Solitaria (12 page)

“This is exactly what it looks like: a white chicken feather. I plucked it out myself and stuck it under the band of a blue hat that has long since disintegrated. But this, I kept.”

‡
1945. Locorotondo, Italy.
Revisiting my childhood is like standing at the shores of a turbulent sea: achingly beautiful and dangerous — the thunderclap of breakers, the foamlicks of crests, the way swells undulate, graceful as pregnant women, the boil of froth through sand in a rip tide. And I, who never learned to swim, long to submerge myself in those pristine days when miracles were possible, when everyone still loved me.

On New Year's Day, upon awakening, Mamma looked out the window and saw a white horse.

“What great fortune,” she said, almost fainting with pleasure. She was pregnant with Daniela, the last of the children. “This one,” she said, stroking her abdomen, “will be lovable and polite; she'll seek pleasure and be religiously inclined. That should please you, Piera.”

I smiled at her positive predictions.

“However,” Mamma had added, “she'll ask frequent questions but will often be deceived; she'll trust men but they'll betray her; and although she'll be liberal she'll also be vindictive.” According to Mamma, there was no season, no month, nor day of the year when one could be born without the weight of sorrows. For the rest of New Year's Day, she would not allow Papà to conduct any business or see anyone with whom he might have a disagreement, because this could undo her good fortune and cast an evil one for the entire year. Certain that she had foreseen our future, Mamma perceived only the good in everything around her. And this in itself was a great fortune.

Within weeks, Aldo received a letter from the University of Milan, informing him that he had placed second in the national competition. A full scholarship right through law school. “We are blessed!” Mamma said. “What great fortune!” He would be expected to report to the university in the fall, having barely turned sixteen. Mamma held him tight to her chest, and Papà patted his back, murmuring how his dreams were beginning to come true.

In July of that year, Mamma began her labour.

“Where is Vito?” Mamma cried, though we had not seen or heard from Vito for two years. “Is it Tuesday? Oh please God, I pray you,” she kept saying, the ominous predictions swirling in her head, confused. “Let the baby wait till midnight.” She was drenched in sweat, delirious. “We're being punished by God for our wickedness,” she moaned, without explaining what wickedness, exactly, she was referring to.

Papà said, “Margherita, please. You're getting yourself in a state. There is no wickedness. Please, for the baby's sake, stop all this morbid superstition.”

“If only we could find a piece of that stone,” Mamma murmured. “Ovidio, go and see if you can find a piece of that stone.”

“What is she talking about?” Mimí whispered. “What stone?”

Papà stroked Mamma's forehead. “Shhhhhh,” he said to Mimí, then to Mamma, “Of course, my love, I'll find the stone.”

Clarissa began to sing.

Renato shook his head and tapped his index finger against his temples. He and Aldo had been ordered outside and now stood in the doorway, listening to Mamma behind the curtain.

Daniela was born squealing in a small
casello
below the town of Locorotondo, in a valley thick with almond and olive groves, holm oaks and wild flowering cacti. Yet, this natural beauty belied our dire living conditions. The
casello
was half the size of the last one, a cramped eight feet by ten feet we could all barely fit into at one time. Instead of a kitchen inside, a large stone oven leaned against the
casello
, so that Mamma had to go outside to cook. On the roof, an open cistern, filled once a week by the water train, provided the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Snakes abounded, often sunning themselves on the railway track.

Mimí began to complain of muscle aches and nausea. At night in bed, she shook, chilled and hot, keeping everyone awake. Renato developed chronic dysentery and with it, constant diarrhoea, so that after each squat, his bleeding intestine protruded. Papà coughed with perpetual bronchitis. I tried as best I could to help out, but it was not enough. Mamma became so exhausted by the new baby and by everyone's ailments that one day, she simply collapsed. Papà called a doctor, who prescribed rest. We enlisted the help of Papà's sister-in-law and for three weeks, we all tiptoed around the
casello
, while Mamma slept almost around the clock. Finally, at the end of the third week, Mamma sighed and sat up weakly. We all crowded around her with kisses and words of joy.

Although she resumed her place, Mamma was easily tired now, and we all worried that she'd have a relapse. Aldo was soon due to leave for Milan. Papà arranged a job for Clarissa in the railway office in Bari, and installed me as the new mother, responsible for Mamma, for Renato, Mimí, and Daniela, and for the daily caring of them all. I was fifteen, my life altered, my dreams of education and futures suddenly arrested.

1947. Locorotondo, Italy.
After two years of silence, Vito finally wrote to say he was coming home. Each day now, I waited.

On the floor beside me, the children's clothes, ready to be washed and ironed. The pantry shelf almost empty, and a
t the back of the hut, the oven gaped, a Munch scream in the afternoon sun. Inside, t
he room was dark, oppressive. Mamma lay in bed, resting.

I sat at the table in front of the window of our small
casello
, writing a school essay on “How was life portrayed by the authors of the 1800s?” Because I had been studying at home, I had concentrated my reading on poetry, which I loved, and had not read much prose from that period. I didn't know if Fogazzaro or Leopardi or Carducci wrote in the 1800s. I did know that Manzoni wrote
I Promessi Sposi
in the 1800s, but he was writing about Sicily in the 1600s. I added what I knew about others: Carducci, I said, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was against the papacy, the monarchy, and the romantic sentimentalism of Italian literature during his time. I felt slightly guilty thinking about Carducci, because I also remembered that he did not seem to believe in God, but more in pagan rituals. Of Fogazzaro, I said that I had only read
The Saint
, a book in which he made a plea for the reform and modernization of the church. Because of this, his novel was banned by the church and placed in the Index of Forbidden Books. I'm not sure about the dates, I wrote, but I believe that Fogazzaro was having crises of faith. And of Leopardi, I wrote at length because I was very familiar with his work, with his exquisite sensibility, his perfect form, all of which was contrasted by his intense pessimistic point of view. I had read and memorized many of his poems of unrequited love and despair. And when I recited these at home, tears brimming in my eyes, Clarissa would accuse me of being overly sentimental and melodramatic, while Mamma would shush her and tell her to leave me alone, because I was, in her words, melancholic.

I set the essay aside, and opened my volume of Leopardi's poems to “The Infinite,” while staring at the hillside town, at the rail tracks that rounded the house and extended into the distance at either side.

The Infinite

Always dear to me this lonely hill

This hedge as well that blocks the view

Of the far-flung horizon.

But as I sit and contemplate the endless

Space beyond, the suprahuman

Silences, and profound stillness,

In my mind, I fool myself and for a while

My heart is not afraid. And I compare the wind

I hear rustling among these leaves,

To the infinite silence; it brings to mind eternity,

And the death of seasons, and the present one

Alive, and the sound of it. And so, in this

Immensity my thoughts drown:

And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea.

Across from me, a small road led up and over a rise to a
trulli
house where a young woman grew red roses. They were the first roses I'd ever seen, their petals moist and sensual, not like the dried flowers people keep in their homes today. I stared into the afternoon sun, searching for the familiar gait.

Mamma moaned in her sleep, and I turned quickly, but she was only dreaming.

A train horn sounded in the distance. Or maybe it was thunder.

Mamma sat up. “Renato,” she said. “Oh! Oh! Help!” Because Renato was born during an evening thunderstorm, Mamma believed he would have a lifelong tendency to tremble, that he would fear things would collapse on him, that his sparkling eyes would not be able to hold another's gaze, that he'd have brilliant ideas and thoughts, but would not articulate them, because he would always be thinking about thunder and the possibility of the earth breaking open and swallowing him whole.

“Shhhhh. Everything is fine, Mamma,” I said.

A train horn sounded in the distance. Or thunder. I looked out.

Renato, Mimí, and Daniela were playing on the tracks with a wheelbarrow they had dragged onto the ties. Renato was at the helm, erratically pushing the wheelbarrow along so that it shimmied from side to side, while inside the wheelbarrow, Mimí and Daniela squealed in excitement. No train was due for several hours, but I felt an irrational fright. What if I lost all the children at once?

I put my book down and opened the window. “Renato,” I called, “get the children off the tracks.”

He turned to me, frowned, then stuck out his tongue, his feet skipping on the ties, his arms still pushing the wheelbarrow. Mimí imitated him, as did Daniela, and they all laughed.

“Don't you be disrespectful with me,” I shouted. I felt a familiar rage churn in my abdomen.

In the past couple of years, my headaches had intensified and become more frequent, the atmosphere itself brimming with uncontrollable triggers. Light, sound, smells, tastes, and touch sparked such pain, I couldn't move. At times, I was nauseous, numb. Spots of light hovered in front of my closed eyes. The children's laughter or cries were a constant torment. I had begun to shout at them, at Clarissa, at Renato, even at Mamma, whose mournful looks I could hardly bear. It was as if I were reacting out of some place outside myself, a place in which my heart raced and my head throbbed, a place where I had become someone I disliked.

I pressed my hands against my temples, to avert the throbbing. Called out once more to Renato, softening my voice. “Renato, please. Move off the tracks.”

He turned and shrugged, in that lazy way of his, in that nonchalant movement of the body that said he didn't care what I said. I pressed my fists into my eyes. The migraine was coming on strong, quicker than ever before. The window hazed, and a million jagged prisms stabbed into my face. Through this, I suddenly saw Daniela, lying under the wheels of a train, her sweet face smiling.

“Daniela!” I shrieked, frightening Renato, Mimí and Mamma, who raised her head in alarm. “Renato, I told you to get off the track! And now you've killed Daniela.”

I ran outside as a train lumbered past, its massive weight rooting me to the ground, the wind pinning my hair back. Chug-chug. Chug-chug. Chug-chug. Wheels whining, steel on steel.

“You're crazy,” Renato said, and I was brought back to myself. The track was empty, the wheelbarrow to one side, and the children stared at me, perplexed. Mamma began to cry, and I ran inside, embraced her and kissed her cheeks, saying, “There, there. It's all right, Mamma. Nothing happened.”

Two silhouettes against an afternoon sky. The man carried a small suitcase and walked beside the woman on the tracks. I stared at them intently. It's him, I thought. He's come back, Clarissa beside him, swinging her hips.