Chapters (47)
- 1. Cover Page
- 2. Title Page
- 4. Author’s Note
- 5. Dedication
- 7. Prologue
- 8. Part One: Umbertina 1860 - 1940
- 9. Chapter One
- 10. Chapter Two
- 11. Chapter Three
- 12. Chapter Four
- 13. Chapter Five
- 14. Chapter Six
- 15. Chapter Seven
- 16. Chapter Eight
- 17. Chapter Nine
- 18. Chapter Ten
- 19. Part Two: Marguerite 1927 – 1973
- 20. Chapter Eleven
- 21. Chapter Twelve
- 22. Chapter Thirteen
- 23. Chapter Fourteen
- 24. Chapter Fifteen
- 25. Chapter Sixteen
- 26. Chapter Seventeen
- 27. Chapter Eighteen
- 28. Chapter Nineteen
- 29. Chapter Twenty
- 30. Chapter Twenty-One
- 31. Chapter Twenty-Two
- 32. Chapter Twenty-Three
- 33. Part Three: Tina 1950 –
- 34. Chapter Twenty-Four
- 35. Chapter Twenty-Five
- 36. Chapter Twenty-Six
- 37. Chapter Twenty-Seven
- 38. Chapter Twenty-Eight
- 39. Chapter Twenty-Nine
- 40. Chapter Thirty
- 41. Chapter Thirty-One
- 42. Chapter Thirty-Two
- 43. Chapter Thirty-Three
- 44. Chapter Thirty-Four
- 45. Chapter Thirty-Five
- 46. Afterword
- 48. About the Author
- 49. About the Feminist Press
- 50. Also Available from the Feminist Press
Even Serafino might have wavered but for her. He might have been content to take their earnings and go back where the winters were gentler. But she jeered at such softness and told him he was a foolish old man; there were his sons to consider. Did he want them conscripted for the Italian army the minute they set foot on the land they had been born in and which still claimed them? Italy had given them nothing, she told him, but it would be quick to take his sons for soldiers and his money for taxes.
When Cristina Muzzi would come by the store, crying over something she missed from the old country or saying that the chestnuts here could never compare to those of Castagna, Umbertina would look at her witheringly, for she hadn’t progressed.
The only disagreeable thing about living in the Broad Street mansion was the quarrels she had there with Beppino. Maybe she was jealous because Serafino and the boys got along with him and the girls loved him because of his dashing, pirate appearance with those huge mustaches. But Umbertina called him a sponge and told him to get out on his own. Indignant, he finally did so, marrying Grazia Saccà, and as Umbertina said, finally opening his moneybags.
Again she was jealous; instead of working day and night and sweating through manual work, all he did was buy and sell real estate and second mortgages. He came by the store to tell Paul about a notice in the Italian paper concerning lots for sale off Broad Street north of the bridge over the canal.
“All I had to do,” Beppino said in his blustery way as Umbertina turned her back and pretended not to listen while she filled sacks with dried beans, “was go down to the lots—they were all marked out with yellow flags—and take the flags from the posts on the lots I wanted back to the office on Bleecker Street with $10 down for each lot. The contracts and deed documents were included free. The lots were selling for $150 to $300, and you’ll see, by next year I’ll sell them for more than double. They’re right between the Erie Canal and the railroad, where all the business and factories are opening up.”
What bothered Umbertina most was how Paul listened to him.