Little Manny’s mother was spooning out the stew when Manuel entered. He sighed, sat down at the head table. Little Manny went to get Elsie.
Elsie was sitting with her ear against the speaker. “Dinner,” he called. She looked up, her deep brown eyes glassy with being in another world. He reached over and shut off the radio.
She blinked for a minute, coming back to the present. “Dinner?” she said.
Manny held a hand down for her to help her stand. She stood, wobbling a little. She went into the kitchen.
There was only enough room for four, which was fine, because his mother never sat down to eat until after everyone else had eaten. His father grunted like a pig as he ate, stuffing stew into his maw while his mother kept telling Little Manny to keep his elbows off the table. Manuel held up his bowl for seconds, and Rose rushed to get it. She was not stocky like the other Portuguese women, but thin and with an hourglass shape that Alice emulated. Alice, Manny knew, used a corset; he wondered if his mother did, too.
Manuel finished, sitting back, and looking over his brood of children, eating slowly and daintily, not slurping from the bowl, not sticking bread in the stew, but sipping from the spoon. “You gotta have manners in this world,” he started to lecture the kids. “My papa, my vovo, we never had any manners growing up. We milked the cows and came right in to eat without washing up.” He picked at his teeth with the knife. He looked to Manny. “I think it’s time you start working like your sisters.”
Manny looked to his mother. She was washing dishes that had suddenly appeared in the sink. “Papa,” said Little Manny, “I have a job.”
“Delivering liquor to people too lazy to make it to the bar?” Manuel said. “How much do you make?”
“Mrs. Mendoza gave me a cookie. And Mrs. Alvarez gave me some masa.”
Manuel snorted. “Did you bring any of it home?”
“I got a cookie,” said Elsie.
Manuel said, “I didn’t get a cookie.”
Alice snickered, but at a look from her father, she shut up. Manuel said to Manny, “We’re going over there tonight and tell Mrs. Adele to pay you from now on. A penny a delivery. That seems fair.”
“Yes, papa,” said Manny, and passed his bowl to his mother, who promptly washed it.
After dinner, and while Rose went to feed Emma, Manuel and Manny went around the corner to Adele’s. A man sat on the stairs of the speakeasy, looking like any other man, smoking and watching the street. He nodded to the father and son as Manuel pushed open the door.
Cigarette smoke assaulted them, making Manny cough. His father smoked, too, but in here, everyone smoked, all the time, so the air hung heavy with burnt tobacco. Adele was manning the bar with her brother Tommy, who caught Manuel’s eye when they first entered. He ribbed his sister, who switched sides with Tommy.
“And how’s my best supplier?” she asked in English.
Manny translated for his father. “I need to get Manny a job. He needs to start pulling his weight.”
“Aren’t the mills hiring?”
“I want you to pay Manny a penny a delivery.”
“A penny! That’s robbery.”
Manuel shrugged. “I don’t have to give you the good white wine, either.” He leaned forward on the bar. “If he gets enough pennies, he can get a bike, and deliver farther. Maybe to Lonsdale or Central Falls.”
“I’ll get him a bike,” said Tommy.
Adele looked like she was chewing on the idea. “Let me think about it.”
Manuel said to Manny, “No deliveries until she pays you.” Then he said to Adele, “Uma carveja.”
She racked up one beer. “Don’t want your own rotgut?”
“Why should I buy my own booze?” Manny translated it without the curse word, but Adele caught it, “merda.” She laughed, and went back to her place at the other end of the bar.
They stayed for a short time, long enough to get the smoke smell saturated in their clothes. Mama Rose laid into both of them, saying that now she had to wash these clothes because they would stink up the apartment and the hamper.
Emma was sitting up in bed when Manny kissed her good night. All the kids lined up in her room and Alice and Elsie climbed into bed with her. Manny got to sleep at the foot of the bed, because he was getting older now and couldn’t sleep with his sisters anymore. They didn’t have enough money to get another bed, and they didn’t have the room in the tiny two-bedroom apartment to put another bed.
The next morning, Manny helped his mother get together the lunches for the girls and his father. The girls would go work at the lace factory near the river, while his father worked a few doors down at the Bleachery. Emma was still asleep in bed. Said Manuel, “Your mother and I talked last night, Manny. I’m going to find you a job in the Bleachery or somewhere else in the mills.”
“No more deliveries?”
“Along with the deliveries. There’s nothing wrong with two jobs.”
