God's Mountain

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’A JURNATA É ‘NU MUORZO — the day is a morsel, reads the sign over the doorway to Master Errico’s workshop. I’d already been standing out front for a quarter of an hour to start my first day of work off right. He gets there at seven, rolls up the gates, and speaks his words of encouragement: the day is a morsel. One bite and it’s gone, so let’s get busy. Yes, sir, I answer, and so it went. I’m writing my first entry today to keep track of these new days. I don’t go to school anymore. I turned thirteen and my dad sent me to work. It’s the right thing to do. It’s time. You only have to stay in school till third grade. He let me stay until fifth because I was sickly and also because that way I’d have a better diploma. Around here all the kids go to work even if they never went to school, and Papa didn’t want that. He works at the docks. He never went to school and is just learning to read and write at the night school run by the longshoremen’s cooperative. He only speaks dialect and is intimidated by proper Italian and people with an education. He says that you do better in life if you know Italian. I know Italian because I read library books, but I don’t speak it. I write in Italian because it’s quiet. I can put down what happens every day, sheltered from the noise of Neapolitan.

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