Gianna waved a hand. “You too much like your uncle. They say things they think you want to hear.” She peered closely at Kenny. “My, my! You are a beautiful Colored boy. Your mama must be happy that she has such a pretty boy.” Her eyes shifted to Ray. “And you, so handsome. You must have a lot of girlfriends.”
Ray quickly shook his head. “No. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Gianna grunted. “You’re going to be a young man soon, so you should have a girlfriend. If you want, I will find you somebody.”
Frankie shook his head. “Nonna, this is not the old country, where families arrange marriages for their children before they become adults. Here in America, we wait—”
“You wait until you are too old to take a husband or wife,” she said, interrupting him. She threw up both hands. “What’s with men waiting until they are thirty before they marry. And some wait until they are forty.” She shook her head.“Così triste.”
“It’s not sad, Nonna,” said a woman cutting cheese into little cubes, “because men want to establish a career before they marry and start a family. It’s the same with women. My girls say they want to finish college before they decide if they want to marry.”
“Your girls act like men. Wearing pants all the time.Lesbiche!” Gianna spat out, angrily.
“My daughters are not lesbians!”
Frankie ushered Kenny and Ray out of the kitchen and into the living room before his grandmother and cousin began arguing. Whenever they got together, it was as if Nonna and her niece were unable to remain in the same room without exchanging words. His parents and sisters had arrived, and he noticed the girls were subdued, almost withdrawn. It was obvious his father’s threat to take them out of public school and enroll them in a parochial school had temperedtheir sometimes out-of-control behavior. Knowing Giovanni D’Allesandro as well as he did, Frankie knew that the threat wasn’t an idle one. Come September, his three sisters would go to school wearing the same uniform. His family would be paying Catholic school tuition and have another baby on the way, so Frankie knew economically things would get even tighter at home, and he decided rather than hang out with Kenny and Ray over the summer vacation, he would help his father in the store. That way, Gio wouldn’t have to close for a few hours daily to make deliveries to loyal customers who refused to buy from the local supermarkets.
“Did you and your friends get something to eat?” his uncle asked.
“No, because Nonna and Patricia were arguing with each other.”
“Go into Nonna’s sewing room, and I’ll bring you a plate.”
“How big is this place?” Ray asked Frankie, as he led him and Kenny through a wide hallway, past a sitting room with love seats and armchairs, and finally into a small room with a trio of floor-to-ceiling windows. A round table with four pullup chairs was positioned in a corner opposite a built-in shelf with bolts of fabric and plastic bins with spools of thread.
Frankie met Ray’s eyes when he sat across from him. “There are three floors with two apartments on each one. Each apartment has three bedrooms, but there is also one with five bedrooms. My grandparents raised my father and uncle and aunts on the first floor, while renting out the other apartment to my grandfather’s brother and his family. Various relatives rent apartments on the second and third floors. Some of the old folks have passed away, but their children and grandchildren still live here.”
“Why doesn’t your father live here?” Kenny asked Frankie.
Frankie averted his eyes as he stared out the window. “My grandfather didn’t approve of my father marrying my mother, because she’s Irish.”
“You’re kidding?” Kenny and Ray chorused at the same time.
Frankie shook his head. “No, I’m not. My grandfather clung to the old ways, where you marry your own kind. Italians marry Italians, and Colored people marry Coloreds. It didn’t matter that my mother was Catholic. She just wasn’t Italian. Poppa defied him and married the woman he loved. My grandfather refused to attend the wedding and threatened to disown anyone in the family who did.”
“Did they?” Ray asked.
Frankie shook his head again. “No one was willing to challenge him, so only my mother’s family witnessed the wedding. Even after my grandfather passed away, Poppa refused to move back.”
“Does your godfather live here with his family?” Kenny asked.
“Uncle Frank never married. I’d heard rumors that he was in love with a Black girl who lived in Harlem, but it ended when her family discovered they were sneaking around seeing each other. That’s when her father sent her South to live with relatives.”
Ray grunted. “Italians aren’t the only ones who are racist and bigoted. That’s why I intend to marry a Puerto Rican girl.”
“It’s the same with me,” Kenny said. “If I do marry, it will be to a Black woman.” He paused. “What about you, Frankie? Do you want to marry an Italian girl?”
“Probably, because I don’t want to repeat what my parents had to go through.”
“What if she’s Irish like your mother?” Ray questioned.
“It wouldn’t matter, because I refuse to deny that I’m half Irish.”
Frankie’s uncle walked into the room, carrying a tray withsmall plates and three glasses of lemonade. “I tell anyone that I’m proud of my half Irish nephew, because once he becomes an accountant, he’s going to help keep the taxman from snooping into my businesses every couple of years.”
Kenny lowered his eyes. It was obvious Frankie’s uncle had overheard them talking about who they wanted to marry. Even though he was attracted to girls, he hadn’t done anything to let any of them know that he liked them. There was one girl in particular in his English class that he thought was the most beautiful girl in the school. Hemlines were now above the knee, and he’d found himself staring at her long, shapely legs when he should’ve been staring at what had been written on the blackboard. However, he’d found it hard to concentrate on his schoolwork when girls he’d known in grade school who had been flat-chested now had breasts, some proudly displayed whenever they wore tight sweaters.
He would turn thirteen at the end of the month, and then he’d be a teenager. A teenager who was going through puberty, and who wanted to experience what it would feel like to have sex with a girl. The first time he woke up to find his thighs coated with semen, he realized he didn’t have any control over his body. Kenny was certain his mother would see the stains on the sheet, so he’d begun placing a towel between his thighs when going to bed, hoping it would absorb some of the nocturnal emission. He’d found it odd that he could control his body during the day, but it was different at night. When he woke to find he had an erection, at first he thought it was because he had to empty his bladder, but later discovered it wouldn’t go down until he masturbated. Thankfully his mother had already left the house to go work when he was able to stand in the tub and jerk his dick until he ejaculated. The pleasure was so exhilarating that he was left feeling slightly lightheaded. Then he showered, got dressed, ate his breakfast, brushed his teeth, and left the apartment to meet Ray and Frankie to walk to school together. That wastheir time to talk about things they wouldn’t have been able to say in the company of others. And it was always about sex.
