Tuscan Rose (18 page)

‘I heard that you are doing well, Signorina Bellocchi,’ she said. ‘And that you have been able to assist with other babies.’

Signora Cherubini smiled but there was an undertone in her voice that put Rosa on edge. She had eyes like a falcon.

‘Yes, signora. I feel well and, as the other babies I was feeding no longer need me, I would like to leave as soon as possible.’

‘I see,’ said Signora Cherubini, looking at the registration form. ‘It says here that the father is unknown?’

Rosa hesitated. The father was known but she would not acknowledge him. It might make her sound like a loose woman, but she resented the way the women in the ward were treated as though they should be ashamed of themselves. After all, she had been wrongly put in prison and raped, although she would never mention such things. She did not want Sibilla to be stigmatised or to be seen as of less worth than a child who had been conceived in love.

‘That’s right,’ she replied.

The smile dissolved from Signora Cherubini’s face. ‘Extraordinary!’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘And the nurse tells me you want to keep the child?’

Rosa felt a pinch in her belly. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘Well, I’m afraid that is impossible,’ said Signora Cherubini, shaking her head. ‘The child must go to the hospital’s foundling home. That is the condition of your coming here.’

Rosa gasped. ‘I was told no such thing!’

Of all the nightmares she had suffered in the past years, this was by far the worst. She instinctively put her hand on Sibilla’s blanket and felt the warm body of her baby wriggle under her palm.

Signora Cherubini’s eyes hardened. ‘Signorina Bellocchi,’ she said, ‘it seems to me you have spent the majority of your life so far in a convent and the rest of it in prison. I don’t think you understand what the outside world is like. Do you realise how hard it will be for you to raise a daughter? Where are you going to live? How are you going to support yourself? Who will employ an unwed mother and, if you do find work, who will take care of your baby while you do it?
Signorina
Bellocchi, have you thought seriously about these things?’

Rosa shrank under Signora Cherubini’s barrage. So far she had been able to hide from the other women in the ward that she had been in prison. She was humiliated.

‘I have the money I saved from sewing,’ Rosa stammered. ‘I will find somewhere to work where I can take Sibilla with me.’

Signora Cherubini looked at her impatiently. ‘For whom? What business of any repute is going to employ a criminal?’

She paused to check if she was hitting the mark and smiled when tears pricked Rosa’s eyes. ‘I’m not a criminal,’ Rosa said quietly.

‘You are an ignorant girl indeed,’ Signora Cherubini said. ‘Do you know where you will end up if you persist with such foolishness? Let me not mince words, Signorina Bellocchi: you will end up selling yourself on the street!’

Rosa looked at Sibilla sleeping peacefully beside her. ‘I only want what’s best for her,’ she said. Despite herself, she started to cry.

Signora Cherubini’s expression softened. ‘Look,’ she said, patting Rosa’s hand, ‘you have a chance to put this behind you. You can begin again. And your daughter will be properly brought up. If you stay together, you will be a weight around her neck. You will sink together. Do you want that, Signorina Bellocchi? Now try to think clearly. Your daughter is not a doll to be played with. Do you want to be responsible for her downfall?’

Rosa’s chest heaved with her crying. Her whole body was racked with grief. Signora Cherubini was right. It was selfish of her to want to keep Sibilla when the baby would be better off with someone who could give her a steady life and education. She thought of Suor Maddalena. Rosa had been lovingly raised by the sisters of Santo Spirito. Wouldn’t that be better for Sibilla than being raised by a ‘fallen woman’?

Signora Cherubini put a form on Rosa’s lap. ‘Sign this,’ she said. ‘And all will be well.
For the both of you.
You can have a fresh start. Maybe even get married some day and start a legitimate family of your own.’

Rosa took the form and pen but hesitated.

‘Sign it,’ said Signora Cherubini. ‘Don’t drag this out for yourself…and her.’

Rosa felt herself staring down a dark hole. ‘I’ll never forget her,’ she wept.

Signora Cherubini smiled condescendingly. ‘Yes, you will. You’re still young with so much ahead of you.’

Through her blurry vision Rosa saw the title of the form:
Document of Relinquishment.
She was to surrender all claims on the child she had brought into the world.

‘I love you,’ she said to Sibilla through her tears. ‘I love you.’

Rosa tried to steady her hand to sign the form. Before she did, she gazed once more at the angelic face of her daughter. Sibilla’s eyes flickered open and she began to cry. A strange sensation stirred in Rosa’s bosom. Milk welled up in her breasts. Sibilla cried more and the milk began to overflow and leak through Rosa’s nightshift. ‘Oh,’ she said, grabbing a wad of muslin and holding it to her breasts. But she couldn’t stem the flow. It rushed in streams down her nightshift and onto the form. Signora Cherubini quickly retrieved the paper before it was soaked.

‘You had better feed her,’ she said to Rosa. ‘I’ll come back with the form in an hour.’

Rosa picked up Sibilla and held her to her breast. How could she give her up any more than she could give up any other part of her body? Could she surrender her heart or her kidneys and go on living? She had been lovingly brought up by Suor Maddalena, but she was out of the convent now and on her own; rootless, without a family. At least Sibilla could know, whatever they faced, that she had a mother who loved her. Maybe it wasn’t much, but maybe it was everything.

Rosa closed her eyes and prayed to San Giuseppe. He was the saint who watched over orphans and unwed mothers. ‘Please help me,’ she wept. ‘Please.’ She opened her eyes and was jolted by a bright light sweeping across her bed. A sense of peace washed over her. She was sure it was an angel.

‘Speak to me,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me what I must do.’

‘What that woman is telling you is illegal.’

Rosa started. She turned to see Suor Gabriella slipping through the curtains. She clutched a folder under her arm and carried a package wrapped in brown paper. She sat on the end of Rosa’s bed.

‘This hospital is supposed to be encouraging you to keep your child. That is the law,’ Suor Gabriella said. ‘There is no foundling
home. That woman sells babies to rich women who can’t have their own. The women want to pass themselves off as the birth mother, so there is never any adoption record kept. The natural mother has no hope of seeing the child again. The form she is trying to get you to sign is a bluff. She will destroy it the minute you leave here.’

Rosa stared at Suor Gabriella in horror. Adopted children had even less status than illegitimate ones, so it made sense that the adoptive parents would try to make the babies appear as their own. Still, such corruption was difficult to believe.

‘But…but this is a charity hospital,’ Rosa stammered. ‘They do good works.’

‘Do you see any nuns here?’ Suor Gabriella waved her hand at Rosa. ‘This place is about profit not charity. I was shocked when I heard the nurse was sending you here. I couldn’t obtain leave earlier to come and see you, and it looks like I came just in time.’

‘But how will I support my baby?’ asked Rosa, remembering the harsh picture Signora Cherubini had painted for her future.

‘You are entitled to OMNI payments,’ explained Suor Gabriella. ‘You must go to the
comune
to make a claim.’

‘OMNI?’

‘The National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy,’ said Suor Gabriella. ‘They have a special allowance for unwed mothers.’

‘I’m entitled to payments. Why?’

Suor Gabriella smiled. ‘Because you gave birth to an Italian baby and you
didn’t
leave it at a foundling home where mortality rates are high. Mussolini wants more healthy children. He wants a bigger army.’

Rosa cringed at the mention of Mussolini. He was the reason she had been put in prison. It wasn’t her intention to be of assistance to him, especially not in producing a fascist army. ‘But my child is a girl,’ she said.

‘Girls produce more babies, don’t they?’

Suor Gabriella was most certainly the kindest of the nuns
working at the prison, but now Rosa saw that the woman’s diminutive stature belied a subversive nature.

Suor Gabriella opened the file she was holding and handed Rosa her release documents. ‘You’ll have to see Signor Direttore about collecting your work payment.’ She passed Rosa the package she was holding. ‘Sorry, it was the only one I could find,’ she said.

Rosa opened the package and found a blue dress. It was frayed around the collar and three sizes too big for her. She wondered if it had belonged to a prisoner who had been executed and therefore didn’t need it for her release. She thought of Sibilla and shivered.

Suor Gabriella stood up to leave. ‘Remember, this place is run by crooks,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard of them drugging mothers to take their babies away from them. I suggest you get out of here today. Now you have the release form, discharge yourself and go.’

‘Can I do that?’

‘Of course you can. You are a free woman now.’

Rosa thanked Suor Gabriella for her advice and watched her leave. She remembered Signora Cherubini had said that she would be back in an hour. She was worried the woman might forcibly take her baby from her. Sibilla had finished feeding and had fallen back to sleep. Rosa changed into the dress Suor Gabriella had brought and swaddled Sibilla in her blanket. Before anyone noticed, she walked out into the hall.

She approached the nurse at the reception desk in the admissions area to discharge herself. The woman was speaking with someone on the telephone. Rosa glanced at the clock on the wall behind the desk. It was nearly the time Signora Cherubini had said she would return and she would pass by the admissions area on her way to the ward. The admissions nurse looked up at Rosa and pointed to the telephone with an apologetic expression on her face. Rosa could hear the muffled voice of the caller. Whatever they were saying it was taking too long to express it. Her heart pounded and her courage started to fail. She glanced towards the entrance doors. It occurred to her that she was no longer a
prisoner and the swing doors were not locked. There was no guard to stop her. She could simply walk through them. The discharge procedure was of no consequence to her as she did not intend to return to the Santa Caterina. All she was missing was Sibilla’s registration of birth and surely she could find another way to obtain a copy. Still Rosa could not move. She had been institutionalised for so long it was difficult to believe that she could walk through a door herself without someone else’s permission.

The sound of high heels approaching startled her into action. She ran towards the doors and, without looking back, pushed her way through them. The afternoon sunlight hit her face.

‘We are free,’ she said, kissing Sibilla. She hurried down the steps and mingled with the other people on the street.

The prison director was surprised to see Rosa waiting for him in the interview room. He glanced at her shabby dress.

‘They discharged you from the hospital so soon?’ he asked. ‘How long has it been? A week?’

‘I’m well enough,’ Rosa lied. ‘They need the bed for other patients.’

He checked Rosa’s release papers. She glanced over her shoulder towards the window, half-expecting to see a hysterical Signora Cherubini in pursuit of her. But there was no-one on the street outside the prison.

It had been unnerving for Rosa to re-enter the prison. She was afraid that the guards may not open the gates for her again to leave and she would be trapped there forever and Sibilla would be taken away from her. All she wanted to do was collect her money and get out.

The director seemed to take forever to calculate the figure owed for Rosa’s sewing work. The procedure was further delayed because Rosa had no fixed address yet. It took over an hour before the process was completed, and by the time Rosa was allowed out through the gates with Sibilla, it was too late for her to go to the
comune.
The truth was that Rosa wasn’t keen to
register with OMNI. They were a government organisation, but Italy’s government was fascist and its head was Mussolini. After what had happened to her friend Sibilla, Rosa felt it would somehow be disloyal. At the same time, she knew she had to put her daughter’s welfare above her scruples. The best that she could do for now was to find a room for them both and something to eat.

Rosa headed in the direction of Via Giuseppe Verdi. People stared at her and she knew she was a sorry sight. The director had returned her shoes but her feet were swollen and the shoes pinched her heels and toes. She could feel blisters forming. She turned down a laneway and saw a dingy-looking hotel. It had water stains down the walls and the shutters were in need of painting, but at two lire a night, it would have to do until she found work.

The reception area was tiled with a strip of red carpet. A limp parlour palm sat in the corner. The stink of stale tobacco permeated the air and dust motes floated in the light from a frosted glass window. The desk was behind bars, with a board for keys above it. Most of the keys were on their hooks and Rosa assumed that meant there were rooms available. She rang the bell on the counter. A woman with untidily pinned hair and sullen eyes appeared from behind a door. She settled her gaze on Rosa.

‘There are no rooms,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Rosa, taken aback. She glanced to the board.

‘The guests are out and will be returning soon. They must all leave their keys at reception.’

‘Excuse me then, signora,’ she said, turning to go.

Rosa continued her search for a room along Via Ghibellina. She almost wished she had her prison-issue clogs back for her feet were bleeding. Every hotel she tried told her the same thing: that there were no rooms available. Finally she asked the proprietress of one of the hotels why the sign in her window said they had rooms free if there were no vacancies.