon-to-be eleven-year-old Francis spat, kicking Jake's left shin with enough force to send him falling to the dusty floor.
"Ow, fucker!" Jake yelled, hurling the full box at Francis' face so it could bonk his glasses that had slid down the bridge of his nose in their dispute and knock them off entirely. They struck the floor just beside Jake, the right frame popping out and the left cracking.
"Damn you, Jake!" both Agatha and Joseph snapped, stomping down the hall to close-in on the ruckus. Joseph took a fistful of Jake's tattered collar and yanked him upwards, so he could be roughly slapped by his mother.
"In the closet for a time-out, now!" she muttered, spittle flying through her clenched, graying teeth. "And, Francis, at the table, pronto!"
"Sí, Mama," either brother said at once.
Joseph groaned out a few lines in angry Italian while kneeling to gather the pieces of Francis' glasses. "God knows when we can afford to get him a new pair."
"The idiots," Agatha sighed, snatching what was fought so childishly for from where it was at her feet. She ripped the box open and dug in, crunching and smacking her lips as she snacked. "See if ya can repair 'em."
"What, are you dumb, donna?" he scoffed, shaking the damaged specs in her face. "How would I fix this?"
"Ya have to somehow! How's he gonna be able to see a damn thing in school?"
"We'll send a note in with him permitting him to sit close to the board."
"UGH, that boy! Where's the paddle? Jake's in for a wallopin'."
"Can I do the honor?" Joseph grumbled.
"Hell, no. His bum had welts that wouldn't fade for a month at your hand."
"Ah, to hell with the spanking! I'm starved. Get your ass in the kitchen."
"Pardon?" Agatha asked, eyeing him resentfully. "Why don't you cook a meal for once, you slacker?"
"Slacker?!" Joseph barked, throwing his hands in the air. "Who is providing for this family? If I were a slacker we'd all be wasting away on the streets!"
"Well, I've had it up to here with your drinkin' and treatin' me like some docile housewife trollop!" she snapped, storming to their other closet where the paddle was stored. "So I'm tellin' you to get in the kitchen and grill up a slab of meat while I punish Jake for being a big hassle and costing us like he did."
"Agatha," he said in a familiar warning tone, fists knotting and his movements towards her gradual and menacing. "You keep behaving this way, your ass'll be getting that paddle."
When they were just inches apart, Agatha coughed up a snotty spitball for his chin to wear. She laughed bitterly at his grossed-out expression as he swept at the loogie with his hand and smeared it onto his corduroys. Agatha's state of mocking joy was eliminated by his fast fist slamming into her nose at a dizzying momentum. A thick stream of blood began to seep out of her nostrils, and she choked back a sob as he kneed her in the stomach and dragged her by her hair into the compact closet.
Joseph was larger and stronger than many grown men, and while Agatha was something of a wrangler herself, she was no match for her husband's wrath, and over the years with him she'd grown to accept this.
Inside the closet, Agatha was pushed against the wall, her back facing him. Muttered curses were directed for his ears as he pulled her underwear down to let them pool at her ankles. He tucked the hem of her dress under her bra strap, exposing her buttocks to him.
"How often do we have to go through this, donna?" Joseph murmured, taking the paddle from the shelf he was eye-level with, and smoothing the wood along her sensitive skin.
"That thing is loaded with splinters!" Agatha hissed.
He clicked his tongue at her protest. "You were about to use this on our son without a second thought."
"I'm gonna report ya to the cops for domestic abuse this time-"
"Hm, but what would happen to my little family if I were arrested? Lotney would be taken out of your care and locked up in some institution, and you, France and Jake would be stuck in a homeless shelter."
"Oh, fuck you."
Seated at the kitchen table, Francis recoiled at his mother's wails. He twiddled his thumbs and hummed to himself in a weak effort to block out his role model and favorite parent's shrill noises of pain that echoed across the house. Papa had been abusive and grumpy for all of Francis' life. He guessed this was because they were poor, and to cope, Joseph frequently drowned out his woes with whiskey or liquor, therefore washing toxins through his brain that would make him into a great neanderthal, according to Mama.
Four minutes later, Francis stood with tears of frustration and pity for Mama, and he tiptoed out of the kitchen, through the entryway and to the closet occupying his suffering mom and vindictive father. Then, the thwacking stopped, but Mama's whimpering did not. Francis was so anxious to stand still and create no noise he minimized his breathing. If he went heard right here, eavesdropping where he damn well shouldn't have been, Papa wouldn't hesitate to whack him a good one, too.
"On your knees," Joseph said lowly, Francis' ears perking up at the request.
"I curse the day we got hitched," Mama snapped, her voice feeble, lacking its usual boldness. "Move aside, bastard, I gotta feed the boys dinner, still."
"If you don't do as I say, you ugly witch, I-"
"Alright! Alright! Mary, Mother of God, are you a prick!"
The butterflies in Francis' tummy went berserk when he heard Papa swat Mama yet again, nausea kicking in at the sounds of a belt buckle and zipper being undone. He was nearly paralyzed in place, but was saved from the shock, pity and repulsion when Jake opened the door of his respective closet and ran out.
"What's goin' on?" he asked hushedly, sensing something was amiss.
"Get - get back, Jake! Shoo!" Francis growled, moving to grab him and walk him far from the scene. "Ma and Pa are arguing. Let's wait in our room till they're done."
When Mama and Papa were done, they fetched the boys and the five went on to have an eerie dinner. Mama was disheveled with her mussed hair and dark circles stained under her eyes. She slouched in her seat, eating nothing, but only blankly gazing ahead while her three sons and husband ate. It appeared she was fractured, but not obliterated; no, she wasn't utterly destroyed because she was still blinking and breathing, not catatonic or behaving crazily.
Joseph said he was off to the bar once the food on his plate had been cleaned off, and following his departure, Mama crumbled, sobbing and verbally damning the man to hell's hottest chambers. Francis, Jake and a dazed and drooling seven-year-old Lotney paused in their eating to watch their mother, feeling awkward and bidding sympathy.
Fifty minutes past midnight, a thoroughly plastered Joseph wobbled into the entryway, dropped his coat on the floor and moved into the unlit living room to plop into his armchair in front of the radio.
Clicking the lamp on in a slow and clumsy motion, the unmistakable noise of a gun cocking startled him out of his torpor. He peeked over the chair to squint at his armed and fed-up wife.
"Fffughhk are ye-"
"Get your inebriated, dimwitted ass up!" she muttered, any speck of patience she had earlier now elsewhere. "Then waddle your butt outdoors!"
"Put dat-"
"If you don't do as I say, I'll gun ya down right here!"
"Christ!" he huffed, heading for the front door faster than she presumed he was capable of in his wasted condition.
Her heart pounded in her chest; she was invigorated but agitated. Finally, she would be free of his neglect and dominance once this was over with, but then what? How would she support herself and her boys? Well, she'd figure it all out in the latter. This had to happen.
"Ice-cold out here, for fuck's sake!" Joseph complained as he stepped off the porch, his boots crunching into the snow. He looked at the rifle in Agatha's grip with skepticism. "You tryin' to scare me with that?"
"Doesn't matter if you're scared or not; you're about to die however you're feelin'."
Skipping out on his opinion, she fired, the single shot penetrating his forehead. He didn't even yell, and it happened so quick he hadn't seen it coming. He toppled to the ground, dying mid-air.
The rest of the night was comparable to a dream; she'd hid his body in the tool shed, then, in a combination of shock, guilt and solace, paced to and fro in the hallway of their and the children's bedrooms. She mumbled questions to herself in her primary language. Putrid-souled and mean as Joseph was, he was their financial source and protector. Killing him was astoundingly foolish and rash, she knew well, but she just could not bear his reign anymore.
Shivering harder than the afternoon Joseph taught her a lesson for her back-talking by forcing her to carry ice cubes in her underwear for an hour straight, she sucked in a deep breath and began formulating a strategy. She would borrow her cousin Angelo's wood chipper, then grind up the remains of her late beloved and feed the raw meat to their three hounds. Twisted as this was, he did deserve the fate, she reminded herself.
'I'll call him tomorrow mornin'. Son of a bitch can sleep in the shed till then.'
"Ma...ma?"
Agatha gasped, whirling to face her youngest and favorite son. "What is it, Lotney, baby?"
At seven, Lotney was already the same height as Jake, who was several inches taller than Francis. He was mostly mute, and his cognitive skills were lower than average for his age, and this was due to both his birth defect and the fact that Agatha had accidentally dropped him in his infancy more than once, maybe twice.
Lotney, or 'Sloth' as his bullying brothers nicknamed him for his sagged facial features and slow movements, walked to Mama with open arms, hugging her waist and drawling, "No tirrred."
She combed her fingers through his light brunet patch of hair, murmuring, "Me neither, baby. C'mon, let's go sit by the fire."
She took his hand and led him into the living room. Using the fire stoker and a match, she brought a healthy blaze to life, then fetched a quilt from the nearby chest and wrapped it around a criss-crossed Lotney. Crossing her legs beside him on the floor and holding him close, she planted a kiss on his lopsided head and sang him a lullaby. She thought about her cousin Rosa and her husband Emiliano, how they'd moved to the west of the United States just the year before to grow their pizza business. Agatha hadn't been too bonded to them while they were living near them, but suddenly she was wanting to change that. As reckless as it was to pack everything and just go, and to such a faraway foreign place, there was the grim matter of what she had just done, which was no less ridiculous. She frowned over Lotney, his eyes drifting to a close, wondering if they'd allow such a deformity on a plane.
What she hated most about Joseph was how he completely ignored their third and last baby, declaring him a dud; just a useless burden developed in a rotted egg of her worn, overused womb. At least Lotney's innocence would exceed his brothers', Agatha was almost positive. His goodness was a trait to be proud of, one Francis, Jake and herself should have emulated, but could not, especially now that Joseph was gone.