Written by Patrick Carella
The ogre knew nothing about Anna’s passion for reading.
He didn’t need a formal decree—no grand hand gesture like some movie tyrant banning a cardinal sin. His method was simpler: if you were a girl in his house and got caught reading, you got a beating. And once he started swinging, anyone nearby could get it too.
Maybe it was the artillery fragment lodged in his head from the Italian Alps. More likely, it was just dumb fear—fear that one of his girls might be smarter than he was.
We’ll never know. But one thing was certain: the bar was set abysmally low.
Little good that did for the bruised body and psyche of Anna’s mother, who had to feed, humor, and procreate with the ogre. She endured at least nine fertilization attempts with the creature, producing nine children.
Never in her wildest Gravina-girl dreams did she imagine she’d wind up the indentured wrangler of an Arthur Avenue rodeo, with nine sets of little hooves underfoot.
Yet she was never too tired to throw herself between the ogre and any child foolish enough to try catching up on homework. She just took a ticket and waited in line for her botte like the rest. He was an ice man, so he had the stamina.
That was Mama Spadafino’s fate: cooking, cleaning, making little Spadafinos—and shielding the family from flying hams hurled by the pissed-off ice man.
Anna’s older brother, Vito, left in 1942 to fight another tyrant, this one in North Africa. Her older sister, Vicky, got out at sixteen, marrying more for escape than love.
That left Anna in charge of helping her mother run the household, including wrangling the remaining herd of six younger siblings.
Even without the permanent book ban, Anna had no time for reading. But her thirst for knowledge—and knack for survival—made her resourceful.
Somehow, she still found moments. She brushed her teeth with Mark Twain, walked the sidewalks with Little Women, rode the subway with Black Beauty.
But her greatest feat was a system that allowed her to read in her bedroom, even as the ogre prowled the apartment.
It was a reading lamp made of sunlight.
The setup was simple:
Anna shared a double bed with her sister, Lina. Unlike the narrow “tuberculosis window” in the kitchen, their bedroom had a large, wood-framed window that let in real air and afternoon light.
Between the bed and the window was just enough space for a skinny twelve-year-old girl to lie back and look out—a girl forced into a maturity far beyond her years.
After school, after chores, after the younger kids went out to play or down for naps, Anna would wedge herself into that sliver of space, prop her head on a feather-bare pillow, and read.
If the ogre peeked in, all he’d see was an empty bed bathed in light. A big middle finger in the form of a sunlit room.
Summer offered the longest reading hours, but most of her hidden reading happened in fall, with winter and spring close behind.
Autumn was her favorite. The changing leaves, the nip in the air, the scent of Mickies roasting in the curb. Football games she was never allowed to attend. There was something romantic in the season, something that made secret reading feel sacred.
Day by day, in silence and in fear, Anna read. The sun shone down on her books, but it also lit something inside her. It was a quiet coconspirator, casting its warm protection across the pages. In that light, she didn’t cower—she stood tall among her heroes.
She breathed in the smell of parchment and bookshelves, lying in a golden field of ink-heavy words.
Each day she read by the setting colors—her own private sundial shifting from yellow to tangerine, to crimson, to violet, until the words dissolved into twilight.
With a quick peek over the bed, she’d spring up, tuck the book between mattress and bedspring, and leave the darkened room. The coast, for now, was clear.
And that’s how it went.
Even on gray days, the sun found her.
The ogre never suspected a thing.
She and the sun remained unconquerable friends for life.
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Patrick Carella is a New York writer whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared in BULL, Hobart, JMWW, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. Website: https://patcarella.com.