When We Were Strangers (6 page)

At last Attilio returned. “The
Servia
is bound for New York in a few days. The stevedores say she’s sound and there’s a lodging house where you’ll stay while they finish repairs.”

“Repairs?”

“All ships need repairs. Look,” he waved his hand at the port where nearly every ship swarmed with sailors, cleaning, pounding and hanging off ropes like long-legged bats. “But you must get your ticket now to be sure of your place.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t move.

Attilio smoothed Rosso’s flank. “You have to see the ship’s doctor first.”

“Why? I’m not sick.”

“I know, but one of the ships last season carried a family with typhus. It swept through steerage and a week out of Naples reached the crew. They were shorthanded across the Atlantic.” Attilio spoke quickly, stroking Rosso’s neck. “So the
Servia’
s captain is having the steerage scrubbed and he hired a doctor to check the passengers. You see, he’s prudent. You’ll be safe.”

“Did many die in steerage?”

Attilio shrugged. I saw wrapped bodies swallowed in waves. “They could have been weak already,” he said, suddenly as cool and brisk as a stranger stopped for directions. What did I expect? He was just my passage to Naples and I was just a shawl maker for his imbecile wife.

Salt air burned my throat. “How much is the ticket?”

“Twenty lire, a good price. And don’t worry about typhus, Irma,” he said earnestly, the old Attilio again.

“We never had it in Opi,” I admitted.

“So there’s nothing to worry about.” Attilio studied the cart. “The pots are in order and Rosso’s brushed. Irma, you didn’t have to do this.”

“It was nothing.” I would have gladly cleaned the cart again to put off the wrench of leaving. I nearly begged him not to leave, to take me with him back to Opi or even on his travels, endlessly winding through Italy, but not leaving, not cast off and alone. I tried to speak and Attilio too opened his mouth, but then his brusque busyness returned. He helped me into the cart, loosened and then tightened Rosso’s harness and silently eased us through the crowd to the ragged ticket line, where travelers bunched together, shepherding trunks, crates or simple bags like mine.

“There’s the shawl,” I said, pointing to it folded on his seat, the roses framed on top.

Attilio touched each flower gently. “It’s beautiful. Catarina will be so pleased.” He grasped my arm. “Irma, remember, don’t pay more than twenty lire for the ticket.”

“I won’t.”

“Remember to buy enough food for the passage, things that keep. You have money?”

“Yes.”

“And tell the officers that Carlo will meet you. Say he sent you to come marry his friend. If they ask. They might not.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry about the doctor. You’re healthy, you’ll be fine. In America you’ll sew for rich women just like your Zia said.”

“Are you putting that cart on a ship or not?” a man behind us snapped. “If not, get out of the way.”

I jumped down with my bag. A sea breeze puffed across us. “Thank you, Attilio,” I whispered. My eyes burned. Attilio kissed his hand and gently pressed it to my cheek. “God keep you, Irma, and take you safe to America.”

“Out of the way, peddler!” someone shouted.

Attilio sat up and clicked Rosso’s reins. A water cart pushed behind him, then a fisherman hauling nets and a cart piled high with wine barrels.

“Get in line, signorina, if you want the
Servia
,” said a woman with a child gripping her skirt. The woman’s almond eyes studied me, searching the crowd. “Was that your father?” I shook my head. “Husband? Brother?”

“He’s a—peddler who gave me a ride to Naples.”

“Oh. Well anyway, look after your bags. This port is full of thieves.”

I pulled my bags behind hers, watching the gray-blue patch of Attilio’s shirt disappear in the crowd.

“Mamma, why is the lady crying?” the child whispered.

“Leave her alone, Gabriella.”

Chapter Three
On the
Servia

The ticket line snaked languidly across the piazza
, bunching and stretching over basalt paving hot under our feet.

“My name is Teresa,” the woman announced.

“Mine is Irma,” I said. Why give a family name if nobody knows your family? Travelers called to each other up and down the line, words skimming overhead.

“Greek,” said Teresa pointing. “And Albanian over there. Those two women are from Serbia.”

“How do you know?”

“I live—lived near the port in Bari. Merchants came to trade from everywhere. Weren’t there foreigners in your town?”

“Not often.” Once a drunken Swiss mercenary wandered up to Opi, slept awhile in our piazza and then left in heavy fog. Days later, shepherds found him in a crevasse, half-eaten by wolves.

“My father’s working in America,” Gabriella announced. “He’ll have his own store soon. Isn’t that right, Mamma?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s waiting for us, waiting for us, waiting every day,” chirped Gabriella, nudging a pebble around a paving block. From the way Teresa plucked at her faded skirt, I suspected that not all husbands waited. In the next days, I learned my suspicions were true. Some men were bewitched by American shopgirls with soft hands, bright hair and no dust of the old country. Some women found nobody waiting in New York. One Sicilian retrieved his wife at the port, hauled her like baggage to a rented room, stayed long enough to get her with child and then slipped west on a train.

Yet wives stood in lines like this. “I had to leave Bari,” Teresa told me. “Everyone knew I was married. They whispered if I spoke one word to another man. Gabriella was growing up half orphan. Enzo had taken my dowry money to America so Papà sold a field to buy our passage. I wrote Enzo that we’re coming and he telegraphed back, but he’s been gone five years. Perhaps he’s changed.” She glanced at her daughter. “Stand up straight, Gabriella. Don’t kick rocks like a country girl.”

Men behind us boasted of the fortunes they would make in America and how they’d return to Calabria, buy the land their fathers had toiled for day wages, buy vineyards, pay their sisters’ dowries and spend their long afternoons like gentlemen in the fine cafés where once they were not welcome. A large family finished its dealings and the line lurched forward. When sea breezes caught a creaking sign that said
TICKETS TO AMERICA
, talk fell away as if the same thought ran through us all: leaving was real enough, but what of our airy dreams? Suppose we who were poor and whose fathers and grandfathers were poor did not become rich in America? Then where could we go?

“Cheer up!” barked a young man with a small pack and a wine jug. “It’s not like you’re sheep to slaughter.
We’re
here for adventure, me and my fine companion.” He lofted his jug in the air and waves of talk lapped up and down the line again.

“How are you paying?” a thin man asked another who looked like a blacksmith, with his thick shoulders and burn-scarred hands.

“Italian lire. And you?”

“Bavarian marks,” the thin man answered proudly.

“Make sure they don’t cheat you.”

“You think I’m a fool?”

I learned that I would need to change my French gold for lire and check the exchange rate on lists they were obliged to show me. I felt a whiff of pride. Who in Opi had ever used an exchange list?

As we waited, hawkers worked the line. “Sail the
Regina.
No wormy potatoes. Good meat, plenty of washrooms and fresh water. Four lire less than the
Servia
and the captain’s sober.”

“Mountjoy
, fresh launched in England, steady as an oak table,” cried another. “The crew’s steady too. Not like some.”

“Take the
Silver Star
,” urged a limping boy thin as a rat tail who galloped by our line. “Big engines. You’ll be in America sooner. Hot meals twice a day. Two parlors in steerage.”

Prickling doubt shot through me. Was Attilio bribed to pick the
Servia
? No, surely I knew him that well. But what did he know of ships? He could have been lied to. The hawkers served the captains, but one ship might truly be better than others. And which was better, a shorter voyage, a stronger ship, or a sober captain? My mind lurched like a drunkard’s. “Teresa, should we ask about the other ships?”

“Ask who? We’re just cargo, whatever they say.”

“But aren’t we safer on the
Mountjoy
if it’s new or the
Silver Star
if it’s faster?”

“Signorina,” snapped the thin man, “in a storm we’re all in God’s hands. You’re in the
Servia
line now.” This was true. For any other ship, I’d have to wait longer in the beating sun. At least here I knew Teresa.

I shuffled forward, pushing my bag until I reached the head of the line, or one of the two snakeheads, for Teresa was waved to one thin clerk and I was sent to a huge man whose eyes glinted from the damp moon of his face. “Well?” he demanded, snapping at a boy who darted forward with a cloth the man used to dry the ruffled folds of his neck and chin. “What are you staring at, girl? Never saw a handkerchief before? Show me your documents.”

I laid them on his desk with the schoolteacher’s letter. The clerk’s blunt fingers left moist stains on each sheet. “A single woman in America. What are your plans?”

“It’s in the letter. I’m going to marry my brother’s friend in Cleveland.”

“And this brother’s friend has a name, perhaps?”

“Federico . . . Gallo.”

“Hum. And Federico Gallo has a job?"

“Yes sir.” What job? Butcher? Miner? Steelworker? His fingers drummed my letter. “He’s a blacksmith,” I said too loudly.

“Am I deaf, girl?”

“No sir.”

An officer in a fine blue suit hung with yellow braid appeared suddenly at his side and rapped a small baton on the table edge. “Too many questions. There’s hundreds in line. Signorina, can you buy a ticket?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Take her name, age and birthplace. New York’s not our problem.” Red-faced, the clerk filled out a card and flicked it toward me. I gathered my documents and moved to the next table.

There a doctor with a silk cravat did not touch me, but had a shirtsleeved assistant feel my head for fever and gingerly part my hair with two spoons he then dipped in kerosene, noting that I had no lice. He made me cough and peered in my eyes. “Heart.” The doctor yawned.

“Open your blouse,” said the assistant.
In public?
“To here.” He rapped my breastbone. When I hesitated, the doctor raised his hand to wave the next person forward.

“Wait, please,” I said quickly, fingers flying at the buttons. The assistant scanned my chest and listened to my heart through a flared wooden tube.

“She’s healthy,
Dottore
,” he said.

The doctor stamped a number on my wrist. “That’s
your
number,” he warned. “If anyone copies it, you’ll both be arrested. Understand?”

I nodded. “So there’s no typhus on the
Servia
?”

The assistant prodded me on to the purser. “Don’t bother him, girl. Everyone’s healthy.”

“Peasants,” the doctor muttered behind me.

“How are you paying?” the purser demanded.

I set out my francs and gripped the table as he examined them. “They’re French gold, sir.”

“I think I know my business,” the purser snapped. “You want the list?” He nodded at the exchange list, finely printed, inking his pen as I strained to read. “See? We aren’t highwaymen.” He wrote out a ticket and marked my wrist a second time. “If you wash it off, you pay again. Next.”

“Excuse me, sir.”

“What?”

“Are there separate dormitories for women?”

“Of course. Servants, feather beds and marble washstands too.”

Weariness made me bold. “I just asked, sir, now that I bought a ticket.”

The purser breathed a dry rasp like an angry bull, but when I didn’t move, he folded his hands together and said, “Single men sleep together. You’ll be with the families and other single women. Is that acceptable, signorina?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Then move along.”

At the next table I bought a straw mattress, soap for salt water and meal tickets for the lodging house where we’d sleep until the ship sailed, which would be “soon,” a clerk said vaguely. Peddlers milled around us, hawking playing cards, sea-sickness herbs, crucifixes and charms, tobacco, blankets and straw hats they swore all men wore in America. Many bought without bargaining. Who would do that at home? Did they think new money would come snowing down in America? Pulling free of one peddler, I backed into a man with cuffs rolled back to show numbers on his wrist like mine but I couldn’t recall his sleek red hair in the ticket line.

“They’re like dogs at fresh meat,” he laughed. “You’re wise not to buy blankets, signorina. We’ll sleep near the boilers, so heat’s the devil on board, not cold. But the crew sells food on the side so they keep rations short. If you’re hungry, you have to pay their prices, which go up every day. See what I got?” He showed me a sack of potatoes, onions, tea, hard cheese, biscuits, salami, dried apple and figs and a big pot of jam. “Just see Matteo over there in the red shirt. He’s the only one who won’t cheat you, and he’ll deliver your provisions straight to the lodging house.” Matteo watched us from under the brim of a wide, soft hat.

“No thank you, sir.” Did he take me for a fool? I had passed scores of food carts in the city. Two weeks of provisions could not weigh more than loads I’d carried up our mountain. The red-haired man shrugged and turned away, his eye flicking back to Matteo. So they did work together.

I made my way to the lodging house, where the din was worse than any thunderstorm. Shrieking children cut through aisles between the cots and men played cards, shouting their bets. A cobbler had set up shop, his hammer ceaselessly rapping, since dozens wanted shoes repaired for America. Women called from washtubs, slapping wet clothes against rattling metal racks. Dust and sweat filled the hot air. Matrons pushed through the crowd, assigning cots, stopping fights as one family’s bags bulged into another’s space and shooing out peddlers who had slipped inside. Two men fought bitterly over cards.

Teresa waved to me, her thick curls tumbling out of loosened braids. “Irma, there’s space over here.” As I unrolled my mattress she said that for a few
centesimi
we could store our bags in a guarded room, which seemed better than watching them day and night. The guard let me step behind a screen to fold the receipt into the chamois bag between my breasts and count the money I had left. Lire that I would spend for provisions went into a pouch I tucked inside my skirt. My great-grandfather’s gold pieces stayed in the bag. By the time I had threaded back to Teresa, my head was pounding.

“Lie down awhile. We have our tickets, there’s nothing to do now but wait,” said Teresa, calmly loosening her bodice as if there were no men around. Gabriella was sleeping, curled around a rag doll.

“I have to go buy some things,” I said. “And I can’t breathe here.”

“At least we’re not in line,” Teresa sighed, peeling back blood-caked stockings. “I’ll wash tomorrow. Be careful in the city.” She lay down and was immediately asleep, her arms woven through Gabriella’s.

Outside, afternoon sun still beat at the basalt paving, but sea breezes whipped across the port and gulls looped the blue sky. I stood in a patch of shade and then made my way to a cluster of street children by a fountain. I picked a sharp-nosed boy with wide eyes and black hair curled tight as a lamb’s coat who called himself Ciro and swore he knew a merchant selling good cloth at a fair price. He set off, darting between horses and carts so quickly that I lost him. He doubled back, took me by the hand and set off through a maze of streets so narrow that the sky was a blue stick above us.

“There,” he said finally, pointing to a wooden sign on which a careful hand had painted a pair of golden scissors and a bolt of blue cloth. “Franco the Dwarf.” The shop was barely four paces deep, a cavern lined in fabric bolts. At the center stood a table heaped with every kind of sewing notion. No taller than the boy, Franco leaped from his bolts to greet me. “Franco the Dwarf, as you see.” Stubby arms fanned his treasures. “What is your desire, signorina? I have silk, cotton, wool and linen, thread in many colors, chalk, pins, needles, buttons, thimbles and scissors. All excellent, excellent, first class for the seamstress.”

I bargained for a length of Egyptian cotton that would bear dense embroidery and admired a silky fringe and deep blue satin that shone like a moonlit lake. “Touch them,” Franco prompted. “Feel how fine.” He brought out hanks of embroidery thread, a shimmering rainbow of violets, blues, deep greens, reds, purples, and a yellow orange as rich as poppies. “Thread like this costs more in America, signorina. You’re wise to buy now.” My fingers tingled, yet Ciro stood motionless at my side. Did these colors not amaze him?

Too late, I tugged at my sleeve to hide the emigrant’s marks. It was then that I noticed a pair of embroidery scissors with brass handles cunningly fashioned like wings. One black screw made a tiny eye and bright steel beaks completed the stork. Catching my gaze, Franco balanced the delicate tool on his fingertips. “See? Light as a feather. You try.” Yes, the scissors floated in my hand. He gave me a scrap of muslin. The sleek handles kissed my fingers and the blades moved as easily as though in curves, lines and angles, clever beaks slicing a warp line, turning a crisp angle to the woof. Even their sound was delightful, a bright snip like a sparrow’s chirp. Held against light, the cut edges were as smooth as the blades themselves. “Fine English import,” said Franco, “new this year.”