Excerpt of Brooklyn Story by Suzanne Corso

Some people lived in the real world and others lived in Brooklyn. My name is Samantha Bonti and of course I was one of the chosen. At age fifteen, I was seduced into a life that shattered my innocence, a life that tore at my convictions and my very soul, a life that brought me four years later to the sunlit steps of the courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. Now, at age twenty-one I stood below the stone facade, watching strangers come and go with purposeful strides; I paused to contemplate how I got there. The dark events of my recent past replayed in my mind in an instant, while thoughts about my disadvantaged beginnings and a lifetime of struggle flooded my consciousness. It had been no small blessing of Providence, I knew, to be born without deformity, to be endowed with a fierce determination to make my own way in the world and to be favored with His hand that worked through others as I matured. My mother Joan tried her best to give me a better life filled with possibility. But she was scarred by her own past, poisoned with cynicism and shackled by addiction and poor health. Mom was a striking woman on the outside and a frail one within. Her beauty was obvious from a distance, but as one got closer one saw that her bottle-dyed, wavy auburn tresses covered deep lines in her face. A witty woman who had had the potential to be brilliant and used to be full of life and spunk, mom had been beaten down by an abusive husband. Vito Bonti was a Catholic immigrant from Italy and as hard- headed a Sicilian as there ever was. A Vietnam vet who owned a pizzeria, he did nothing for mom and blamed her for his bitter disposition. After all, mom was nothing more to him than a poor Jewish girl from Brooklyn and he never failed to remind her of that. Despite her willingness to forgo her own faith and take up his beliefs and his customs, he cheated on her with other women as often as he could steal away. When Joan and Vito were alone in their apartment, they argued long and loud enough for neighbors to hear. In a fit of rage one month before I was born, he threw a car jack at my mother’s pregnant belly. It forced her into premature labor due from the hemorrhaging and she was rushed to the hospital. The doctors said if I were lucky enough to be born; I would most likely have severe brain damage by the impact of the blow, or even worse be a stillborn. Fate achieved, fear stepped aside and I survived. Then Vito abandoned her. He never sent a penny for support, and never came around. I saw him once by chance when I was six years old when mom pointed him out in the neighborhood. He was a nice-looking man with long black hair and a scruffy beard, who wore a brown shirt buttoned to the collar that had pink flowers on it. I ran to my father and hugged his legs tightly. He pulled away, and I never saw him again. Maybe it was better that way, I thought. Mom had it tough enough as it was, living on Social Services and living with disease that visited her weakened body; she didn’t need more of Vito’s physical abuse on top of her hardships. Mom may have felt that having a daughter was one of them, but she never said that to me. And although there were moments when I knew she loved me—when she wouldn’t let me hang out in the streets with neighborhood kids and when she kept me away from boys—I only heard her say those words once. Instead, she criticized me at every turn and picked fights with me without any provocation on my part. Mom’s only comforts were cigarettes and going unconscious with drink, prescription meds and the recreational drugs she used on occasion. Sniffing glue was what she did most because it was cheap—alone, or with seedy friends or even my friends. Over time, illness drained her body and addiction poisoned her spirit. To her credit, mom kept her worst habits and her demons from me as best she could and told me now and then that there was another way to live."