This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti (6 page)

This slow indoctrination, though, eventually led to my father becoming restless. Running numbers and making the same mundane pickups week after week began to bore him. He itched for more action—a way to make more money. At the same time, his home situation had become almost impossible to endure. My grandfather continued to gamble, drink, and frivolously spend whatever little money he’d earn from odd jobs. The standard of living in the Gotti
household continued to decline, just as the frequency and intensity of the beatings absorbed by my father escalated. But there was a subtle change in the family dynamic: now that my father was no longer a skinny little kid, it took much more effort on the part of my grandfather to actually cause him real harm. It became easier, though no less vile, for Grandpa to hurt Dad with words. The sting of my grandfather hurling epithets through a boozy haze and my father stoically absorbing the blows had a lasting impact, leaving invisible bruises that never quite healed.

It became common practice for my grandfather to begin his rant the moment he came home for dinner. On one such occasion, he returned home after an all-night card game and demanded that my grandmother keep the house quiet so he could get some sleep. He let her know he expected a “hot and hearty” dinner when he woke up. Usually, there was never much food in the house, and the kids had been forced to live on rice, vegetable soup, and greens. My grandmother had all but exhausted her line of credit at the local butcher shop, the same shop where she had once been employed. Even though she was a proud woman, she was not above begging her former boss for scraps—some edible cut of meat one of the employees would probably throw out—if it would help feed her family, or, even more important, if it would allow her to throw together some sort of meal that my grandfather wouldn’t reject as inedible.

That night Grandma got lucky. She returned home with a goodsized steak, which should have been enough to satisfy my grandfather and feed some of her hungry brood. But my grandmother was afraid to trim even an ounce off Grandpa’s steak. So, while he dined on the entire juicy cut of meat, the rest of the family divided up a leftover shepherd’s pie and a loaf of stale bread. As my grandfather devoured his succulent steak, his hungry children watched and salivated. This did not sit well with my father.

Dad waited until his younger siblings—Billy, Gene, Marie,
Ritchie, Patricia, and Vincent—finished their meals and left the table. He waited until the last one filtered out of the room and the kitchen door closed behind them. Then he slammed his fist down on the old butcher block table so hard that one of the legs nearly gave way, and my grandfather’s plate fell into his lap. By now my father was on his feet and my grandfather was wiping food off of his pants. Horrified by this sudden development, and the mayhem it was likely to precipitate, my grandmother stood cowering in a corner.

Years of abuse had taken its toll. The anger Dad had swallowed so many times, through so many years, now crept to the surface and fueled a pride and courage he hadn’t known he possessed.

“There was no fear,” he later recalled. “Only pure and raw defiance.”

Words Dad normally uttered only under his breath, in the moments
after
a beating, suddenly poured out of his mouth.

“You’re a selfish prick!” he shouted. “Can’t you see those kids are hungry?” He remembered yelling those words along with many others, and the great relief it brought to finally say the things he had kept inside for so long.

My grandmother stood frozen, beyond shocked. Grandpa dropped the remains of his dinner, sending the chipped plate crashing to the floor and shattering into a million pieces. Father and son squared off.

The initial blow struck my father in the head; it barely caused him to wobble. He was prepared to strike back, ready and able to drive the old man into the ground. And he wanted to. Nothing would have felt better, at least in the short term.

But he didn’t.

For better or worse, my father had been raised to respect his parents, to believe that there was almost no greater sin than to hit one’s father. It was the ultimate form of disrespect, and my father
just couldn’t bring himself to sink to that level. Giving his own father some of the same foul-mouthed lip was one thing; hitting his own father was quite another. Instead, he let Grandpa strike him again—hard—in the face. Once, twice, three times. The last blow nearly caused him to go down. He staggered toward the kitchen door. By now my grandmother was crying, trying hard to hold back her loud sobs. She was moving about the tiny kitchen, jockeying for position in the middle of the room, trying to find some way to get between her husband and her son.

Years later, Dad told me he was so tempted to hit his father that night. At the same time, he knew once he raised his hands up to his father, there was “no turning back.”

The beatings continued with mostly the younger Gotti kids. One night my father came home to the sound of his thirteen-year-old sister, Patricia, screaming in terror. Dad raced inside the house and into the kitchen, where he found his father eating dinner, and Patricia beaten, bruised, and locked in a small kitchen pantry. My grandfather, in a fit of rage, had knocked her around and then imprisoned her for good measure. He’d caught her speaking to a neighborhood boy a few hours earlier and was determined to teach her a lesson.

My father sprang into action, first freeing Patricia from the pantry and making sure she was not in any immediate danger. Then he turned to face his father.

“Why don’t you beat up on someone your own size!” he shouted.

My grandfather didn’t show an ounce of fear or concern, and went on eating his dinner. When he was done, he grabbed a coat and hat from the closet, ready to go out for the evening. Except my father blocked his way. Again, young John told his father that he was a “selfish prick.” My grandfather hit him—causing an impressive gash just over Dad’s left eye. But unlike all the times before, Dad didn’t just stand there and take the beating. Years of constant
rage and humiliation prompted my father to finally swing back, forcefully and purposely. My grandfather was stunned. He wobbled, then fell to the floor. Dad stepped over his father’s limp body on his way out the door. Over his shoulder, he yelled to his mother, “How can you stand there and let him beat your kids?”

T
he withering heat of summer had come early to the city in 1958, with temperatures soaring well into the nineties by mid-June. The asphalt patches used to repair the potholes of winter had already begun to wear, dissolving into a messy goo that stuck to the soles of my mother Victoria’s new spectator pumps. She had bought the expensive shoes as a gift to herself, to celebrate a new job as a telephone operator.

She’d waited three months to get an interview with the utility company, and now, finally, she had a decent job with decent pay. For some time she’d been living hand to mouth; after paying for the room she rented at Aunt Bessie’s boardinghouse in Astoria, Queens, there was barely enough money to put food on the table. The boardinghouse wasn’t exactly the Ritz, but it was the best she
could do at the time. Her circumstances, however, were about to change. The new job would allow my mother to move out of the boardinghouse and get her own apartment.

What an improvement it would be. No more nights trapped in a tiny bedroom on Euclid Avenue, and Aunt Bessie always breathing down her neck and sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Mom wanted nothing more than to get out of the boardinghouse, to put some distance between herself and the old bitch.

The ill-tempered old woman wasn’t her real aunt; that was a moniker she favored, as if it would somehow make her a more appealing and thoughtful person. My mother dutifully complied. Victoria Lorraine DiGiorgio was not yet seventeen years old, and was generally content to take the path of least resistance, whatever was necessary to find peace in her life. This was her second stay at the boardinghouse; the first was several months earlier, shortly after she had dropped out of school. After several weeks of bouncing between her friends’ apartments, Mom searched the classifieds but came up empty. On the advice of a girlfriend, a boardinghouse alumnas, and with nowhere else to turn, Mom turned up on the doorstep of Aunt Bessie’s dilapidated, two-family Brooklyn home.

“It was one of the worst places I ever lived,” she would later say.

The old woman made it clear from day one that room and board came with a price. In addition to monthly rent, Victoria was required to perform chores around the building. She didn’t really mind; it helped the hours pass and provided some structure to the day. Not too long after my mother first moved in, she met a personable young man named Willy, an ambitious Irish immigrant, with “black Irish looks and a bright, perfectly white smile.” Willy worked with his father in a steel factory not far from Aunt Bessie’s place. To Victoria’s eyes, he seemed like a man with potential. After only a few months of dating, he proposed, promising my mother “an easier, less complicated life, one where you’ll never have to worry
about paying the bills.” This was not a small carrot to be dangled in front of my mother; it was precisely what she wanted to hear. My mother was young and searching for someone—anyone—with the capacity for love and the ability to protect her.

My mother has always had mixed feelings about her early childhood. It is difficult for her to talk to me about those early years, and the odd and volatile nature of my grandparents’ relationship. Being raised in a home. Being called a “bastard” and finding out she almost had a brother seems to have taken quite a toll on her. My mother still cries when discussing this part of her family’s history.

In those days, it was scandalous to have a child out of wedlock and keep it—scandalous behavior that was barely a notch above running whiskey. Regardless, my grandmother was a woman who had neither the desire nor the inclination to raise a child alone, so she enrolled my mother in Sacred Heart Academy shortly before her fourth birthday. From that day on, my mother was a child on her own, a little girl without a home, without parents—without family. She was rootless, an inescapable fact that both saddened and defined her for many years to come. But the loneliness is what bothered my mother the most. At Sacred Heart Academy, the nuns were cold and distant. They served as strict disciplinarians rather than warm chaperones or compassionate protectors. Mom never knew how it felt to be loved and wanted by anyone—except Uncle Tony and Aunt Dolly. Uncle Tony was Grandpa’s younger brother. Younger, but certainly more mature and responsible. When Grandpa abandoned my mother, Uncle Tony stepped in for a while and tried hard to play father. He was only eighteen years old. But he was engaged to be married. His fiancée, Dolly, also adored Mom. The couple often visited on the weekends and treated Mom like their own daughter. Sadly, when Aunt Dolly and Uncle Tony announced they wanted to adopt Mom, all hell broke loose! Out of jealousy, spite, or his own guilt, my grandfather absolutely forbid
it. He didn’t have the guts to take responsibility and raise Mom on his own. But he refused to allow another man to do so, either—especially his own brother. Perhaps it was the fact that my mother would serve as a constant reminder of his earlier fuck-up. I call it plain selfishness.

When Mom met Willy as a teenager, he seemed to be everything she was looking for in a man. He promised stability, a family, and a home. She fell hard for his charm, and it wasn’t long before the two young lovers eloped to City Hall. But after they were married, Mom realized she had made a big mistake.

Willy and his father both lost their jobs in the following weeks when the factory hit on hard times and shut down; soon bills were going unpaid and creditors were knocking at the door. More important, Victoria came to the sad realization that she wasn’t in love with Willy; maybe she’d never been in love with him to begin with.

“There’s nothing worse,” she would tell me years later, “than waking up beside someone and realizing you don’t love them.”

Mom left Willy and moved back into the boardinghouse just a few months after getting married. Aunt Bessie wasn’t thrilled to see her, despite the fact that Mom’s old room was still vacant and Bessie really needed the money. So the old woman taunted my mother and rubbed her nose in her mistake at every opportunity. Bessie also let Victoria know that she was on house probation, and the next time she left, she wouldn’t be allowed back.

Eager to become self-reliant, Mom took on as much work as she could possibly handle. In addition to her job at the utility company, she found an ad for a waitress at a local bar. Soon, she figured, she’d have enough money socked away, and then she could say good-bye to Aunt Bessie forever.

T
HE COCKTAIL WAITRESS
job wasn’t anything impressive, but it was enough to bring in some extra needed cash. Victoria held the ad in her hand and double-checked the address. It was just across the street from Aunt Bessie’s and thankfully the appointment wasn’t until a half hour later, just enough time to stop at home and freshen up.