Lousy with Stature--Book #1

Chapter 1--Descending into Hell

"With gates of silver and bars of gold

Ye have fenced my sheep from their father's fold;

I have heard the dropping of their tears

In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

"Oh Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,

We build but as our fathers built;

Behold thine images, how they stand,

Sovereign and sole, through all our land."

Then Christ sought out an artisan,

A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,

And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin

Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These he set in the midst of them,

And as they drew back their garment-hem,

For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he,

"The images ye have made of me!"

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, from the Preface of How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis

August 1890, Hell's Kitchen, New York City

"We want Anthony to live with us."

That is what the letter had said. Anthony Higgins had translated it into Italian for Nonna himself. A part of him wanted to lie, to hide the truth from her, but Anthony knew Nonna was too smart to be fooled; she could certainly read the shift in his eye whenever he lied. Most people could. He was not a good liar. Also, she could read and write English even though she pretended she couldn't.

Anthony had lived with his grandmother his entire life. The letter had arrived the day before letting him know that all that would be changing. He would be moving into the apartment of his father, stepmother, and two younger siblings. Anthony received letters and small gifts from them in the mail on his birthday and on Christmas, but they'd never visited, and Anthony had never written them.

Mama was just a baby when she emigrated from Sicily along with Nonna and Nonno years ago. Nonno had not been rich in Italy, but he had owned a small leather shop in their village that his own father had left him. Sicilian immigration to America was just increasing, and Nonno saw that as an opportunity for a business to take off. America was the future, and he wanted a stake in it before it became over saturated. At just twenty-five, he sold his store in Italy to come to New York with Nonna and Mama to set up a leather shop. There he could repair anything that came in that was made of leather--shoes, gloves, harnesses. He also made and sold his own creations. The quality of his store was good, good enough it attracted Americans despite the lack of English Nonno spoke. One of his regular customers was Walter Higgins--Anthony's father. Papa was a butcher and regularly bought his aprons from Nonno. That's where he met Mama. Papa was an almost-forty-year-old Irish bachelor, but he fell hard for Mama; that's what Nonna said.

Nonna spoke of her daughter with pride. Her daughter was beautiful with long, silky, black hair hair, strong features, and startlingly dark eyes. Mama was confident and bold, unafraid of people's opinion of her. An only child, Nonno had treated her much like a son, and she had blossomed under the attention. It had shocked Nonna that Mama, at only sixteen, would attach herself so quickly to a much older man. But Mama was levelheaded (and stubborn), so Nonno had allowed the marriage.