All Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

“stand their ground,” as my mother said. Like us, most of those white teens eventually moved to the all-white housing projects of South Boston. Many are now the parents of today’s teens “standing their ground” in the Southie projects, now undergoing integration through what locals are calling “forced housing,” after “forced busing.”
    My older brothers and sisters looked forward to the weekends, when there were free buses out of Columbia Point, to Broadway, the main shopping street in white South Boston. The white families of Columbia Point would all go on excursions to the toy stores and supermarkets there. Many recall seeing my mother getting on the bus, with her long, red country-western hair, leopard coat, fishnet stockings, and eight kids wrapped around her. Everyone talked about her ability to look so good after having all those kids, and even though she had to be both mother and father. Ma wouldn’t be seen in public except in spike heels. To keep her figure, she went jogging around Columbus Park, down the road in Southie. She’d walk over to the park in her jeans and spike heels, carrying flat sneakers in a brown paper bag. It was only when she got to the park, where no one could see her, that she changed into the sneakers, putting the spike heels into a bag and throwing them behind some bushes. She might have had to be the man of the house but, as she always said, she wasn’t about to start looking like one. Ma liked the praise she got for her looks, and she would remind people, “Imagine, after having nine kids!”
    After a day of shopping on Broadway, Ma would sit for a cup of coffee at the Donut Chef and talk to everyone in the room. She was a great talker, and whether you were on a stool right next to her or on the far end of the room, you were part of her audience. While Ma did her storytelling, the kids stood lined up against the wall in descending order, each one hugging a bundle of groceries, watching for the free bus to take them back to Columbia Point. On one snowy day, as my brothers and sisters waited and watched for the free bus, the jukebox began to play the country-western hit that Dave MacDonald had written, sung by Doug LaVelle. Ma jumped up and told everyone in the Donut Chef that that very song playing had been written by the kids’ father, a no-good bastard if there ever was one. The song was titled “Two Years for Non-Support.”
    Ma loved the chorus because she could knock twice on the coffee counter, like a judge banging her gavel. “And I gotta go-oh-oh / Because I owe. / Order in the court ( knock knock ) / Two years for nonsupport.” She told everyone in the shop how the song was about her getting her husband locked up. That years ago the kids’ father had been sentenced to two years for nonsupport after being brought to court by her, pregnant with their fifth child. She pointed to Frankie in the lineup. He was four now, and was watching Kathy and Kevin, the three-year-old and two-year-old, to keep them in the line. Ma told how Dave MacDonald ended up getting out after two months, broke down the door at Monticello Ave., and tried to strangle her. That’s when she kicked him in the mouth and knocked out a couple of his teeth. The next day she had him right back before the judge. Ma says he looked worse from the fight than she did. And when he was allowed to speak before the court he said, “Your honor, she may be a little woman, but she’s as strong as any man.”
    My mother cherished those words and got everyone at the Donut Chef laughing while she made a few of them feel her biceps and showed her leg muscles. My brothers and sisters laughed too. We were on Ma’s side when it came to stories about the no-good bastard. We always felt a rush of pride with Ma’s favorite line, “I was always a fighter.” Grandpa had told her that when she was born she’d had to be brought into