Awake Unto Me (3 page)

Mama Rocco stood behind the counter, waiting on customers even though she spoke no English. A Rocco kid Beth didn’t know stood next to her. The Rocco children were taught by the fathers at the Mission Dolores, and Beth went to the public grammar school. This was not the solemn-eyed boy who was usually at his mother’s side but a girl of Beth’s age, her natural coloring darkened by outdoor work.

She smiled brilliantly at Beth, who automatically smiled back. Mama Rocco spoke rapidly in Italian, likely instructing the girl to weigh and add up Beth’s purchases. It’s the same thing I do,
Beth
thought. But Mama Rocco was also smiling both at Beth and her daughter, whom she patted on the shoulder. Beth swallowed a sudden lump of emotion, knowing she could never expect such a gentle gesture from her own parents.

Beth walked home with their smiles on her mind.

As she was getting ready for school the next morning, Beth asked, “Mama? Do you need anything else at the Italian store? I could go there after school before I come home.”

Frieda fixed her with a sharp look. “I suppose we need some more onions and turnips for the stew. Don’t dawdle. Your father needs you directly so I can go home to prepare supper.”

“Yes, Mama, I won’t be long.”

After school, Beth practically ran the three blocks to Rocco’s Produce. She was thrilled to see the girl from the day before standing behind the counter. Mama Rocco was busy elsewhere in the store and the girl smiled her radiant smile and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Beth Hammond.” She smiled shyly. “What’s yours? What school do you go to?”

“My name is Theresa. I go to St Agnes. Where do you go?”

“Guerrero Primary. It’s on Guerrero Street,” Beth added, then felt foolish.

“That must be why it’s called by that name then,” Theresa said seriously, not as though she meant it in a nasty way.

Beth was silent, searching for something else to say. Theresa looked at her expectantly but when Beth said nothing, Theresa saved her by asking, “Are you shopping for your mama?”

“Yes. It’s for supper tonight.”

“I see. What are you having? We always have spaghetti or something like that.”

“Uh-huh,” Beth said, not knowing what exactly Theresa meant by spaghetti.

“What are you having?” Theresa asked again.

“Beef stew.”

Before Theresa could say anything, Mama Rocco spoke sharply. Theresa glanced over Beth’s shoulder at a man standing behind her. Beth didn’t understand Italian but she recognized it was time to leave.

“Good-bye,” Theresa said cheerfully. Beth gave Theresa another shy smile before she darted from the store.

*

Several days passed before Beth had an excuse to go back to the produce store, but when she was able, she saw that Theresa was alone, and the thought of talking to her again made her giddy.

Theresa giggled as she added up Beth’s purchases.

“What’s so amusing?” Beth asked.

“Nothing.” Theresa kept smiling to herself.

“Oh. Do tell me. It’s not nice to keep a secret.”

“It is just that you always buy the same thing. Don’t you get bored with what you eat?”

“No. It’s just what we eat.” Feeling a sudden and inexplicable need to defend her family, she said, “It’s what my father likes.”

“Oh, I know. We eat what my papa likes, but he’s easy. You could come over and eat with us some time.”

Taken aback by the invitation, Beth immediately tried to think of how to persuade her parents, especially her father, to allow her to go to her new friend’s home. Any little difference in routine could annoy him.

“I don’t know if I can, but I’ll ask.”

“Mama is having her sister and my cousins to supper Thursday so she’ll be making a great deal of food. You could come then.”

*

“Theresa asked me to supper with her family on Thursday. May I go, Mama? May I please?”

“Who are these people?” Frieda asked suspiciously.

“They own the produce store. You know them—the Rocco family.”

Frieda nodded thoughtfully, putting away the groceries with her usual staccato movements. “I’ll ask your father.”

At the dinner table that night, Frieda said, “Beth has been invited to dinner with the Rocco family. You know of them. They own the produce store.”

“Eh. The Italians. Why would they ask her?” George kept his eyes on his plate and kept eating.

“Their daughter, the second child, I believe, is the same age as our Beth.”

George didn’t look up. “I don’t like Italians.”

“They are well regarded. We would do well to be neighborly. Besides, it would be good for Beth to have a friend.”

“She has friends.”

“No one special. Please, dear. It’s just for dinner.”

“No,” George said shortly. “We need her at home and I don’t know them.”

In the kitchen after supper as they cleaned the dishes, Frieda told Beth, “Don’t worry, I’ll speak to him.” Beth nodded and went to her room when she finished her chores, disappointment making her feet heavy.

*

Beth sat nervously at the huge table. She couldn’t even count the number of people in the house, let alone remember their names. The Rocco family spent a good half hour before supper talking and kissing and hugging. It was altogether a strange and wonderful occasion.

When Theresa introduced Beth to Mama and Papa as her friend, they had startled her by kissing her soundly on both cheeks. Her own family would never do such a thing. Her mother occasionally pecked her cheek or gave her a small hug, but she certainly wouldn’t have done it with a friend she’d brought home for dinner. She’d never been at a supper table with so many people and so much noise. And, most of all, they were happy.

The contrast between the Roccos and her drab and morosely silent parents struck her as everyone laughed and shouted and passed huge bowls of food around. The conversation went on in mixed Italian and English, and Theresa sat beside Beth and kept up a whispered translation. The food was odd too, but wonderful. Beth had a huge steaming plate of fragrant spaghetti, meatballs in a vibrant red sauce, and bread with spices on it. Theresa encouraged her to try everything.

“Insalata too,” she said as she passed a huge plate of salad to Beth. Beth’s family distrusted green, leafy vegetables and never had them, and as she ate them she thought she knew why. She found them bitter and foreign but ate politely.

Theresa and her brother Nicolo walked Beth home. Theresa hugged Beth and said, “Maybe you will come out to the farm with me sometime to bring in the goods for the store. Papa has asked me to come help in two weeks. It’s south so we go out and stay the whole day.”

Beth nodded. “I’ll try,” she said. She was buoyed by her success; not only had her father finally agreed to let her have the Roccos as friends, but she had made it through the occasion without making a fool of herself. The world suddenly felt a million times brighter, and she hadn’t even known it was dull.

*

“Listen to me play this, dear, and read the notes,” Frieda said. She and Beth were seated at the piano and George was in the armchair reading his newspaper. Beth read the title, “Für Elise
.
”
Frieda played the simple melody slowly, letting Beth hear each note. Then she moved to one side and Beth took over.

The piano was Frieda’s pride and joy. Her mother had bought it in Minneapolis and had laboriously carried it overland to San Francisco when she joined Grandpa Olaf there in 1852. Olaf had tried and failed to make his fortune in the gold fields, eventually giving up and settling for being a policeman instead. The piano was the family’s only recreation, since George disliked or distrusted any other possible forms.

Besides the piano, reading pleased Beth the most. She did well in school and helped her father at the store because it would never occur to her to do otherwise, but her real joy was books: Dickens, Hardy, the Brontë sisters, the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She read two books a week because the Mission District had been recently blessed with its own branch of the library. Beth no longer had to go downtown to Kearny Street with her mother. Since it was close enough she could walk to the library by herself, even though she couldn’t stay long because of her work at the store. Beth had to work all day on Saturday, but after dinner, if she could get her homework done, she could often cajole her parents into letting her go to the library. George grumbled but Frieda gently overrode his objections.

“She’s the best girl in the world, dear. Give her at least this much privilege.”

“Books are no good for girls.”

“She only reads novels and poetry, dear. They won’t harm her.”

“The only book she needs is the Bible.”

When Frieda mentioned Beth’s request to go the Rocco farm, her father’s face turned the color of the spaghetti sauce they served at their dinner, and Beth curled into herself and stared at her plate.

“No. I said, no. I need her at the store.”

“All right, husband. As you wish.” She turned to Beth, who was nearly in tears, and quietly said, “Don’t be concerned. I’ll ask him again later.”

Beth returned to her room, disconsolate. She hoped her mother was correct. She very much wanted to go to the farm with Theresa and her family. Something about Theresa’s smile, the way she laughed and fooled around, made Beth feel happy and that life was full of joy and possibility.

*

Beth didn’t know how her mother had done it, but when she got up, her father had told her to be careful and not be any trouble. She raced around getting ready, thanking her mother profusely as she ran from room to room. She ran to Theresa’s shop and laughed at her stories and her sibling’s silly torments all the way to the farm.

The Rocco family and their farm workers spent the morning in the field, then had a huge lunch under the grove of oak trees near the southern edge of the property. Papa Rocco’s brother and his family lived at the farm full-time, and once again the crowd at lunch seemed enormous to Beth. Since everyone took a little wine at lunch along with all the food, they were drowsy, and Theresa took Beth over to the little stream about a mile from the fields.

“What do you think you’ll be when you grow up?” Beth asked Theresa, who lay on her back with her eyes closed.

“Let me sleep,” Theresa said. “I’m tired and you ask too many questions.”

“I want to know.”

“I’ll work in the store until I get married. Then I’ll have a family. What else would I do?”

“I don’t know. I really hope I’m not going to be working in my parents’ store my whole life.”

Theresa turned on her side and looked at Beth. “But why ever not?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want that. I don’t know what I want. I don’t want to get married either.”

“Oh, goodness. Of course you do.” Theresa again closed her eyes, as if the conversation was over.

Beth sat and looked at the stream and beyond it the sun shining over the vast fields of vegetables and the green hills in the distance. She was utterly at peace in one part of her mind and anxious in the other.
I only know what I truly don’t want, not what I truly do want. How will I ever know?

When there were no ships in and no opportunity for crimping, Lucky Jack started a card game. It took longer to make money but was more fun and less dangerous.

There was no such thing as a slow night at the Grey Dog. The waiter girls circulated constantly, flirting with the patrons and getting them to drink. There was always a mix of sailors, miners, and every variety of criminal known to the Barbary Coast. Jack stood at the bar for a while and looked around, talking off and on with Leo.

Jack sighed and swallowed his shot of whiskey. “I wish I could do something other than crimp or gamble—something honest. I could live respectable-like and give Kerry a better life.”

“Eh?” Leo poured another glass and pushed it over to Jack. “You’re not really fit for honest employment. You been down here since you was a kid. You ain’t never had no regular job.”

Jack laughed. “That’s true. But I don’t go in for robbery or murder. Running women isn’t to my taste. That don’t leave much.”

“You’re pretty good with the cards,” Leo pointed out. “If there’s a greenhorn to fleece, you do all right. You’re Lucky Jack.”

“That’s ’cause I don’t lose my shirt and no one gets mad enough to shoot me.” Jack turned around and scanned the crowd.

He saw a man who, from his sober suit, looked to be a gentleman, sipping a whiskey and looking around expectantly.

“What’s his story, you reckon?” Jack asked Leo. It was a game they played—guessing the wants of and / or background of the strangers who made their way to the Grey Dog.

“Banker.”

“Nah. Too thin. Doesn’t look greedy enough.”

Leo laughed and they clicked glasses. “Then what’s your guess, Jack?”

“Hmmmm. Let me see. He’s not in business, I’d swear.”