Linda Cardillo - Dancing On Sunday Afternoons (14 page)

She got out her dustpan and broom and swept up the splinters.

She looked up at Flora with the baby on her shoulder.

"You're a good friend to Giulia?" She wasn't sure, I could hear it in her voice, see it in the narrowing of her eyes.

Flora nodded as she patted her daughter's back.

"Then you'll keep your mouth shut about this? This kind of thing, it shouldn't go outside the family. "To me, she said, "Why didn't you come here first, sweetheart? Didn't you trust Uncle Tony and me to take care of you?

You had to go to a stranger?"

I started to explain that it wasn't my choice. I was going to tel her that Paolo had brought me to his sister, but Flora interrupted me.

"Signora Fioril o, Giulia meant no disrespect. There was a lot of blood at first. I live close to the store—that's where it happened. I think Giulia realized how much attention she'd attract if she came al the way here with a bloody head. So I cleaned her up a little before bringing her to you. I don't know much more about what happened. I'm a good friend to Giulia, Signora. And I'm not a gossip."

Yolanda emptied the glass bits into the bin. She seemed satisfied with Flora's answer, but I could see she wanted to hear more about what had happened and didn't want to ask me in Flora's presence, especially if Flora knew as little as she professed to know.

"No, no. Please don't be offended, my dear. I'm grateful to you for taking care of her and for bringing her here, you with the baby, too. Your first? No? So, you must have a lot to do at home, supper to prepare, the baby to put down. I won't keep you. Giulia is quite safe with us."

After Flora left, Zi'Yolanda stopped her fussing with the broom.

"So, you wanna lie down, sweetheart? I'll make up Pepe's bed nice and clean for you. Or you wanna talk about it?"

"I think I'll he down, Zi'Yolanda. There's not much to say. Claudio came into the store. He got mad. He picked up an iron and threw it at me."

"He ever hit you before this?"

"No, never."

"I don't understand it. Wel , when Uncle Tony gets home, you can bet he'll have a word or two to say to your brother."

I shrugged. Claudio listened to nobody, not even Uncle Tony. Any words Uncle Tony might shout or scold would be ignored, just like Claudio used to ignore Papa.

"Maybe I'll have that glass of brandy before I he down."

When I woke up it was dark. My head throbbed but the bandage wasn't leaking. The bleeding had stopped.

Peppino's bed was in a corner of the dining room, and Zi'Yolanda was setting the table. I smel ed soup.

"You feeling a little better, angel? I made some 'scarole and meatbal s. Uncle Tony's washing up in the kitchen.

You wanna sit up and eat something with us?"

When Uncle Tony came to the table he took one look at my head and started to curse.

"That son of a bitch. He should be my son. If he were, I'd teach him once and for al not to lay a hand on his own sister. God Almighty! That's who he thinks he is. I'll tel you one thing. I'm not letting you go back to his house. Not tonight, not any night.

"He can bang on my door al night long. Wake up the whole damn neighborhood, for al I care. You hear that, Pepe?" He turned to my cousin.

"You tel your boss this is where his sister is and this is where she's going to stay."

After supper, Peppino went out. He had barely looked at me during the meal. I had never seen Uncle Tony so angry or so determined. Something had happened to our whole family that afternoon when Claudio had hit me and I had accepted refuge from Flora and Paolo. Something like this would not— could not—have happened in Venticano. So much damage in one afternoon.. .so little protection for me.. .so little solidarity in the family. I saw at supper that this was going to rend us apart. Already Tony and Peppino had chosen sides—one to stand by me, the other to fol ow Claudio.

This frightened me more than the blow from Claudio. What would my sisters do, sheltered under Claudio's roof? What would my parents say when they were informed? Why weren't they here now, to protect me, to prevent the catastrophe I feared when Claudio came storming up the stairs to fetch me home?

Or would he not come at al ? Would he leave me here with Tony and Yolanda, cutting himself off?

Another home for me. I was no longer welcome in the house of my brother, nor my grandmother, nor my mother and father.

How I longed for a home that I could cal mine.

CHAPTER 19

The First Letter

I waited into the night for Claudio to come raging into Yolanda and Tony's the way he'd raged into the store that afternoon.

Yolanda jumped at every slammed door, every footfal on the stairs, pricking herself with her darning needle more than once during the evening as she sat at the cleared dining table with a pile of Peppino's and Tony's shirts and socks.

My head hurt too much to sit up with her after we ate. I didn't even help her wash the dishes. She had shooed me back into the bed.

"I'll take care of this tonight, sweetheart. You go and He down."

I turned my body to the wall, grateful not to have to listen to Yolanda's worries, Yolanda's gossip, Yolanda's aches and pains. Even Yolanda's criticism of the absent Peppino didn't interest me. Peppino had been my least favorite cousin when we were children. He was a tease who'd once brought me a rose he'd doused with pepper. I had sneezed and coughed for almost an hour. But what had hurt the most was his ridicule. I had thought he liked me, was offering me a special gift with the rose. When I held it up to my nose to admire it and began to sneeze so hard that tears welled up in my eyes, he whooped and hooted with laughter, and his friends leaped out from their hiding places to laugh and taunt with him. I threw the rose down and stomped on it with my foot and kicked Peppino before I turned my back on him and walked home with as much dignity as I could.

Now I was lying in his bed, huddled against the wal , waiting for my brother to show himself.

But he never came. No pounding on the door, no shouted curses, no scenes between the blustering Claudio in charge of everything and the outraged Tony, protector of his niece.

I began to drift off to sleep, floating in and out of dreams, when I heard a respectful knock at the door and then muffled voices. It was late, the room already dark, Yolanda and her darning basket gone.

I heard Uncle Tony speaking quietly and without excitement to whoever had come to the door. It could not be Claudio.The voices were too reasonable. The way one talks to strangers, not to family.

Zi'Yolanda's voice pierced the calm. "Tony, Tony? Who's there? What is it? What does he want?"

"It's al right, Yol y. It's Paolo Serafini. Go back to bed. Everything's okay."

Peppino's bed was positioned so that I couldn't see through the archway between the dining room and the front room, where Uncle Tony stood talking to Paolo. Paolo, here. A few feet away across a darkened room. I sat up, straining to hear his voice, wishing I could go out to him but not trusting myself, afraid that I'd throw myself into his arms, sure that if I did so he'd return the embrace. And there would stand Uncle Tony, mouth agape, not believing his eyes for a few seconds, then jumping from the scene before him to my brother's rage.

Tony would explode, feeling betrayed. Yolanda would come running in her nightclothes and grasp whatever fragments she could to feed the clothesline crowd in the morning.

No, I had to remain in bed, show indifference, feign sleep. Anything to prevent them from recognizing the wildness beating in my heart, the agitation I felt knowing he was just beyond reach.

"Tony, I stopped by Claudio's house early this evening to tel Angelina and the girls that Giulia is safe with you.

Claudio I haven't seen. He hasn't shown up at the Palace yet. Angelina said he had a meeting in New York and she wasn't expecting him home til late, so I don't think you'll see him here tonight. Unless he runs into somebody like Pepe, he's not even going to know where Giulia is. So rest easy. Maybe by tomorrow he'll have cooled off." He paused. "How's Giulia doing? The girls were upset, wanted her home with them, but I said leave her alone, let her rest out of Claudio's way."

"Thanks, Paolo. That son-of-a-bitch nephew better not show his face around here for a few days. His father should only be here. He'd kil him for touching a hair on his sister's head. I may do it for him.

"I understand your sister fixed her up. God bless her. Giulia's indebted to her and to you."

"Flora would've done nothing less. It's how she is. Look, I'll try to talk to Claudio as soon as I see him. He listens to me...sometimes. Anyway, I just wanted you to know. I've got to get back to the Palace."

"Keep an eye on my son. He hasn't learned to control himself yet. Thinks the night should never end, you know what I mean?"

I heard the door latch, the lumbering of Tony's feet back to bed with Yolanda, the brisk tap of Paolo's shoes on the stairs that ran along the outside wall next to my bed.

I moved from the bed to the front window, reaching it in time to see him stride from the building. I pressed my palms against the glass, wishing he'd turn around and glance up. But he walked off into the night, his head down against the cold wind, his hands thrust into his pockets.

A blue envelope arrived at eight the next morning, delivered by Nino. He was on his way to school and had run to Yolanda and Tony's in order not to be late.

He knocked on the door in a rapid, impatient-little-boy way. "Giulia? Giulia? I'm looking for Giulia Fioril o. Is she here?"

I heard his voice on the landing, breathless, loud, for al the building to hear.

Peppino opened the door in his undershirt, sul en from being roused at too early an hour, from having to sleep on the sofa when he came in at four in the morning, since Zi'Yolanda had put me in his bed.

"Yeah, what do you want?"

"Is Giulia here?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"This is for her. Give it to her, please." Nino tossed the envelope to Peppino and flew down the stairs.

Peppino took the envelope and studied it as closely as his sleep-heavy, wine-blurred eyes al owed. He turned it over in his hand, studied the inscription, checked to see if the envelope had been sealed. I watched from the archway of the dining room as he slid his grimy thumbnail under the flap.

"Is that for me, Peppino?" I crossed the room in two swift steps and put my hand on the envelope, my thumb pressing down on the flap Peppino had begun to peel open.

He kept his hand on the blue paper, not releasing it to me.

"Whose brat was that? And who's sending you letters through him?"

"I won't know that until I open the letter, Peppino."

"Is this the reason Claudio hit you?" His hand tugged against mine.

"It's none of your business. You're not my brother. And neither one of you is Papa. Give me the letter."

He stil wouldn't let go. The struggle over this piece of paper was waking him up.

"Something's not right," Peppino chal enged me. "Some stranger early in the morning. What is it, a love letter?

Why so urgent? And how did he know you were here?"

"Peppino, I told you. I have no idea who wrote this because you won't let me open it. And even if I did, I wouldn't tel you."

But I did know, of course. I knew the blue paper. I knew the flourish of the pen. I knew Nino. I was desperate to read the words, but kept my longing to myself. I didn't need to give Peppino, with his nosy questions and his big mouth and his loyalty to Claudio, the opportunity to learn such a secret about me. The secret was stil so new that I'd lain awake al night, bewildered. What was I to do with this knowledge? This man who'd been a steady, silent presence in my life had now spoken, had now taken me into his arms. How could my understanding of him, my feelings for him, change so much in just one day? People around me thought my world had turned upside down because Claudio had hurt me so savagely. But they were wrong. 1 was not going to let my life fal apart because my brother couldn't hold himself in check. He had made me angry but he had not made me afraid. What made me afraid right then were my feelings for Paolo. I was not looking for this; I had not asked for it in my prayers or even my dreams.

I had been thrown off balance by Paolo. I had no warning, no months of preparation and anticipation for the way I felt.

This brought so much unease to my heart. I felt out of control, bobbing and diving among turbulent waves that washed over me with ever-increasing height. Volumes of emotion. Voices within my head expressing doubt, tel ing me this shouldn't be. I shouldn't feel this way—so suddenly, so differently. I was too confused. I needed to understand more. I needed to anchor myself, to keep myself tethered to something real---

I needed the letter, becoming tattered and smudged in Peppino's hands and mine. We were scrabbling like two children over a chestnut. One taunting, the other clutching.

"Pepe, what are you doing up so early?" Zi'Yolanda shoved her head out the kitchen door."You wanna cup of coffee?Who was that at the door?"

Her hair was stil down in a graying braid behind her back, her cotton housedress protected by a flowered apron. My own mother, her hair stil black, never appeared even for morning coffee without her hair smoothly pinned in place.

"What's that?You two look like you're fighting over the last piece of cake. Did someone bring a message?

From Claudio?"

"It's for me, Zi'Yolanda. But I don't know vmo it's from because your son won't let me have it."

"If it's from someone in the family, why didn't they come in person?" Peppino jumped in. "And if it s from a stranger, it's not right...."

"Since when did you become a judge of what's proper and what's not? You with your American girlfriend who stays out with you half the night like aputana?" Zi'Yolanda was warming to my side.

"Look, why don't you give me the letter and I'll open it right here in front of your mother and you."

Zi'Yolanda gestured to Peppino to let go of the letter. She was as curious as he, but for more benevolent reasons—romance, gossip.