I rested an elbow on the top of the table and used my fork and pushed around my food.
My appetite was nonexistent, or maybe it was the company that seemed to be a suppressant of my hunger.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
My father’s clipped tone had me involuntarily tensing. I set my fork down and placed my hands in my lap, and gripped the linen napkin tightly. As I stared at my father, there were so many things I wanted to say. I hate you. I wish you loved me. Why are you the way you are?
But I bit my tongue and shrugged in response to his question.
“Quit playing with your food like a child.” His expression was as cold as ever as he picked up his wineglass and took a long drink from it.
My mother sat silently, submissively beside him, eating like a baby bird, as if she were forcing herself to swallow each bite.
“Where is Gio?” my mother softly asked, not looking at my father as she continued to eat.
“Work.” That one word was all she’d get. He didn’t even give her the respect of looking at her.
Work meant one thing. And that was doing my father and the Cosa Nostra’s bidding.
And as if my thoughts and my mother’s voice had conjured Gio, the sound of the front door opening and closing filtered into the dining room.
I heard his heavy football before he entered the room.
My mother didn’t look up, nor did my father at Gio.
I stared at my older brother and took in how he didn’t look as pristine and put together as he normally did, although it was clear he had attempted to. He always had this rough edge to him, and the tattoos that covered him from upper neck to the backs of his hands didn’t help soften him.
Whereas my father could seem more like a businessman and less like a capo in the Italian mafia by how he dressed and held himself, Gio screamed criminal in the very stereotypical sense.
Gio’s short black hair was disheveled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Maybe he’d just been working out?
But as I took a closer look at my brother’s appearance, I knew better.
His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. And then there was something rust-colored splattered along the white material. He lifted his hands and smoothed them down his jacket, and I noticed his scuffed-up knuckles, ones that looked like they’d been recently tended to.
“Is it done?” my father asked, still not looking at my brother.
“Yes.” Gio took the seat beside me and started filling up his plate.
I picked up my fork and took a bite of my garlicky mashed potatoes, but the texture and flavor was more like wallpaper paste in my mouth.
There was no conversation, just this uncomfortable silence that I’d gotten far too comfortable with when in my father’s presence.
“Has anyone spoken to Amara?” Gio asked in between bites.
He was the only one who could get away with saying things my father didn’t want to talk about. And Amara was one of them.
“She’s married off. She’s not our problem anymore.” My father’s voice was like a whip across the table, and I looked at my brother, then back at Marco.
I wanted to ask why he was so cruel, how he could just forget about his daughter simply because she was no longer his “problem.”
I wanted to yell at my mother and tell her to grow a spine, to ask her if she didn’t miss her daughter. But I pursed my lips, clenched my jaw, and stared at my brother.
He seemed unaffected by our father’s cold exterior as he shoveled bite after bite into his mouth. I noticed he had a bruise forming on his temple, and more splatters of what I could only assume was blood behind his ear.
Not even the dark ink that covered him could hide the gore.
I swallowed down the bile, not really shocked by the clear violence my brother took part in, but knowing it was part of our lives.
My brother didn’t respond, and my father went back to drinking, but then Gio let his fork fall to the plate with a clatter, grabbed his napkin, and wiped his mouth as he glared at our father.
“Just because she’s married doesn’t mean I can’t speak about my sister or ask how she’s doing.”
Suddenly everything became quiet, with me physically tensing.
I glanced between them. My mother kept her focus on her plate, her throat working as she swallowed. I hated that she acted like this, that she had become so weak and docile, her fear so suffocating that she wouldn’t even stand up for her own children.
But I also felt sad for her. I wanted to help her even if she didn’t want to help us.
I couldn’t remember the last time she’d stood up for me or told my father not to lay his hands on me, not to insult or curse at me. No, she turned a blind eye, not caring about anything but her own skin.