My Sicilian mamma Crucifessa worked at home selling homes to Italians. She also embroidered and sewed to earn extra cash. My Papa was totally busy outside our home captaining boats, and in later life, working in factories.

I remember seeing him slump after his long hours city work. In fact, my friends on our make-shift ball field provided an early warning system, alerting me of my Papa’s walking home from the subway station..

They yelled, “Your dad is on his way. Run home!” I shook, anticipating a spanking for lateness to the dinner table. In retrospect, my alarm was unfounded. I was never hit for being late .It was a fake charade by my father, I’m gonna take my belt off now.”

Amazing that well coordinated Sicilian always seemed to miss me with his belt at point blank range. Momma of course, pretended to provide a buffer.

Regularly, when Pop entered our home after city work he dropped tiny chocolates bought from subway vending machines directly on the floor next to me. That floor blanketed with baseball cards shared space with mini chocolate ,and the Journal American newspaper’s sport page. Jimmy Cannon, famed sports writer proved my favorite author and the reason my teaching nuns seemed amazed at my esoteric vocabulary.

Mamma taught me lifetime lessons in confronting bigotry. She handled that social disease with dignity, pride, patience, constructive reaction.  She was rewarded with the proverbial last laugh. Fifth grade was the springtime of my life, I rode a city bus frequently with mom.    One day she asked the bus driver a question in her so-called broken English. A sneering driver mocked and mimicked her. A bus filled with other riders brandishing Germanic accents giggled and laughed and even shouted at her. She wore the insulting cloak of a scapegoat suffering from the original sin of being Italian.

At ten, I felt trapped in a noisy bus, a  green gassy bus literally like a rolling cage with toothy human animals viciously laughing at my mom. Enraged and in pain, I recall that infamy.

On the way out of the bus I kicked the driver. He screamed, “You slimy, wop guinea bastard.” He got up, took one step then sat immediately and slammed the doors.

Momma said, “Antouzzu why did you kick that man?”

I said,” I don’t know what those words mean, but I know that they are mean.” That was the first time that I realized that others referred to us as Wops and Guinea bastards.

I asked my Mamma the meanings of the insults. “I will explain some other time, “she said.

I’ve never hated more or wanted to strike back harder. For years the thought of avenging that moment haunted me. At that time, however, mom silenced and put her finger over her mouth to prevent any negative reaction from me.

Instead, on that steamy Brooklyn afternoon she clutched my hand, gave me a gentle extra squeeze a delicate whisper of love and said in Italian, “Relax, they won’t win. “I noticed that she copied some writing printed on that bus.it was probably related to the bus and its driver. Surely, she avenged that insult.

A year later, my parents considered renting in an apartment building closer to my parochial school. Mamma walked with me into an enormous, flower filled courtyard. As we approached its entrance, men and women hanging out of their windows gestured and yelled at us. In Germanic accents it seemed like a chorus of folks from every corner shouted, “Get out, we don’t want Guinea Wops here!” My mom bit down on her lip and was determined to enter to speak to some rental agent. She was stopped at the door by a large pot bellied. and horned rimmed man. He put his crusty hands across mom’s face and said,” We don’t have and vacancies?” We turned and she took small backup steps. I asked, “What are vacancies?”

She said, “My son the man means that they don’t have any open apartments. She stared at the pavement momentarily. That alerted me of her disappointment.

“Mom I heard those bad words about us again.” She rubbed my head, “My boy you will realize that intelligently standing up to that kind of ignorance and evil will make you a better man. Don’t allow them to imprint negativity on your soul.”

Those two early warnings about the bigotry that confronted this American born Italian American in the Fifties were a lesson. Nowadays, whenever I detect any kind of bigotry against others, I ask, What would Mamma do?