Mama takes one look, puts her fingers to her mouth, and whistles so loudly, we all freeze. Been a while since I’ve heard that, but we all know she means business.
“What is going on here?”
“Oh, Mama, we’re just watching a movie,” Marialena says innocently.
“My God,” Mama shakes her head. “After the movie, y’all are gonna sweep that floor and make this place tidy, you understand me?”
Everyone mumbles and agrees, while Marialena flickers the lights and tells us all to get to our seats. Natalia beckons me and Rosa over to snuggle on a huge bedroll she’s made on the floor, right up front. Rosa sits cross-legged beside her, winces, and gives me a reproachful look. I discreetly hold my fingers at my eyes and swivel them back to her, to remind her I’m watching her.
She’ll be ready to combust by the end of this movie. I watch as she slowly sticks her tongue out at me, almost like she’s mocking me, but then she moves her tongue around the edge of her lips to tease me. Under the dark shadows of the Great Hall, while everyone else is watching the movie, no one sees the little seductive flirt.
At first, I think it’s just a regular movie, some Disney cartoon I’m barely paying attention to. Beauty and the Beast? The girls seem riveted and Natalia sings along in her sweet, high-pitched voice, but most of the guys seem bored. We entertain ourselves with popcorn and candy, and Mario makes subtle wisecracks Mama and Natalia don’t hear about the Beast nailing Belle.
“Is his dick beastly?” Mario mutters, shaking his head. “No wonder the girl’s crazy about him. Who wouldn’t wanna be nailed with a nine-inch dick?”
Tavi elbows him but Orlando and I snort with laughter. Sergio joins in about those claws of his and Belle’s pretty yellow dress being torn to shreds, and Timeo makes a wisecrack about little beast-like bambinos. But when the credits come on, the screen flickers.
“Movie ain’t over,” Marialena says in a singsong voice. “You guys are gonna like this one.”
The screen goes black, and the room quiets. I reach under the blanket for Rosa’s hand as a picture that’s gotta be thirty years old pops up on the screen.
“Oh my God,” Mama whispers when the camera flickers to the church. She’s holding a baby swaddled in a white blanket by the front door, looking suave and put together as always. God, Papa still has black hair, and his eyes aren’t as haunted as they were when I knew him. It was before he’d taken the throne as Boss, before his father died of a stroke. Before his older brother committed suicide.
“Marialena, where’d you get these?”
“Papa’s desk,” she says quietly. “Thought they’d make a fun movie night.”
The old video camera from the Eighties didn’t hold a candle to the current equipment we have. The video footage is jerky and grainy, but we’re all there… all of us.
A hush falls over the room as we watch clip after clip.
“My God, your hair,” Tavi says to Mama. Her perm was a sight to behold, and even Rosa, when she was school-age, had wild and crazy hair she didn’t tame until her early twenties.
“This was before you came to us,” Rosa says, holding my hand under the blanket. To others, it will look like we’re just sitting together, watching a movie. Natalia snuggles up to Rosa’s side and giggles at everyone’s pictures.
“If this is the one I think it is,” Mama says thoughtfully, her voice trailing off.
And then there I am, a gangly youth with a perpetual scowl. In one short video, Marialena’s first Communion at church, Romeo puts an arm around me and takes a picture. My chest swells and I grin at the camera, so proud to be one of the Rossi men.
“There you are,” Mama says proudly, halfway across the room.
Rosa’s hand stills in mine. I stroke my thumb along the top of her hand and wonder what she’s thinking. I know what I was thinking that day.
It was the first day Romeo ever taught me how to shoot a gun. We’d been attacked by a local rival, and I had no weapon. I used what I had, though. A nearby branch I used as a club, my two fists that were unrelenting when the shit hit the fan. And I knocked them down and restrained them until Romeo came and brought Papa to take over. Back then, the older made men of The Family were the inner sanctum until one by one, the Rossi men of the brotherhood grew of age and were inducted.
Papa was so damn proud of me. I was so damn proud. Mama cried, and Rosa wouldn’t even look at me for days. I think it was the bruising and stitches I needed around my hands after delivering a near-death beating.