BELLA MAFIA (17 page)

Teresa looked down into the New York street and watched Father Amberto hail a cab. He was carrying two heavy suitcases filled with her husband's clothes. She remained standing at the window until the cab merged into the stream of continuous traffic on Thirty-fifth Street, then turned back into the small room she and Filippo had used as a study. She went to the desk where she had stacked all Filippo's unpaid bills and company papers in preparation for work that evening, but now nothing could be further from her mind. She was so angry she was still shaking. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, flushing at the thought of what her daughter had said to the priest. Suddenly she yanked open the study door and walked into the narrow corridor.

"Rosa,
Rosa!'

Her daughter's bedroom door remained firmly closed. Her radio blared, the volume turned up to earsplitting level.

"Rosa,
Rosa, come out of there!”
Teresa hit the door with the flat of her hand, kept on hitting it until the music was turned off. Then she stepped back, hands on her hips, as Rosa opened the door.

"How could you do that? How could you say that to Father Amberto?"

"What?"

"You know perfectly well what. How dare you! I have never been so humiliated in my life."

"Didn't faze him, he was too busy stuffing the suitcases with all the clothes."

"I want you to apologize to me, you hear me?"

"Sure I hear. So can half the block. There's no need to act so hysterical. You think he's never heard the word before? All I said was—"

"I know what you said: 'Check the pockets for rubbers!' For
rubbers
! What in God's name possessed you to say such a thing? Search your papa's suit pockets!" Teresa put her hands over her face. "What will he think of us?"

"I don't think he'll be saying Hail Marys over it, Mama. It was nothing, forget it."

"Forget it!
Why did you say it, Rosa, why?"

Rosa shrugged her shoulders and turned to go back to her room. "Maybe because I can't stand the way you're acting, creeping around the place. It's been two months, Mama, and every time I look at you, you start blubbering, or you're going to every mass. It's a wonder your knees aren't calloused."

Teresa pulled her daughter by the shoulders, her face red with rage. "How do you expect me to behave? You want me to play music so loud I deafen everyone? You want me to throw open the blinds and have a party? My husband, your father is dead! So help me God, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know. I just don't want anyone else coming here with their prayer books and clasping me by the hand, people I don't know pinching my cheeks as if I were a kid."

"They're being kind, Rosa. They're trying to help us."

"No, they're not. They're just prying. We don't even know them."

"They're from the church."

"But they don't know me; they never knew Papa. He never set foot in church unless you dragged him there. They're just nosy, and you are loving every minute of being the center of attention."

Teresa slapped Rosa so hard she crashed into the wall. She staggered for a moment, then hurled herself at her mother, fists flying, screaming, "
Leave me alone!"

"Fine, I'll leave you alone. I won't cook for you, clean for you, wash for you—"

"You don't have to anyway—"

"Sure I don't have to, and I don't have to give you money every day to go to college. Sure I'll leave you alone. I won't speak to you until you apologize. May God forgive you, and you'll need his forgiveness for what you said to Father Amberto."

"Why? It was the truth, wasn't it? You think I'm deaf? I heard you two fighting and arguing. I could hear you screaming at each other. He never loved you. He had other women. I know it, everyone knew it. ..."

Teresa couldn't stop the tears. "Why, Rosa? Why are you saying these things? Since we got home, you've been behaving crazy, I don't know you." Teresa searched for a tissue and blew her nose.

"Oh, don't cry, Mama. Please, I'm sick of the sight of you crying."

"Because you
don't—"

"Why should I cry? Tell me why? Cry for Emilio? He never loved me; it was all arranged. I'm glad he's dead because I feel used. I was handed over like a piece of meat."

"May God forgive you, you know that's not true, Rosa."

"Yes, it is, and Papa never loved you; they handed you over just like me."

Teresa couldn't listen anymore. She walked into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. How little her daughter knew, how little she understood. She took out a photograph of herself on her graduation, wearing her cap and gown, younger than Rosa.

Rosa was sitting in front of her dressing table, trimming her bangs with a pair of nail scissors. Small snippets of hair covered the glass top, fell onto her cosmetics, but she snipped and snipped, anything to stop herself thinking, remembering.

"Rosa, can I come in?"

"No."

Teresa hovered in the door. "I want to show you something. It's a photograph of me when I was your age, in my cap and gown."

"I've seen it, Mama. Grandma used to have it on the mantelpiece."

"Look at me, such a stern little face, with such thick glasses."

Rosa gave only a fleeting glance at the photograph, and Teresa continued. "You remember Grandma and Grandpa? I was brought up in that bakery. Papa was always dreaming of going home someday, but Mama never wanted to; she felt that they had done so well here in America. Papa was so proud the day I was accepted in college; he thought by just getting accepted, I was already a qualified lawyer. He told everyone, and they streamed into the bakery with gifts and congratulations. ..."

Rosa blew at the hair on the dressing table, only half listening. She had few memories of her maternal grandparents, though she never passed a bakery without the smell somehow reminding her of the times she had seen them.

"My father worked in the bakery, Rosa, he didn't own it, and he rented the apartment in the basement. It was dark, airless, and we ran a constant battle against cockroaches. They came in the hundreds as soon as the ovens went off—"

"Why are you telling me this? I've heard it so many times, about how you used to chase them with a broom. ..."

"Because the man who bought my father the bakery, and bought him the little apartment on the top floor where there weren't any cockroaches, was Don Roberto."

"So what was Don Roberto going to give Papa for marrying me off? Move us out of this dump? Was that the deal? What was I worth, Mama? A new apartment or a bigger slice of the family business? You complained enough that they never treated you like family, like Aunt Sophia! Well, you got even more than you bargained for, didn't you? Now you'll be rich. ..."

Teresa was too late to stop Rosa from ripping her graduation photograph in two, tossing the scraps aside. She bent down to retrieve them. Then she sprang forward, grabbed her daughter's shoulders, shook her. She shrieked, "You don't know anything, you don't know—"

Rosa dragged herself free and picked up her scissors, jabbing at her mother. The small, sharp blades cut into the back of Teresa's hand. "Why don't you leave me alone?"

Teresa went into the bathroom and ran cold water on her hand, watching the trickle of blood from the deep cut spread down her fingers.

Rosa appeared, shamefaced, at the door. "Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"You need a Band-Aid?"

"Yes."

Rosa opened the cabinet. Her father's shaving brush, razor, and cologne were where he had left them. She took out the box of adhesive bandages and opened it.

"This size?" She held one up and watched as her mother dried the cut on a towel, then held her hand out. Rosa gently placed the Band-Aid over the cut. "You forgot to take Papa's things out of the cabinet. I'm sorry, Mama, and I'll apologize to Father Amberto next Sunday."

Teresa sat on the edge of the bath. Rosa hesitated before she bent to kiss her mother's head. Teresa slipped her arms around her daughter, resting her face against her. She felt Rosa's body tense, but she tightened her arms around her. "Listen to me, please . . . just listen."

Rosa eased herself away but remained close. Teresa, without looking up, continued. "I never had a boyfriend, you know. All through college. It wasn't for want of trying. I made the excuse that I had to study so hard that I never had the time. My mother was always asking questions, prying, wanting to know if I had 'a young man,' as she called them. She was so scared I'd be left unmarried. Mama was frantic, like there was something wrong with me. Some days when I got home, she would have old women there, ready to introduce me to their sons, grandsons, uncles. . . . The whole neighborhood was intent on finding me a husband, but none of the introductions ever came to anything. My father was still proud, informing every customer that his daughter was a lawyer, though I wasn't. In fact, I never did finish."

Rosa interrupted. "You never finished?"

"No, I always promised myself I would go back and get my law degree, but ... I had you to think of, and Filippo. He needed me; some of the licenses were so complicated, the export and import paper work was spaghetti to him."

"I thought you were a lawyer."

"You thought wrong. You think you know everything, but you don't."

Teresa took off her glasses and began to clean them on a towel. Rosa noticed the red mark on her mother's nose, the slight rings beneath her eyes—small eyes, watery with tears. The thin, sharp nose and small mouth were so different from her own. She felt moved by her mother's plainness and continued to stare, blushing as Teresa suddenly looked up and gave a weak smile. The smile accentuated the sharp features, stretching the skin over her high cheekbones.

"You look so like him. I see his face every time I look at you. You were conceived on our honeymoon. Did you know that?"

Rosa nodded. She eased the lid of the toilet seat down and sat, elbows on knees, chin cupped in her hands. There was no escape; she had to listen. Teresa continued. "I came home one afternoon, I used to walk in through the bakery and down the back stairs . . . this day Mama was waiting, wearing her best dress. I thought,
Oh, God no, not another suitor ... not someone else's reject.
'Quick, quick,' Mama said. 'Go and change, put something pretty on; we have company.' Of course, I refused— in some ways you are very like me—but then Papa rushed up to me, his face bright red. He whispered to me that I had to do my hair, wash my face, he spoke to me as if I were a child, and he repeated, 'We have company, we have company, hurry.' "

"Did you change?" Rosa asked, genuinely interested; this was a part of her mother's life she had not heard about before.

Teresa gave a small laugh. "No, I walked into the best room, the room that was polished and cleaned but rarely used. That was the first time I saw Don Roberto Luciano. Until that moment I wasn't even aware he existed. He was so tall his head seemed to touch the ceiling. He had gray hair, and he wore a dark pin-striped suit with a carnation in his buttonhole. . . . And you know, if I concentrate, I can smell it now—limes; he wore some kind of cologne that smelled of fresh limes. You could smell it in the room hours after he had left. But he stayed only a short while. He was very charming, so elegant, so . . . kind . . . yes, that is the word to describe him. Kind, more attentive to my mother than to me. As he left, he kissed my hand. I knew something was happening, but I hadn't the slightest idea what on earth it could be . . . Papa would not say a word until he was sure Don Roberto was halfway down the street. I don't think my parents ever knew why, but Don Roberto

Luciano had come to meet me, wanting me to marry his son Filippo."

Rosa leaned forward, fascinated. "Go on."

Teresa smiled, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I was furious, I was so humiliated. My father seemed furtive, even apologetic, but Mama was beside herself. They had had to go without so much for me to be able to continue my studies, not that I gave that too much thought, I guess I was pretty selfish. I didn't even want to meet Filippo, and we argued and shouted, and Mama cried. My father said he could not insult Don Roberto, but still, I refused. I said I didn't care who he was; I accused them of living in the Dark Ages. My father shouted at me, said I was his daughter, his only daughter, he had not been blessed with a son to provide for him in his old age, he had only a daughter, a selfish daughter who drained him of every cent he earned. . . . He acted in a way I had never seen before, threatening to disown me."

"So what made you change your mind?" asked Rosa.

"Fear. You could feel it, my father was terrified. He was a simple man; he couldn't understand why Don Roberto had come to him in the first place, asking for me, for the daughter they had already begun to think they would never find a husband for. So I agreed to meet him.

"The following day Filippo came around, by himself. He was already waiting in the best room when I arrived home from college. Mama sat with him, and Papa made the introductions. Rosa, it was just so awful, the way he gestured frantically for Mama to leave us alone. I don't know what I had expected, maybe some retard. It was all kind of crazy. . . ."