The Family by Naomi Krupitsky
For Lil and Marty Krupitsky, who never got to read this book, but always knew I could write it.
And for New York City.
PROLOGUE
[July 1948]
Shooting a gun is like jumping into cold water.
You stand there, poised on the edge, muscles coiled to leap, and at every moment until the last, there is the possibility of not doing it. You are filled with power: not as you jump, but just before. And the longer you stand there, the more power you have, so that by the time you jump the whole world is waiting.
But the moment you leap, you are lost: at the mercy of the wind and gravity and the decision you made moments before. You can do nothing but watch helplessly as the water looms closer and closer and then there you are, submerged and soaking, ice gripping your torso with its hands, breath caught at the back of your throat.
So a gun unfired holds its power. In the moments before trigger clicks and bullet is unleashed, beyond your grasp, out of your control. As thunder crashes in the distant wet clouds and the electric air raises the small hairs on your arms. As you stand, feet planted like your papa taught you just in case, shoulder flexed against the recoil.
As you decide and decide again.
Fire.
BOOK ONE
1928–1937
Sofia Colicchio is a dark-eyed animal, a quick runner, a loud shouter. She is best friends with Antonia Russo, who lives next door.
They live in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called Red Hook, which is bordered by the neighborhood that will become Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. Red Hook is younger than Lower Manhattan, but older than Canarsie and Harlem, those wild outskirts where almost anything goes. Many of the buildings are low wooden lean-tos near the river, but the rooftops climb higher away from the waterfront, toward still-low but more permanent brick townhouses, everything a dark gray from the wind and the rain and the soot in the air.
Sofia’s and Antonia’s families moved to Red Hook on the instructions of their fathers’ boss, Tommy Fianzo. Tommy lives in Manhattan, but he needs help managing his operations in Brooklyn. When their neighbors ask Carlo and Joey what they do, Carlo and Joey say, this and that. They say, importing and exporting. Sometimes they say, we’re in the business of helping people. Then their new neighbors understand and do not ask any more questions. They communicate via snapped-shut window shade, and by telling their children, it’s none of our concern, loudly, in the hallway.
The other people in the neighborhood are Italian and Irish; they work the docks; they build the skyscrapers sprouting like beanstalks from the Manhattan landscape. Though the violence has abated since the adults in this neighborhood were children, it is still there, hovering in the spaces between streetlamp circles.
* * *
—
Sofia and Antonia know that they are to tell a grown-up before going to one another’s houses, but not why. Their world consists of the walk to and from the park in the summers, the clang and hiss of winter radiators, and all year round, the faraway splash and echo of men working the docks. They know certain things absolutely, and do not know that there is anything they do not know; rather, the world comes into focus as they grow. That’s an elm tree, Antonia says one morning, and Sofia realizes there is a tree in front of her building. Uncle Billy is coming for dinner tonight, says Sofia, and Antonia suddenly knows that she hates Uncle Billy: his pointed nose, the shine of his shoes, the stink of cigars and sweat he leaves in his wake. Cross the street or you’ll wake the maga, they remind each other, giving a wide berth to the smallest building on the block, where everyone knows—but how do they know?—that a witch lives on the third floor.
Sofia and Antonia know that Uncle Billy is not their real Uncle, but he is Family anyway. They know they are to call him Uncle Billy, like Uncle Tommy, and that they have to play nicely with Uncle Tommy’s children at Sunday dinner. They know there will be no discussion in this regard.
They know that Family is everything.
* * *
—
Sofia lives in an apartment with three bedrooms and a wide window in the kitchen, which looks out onto the no-backyard-access backyard. The landlord sits out there in the summer with no shirt on and falls asleep with cigarettes dangling from his thick fingers. The midday heat burns the places his body is exposed to the sun, leaving the underside of his round belly and arms lily-white. Sofia and Antonia are not supposed to stare. In Sofia’s room there is a bed with a new bedspread, which is red flannel; there are three dolls with porcelain faces lined up on the shelf; there is a plush rug she likes to sink her toes into.
Down the hall from her bedroom there is her parents’ room, where she is not supposed to go unless it’s an emergency. Cara mia, her papa says, there have to be some things just for Mamma and Papa, no? No, she responds, and he makes claws of his hands and chases her down the hall to tickle her, and she shrieks and runs. And then there is an empty room with a small cradle from when Sofia was a baby, which is no one’s. Her mamma goes in there sometimes and folds very small clothes. Her papa says, come on, let’s not do this. Come on, and leads her mamma out.
Sofia has just started to notice that people are afraid of her father.
At the deli or the café, he is served first. Signore, the waiters say. So nice to see you again. Here—on the house. It’s a specialty. Prego. Sofia holds him by the hand like a mushroom growing from the base of a tree. He is her shade; her nourishment; her foundation. And this must be Sofia, they say. Her cheeks are squeezed; her hair is ruffled.