The Bookie's Daughter

by Heather Abraham

  When he responded, my mother realized that the red-haired stranger was her absent father. “Greta, there is no need for hysterics. I came to see her and would like to take her for ice cream. You have no right to stop me. She carries my name and should know who I am.”

  Furious at having been denied her way, Greta leapt from the porch and flew over the steps, knocking her ex-husband to the ground. Kneeling on his chest, she removed a shoe and began to pummel Clive’s head and face. Bonnie, frozen on the porch beside her Grandmother, began to cry in confusion. “What’s wrong, Grandmother? Why is Mommy so angry?”

  Trying to shield her granddaughter, Mrs. Hanson quickly pulled Bonnie into the house and tried to occupy her thoughts. “Let’s go into the parlor and have some cookies and ice tea.” Bonnie rebelled, pulling away from her grandmother’s loving arms. She ran to the parlor window in time to see her father, his back toward her, disappearing from view.

  Minutes later, Greta entered the house and instructed Bonnie, “Be a good girl for grandmother. Mommy is going away. I will come see you in a couple of weeks.” Without a further word of explanation, Greta disappeared from the house, leaving a mystified and distraught child in the care of her loving grandmother.

  Bonnie would not see her father again until she was well into her twenties, when my father tracked him down and invited him for a visit, hoping in vain for reconciliation. My mother’s anger and resentment toward her father was deeply ingrained. She had heard the stories of his cruelty to his pregnant wife, which were related to her by Greta so often that they became familiar—not unlike a sad and repetitive bedtime story.

  According to Greta, she had been married to Clive for six years when she discovered that she was pregnant. Knowing that Clive did not want children, she approached her husband with trepidation and told him the news. Clive reacted viciously, kicking his pregnant wife out of the house. Heartbroken, Greta left with a few belongings and shortly thereafter made the journey to her elder sister’s home in Hamtramck, Michigan. Bonnie was born there on February 14, 1935. I have always thought it ironic that my mother, so closed off from her feelings, was born on a holiday representing true and enduring love.

  Sadness abounded for the first few months of my mother’s life as Greta’s sister, Dalia, died soon afterwards from a tubular pregnancy. Greta packed up her infant daughter and returned to Avonmore, Pennsylvania where she moved in with her grieving mother. Putting aside her sorrow, Mrs. Hanson embraced Bonnie and took on the responsibility of raising her beloved granddaughter. Greta was happy to surrender the heavy burden of motherhood. She soon began to live a rather scandalous life, seemingly without care for her daughter. Her ability to drink like a man and her passion for billiards drew her to late nights out with the boys, and provided significant amounts of fodder for the gossip mill.

  Thankfully, my mother was well cared for in her grandmother’s home. My great grandmother dotted on Bonnie, even as she worried at her own daughter’s reckless attitude for the future. For a few short years, my mother lived a charmed life, with everything a little girl could want—except, of course, responsible and loving parents. Greta visited occasionally, staying for a week or so only to disappear again. Her pattern of behavior continued until she married her second husband, a ruggedly handsome Italian coal miner named Marco Rossi, and found that she was pregnant with her second child.

  Without warning, Greta appeared at her mother’s home and announced that she was taking Bonnie to a remote village in Indiana County, where she would live with her and her new husband. My mother was torn away from the only loving and stable home she would ever know. Years later, she would often relate how heartbroken she was to be taken from her grandmother, and how shocked she was to “see the shabby house [her] mother lived in with Marco.”

  At first, Marco acted the concerned father and Bonnie hoped for the best. Only a short time after her arrival, however, she witnessed her new stepfather’s violent side. Marco’s handsome charm turned deadly when combined with drink, and unfortunately Marco liked to drink. It soon became apparent that Marco saw his wife and stepdaughter as his personal property—property that needed to be kept in line. The beatings began shortly after my mother’s arrival, only ending with Marco’s death in the coalmine seven years later.

  As far as Marco was concerned, Bonnie’s only function was that of babysitter and housekeeper. She was kept busy caring for her mother’s growing family. A few months after she was installed as resident caretaker, Greta gave birth to Marco’s eldest son. At eight years of age, my mother was given the responsibility of caring for and raising her infant brother. Enrico was a beautiful baby with curly black hair and startling blue eyes. Bonnie loved him dearly and quickly became determined to shield him from his father’s drunken rages.

  Over the next few years, Greta was almost constantly pregnant, eventually giving birth to three more children. The twins were born in 1948, one year after their father was put on trial for the attempted murder of their mother.

  By all accounts, Marco Rossi was a man seething with rage, always on the lookout for a reason to mete out his personal brand of punishment. Even as an adult, my mother would take on the look of a wounded child when she spoke of her years living under her stepfather’s sadistic rule.

  When not terrorizing his wife and children with his fists, Marco found creative ways to shock and frighten his family. My mother often reminisced about the first time he presented her with a chicken as a playmate. After a week of happy play with her feathered friend, Bonnie was forced to watch as Marco, half drunk on homemade wine, chopped the chicken’s head off. He laughed as the chicken ran around spurting blood before collapsing on the ground at his stepdaughter’s feet. My mother learned quickly not to play with subsequent chickens, as she knew that their purpose was twofold: first, to provide food for the Rossi family table, and second, to play a sinister role in Marco’s psychotic games.

  After living with Marco for a year or so, Bonnie determined that she needed to learn Italian, as this was Marco’s primary language. He would often revert to it while in a drunken fog. My mother knew instinctively that becoming proficient in Italian would increase her chances of survival. She also understood the need for secrecy, as Marco would most certainly perceive her knowledge as a threat to his privacy and his supremacy. Fortunately, my mother found a teacher in a sweet, elderly Italian woman who had, on more than one occasion, stepped in to protect Marco’s children from his drunken rages. Mrs. Nunna agreed to give my mother lessons in her native language, but only when she was sure that Marco was occupied elsewhere. Within a few months, Bonnie was proficient enough in Italian to feel some measure of comfort. She continued her lessons, believing that the knowledge might someday save her life. Her foresight proved accurate.

  On a cold, winter night in 1948, just a few months after her mother gave birth to twins, the village of Dillardstown lay silent under a blanket of snow. The Rossi children had been tucked into bed, finally drifting off to sleep after Bonnie read them a bedtime story. Greta had gone to a neighbor’s house to play cards and Marco was reportedly out for the evening. Bonnie stoked the fire in the potbelly stove and settled in to read a comic book she had borrowed from a neighbor. She eventually drifted off to sleep in her chair.

  My mother awoke to an icy blast as her stepfather kicked open the front door, axe in hand. Bonnie froze, waiting to see what Marco intended and breathed a sigh of relief when he strode past her and made his way to the root cellar door, descending into the warm and musty basement. Bonnie soon heard the clank of bottles and knew he was partaking of the wine he stored in the cellar. She again fell asleep but awoke a short time later to the sound of Marco’s raised voice. Confused, she wondered who had joined him in the cellar. Slipping quietly from her corner chair, my mother went to the cellar door and quickly realized that he was still alone. He had worked himself into a fit of rage about some imagined slight he had received at the hands of his children. Speaking in Italian, he raved about his disrespectfu
l children and unappreciative wife. As he continued his rant, a new sound entered the bizarre dialogue. Bonnie soon realized that the strange thud was the sound of the axe striking wood.

  To her horror, he began to sadistically chant in his native Italian, “I will cut their heads off one by one. I will cut their heads off one by one…” His words and the sound of the striking axe began to take on a menacing urgency. Bonnie realized that Marco was slowly climbing up out of the cellar. He was striking each step with the axe as he emerged.

  Knowing he was more than capable of a murderous rampage, she ran to the bedroom and awoke the two eldest boys, warning them to keep quiet. She quickly grabbed the infant twins and made for the front door, yelling for the two eldest to run ahead of her out into the snow and hide. Just as she stepped over the threshold, Marco kicked open the door of the cellar and realized his prey was on the run. He screamed into the frozen night, “Run little chickens, run. I will find you and finish you off.”

  With an infant in each arm, my mother leapt off the front porch and ran for her life, all the while screaming for help. Her pleas rang through the frozen village as she trudged barefoot through the deep snow. Marco, axe in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, was quickly closing in. Bonnie noticed lights on in a cabin a short distance away and ran toward the light, desperately hoping the older boys had found a safe place to hide.

  Stumbling up the stairs of the cabin, she began to kick the door with her bare foot, her arms full with the now-crying twins. From the sound of Marco’s enraged snarl, my mother knew he was just feet from the cabin porch. Suddenly, she heard a loud bang and then a reassuring voice. “It’s okay, Bonnie. I got him. He won’t be hurting anyone tonight.”

  Bonnie turned and saw Marco on the ground, blood pouring from his nose. Mrs. Nunna, hearing her screams for help, had waylaid Marco with a cast iron frying pan, hitting him full force in the face and knocking him out. She stood over him wearing a look of triumph, as she coaxed my mother off the porch. Marco lay sprawled in the snow, his blood and wine marring the otherwise pristine whiteness that blanketed the frozen ground. Several of his friends crept from their homes to confirm that he was still alive. Many had heard my mother’s desperate pleas for help, but fearful of Marco’s wrath, none had attempted to intervene.

  Bonnie took the twins home and found the older boys hiding in some bushes. After drying them off and tucking them back into bed, she waited with Mrs. Nunna until her mother returned home. A neighbor had gone to fetch Greta and informed her of her children’s narrow escape. Greta, however, was a woman resigned to living with a violent tyrant. Bonnie found herself comforting her mother.

  Bonnie worried that Marco might not announce his intentions in the future. Luckily, he was too drunk to realize that my mother understood his native language. Her foresight had saved the children this time, but she knew that his violent nature would erupt again. Marco’s twelve-month sentence for trying to kill her mother, only two years before, had done little to curb his sadistic nature. If anything, it had made him even more violent.

  In addition to Marco’s brutality, my mother also had to endure his repulsive friends who would often come by to join him in Bacchanalian feasts. Greta would cook up enormous amounts of pasta smothered in sausage and meatballs, which Marco and his cronies would consume along with gallons of his homemade wine. During one such drunken orgy, Greta sent Bonnie to deliver food to an ailing neighbor. My mother took a short cut through the woods, unaware that she was being followed. On the return trip home she was waylaid by one of Marco’s intoxicated friends, who dragged her deeper into the woods and raped her. Hours later, she emerged from the woods, emotionally and physically bruised and battered from her ordeal.

  Greta was horrified at the condition of her daughter but fearful that Marco would blame the rape on Bonnie and mete out still more punishment on her traumatized daughter. She convinced her to keep quiet and retire to the cabin to lick her wounds. Marco was eventually informed about the rape, but did nothing to bring the perpetrator to justice. As Greta suspected, he blamed his eleven-year-old stepdaughter for being where “she shouldn’t have been.” The constant verbal and physical abuse she endured daily at the hands of her stepfather, the rape, and the lack of concern for her welfare, coupled with her own father’s abandonment, left Bonnie with little trust and a great deal of anger for the adults in her life.

  Marco’s sadism towards his wife and children grew even more frequent. Greta carried physical evidence of his abusive rage for the rest of her life. In the winter of 1946, she took a particularly brutal beating that left her with a large, thick scar on her left cheek and multiple burns over her torso. According to Indiana County, Pennsylvania court records, Marco was indicted in March of 1947 for “assault with intent to kill” his wife. The indictment charges read as follows:

  [Marco Rossi], on the 26th day of November 1946, at the village of [Dillardstown], Indiana County, did feloniously and unlawfully make an assault in and upon the body of one [Greta Rossi] with a stove lifter and did cut, stab and wound the said [Greta Rossi] with the intent to kill and murder her, by pushing the said stove lifter through the side of her face.

  Marco eventually pled guilty to the charges, receiving a fine of $150 and a one-year jail sentence. His sentence gave the Rossi family a short reprieve from his cruelty but also left them without an income. With the help of her mother, Greta managed to care financially for her family during her husband’s incarceration, but she went back to Marco upon his release.

  With violence looming a constant threat in the Rossi house and the traumatic rape of a few years before, it is a wonder my mother ever found the strength to stand up to Marco, but stand up she did. After the incident with the axe, she began to defy him at every opportunity. She would take his beatings and in return taunt him about his lack of manhood and his cruelty. I think this was my mother’s way of keeping him occupied so that her younger siblings could escape their father’s abusive gaze.

  By the time she was fourteen, my mother’s contempt for her stepfather was constantly apparent on her young, freckled face. Marco’s violence still kept the Rossi house in constant fear, but Bonnie found some measure of power from her brave façade. She noticed that her stepfather became unsettled when she defied him. She took full advantage of this new power, keeping him off balance whenever the occasion would arise.

  As my mother’s courage grew, Marco began to see the youngest of his brood as ripe victims. In Bonnie’s fifteenth year, when the twins were two years old, he began making snide comments that left my mother paralyzed with fear for their safety. One warm, sunny Saturday, Marco was deep in a drunken haze. He began to push the twins around, laughing when they fell down and yelling, “Get up, you little bastards. Get up or I will squash you into the mud.”

  Hearing the commotion from inside the cabin, Bonnie flew to their defense with Marco’s old friend, the wood-handled axe. Standing boldly between her stepfather and the twins, Bonnie dared him to follow through on his threats, “I will cut your head off like a chicken if you touch them again. I’m not afraid of you anymore. It is time for you to die.”

  Marco stood for what seemed like an eternity and then began to laugh at my mother’s audacity. He threw his hand up as if dismissing her and staggered over to the neighbors to find more drink. Bonnie picked up the twins and took them back to the cabin to tend to their skinned knees and troubled minds.

  My mother had no one to turn to, no one who would protect her or her siblings from Marco’s tirades. Although she had prayed to God for years, he had not answered her pleas. God, like her earthly father, had abandoned her. She was done waiting for rescue. She decided to take Marco on full force. If necessary, she would chop off his head and end his miserable existence.

  As it turned out, my mother did not have to wait long for Marco’s demise. A few short months after she defied him, axe in hand, Marco lost his life in a coalmine collapse. According to Dillardstown gossip, Marco’s death in the coalmine w
as “arranged” by those belonging to the Black Hand. Other accounts told of an angry Marco attacking another coal miner, accidently knocking down a support brace, and causing the collapse which took his life.

  According to my mother and others who were present at Marco’s funeral, there was little grief for the man who had brought so much pain and suffering to his family and friends. However, Mrs. Nunna, though bravest in confronting Marco, apparently thought it inappropriate for a widow not to cry at her husband’s funeral. She kindly offered to peel an onion under my grandmother’s nose to bring about some visible sign of grief. Her suggestion brought only laughter as the “grieving” widow realized her newfound freedom.

  My mother felt no remorse for desiring the death of her stepfather. If anything, she was glad he was dead and no longer a threat to her family. For Bonnie, Marco’s death was liberating. A few months after his demise, she decided it was time to make a change. Knowing her siblings were no longer in immediate danger, she left her mother’s home. She ran away, settling in Greensburg and began to dream of a new life. Only fifteen at the time but aged beyond her years, she quickly found a position as a server in a restaurant close to the Westmoreland County Courthouse. With the tips she earned, she found lodging in a nearby boarding house owned by a hawkish elderly woman who rented only to single women. Here Bonnie would find a measure of safety as she looked toward a new and hopeful future.