When We Were Strangers (3 page)

Stay with my father?
And if he came after me again, if Zia wasn’t there?

Live in Opi alone
,
unwed?
How could I earn my bread? Who would help me in a hunger year?

Call down death like the woodcutter’s daughter?
I stared at the cross on our wall. Father Anselmo would not bury the girl in the churchyard, for by taking her own life she had damned her soul. The folds of the altar cloth ran over my legs like the hills around Opi. How could I live in these hills?

Leave Opi?
To die with strangers? The needle grooved a line in my thumb. “It is better to die alone than to live here like a beast,” Carlo once said. What of the two sisters from Calabria in Alfredo’s letter with the dry goods store and rooms to rent? But they had each other, they were not from Opi and did not bear the Vitale curse on those who leave our mountain.

On the eighth night my father stood over me as I sewed, blocking my light. I worked in darkness until he left for the tavern. Then I pulled out my last stitches, for they were all ragged and wild. On the ninth morning Zia made me stay in bed. “What’s wrong with her?” my father demanded. “Why isn’t she up?”

“Women’s sickness,” my Zia announced briskly. “You go buy the bread today.” He looked at us sharply. Only women bought the bread in our village. Besides, I was never sick. “It’s early, there’s nobody there yet,” Zia said quickly, handing my father his cloak.

His eyes grazed the mirror as he ran a rough hand through his hair. “I’ll do it,” he said gruffly, “this once.”

When my father came back with our loaf, larger than usual and very light, he and Zia ate in silence as I lay turned away to the wall. When he left for the fields I got up and set my chair in the doorway to finish the last bit of fringe. Zia’s knitting needles sat idle in her lap. “Are
you
sick, Zia?” I asked finally. “Do your eyes hurt?”

“No, they’re just tired. Go on. You could finish today.” Early that afternoon I did finish. Together we cleaned our table carefully and laid the altar cloth across it. Father Anselmo would be pleased, but it seemed that I had made my own shroud. Zia Carmela stroked the cloth, grazing the medallion, the border and silky fringe. “Irma,” she said quietly, “light a candle, close the door and get me the iron box from under our bed.”

“Why?”

“Just get it.” She had never undressed in front of me, so I didn’t know that a tiny brass key hung inside her skirts. She had me open the box. “Look inside. What do you see?”

“Nothing but old boots.” They were frothed with mildew and nibbled by mice, stiff as wood. Not even a goatherd would wear such boots. Then I saw the holes, close together and piercing the soles.

“Is that—?”

“Yes. Your great-grandfather, remember, was stabbed to death in Russia. He must have fought bravely, for the captain honored his dying wish and sent the boots home to his widow. She cleaned them and bought this box to keep them. Give me the boots, Irma, and watch.” I set them in her lap and pulled my stool beside her.

She felt both heels, then cradled one boot and gently twisted the sole from the heel. A small chamois bag fell out. Bent fingers teased it open and I gasped at the glint of gold coins. “This was Luigi’s pay from Russia. It has been kept by the women in our family for the one who would truly need it.”

“All this time? My mother said they sold their beds once in a hunger year. They ate boiled straw.”

Zia Carmela closed the gold in my hand. “We knew those times would pass, but you must go to America, Irma. There’s no life for you here. Father Anselmo says that in America even decent girls can earn their own bread. Perhaps you’ll find Carlo in that place called Cleveland. If not, at least you can work. You can make beautiful things with your needle.” Her hands trembled.

“But Zia, I can’t leave you.”

“You know that I love you like my own soul, Irma. But you must go. You know your father. What will happen if he drinks again and comes after you?”

“But to go so far. Why not an Italian city: Milan, Rome or Naples?” I suggested wildly.

“We have no family there. People would think—Irma, you know what they would think."

That I was a mountain slut. “We don’t know that Carlo reached America. He never wrote,” I reminded her.

“No, he didn’t, but Alfredo did. He’s content. You’re clever and work hard. You’ll go to Naples, find a good ship and cross the ocean. You’ll find rich women in Cleveland and sew for them.”

“Come with me, Zia.”

“How? I can’t even walk down the mountain.” Her bent fingers stroked mine. “You go, make money, and come back like Giovanni the shoemaker’s son.”

“And buy us a house?” I said slowly.

She gripped my hand. “Perhaps. But first you must leave Opi. Father Anselmo has some papers for you. There’s a cold wind today. Take Carlo’s cloak.” She felt for it on the nail by our door and wrapped it around my shoulders. I put on my wooden shoes and hurried to the church.

Father Anselmo was cleaning the communion chalice. He sat me near him as he worked. “Irma, you know I came to Opi from Milan,” he said quietly. “Your own people came from Greece, Carmela says. The world is full of adventurers, more than you think.”

“But that was long ago. My mother said—”

“Carmela told me what she said, that all who leave will die. But Irma, your mother died in her own bed and the baker died in his shop, kneading bread. Death finds us where it will, and every soul leaves this world alone. Is it the ship that frightens you?”

Yes, that too. I had never seen a ship, an ocean or even a great lake. My heart rocked inside my chest. Cold seeped through my wooden shoes. “I don’t know anyone in America. And Carlo never wrote to us,” I added, my voice cracking.

“Letters take a long time. Carmela told me what happened that night, what your father tried to do. If he marries Assunta, can you stay here even then, you
and
Carmela?” I said nothing. Assunta was kind, but perhaps not kind enough to keep two women in her small house. A mouse skimmed over the paving stones and disappeared beneath the baptismal font. “Irma,
can
you stay?” he repeated.

I stared at my hands laid open on my lap. “Perhaps not, but I’m afraid of leaving, Father.”

“Of course. But what can we give you in Opi, we who love you? Many find happiness in America. And if we have another hunger year, you can send money to help your family. It’s better that way, is it not, than to live here by charity? Or to marry a man who will use you badly?”

I closed my eyes. No other way appeared.

“The Lord will watch over you, my child, as the shepherd keeps his sheep. He will watch your going out and your coming forth,” the warm, familiar voice continued. Tears dotted my hands. “Here.” Father Anselmo pulled a soft cloth from his sleeve and dried my eyes. Outside the hour chimed. He cleared his throat. “Irma, look.” He pulled out a sheaf of folded papers. My birth certificate, he explained, and a letter to the ship’s captain and port officers in America that I was of good character from an honest family, skilled in fine needlecraft, that he had hired me himself and was pleased with my work. “And this is for you,” he said, holding up a rosary of tiny coral beads. “It weighs nothing but will comfort you on your journey. If Carlo writes, I will tell him to find you in Cleveland. I’ll have Ernesto release your dowry and see that he and Assunta keep Zia after they marry.”

“Thank you, Father,” I managed. So it had all been arranged without me. When we culled ewes for market or slaughter, the others went on grazing, barely noting their sisters’ leaving. Once I was culled, Opi too would continue without me. My eyes ran over the windows and frescos of the church, the columns and oak pulpit I might never see again, and ended at Father Anselmo’s patient face. “Will you give Zia the altar-cloth money so she won’t go to Assunta a beggar?”

He promised and walked me to the church door. “Addio, Irma,” he said, and kissed my two cheeks. “Write to us.”

That afternoon I walked down every street in Opi. It seemed the wind had blown out word of my leaving as it once blew Filomena’s threads through our town. The mayor’s wife drew me behind a chestnut tree by the well. Her little daughter asked eagerly, “You’re going to America, Irma?”

“Hush,” said her mother and pressed twenty lire into my hand. “Buy something pretty in Naples.” She stepped closer. “They say in America, women don’t have to marry. It’s a wonderful country.”

“Will Irma come back?” the child whispered.

“No, never!” said her mother fiercely, her eyes blazing. I had never felt envy before. She kissed me and hurried away, pulling the child behind her.

I
would
come back, I told myself. But when? For now I must take Opi with me. I climbed to the high, flat rock where our pastures began, took out a scrap of cloth and sketched with needle and black thread the jagged line of our city wall, the mayor’s house, our church and bell tower and finally the low jumble of the street where I lived—where I once lived. The sun was low by the time I went home. My father, who never returned before dark, had dragged his chair to the doorway, his lined face russet in the waning light.

“Your dowry’s there on the table, one hundred twenty lire,” he said gruffly. “Wherever you go, tell people that you are a Vitale from Opi. Here, take these too.” He gave me a salami and small wheel of our cheese. “You can eat decent food until Naples, at least. Work hard in America and send money as soon as you can. You’re a good girl. Don’t dishonor us.” I could not remember my father ever making a longer speech.

“Will you marry Assunta?” I asked. He shrugged. So yes, he would marry. “And Zia will live with you?”

My father glanced at Zia and nodded. Then he jerked his head toward the hearth where I kept my pressing irons. “And Irma,” he added gruffly, “that night when . . . that night I was thinking of your mother, wanting her.” He cleared his throat. “A man gets lonely, that’s all.” He stood up heavily as if these words had exhausted him. Then he pressed my shoulder, pulled his cloak from its peg and left us for the tavern. He did not speak to me again.

After my silent meal with Zia, I pressed the altar cloth and scented it with lavender oil, and then packed my sewing box, documents and rosary from Father Anselmo, my few clothes and apron, good shoes and a small stone pried from the wall of our house. I blew out our candle and climbed into bed beside Zia. When I tried to speak, she whispered, “Hush, rest.” She cried in her sleep and I held her tightly. When I woke, my father had already gone to the fields.

At dawn, I drew water from the well for the last time. Assunta met me there with a small dense loaf, still warm. “It’s good for traveling,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your Zia.”

“Thank you, Assunta.” Tears wet the loaf and I brushed them away with my shawl.

“Listen to me, Irma, your father is a good man.”

I said nothing.

“When he was young,” Assunta insisted, “he had a beautiful laugh. You know that he and your mother lost three babies before Carlo was born? He told me once that he was afraid of loving his children too much and then losing them." My father never spoke of this. Perhaps I would never have known this if I wasn’t leaving Opi. “It’s true. Here,” said Assunta, pressing five pewter buttons into my hand. “They’re very fine. You can sell them in America for a good price or use them yourself.” I tried to thank her, but she hurried away. The buttons in my hand grew as warm as the bread as I made my way home. My last coming home. My last time mounting our worn stone step.

Morning sun cut through our window. “It’s time,” said Zia as I entered the room. “Now leave me Carlo’s cloak and go.” She sat in her chair without moving as the goat boy clattered down the street. I put my dowry and the gold in a chamois bag I hung between my breasts. Then I smoothed Carlo’s cloak over our bed, lit a candle and knelt by Zia’s chair. She touched my face, my nose, and kissed my two hands. “When you are safe in America,” she said, clasping my hands so tightly that they ached, “write to me.”

“Yes, Zia, I promise.” When I tried to kiss her, she gently pushed me away.

“Go now, Irma. Be proud and God keep you.”

I left, the bag beating against my heart as I hurried down our mountain and the birds cried, “Stranger, stranger passing.”

Chapter Two
Attilio

By the time I reached Pescasseroli,
my shadow had shrunk to a puddle. I took cover from the noonday sun in a slice of shade beneath the city gate while once-familiar streets gaped and taunted: “Mountain girl, if you’re so afraid now, how will you get to America?” Working my rosary to calm myself, I realized one small blessing: the streets were nearly empty. Merchants’ wives must be resting in the cool of their high-ceilinged, curtained rooms while husbands drowsed in shops and market stalls. Perhaps no one would point to my pack and ask with a smirk if I was bound for a convent, like
Sister
Filomena.

As I crossed the main piazza, only a pair of sleepy beggars watched me fill my water pouch at the fountain, not for thirst, but by habit. Once when we were young, Carlo had passed a mountain stream in summer without drinking. “Idiota,” my father cried. “The next one could be dry.” He didn’t waste his breath to add: “Irma, you drink too.”

Rinsing my face and arms, I looked up and saw Opi sitting like a brown-gray lid on the mountain. A jagged line of rock and trees seemed for a moment like a crowd of all my people: my father and Zia, Assunta, the mayor’s wife, Father Anselmo, even Gabriele and the goat boy all there without me. “Irma embroidered this before she left,” the women might say as my altar cloth was laid out next Sunday, but then talk would drift to wool prices, an ailing child or a marauding wolf the men must hunt. My father rarely spoke of my mother after her death and doubtless he would not speak of me after I left Opi. My shoulders shook until a beggar turned his bleary eyes at me. “Go,” I told myself. “Move your legs.” I gave the beggar a piece of my bread.

“God bless you,” he murmured and added, “wherever you’re bound, signorina.”

Outside the city walls, the road curved south, drawing me from Opi as we drew weaning lambs from their ewes. To keep from looking back, I fixed on pine needles pressed in packed earth, on dragonflies and thorny humps of blackberry bushes that would bear fruit when I was gone. I watched the clouds, not the whole ones we saw from the mountaintop, but white bulges glimpsed through trees. The water pouch dug at my shoulder and the money bag beat at my breasts. I thought of embroidery stitches and catechisms, anything but home.

After perhaps an hour of walking I came upon a gray-haired peddler fixing his cartwheel, copper pots neatly stacked by a ruddy, broad-backed horse tethered to a tree. “Brace the spokes?” the man asked the horse thoughtfully. “Good idea, Rosso. Such a clever boy.” My father never spoke so kindly to any man.

I offered the peddler a drink, for his brow gleamed with sweat. He swallowed, glanced at me, and when I nodded, drank again and then wiped the spout with a clean cloth. “Thank you kindly,” he said. “I did need that.” He had a long wedge of nose, waves of wrinkles ruffling his face, a wide smile and kind eyes. “My name is Attilio,” he said. “And this is my companion, Rosso. We’re bound for Naples to buy copper pots. And you, signorina?” he asked politely.

My throat went dry. To inquire of a name was surely common enough for city people and travelers, but at home we knew each other as we knew our own clothes. “Irma Vitale,” I managed. “Daughter of Ernesto Vitale. Of Opi.”

“Opi? Oh yes, just north of here, no? Too small for my trade. But,” he added quickly, “I’m sure it’s a fine town.”

I nodded. Soon nobody would have heard of Pescasseroli. Strangers might stare at me as we once surrounded an African juggler who ventured into Opi. We children had dared each other to touch his sheep-thick hair and Carlo asked Mamma if his skin had been burned to make it so black. Father Anselmo overheard and whispered, “Hush, Carlo. Don’t you see a child of God?”

“So Irma, are you bound for America perhaps?” Attilio asked. Was America written on my face? “I’m guessing,” he added quickly. “We see more people going all the time, even whole families.”

“Not from Opi. My brother left, but no one else.”

Attilio bent over his work. “Well, some places are like that.”

When I asked how far we were from Naples, Attilio scanned my shoes and bundle. “With good weather a man on foot might get there in five days. But a woman alone would do well to find a group to travel with or a family at least. Further on you can get a train.” Carlo had described long iron boxes on iron wheels that ran faster than any horse. People rattled and slid inside the wagons unless they had lire for first-class salon cars. Attilio cleared his throat. “Signorina, you could ride with us. You hardly weigh much. Rosso’s strong and I’d welcome the company.”

It was true that peddlers often took travelers free for just this reason. Even respectable women accepted rides on a public road. They sat in back and nobody gossiped. How else could they get to market without a horse? Attilio seemed honest. He was respectful to me and kind to Rosso. He worked steadily at the cartwheel, letting himself be studied. He was a good man; I knew this as surely as I knew how much wool a sheep might yield or how long a line of stitches a pull of thread could make. Still, surely it was better to pay for favors from a stranger. I saw rips in his shirt and vest.

“I’ll mend those clothes if you get me to Naples safely.”

“You needn’t, signorina. Many peddlers gave me rides before I bought Rosso. It costs me nothing to return the favor.”

“I can embroider as well if you’d like something made for your wife,” I added, for there was an air of married man around him; the locket around his neck surely held a portrait. I took from my pack an apron I had made for my mother in her last sickness. Yellow poppies and wild roses bloomed across the linen. She had judged each flower sharply before her strength fell away. “What poppy droops like this?” she demanded. I remade the petals, cupping them to the sun. “How can it bloom?” she asked of my first rose bud. In her last days, she held the finished apron weakly in her hands and raised it to her face. “Smells of roses,” she whispered, and slept with the apron in her arms.

Attilio studied the flowers gravely. “You have a gift, Irma. Your needle paints. Yes, perhaps you could help me.” He plucked from his own pack a fringed shawl of fine blue muslin. “A present for my wife. She is not well.” He chewed his lower lip for so long that I finally asked, “Would you like a design on the shawl?”

“Yes, a design.” He stroked the muslin. “She took fever last winter. Afterwards, she was as gentle as ever but like a child.” He looked up. “She still loves roses.”

I traced a line where the blooms might go, and we agreed on three full-blown roses with tendrils and buds. I would mend his torn clothes as well. At the next market town Attilio would buy thread and English needles and help me choose a good ship in Naples, for he said it sometimes happened that people bought tickets for ships that had already sailed. A fair exchange, even Carlo would agree, but I was astonished how many steps lay between me and America and how easily one might slip.

When he’d fixed the broken spoke, Attilio cleared a place beside him, handed me his torn vest and we started south. Opi women would have plucked my sleeve and asked, “Irma, have you lost your wits to sit beside a stranger?” They might whisper at our well that mending leads easily to other “services” for a man whose wife has turned simple. But they hadn’t seen how gently he held the muslin shawl or how when he offered me onion slices he held them by the edge so that not even his fingertips grazed mine.

Spring rains had left the road so lumpy that I pricked myself constantly as I sewed. “Here, Irma,” said Attilio. “Use this.” He held out a spongy spike of aloe leaf and showed how to squeeze the healing jelly on my bleeding fingers. “The road gets better soon. Just look around for a bit now. You’ve never been so far from home, I wager.”

Never. So close to Opi and so much had changed, even in women’s dresses, their skirt borders, the cut of bodices and puff of sleeves. The language, too, was changing. When a boy called out to a group of girls, making them laugh, Attilio had to explain the joke to me. In Naples, would I seem as foreign as the African in Opi? All afternoon the road thickened with travelers: merchants, friars, gypsies, shepherds and goatherds with their flocks, ragged soldiers wandering home and rich signori whose coachmen shouted us aside. We passed families going to America, one with a baby who would take its first steps there.

“Irma, who do you know in America?” Attilio asked.

“My brother Carlo left to work on a ship for Tripoli and earn his passage to America. By now he could be in Cleveland.”

“I see. So he might not meet you at the New York port?” I took a stitch and shook my head. Attilio cleared his throat. “I’ve heard that American police question single girls to make sure they won’t be a—problem.” A “problem” like Filomena, did he mean?

I tugged at the thread. “My Zia said I could sew for rich women in Cleveland. I thought I’d go to a shop or ask at churches for work while I look for Carlo.”

“I see.”

I read doubt in Attilio’s quiet face and now my stomach ached like the night I ran from my father. Cast out of Opi, closed out of America, would I be homeless as the wind?

“Don’t worry, Irma, we’ll stay with my sister’s family tonight and think how to help you.” Bent over my work, I nodded and sewed, trying to think only of stitches. “See? The road is easier now,” Attilio said kindly. “You aren’t pricking your fingers.” It’s true, I was learning to move with the cart. Soothed by my needle’s steady slip through cloth, I remembered Giovanni’s letter and his plans to marry the landlord’s widow. “Attilio, don’t some people go to America and then return?”

“Some men, yes. They come back to marry.” He ran a finger down his long nose. “Perhaps some women as well.”

“But no women you know?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Irma. But you could be the first. Or you could make a good life there.” I had made dresses, altar cloths, aprons, cheese and wine. But how to make a life? Tiny stitches crept across the cloth. Could I make a new life thus: one stitch at a time?

At the next town, as he promised, Attilio bought embroidery thread for the shawl, pinks and reds for the roses, greens for the leaves and stems, yellows for the centers and long-eyed needles made in England. I gasped at the price but Attilio only shrugged. “Good copper makes good pots,” he said. “There’s no other way.”

In late afternoon, we stopped on the road to Isernia in a crowded farmhouse where his sister Lucia lived with her husband’s family. A smile as wide as Attilio’s warmed her plain face as she welcomed us.

“Come with me, Irma,” she said. In walking to the well, drawing water, feeding chickens and gathering vegetables for the evening soup, Lucia’s quiet listening and gentle questions teased out my hazy plans for America. Although I had determined to tell no one of the night my father touched me, I told her that as well.

“Help me cut the onions,” Lucia said. As I cut and cried, she leaned close and whispered, “You did right to leave Opi.” Heat swarmed up my neck as I confessed the secret shame that by my father’s touch I was tainted like Filomena.

“You’re blameless,” Lucia insisted. “Did you tell your priest what happened?”

“My Zia did.”

“And did he say you must confess? Did he set you any penance?”

“No.”

“Well then,” said Lucia briskly, “you see? You haven’t sinned.” She handed me the broom. “Sweep the floor. I’ll be back.”

I had swept, filled the kindling box and scrubbed the oak table by the time she returned. We ate quickly and in silence as at home, but while we scraped the trenchers clean, a stream of neighbors filled the house, standing along the walls and studying me, not unkindly but intent, as if I were a horse that they might buy.

Attilio led me to the table. “Irma, I said we’d help you get in America. Come close to the fire,” he invited the neighbors. “Welcome.” In the murmuring scuffle, I saw that many had brought their own chairs and stools, as we did at home for pageants in the church piazza. Now I was the pageant. He asked for my documents and I fished them from my pack. Someone ushered in the schoolteacher, who read Father Anselmo’s letter aloud and shook his head. “I’m sorry, signorina, but you’ll need a letter
from
America to prove you won’t be alone.”

“Here,” said Lucia, handing me wine in a clay cup. Her child laid a warm hand on my sleeve.

“She has a brother,” Attilio offered and explained Carlo’s plan for Tripoli and Cleveland.

“He left six months ago?” the teacher asked. I nodded. “And you’ve heard nothing from him?” When I shook my head, the others whispered in dialect. “Carlo will write you now, Irma,” the teacher declared loudly. “He’ll invite you to America. You’ll tell the police that there’s no envelope because you lost it.” As the teacher filled his pen, those around the table debated what work I could do in America. Factory work, some suggested, millwork or glove making. Others suggested I paint ceramics, cook, or be a nursemaid to the children of rich Italians.

“Not a lady’s maid,” one said, “she’s not pretty enough.”

“Baker!” cried Lucia.

“Needlework,” I offered into the din.

“You know, she wouldn’t need a trade if she married Carlo’s friend,” a rumbling voice announced. The teacher looked up, considered and nodded.

In the heat and close air, my head spun with wine. “What friend?”

“Your brother’s in America, no?” the teacher prompted patiently. “And he will meet people there, no, men from Italy?” I nodded, although in truth Carlo rarely made friends. “So then, Irma, if such a man were single, might your brother not wish for him a good wife and think of you? So Carlo invites you to Cleveland and sends money for your passage.” Now suggestions for my fiancé’s name thickened the air like blackbirds: Giuseppe, Antonio, Carmine, Matteo, Paolo, Pietro, Salvatore, Luigi, Federico, Gabriele or Ernesto, like my father.