Carmella Commands

Front matter

Carmella Commands

Carmella

by

Chapter I

Some elusive something was holding back the sewing class from the mark which Mrs. Barrington had set for it.

That mark, as all who knew Mrs. Bar­­­rington could easily guess, was preëminence among the many activities of the settlement house. Preëmi­nence absolute and acknowledged. She had accepted the post of chairman only because Mrs. Whitman Rus­­­­sell had asked her. Mrs. Russell was one of those whose invitations are not refused.

But the class almost maliciously refused to prosper. Some perversity haunted it. Some spirit of ingratitude among these foreign women whom she was trying to help.

Sitting alone in the white­-walled room, from which her slender gathering had just been dismissed, Mrs. Barrington reviewed the problem. Being anxious, she was half-­angry. Being half­-angry, she thought swiftly.

Like a trained tactician in social matters, she knew that for every effect there was a cause, and that in most cases the cause was some form of personal preju­­dice. Always, moreover, there was some one who knew—if only that some one could be induced to tell.

“Miss Sargle!” she called as the new superintendent of Hope House passed the door.

“Yes, Mrs. Barrington!”

Miss Sargle entered briskly, confident and smiling, as any graduate of any social service institute should do.

“What,” demanded the sponsor of the sewing class, “is the matter?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Miss Sargle calmly.

To her, as it happened, the sewing class for Italian mothers was one of the least of the Hope House inter­ests. For years it had been the institution’s ugly duckling, kept alive only because Mrs. Russell, the president, insisted.

Although she was a recent comer to the house, Miss Sargle had quickly imbibed all the managerial preju­dices against the sewing class, which undoubtedly a graduate of a social service school should not do.

She could not be expected to know, moreover, its importance to Mrs. Barrington, sponsoring it at Mrs. Whitman Russell’s request.

“Why don’t the women come?” insisted Mrs. Bar­rington.

“I wish I could tell,” said the superintendent. “It’s hard to understand these foreigners, you know. And remember that the Italians in this district are not the newest comers—they’re complicated, somehow, by having lived here, and by their children who—who—well, you know, Mrs. Barrington, by the complexity of it all.”

“Complicated by its complexity is an excellent ex­planation, Miss Sargle, if we don’t want to do any­thing about it,” said Mrs. Barrington icily.

Miss Sargle flushed. The institute had taught her more about classes than it had about sponsors.

She was beginning to feel cheated by her education, when she had a happy inspiration.

“Couldn’t Mrs. Scalzo tell you?” she asked.

Mrs. Scalzo was the skilled lace-­maker who actually taught the class under Mrs. Barrington’s direction.

“She might, if she would. But for some reason she won’t. I’ve asked her. So that is that.”

“Then,” said Miss Sargle, “I’m afraid⸺”

Mrs. Barrington cut through:

“Who is there around here who would know, and would tell, and talks English?”

“That’s a hard question,” said Miss Sargle, clasping her hands. “Probably it’s some indefinite feeling—something hard to explain, even if they were good at explaining, which they aren’t. One would need long intimacy⸺”

“Aren’t you intimate with them yet?” demanded Mrs. Barrington.

“Remember, please, that I’ve been here only a few months. And there are a good many branches to the work. I haven’t had time yet to do much except with the children. And they’re the most important, after all, don’t you think ?”

“Miss Sargle!” Mrs. Barrington had a sudden in­spiration, not to be credited to any knowledge of, or any particular sympathy with, the women and children of Little Italy. Social leadership grows out of that instinct and stimulates it.

“Miss Sargle, who is the brightest Italian girl around here—not over fifteen years old ?”’

“Why, there are a great many bright ones. That’s their characteristic, you know, to be bright. There’s—let me see—of course, I’ve not learned all their names—there’s Domenica—she’s sixteen, I think—but she’s bright⸺”

“Too old!” said Mrs. Barrington, decisively.

“Well, then there’s —let me think—there’s—oh, yes—there’s Carmella Kid Kate. At least, that’s what they call her. I don’t know her last name. I call her Carmella, but the children seem to call her Kid Kate. She’s the kind you mean.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve, for a guess—or thirteen. She’s that size, though she’s so self-­confident that she seems older.”

“How near here does she live?”

“Over on Doty Street, I think. Not far, anyway.”

“Get her and send her here. I’ll wait.”

Mrs. Barrington settled down to further reflection, the interview over and its details forgotten. Miss Sargle was a means to an end. One does not remember such things.

“But⸺” began Miss Sargle.

“I’ll wait,” repeated Mrs. Barrington.

Miss Sargle went out, debating in her mind. She was alone in the house, so far as management went, and could not well leave it. Yet Mrs. Barrington was not the sort of woman one denied. She began to have new respect for the sponsor of the sewing class.

On random chance, she climbed the two flights of stairs to the canopied roof playground. There was no class at that hour, but two small dark-­haired girls sat in a corner, reading books from the settlement library.

“Hello, Elena! Hello, Giulia! Does either of you know where Carmella lives?”

“You mean Kid Kate?”

“Yes,” said Miss Sargle.

The two girls stood, bright and well­-mannered. They were members of the Girl Scout troop that Hope House fostered. Giulia spoke:

“Sure, I know, Miss Sargle. Just over on Doty Street. In the yellow cottage there—just all to them­selves one house. Her dad’s rich, I bet.”

“What’s her father’s last name, Giulia?”’

Both girls shook their heads.

“I never heard it, Miss Sargle,” said Giulia.

“But—I mean—what is Carmella’s—Kid Kate’s—whole name ?”

“Oh! Carmella Coletta. But she’ll slap you if you call her anything but Kid or Kate. And she slaps hard, Miss Sargle, you bet.”

Giulia put her hand to her cheek, unconsciously. Elena giggled uneasily.

“Well, Giulia,” said Miss Sargle. “I’ll give you a dime if you’ll run over to Carmella’s house and see if she’s there. If she is, tell her I’d like to see her. Right away, quick! There’s a lady downstairs who wants to talk with her. But you just tell her Miss Sargle wants her right away.”

“May I leave my library book here, Miss Sargle?”

“Yes, yes, yes! But please run! And ask Carmella to run back with you.”

“By gollies, said der captain, if it ain’t it a emer­gencies wot it is,” hummed Giulia to herself as she tossed her book into a willow chair and dashed down the stairs.

Miss Sargle descended more slowly. And thought. Here was another eccentricity to be charged to Car­mella. Slapping other children unless they called her Kate. Yet the girl had never objected when Miss Sargle and other workers had used her Italian name. Strange child! Strange child!

“I’ve sent for Carmella,” she announced, looking into the room where Mrs. Barrington sat, still tense in meditation.

“Thank you!” said the lady absently.

Miss Sargle started for her office across the corridor, but turned to say:

“By the way, Mrs. Barrington, her name is Car­mella—Carmella Coletta. But if she doesn’t seem to want to talk, try calling her Kate. For some strange reason she likes that name.”

“Thank you!” said Mrs. Barrington, gazing through the window.

And, as if uninterrupted, the sponsor of the sewing class resumed her mental analysis of the situation.

This settlement house work was out of her routine world—but were worlds so different, after all? Per­haps old rules governed new problems. She had learned much of the philosophy of social stress through long seasons of charity balls and Grace Church fêtes and country club tournaments and carefully exchanged teas and dinners. Even Junior League politics was no unknown quantity, although she herself had been a quarter­-generation early for this manifestation.

But she had served a term as president of the Ash­ croft Circle, which ruled in days of old, until it grew too conservative and domineering for onrushing débu­tantes. The sewing class—she wondered if here again was something of the same problem. It was not attracting the younger women of Little Italy. She tried to picture Carmella in advance. Her own Margaret was hardly older than this unknown Italian girl, whom she was waiting to consult⸺

“Carmella”—a musically alluring name, yet one with strength in it. Curious for a girl with such a name to prefer “Kate.” Yet people chose queer things for queer reasons. Especially young people in these quick days.

Queer reasons! There must be a reason why the sewing class was failing. There always was a reason. Probably queer. But worth knowing. Where in the world was that girl? Mrs. Barrington looked at her watch, and frowned.

Down the street came Giulia, racing. Into the door­way of the stucco building, up the half-­dozen steps to the main floor, and to the left into Miss Sargle’s office.

“She—she—she’s—c­-c-­coming.”

“Thank you ever so much,” said Miss Sargle, smil­ing and reaching for her purse to find the promised dime. “You’re all out of breath, Giulia. Is she com­ing right away?”

“Y­-y-­yes, Miss Sa-­sar­-gle. S­-soon as she c-­can walk. She w’wouldn’t run, like you said. I told her y­-you said.”

“Oh, very well, Giulia. I t isn’t far. Here’s your dime, and thank you.”

“Y-­yes’m. Thank you! I’ll use the money for fire­works. St. Theresa’s Day comes next week, you know.”

“So it does, Giulia. Thank you for finding Car­mella.”

“Yes’m.”

Giulia started for the stairway to resume her book, but turned and peered into the office again.

“She Wouldn’t Run, Like You Said”

“Sh-­she said, Miss Sargle, she’d be dannato if she’d run.”

And then Giulia panted up the stairs, clutching her dime. Miss Sargle rested her chin on her hand. Strange child! Strange children!

Presently Carmella calmly arrived.

Deliberately she turned from the corridor into the superintendent’s office.

“Good evening, Miss Sargle!” she said.

“How do you do, Carmella? You didn’t run with Giulia, the way I asked you to.”

“What’s the use? It’s hot. And you didn’t send word the cops were pinching the place or anything. I asked Julia very special. She ran back, but she’s an ignitz. You can talk English yourself, you know.”

“Yes, of course. But⸺”

“Well, then, you don’t need any help in a hurry, if it isn’t the cops. If it’s anybody else, they’ll wait for you. Get me?”

“I see,” said Miss Sargle. Although, in her heart, she didn’t. This was postgraduate work, and she had merely graduated from the social service institution. But she hastened to recapture the leadership.

“I want you to come in and talk with Mrs. Barring­ton, Carmella. She wants to talk with you. Come with me.”

“Who’s Mrs. Barrington?” demanded Carmella, spreading her feet and standing still.

“She’s sponsor of the sewing class.”

“Oh, I heard of that dame. M’ mother knows her.Kind of high hat, ain’t she?”

“I don’t think so. She’s very pleasant. She wants to talk with you.”

Miss Sargle moved on, expecting Carmella to fol­low. Thus she had been trained. But Carmella stood firm.

“What’s she want to talk to me about?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps about the sewing class.”

“I don’t know a blame thing about it, except that she’s high hat. Why don’t she ask Mrs. Scalzo?”

Miss Sargle started in surprise. The girl’s uncanny wisdom of things was—Miss Sargle searched her mind for the word—well, it was uncanny.

“I don’t know, Carmella. Come this way, please.”

“Oh, all right!”

And so Carmella Coletta met Mrs. Rodney Bar­rington.

Carmella Calmly Arrived

Chapter II

“How do you do, Carmella?” said Mrs. Bar­rington, appraising the sturdy little black-­haired picture of self-­confidence at a glance, quite as she had appraised social leaders through recent years. Or so she thought. She might learn later that her trained inventory had over­looked some few factors that were outside her own reactions.

“I’m very well, thank you, Mrs. Barrington,” an­swered Carmella quietly. “How do do, Mrs. Barrington?”

A deep reader of racial riddles would try to interpret deeply the slight—the very slight emphasis on Car­mella’s “you” as she asked after Mrs. Barrington’s health. But the deep reader would be wrong. It was not even symbolic, save as the child herself sym­bolized a swift decade dieted in a faster school of life than Mrs. Barrington’s forty-­one years could match.

Carmella, to put it simply, was merely trying to be polite—which to her meant returning whatever seemed to her to be tit for whatever seemed to her to be tat. It is an old, old rule.

Mrs. Barrington had been—well, perhaps she had been a trifle overgracious in her question. Carmella, by instinct as fundamental as the first step in civiliza­tion, was perhaps a trifle overcasual in reply.

Mrs. Barrington, as it happened, did not notice the very slight emphasis.

“Very well, thank you, Carmella, ” she said.

“That’s good,” said Carmella, still struggling with her social formulas. “It’s been a beautiful day, hasn’t it?”

“Y-e-e-e-s!” admitted Mrs. Barrington, beginning to be more observant. “A very beautiful day,” she added, after a pause that may have denoted a revised mental measurement.

And then, for a moment, Mrs. Barrington and Miss Carmella Coletta forgot the rules. They simply stood and stared.

Mrs. Barrington, daughter of all the daughters of all the necessary ancestors in American history.

Carmella Coletta, daughter of an immigrant who at that moment could not talk English, and was swear­ing at a shoveler in rich Italian. Yet, perhaps, de­scendant of kings who ruled when Nero was merely a maternal hope. Yet, also perhaps, not.

The difference was chiefly that Mrs. Barrington knew and cared, whereas Carmella did not know and did not care. She would not even have known what to care about had she been told to sit still for five min­utes and worry. Mrs. Barrington smiled graciously at well­-regulated intervals. Sometimes a fraction too graciously, but her own world rarely measured half­tones. Carmella smiled easily and contagiously. Often her eyes smiled when her lips did not—a puzzling sort of smile that lures confidence but repels familiarity.

Two strong souls looked through each other’s front windows for a moment. Neither could turn a corner in the other’s house. But at least they saw past the entrance.

Carmella had never heard of Kipling, and Mrs. Bar­rington had long since forgotten him as of no immedi­ate conversational value. The two lived perhaps four miles from each other, across the city. But there was neither East nor West, though they came from the ends of the earth.

“Carmella,” began Mrs. Barrington, recovering first from the mutual study⸺

“Mrs. Barrington,” Carmella interrupted, “please call me Kate.”

“Why— why—ye-es—of course. But isn’t your name Carmella?”

“Sure it is—my dago name. But it’s wop—wop—wop. So help me Santo Dio, Mrs. Barrington, I get so damn’ sick⸺”

“Carmella, you’re swearing!”

“Yes’m! I’m trying to. I get so damn’ sick of this wop stuff. You can’t imagine! My name, when I get to be an American, is going to be Catherine. But of course I’m a kid, so it has to be Kate. So, if you don’t mind⸺”

“Kid Kate!” murmured Mrs. Barrington, thinking aloud.

“Yes’m! Kid Kate. Anything but that Carmella stuff. I get that at home.”

“But Carmella is a beautiful name,” suggested Mrs. Barrington.

The girl stood squarely gazing, but did not answer. “And you never told Miss Sargle to call you Kate, did you, Carmella?”

“Oh—her! Buon Dio, no!”

“But why not?”

“Perchè? Because she’d ask me why and argue me, and ask m’ mother why, and write down a figure in a book. She’s all rules. She’s dumb. She wouldn’t know—the way you do, Mrs. Barrington.”

“I see.”

Mrs. Barrington was silent for a moment. Waiting to be sure that she wholly did see. Waiting to value Carmella’s verdict on her own possible virtues. Then, suddenly, she came to the reason for the interview.

“Let’s sit down, Kate. I want to ask you a ques­ tion. You know we have a sewing class here at Hope House. Your mother, they tell me, makes beautiful lace. But she doesn’t come any more.”

“What of it?” demanded Carmella. “Lots of other girls’ mothers don’t.”

“Mrs. Barrington, Please Call Me Kate”

“That’s true. But I want to find out why. Why doesn’t your mother come, Kate?”

“Is there a law that she has to?”

“Of course not! But I should think she’d like to.”

“That’s the bunk!” said Carmella. “She don’t have to. She don’t like to. Why should she?”

“But why doesn’t she want to, Kate?”

“She speaks not the English.”

“But—we have some one here who speaks Italian. Mrs. Scalzo would talk to her. And most of the other women talk Italian more than they do English.”

“Yes,” admitted Carmella.

“Then why doesn’t she want to, Kate?”

Carmella wriggled with eagerness to tell. The eagerness of youth possessed of knowledge for which an adult is seeking. But a reticence the native rarely fathoms held her back—the reticence of caution in a strange world. She sat and stared, totally silent.

Suddenly Mrs. Barrington laughed. The altogether happy laugh of one who has solved a secret.

“Carmella Kid Kate!” she exclaimed. “You’re afraid of me. You’re afraid to tell. You’re afraid of me, and I’m just Mrs. Barrington.”

“Afraid nothing!” exclaimed Carmella, as instinc­tively as she would have met a taunt in the schoolyard at recess. “You think I’m afraid of you? Sure you’re Mrs. Barrington. And what’s that? I’m Car­mella Coletta, and I’m private secretary of the Coletta ⸺” she hesitated for the word— “the Coletta Construction Company. Afraid!”

“What do you construct, Kate?”

“Cellars,” answered the girl defiantly.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Mrs. Barrington. “You, or your father?”

Carmella laughed in turn—quite the equal of Mrs. Barrington’s—plus the added sincerity of thirteen years as compared with forty-one.

“Dad, of course! Dad’s the Construction part of it. He’s a whiz at that. Any time you want any cellars built, ask dad. But I’m the Company of it. When it comes to talking or writing, dad’s a dud. That’s where I come in. I’m the goods when it comes to the English part.”

“So I judged,” said Mrs. Barrington, smiling.

Her social instinct, synchronized to situations, told her that this was the moment. She went on quickly.

“But tell me, Kate, now that you trust me, why doesn’t your mother come to the sewing class?”

“Mother, or all the other women?”

Mrs. Barrington flushed slightly. Carmella’s perceptions were disconcerting.

“Your mother and other women,” she admitted.

Carmella gazed long and keenly at Mrs. Barrington, so long and so keenly that the latter was again almost embarrassed. Finally the girl spoke:

“You really want to know?”

“I really do, Kate.”

“Even if it hurts your feelings?”

“Even if it hurts my feelings.”

“Then I’ll tell you. You’re high hat with them.”

At this particular moment Miss Sargle had to step to the door. It was Miss Sargle’s misfortune that she always interrupted at the wrong moment. Like the habit of attempting dramatic entrances, only to stumble over the rug. There is no getting over it.

“Carmella’s brother is here for her,” said Miss Sargle.

Without waiting for further introduction, the girl’s ten-year-old brother darted into the room.

“Quick, kid!” he cried, speaking in Italian for greater privacy from these American women. “Mother wants you to come home right away, to speak English. She’s mad at you for coming over without asking.”

“Cops?” asked Carmella.

“No, no! A man asking questions. Mother wants you.”

“All right. You run and tell her I’ll be right over. Run like the devil, or we’ll both catch it. Tell her I’ll be right over.”

“You’ll catch it anyway,” retorted Joe. “She’s mad.”

As her brother started away, Carmella turned to Mrs. Barrington and explained, in English:

“Mother wants me, to talk English for her. She gets panicky when I ain’t around and anybody comes. Damn these languages anyway! Why don’t they all talk Italian? Good-bye, Mrs. Barrington.”

“But, Kate, just a minute!”

Mrs. Barrington was definitely annoyed at the interruption, just as the key to the problem was being given her. In her own well-ordered home interruptions did not happen. She felt like discharging Miss Sargle on the spot, with two weeks’ pay and no reference.

“What do you mean about my being high hat with your mother?” she went on quickly.

Carmella turned in the doorway, emerging from the middle of Miss Sargle, into whom she had plunged in the process of hasty departure. Miss Sargle had lingered fascinated. She was far less bewildered by the collision than by discovering a Carmella who talked freely and scandalously with Mrs. Barrington. With herself, Carmella had invariably been reserved and most exemplary. Here, she sensed, was another step in her postgraduate education.

Poised on one foot, Carmella turned to Mrs. Barrington and half shouted:

“You know what high hat is, don’t you? You think you’re better than us folks. Better than m’ mother. You talk down to ’em. You smile down to ’em. My mother ain’t going to make lace for you to smile down to her about. It’s better lace than you could make yourself. A whole heap better. Get me?”

“But, Kate⸺” pleaded Mrs. Barrington, now in real distress. She knew that never again could she get Carmella into this mood of high and heart-rending frankness.

“I answered your question, and I gotta go, and go quick. I gotta go. Good-bye, Mrs. Barrington!”

The interview’s final touch of courtesy was Carmella’s, descendant possibly of ancient kings; descendant surely of a civilization that was older than that of Hope House. Miss Sargle breathed heavily and hurried to her own office before Mrs. Barrington could speak.

Carmella, as she fled, was appalled at her own boldness. She ran from what had happened as well as to answer her mother’s summons. Her sturdy legs bore her swiftly down the street as Mrs. Barrington looked through the window after her. Much more swiftly than she had come Carmella was going.

Mrs. Barrington sat down to think over an entirely new notion.

“High hat,” indeed!

And what exactly, she wondered to herself, was high hat? She had heard her own Margaret use the phrase, too. Evidently it was something that ran through all the social layers. And it might be an idea worth considering.

Was it by any chance that settlement work was handicapped by this high hatting? Her thought turned again to the Ashcroft Circle. Was it the same instinct that had caused the newcoming juniors to form their League and defy the established order? Was the world such a medley of monotonous motives?

But there were so many ways of “smiling down,” as Carmella had called it. How, in particular, had she offended Carmella’s mother? Or the other women who no longer came to the sewing class?

She hadn’t done it! She knew she hadn’t. Her work was as altruistic as, for example, her friendship for Mrs. Whitman Russell, wife of the president of the Central Trust Company, on whose invitation she was here in Hope House.

And yet—Carmella had been positive. A most positive youngster! With remarkable eyes and a remarkable smile. And—bless Mrs. Barrington’s highly pedigreed soul for admitting it—Carmella had spoken as one having authority.

How much authority of knowledge had she? Mrs. Barrington wondered. Her wondering continued as she left Hope House and entered her waiting car to be driven from the old east end slowly through the business district to the newer west side.

“Dixon,” she suddenly asked of the chauffeur, “did anybody ever ‘smile down’ at you?”

“I beg pardon, ma’am?” said Dixon.

Mrs. Barrington repeated the question, whereupon Dixon drove in silence for some moments, pondering. At last he answered.

“If I know what you mean, ma’am, yes!”

“Who?”’

“Well, ma’am, for one there was that Italian girl that came racing out of the house a few minutes before you came out. She did it, I reckon.”

“Who? Kid Kate? I don’t mean that sort of thing. She’s a child. And besides, she doesn’t know you. I mean somebody who smiles down—you know—from above.”

“Mostly the people who tip you do that, Mrs. Barrington,” said Dixon.

“Oh, I see! And do you like it, Dixon?”

“If they tip big enough, I can stand it, as long as I’m driving. But when I get through⸺”

“You mean you’re not going to be a chauffeur always?”

“Not always, ma’am. Of course not.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Get into a job that grows, ma’am.”

“I see. And then?”

“Nobody’s going to tip me, ma’am. I’ll charge ’em and they’ll pay. And if they act superior, I’m going to tell ’em to go to hell. I beg pardon, Mrs. Barrington. That slipped out.”

“All right! That’s all right, Dixon. I see what you mean.”

It was Mrs. Barrington’s first attempt to learn from her chauffeur. She sat in silence, trying to figure how much she had learned. Suddenly she remembered, with a hot-flushing face, that Mrs. Whitman Russell had “smiled down” to her—on her, Mrs. Barrington –when the subject of sponsoring the sewing class had first been mentioned.

“The cat!” exclaimed Mrs. Barrington to herself. And sank into a corner of the sedan to think and to grow furious.

Chapter III

Carmella, meanwhile, had come running to the yellow cottage on Doty Street, a dingy cottage with a ten-foot depth of front yard and room for grapes at the back. In marked contrast to the square-front tenements on both sides and across the street. Carmella reveled in the feeling of glorious superiority a one-family house gave her.

Before she had turned the corner she had known what to prepare for. A strange man in a gray suit, with baggy trousers, with some kind of a book in one hand and a pencil in the other, and her mother shrieking maledictions which the gray-clad man would not understand, because they were in Italian. It was exactly so.

The gray-clad young man, speaking English; Maria Coletta, Carmella’s mother, highly angry and shouting Italian. With neighbors and neighbors’ children gathered around the yellow gate. When Carmella arrived the argument had reached high-C. She rushed to her mother’s side and faced the stranger.

“Say,” she cried in English, “cut the comedy and come down to cases with me. What in hell do you want with m’ mother?”

Mrs. Coletta glanced proudly at the assembled neighbors. Perhaps she was helpless in the face of English speech, but she had a daughter! And such a daughter!

“Who the hell are you, kid?” demanded the stranger, taken by surprise.

“I’m the talking member of this firm, Mr. Smarty,” said Carmella. “I pay the taxes and the graft and I know Tim O’Neil, the big cop down at headquarters. That’s me! Now who are you and what do you want?”

“Well, you’re some kid, all right,” exclaimed the stranger. “Now look here, kid⸺”

“Miss Coletta is my name,” said Carmella.

“Yeh! Miss Coletta. All I’m doing is to collect poll tax figures. Who’s your dad?”

“Who’s your old man?” asked Carmella.

“Cut that out!” said the canvasser. “I’m official. Now who’s the men folks around this house?”

“Are you a cop?” asked Carmella.

She had heard of plain clothes men.

“Nothing like it,” said the stranger.

“Then show me a badge. If you’re official, you gotta badge.”

Mr. Stephens, college sophomore, pulled open his coat and showed a nickel badge.

Carmella inspected it carefully.

“That’s all right!” she said. “Now what do you want to know?”

“How many folks are there in this family over twenty-one?” said Mr. Stephens.

“Not a one only dad,” said Carmella. “And mother,” she added.

Mr. Stephens, laboriously working his way through college, thereupon took from Carmella the necessary facts concerning Tommaso Coletta, contractor, and his wife, Maria, Mrs. Coletta glaring heavily the while.

As the young man went out through the yellow gate she turned to Carmella, saying in Italian, her only language:

“Why were you over to the House, you runaway?”

“They sent for me.”

“What for?”

“To ask questions.”

“What questions?”

“Oh, just questions.”

“How often have I told you not to go over to the House without you ask?”

“Aw, mother, forget it!”

“Forget it, shall I? Forget it? Listen, girl! You mind me or you get hurt. Come with me!”

She laid a heavy hand on Carmella’s arm, starting for the door.

“You lick me again and I forget English!” screamed Carmella.

This was a new threat she had lately evolved, and it frightened her mother.

“Oh-ho! You forget English, do you? Then I bet your father he make you remember. I tell him when he comes home.”

“Oh, cara madre, don’t tell dad. He hits to hurt.”

“Ah-ha! Maybe you like it not that I tell him. Then what about it that you forget English?”

“Gee, mother! I’ll remember.”

“I’ll bet you do,” said Mrs. Coletta.

Mother and daughter went into the yellow cottage together—two generations a thousand years apart.

Tommaso was late in his home-coming that night, and Carmella studied his mood closely. There was still a question in her mind whether her mother would tell him that she had disobeyed. He had a way of questioning that seemed to command Maria to tell him everything.

Carmella was afraid of him—and he was the only individual in the world of whom she was afraid. It would not have been good for her, at thirteen, to know that he also was afraid of her; that he was afraid of all his English-chattering children. But chiefly afraid of Carmella, she being the oldest and the one on whom both parents relied to interpret their wishes to a world that did not speak their language.

Carmella spoke three separate tongues. In school she used a stilted, formal English, often putting “dis” for “this,” but closely following the textbooks in style. At home she spoke Italian to her parents, and a pidgin-mixture with her younger brothers and sisters. Elsewhere she spoke a haphazard jumble of the two, American slang preferred, as with Mrs. Barrington—a very unbookish jargon.