• The story of Lee Minucci- my Great Grandmother


    All around was nothing but caose. But it was exited caose, with old and young, poor and rich, healthy and sick. All exited to see the New York horizon show it face. Soon I would get off with my parents and live the good life.
    I smiled and looked at the brilliant lipid luzi sky, complete with breeze and fluffy white clouds that looked like whipped cream and marsh mellows.
    "Lee! Come here ragazza. We need to go soon. Stop staring at the sky! Help your father!" My mother yelled at me across the sea of boiler hats and old men and women that hid her from me.
    "Venendo." Coming. I yelled.
    I ran across the sea of people and got knocked down, scrapping the nice pink dress my mother had sown for me, just for the occasion of America. I cried out in pain and then weeped over my scrapped dress, seeing the hole in it. My father would yell at me, I just knew it, but he would yell at me even more if I didn't move and help him.
    I got up, fighting against the stubborn pain in my leg and trying to get past the blurring tears. I would not cry, then my father would surly find out. When I got to my mothers and fathers table I saw my mother, not my father. "Ahh! There you are! Where have you been, ragazza?"
    "Looking at America!" I cheered, trying to hide me glee of seeing father no were in sight.
    "Hmph." She said and put her dainty hands on her dainty hip. "Find your father. We will need to get ready soon."
    I nodded and started off, looking this way at that for the crooked Italian nose of his, the one that had been broken so many times in fights that we gave up trying to make it strait again.
    "Idiota." Idiot! I heard a gruff, husky voice say. I turned to it just in time to see my father swinging his big meaty fist to the side of a handsome boys face, the impact making the boy topple over and fight back tears of his own. "You gave me the wrong piece of bread you scum." My father spit in the boys range and then turned to me.
    I was frightened by my father, his Italian temper always getting the best of him. He rushed past me in a furry and I was forced to raise after him. When we got to the table we hastily packed what little things we had and walked over to the crowd of Italians who were waiting in front of the opening that would lead to the dock.
    As the bridge went down, people hurried to get to the floor of America, pushing and shoving others to get to the soil. The more civilized people who didn't know how to push or were to dignified to push ended up falling into the harbor, screaming and daintily waving in the air for help, but help would not come to them. This was America, a different land from Italy.
    I luckily, had my big father to hide behind, he did enough pushing for 10 men. He kept both me and my mother safe, intimidating the others to keep out of his way. We got to the shore and my mother threw her hands to her chest, sighing in relief and astonishment as we soon were being pushed into the cluster of people.
    Americans, Indians, French, German, and races I couldn't name were in the Harbor. Selling and begging and loitering. It was hard to stay with my parents when I, only 12, could hardly see over any ones head.
    "My my my, so this is America... Lee?" My mother said.
    "Yes nonna." I asked.
    "Were are you ragazza?" My father asked, again disappearing in the crowd.
    I sighed and rushed to them, this time being careful not to fall and damage my new dress. I stopped by them and gave a smile, but the smile instantly disappeared when I saw the boy. He was the same boy as before, but angrier and walking with big beefy German man. The man looked at my father while my father looked at him. "Dis de man vho hurt you son?" The German man asked never letting his eyes leave my father.
    "Yah, and what if I am?" My father said. Blood lust in his beady black eyes.
    The German man threw the first punch, his fist actually making the air around it whistle angrily as it impacted with the side of my fathers face. The next few seconds moved like minutes... my father hitting the ground, the screech of my mothers voice, my stunned eyes, the Americans looking at the fight and forming a circle to watch it, the looks of satisfaction of the German mans face...
    My father finally hit the ground, blood spluttering out of his mouth with a couple of teeth coming out. The German man looked at him, then the boy- his son- spit in the range of my father, looking satisfied along with his father.
    The German man turned away, but the Americans didn't let him leave. They saw my father get up, a look of pure animistic blood lust in his eyes, his crooked nose twitching like it always does when hes angry. He yelled at the German man and pierced him with the butcher knife he always had with him, to get at the German man.
    There were screams and screams and my father pierced the man, over and over again till the German man was nothing but a pile of red, with the occasional white. I had seen my father with his butchered cows but this... the look of the boy as he watched his dead father, the astonished look of Americans as they realized blood had spray across there face, my mother screaming at the gore, my father howling with rage and triumph.
    It all happened so suddenly then... the next few minutes that I still cant recall all of it, just guess.
    The cops came on horses, with there whistles. They cleared a little of the area and took my father away, sent him to jail. My mother cried and weeped and we lived on the streets of the harbor for a while, without a man we were just a widow and her daughter. But thankfully a rich man, an American saw how beautiful my mother was behind the grime and dirt and married her. I then lived the next few years with him until my mother died of a fever, the man didn't like me so he sent me away to live with my Aunt and Uncle who had immigrated to America awhile ago.
    My life has never been a happy one, but it is a life to remember.