Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero Page B

son’s needs ahead of her own whims. Suspicions became accusations that led to constant fights. Fannie’s attempts to hide her extramarital activities seemed feeble at best, and it seems Al tried to look the other way, at least for a time. But the fighting reached a fever pitch when Al, acting on his suspicions, rushed home on his lunch hour (which happened to be in the middle of the night, as he was working the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shift at the subway token booth) and found young Winston home alone. This happened more than once, continuing even after Al angrily confronted his wife about it. According to Al, it reached the point that Fannie was never there when he’d come to check. Fearing for the boy’s safety, he eventually installed a double lock on the front door, locking Winston inside when he left for work to keep him as safe as possible during the night.
    Fannie meanwhile had grown as irritated with her husband’s attempts to control her as he was with her philandering. She could not seem to understand his point of view, or why he had to be so serious all the time. Life was for more than work or chores. Fannie was a grown woman and she worked too. Wasn’t she entitled to some freedom, a little fun? She always came home to him in the end, so what difference did it make?
    Apparently it made a lot of difference to Al, and so came the fights, the recriminations, he venting his anger and hurt, Fannie reaching her wit’s end as Al nattered on about fidelity and motherly duty. The fights grew increasingly volatile and sometimes physical, though at that time such things were considered strictly family matters rather than situations for police intervention. No one yelled at or physically harmed Winston, but he overheard his parents’ virulent quarrels.
    Alphonso could not reconcile himself to his wife’s behavior, but he would not leave her, nor did he want her to leave him. Both Al andFannie seemed to think they could be happy together. If only Fannie would stop running around with other men. If only Al would quit trying to control her and stop being so erratic, as she called it.
    Very big “if onlys” to be sure, in which there seemed to be little room for compromise on either side.
    Fannie finally left. To make sure her husband would not interfere, she had two police officers accompany her when she moved her belongings out of the apartment on 124th Street. Among the things she left behind was her nine-year-old son. She returned two weeks later, however, after a doctor informed her that she had a stomach tumor and needed an operation. Fannie moved back into the apartment with her husband and son and immediately summoned her mother in Michigan to come stay with them in New York to look after Winston while Fannie underwent surgery.
    Fannie explained to her son that she needed to go to the hospital so the doctors could cut a tumor out of her stomach. How much of this explanation the young boy actually grasped is uncertain, but the memory of his mother leaving home to go have an operation seemed to stay with him as a particularly troubling event, likely because it marked the end of life as he had known it.
    Fannie had the surgery and remained in the hospital for two weeks. Upon her release she returned to the apartment on 124th Street where her husband, mother, and son were waiting for her. Right after his mother came home, Winston was told he was going to Michigan to stay with his grandmother until his mother got better. The boy left with Fannie’s mother shortly after. He would never return to the apartment on 124th Street. Neither would Fannie, who moved out after her son left for Michigan.
    Winston remained at his grandmother’s farm in Holly, Michigan, the rest of the spring and into the summer of 1944. It was a rustic home with no indoor plumbing, situated in a rural community with a one-room schoolhouse, at which he was enrolled. Quite an abrupt change of lifestyle for a boy who had just turned nine and had