Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (5 page)

“Do well in America, Lucia. Be good and study hard. Write to the countess. Take care of your mother.” He smiled and kissed us both. “Teresa, watch your temper and try to be happy. It’s a new start for you.” Then he was gone and our life by the Bay of Naples was over, like a song cut off too soon.

F
ALLING
A
NGEL

We were Teresa
and Lucia Esposito on the ship from Naples, on Ellis Island, and into Pennsylvania. And then we were not. I’d been seasick and sleepless for our passage and struggled to look healthy for the immigration officers. At last on the train for Cleveland, I slumped against a window, drowsing as rolling green fields ran past us like a vast sea.

Mamma had been anxious ever since we left New York, troubled by the broad swaths of forests. “It’s so empty here!” she fretted. “Nobody told me.” She held our envelope of documents, turning it over and around on her lap, running the dull edge along her palm with such force that I roused myself to trap her hand in mine.

“We’ll be in Cleveland soon. Everything will be good there.”

We were slicing through a forest. She stared at the blur of trees crowding along the tracks and announced: “I know where the trouble started.”

“What trouble?”

“It’s because of my grandfather,” she said so loudly that even Americans turned to stare. “That’s why there was always something wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said fiercely, forgetting to whisper.

She shook her hand free. “My grandfather Domenico was exposed, put up for adoption. That’s why our name is Esposito. You didn’t know?”

“Of course not. You never told me.”

“I’m telling you now. His mother didn’t want him. Maybe he was too much trouble. When he was five she took him to an orphanage to give away to anyone who needed a boy with a beautiful voice. A priest picked him for the chapel choir and named him Domenico Esposito. Aren’t you ashamed now to be Lucia Esposito?”

“It’s just a name, Mamma. Everybody needs a name.”

Mamma clutched our documents. “We’ll have bad luck in America. Galuppi said I was a hysteric. Something bad will happen to us. I know it.” She held her head, staring across a long green valley.

“No, Mamma, no.” When did the train grow so cold and the wheels begin rattling so loudly?

A squat man with a wide mouth sat across from us, dressed like an American and reading an American newspaper. He folded it carefully and addressed Mamma in an accent so familiar he might have lived beside our villa. “
Signora,
calm yourself. You don’t need to be an Esposito. I myself was born Tommaso Russo. Now I’m Thomas Ross. You can be who you want to be in America.” Schools wouldn’t need my Italian papers, he explained. They’d take me with any name. Factories would hire or not hire Mamma for the work that she could do. Many immigrants changed their names or made them more American.

“Why did you change yours?” I asked. “What’s wrong with Russo?”

“I live in Harrisburg and bake for immigrants. I make their focaccia, Irish soda bread, brown bread, rye, pumpernickel, sourdough, challah, babka, and stollen. I cut up loaves and hand the pieces around so people can try all the breads of America. So I gave myself an American name.” Mamma turned her documents over and over. The baker smiled placidly.

“You were just in Italy?” I asked to fill the silence.

“I went home to see my family. I go every three years.” So easily then, one could move back and forth across this great distance, living in two lands, like a tree rooted on both banks of a river. We could do the same if police weren’t watching for us in Naples. “Here’s Harrisburg,” he said cheerfully, gathering his bags. “And there they are!” A family dressed in American clothes stood waving, all short and smiling like Tommaso/Thomas, who hurried off the train to meet his wife and children.

“Mamma,” I said as he left, “
we
could change our names too.”

She nodded, her eyes glittering. “Yes, let’s. Who should we be?” Her voice turned shrill with pleasure. “Russo’s too common. Verdi, Garibaldi, or Leopardi like your poet friend.”

“Vesuvius,” I ventured, and she laughed so loudly that people turned again to stare.

“Caruso. Da Vinci.”

“Didn’t Toscanini say you sang like angel? We need a good angel in America. We could be Teresa and Lucia D’Angelo.”

“D’Angelo, D’Angelo, D’Angelo.” She leaned back, half closing her eyes as she did when spinning stories. “So . . . I was married. My husband, Pietro D’Angelo, worked inside the cathedral in Naples, painting a fresco high up in the nave. It would show Our Lord and His angels welcoming the Blessed Virgin into Paradise. One day the scaffolding cracked. My husband fell and died, crushed on the marble floor.”

“It’s bad luck when an angel falls,” I added to her tale.

“Yes, Pietro’s soul would curse all who worshipped there because the scaffolding was rotten. So the priest gave me money to erase the curse. We used it to come to America.” She smiled. “It
could
be a true story.”

“Let’s make it true,” I said.

Together, like bad children, we ripped the documents to pieces. We were crossing a bridge over a broad river: the Susquehanna, I realized later. Dividing the bits, we pushed them out the window, watching them flutter, spin, and flash white against the sky.

“There,” said Mamma happily. “Now we’re new.” I pictured
Lucia D’Angelo
in looping black script. I imagined presenting myself to strangers: “I am Lucia D’Angelo.” In tunnels, I peered at my reflected face. Here was Lucia D’Angelo. She would speak English perfectly, go to school, and wear American clothes. Perhaps her voice would change and she could even sing. At least when she spoke, people would stop and listen as they did when Mamma sang.
Hysteric, difficult, unstable, bastardina,
all the old, bad words of our old life were left behind in the green river valley.

“Lucia D’Angelo, sleep now,” my mother said gently. We had been up long before dawn to see the Liberty Lady. As we rattled west, I dreamed of Pietro D’Angelo, the marvelously gifted artist who leans too far from the scaffold while painting angels. A foot reaches frantically for purchase in air and too-mortal D’Angelo falls, arms flailing. Priests run to catch him, black robes streaming. Too late for his poor twisted body splayed on the marble floor. “He died for holy work,” the priests say. “His soul will be lifted into glory.” At the requiem, Mamma sings “Ave Maria.” The priests give us money out of love and pity. My dream melted into sleep so sound that we were entering Cleveland’s Union Depot before I woke. Mamma had already gathered our bags.

On the platform, a tall woman with Paolo’s long, scooped cheeks and square shoulders surveyed passengers spilling off the train. “Rosanna?” I hazarded and was immediately corrected: “
Roseanne.
It’s more American.”

Her high-necked blouse blazed white against the smoky green of a long woolen skirt. “Made right here in Cleveland,” Roseanne boasted, stroking the fabric. “No finer quality in America.” She had wide painted lips and bulging eyes. “The train was very late,” she scolded, “but I waited as a favor to Paolo so you wouldn’t be taking the streetcar alone. And I bought your first tickets.”

“A favor to Paolo,” Mamma muttered as Roseanne helped us carry our bags to the streetcar, hoist them up, and claim a brass pole. In Naples I’d only ridden streetcars with the countess. Otherwise I walked. Everyone rode here, clerks and suited ladies, workers and immigrants like us.

“Standing is better,” Roseanne advised as we rattled away. “You never know who just used those seats. Maybe Greeks or Bohemians. Slavs, people with fleas,” she shouted in our ears and then related her story: she’d come from Pozzuoli on the Bay of Naples seven years ago with her husband, a stonemason who made enough to buy her a boardinghouse before he died of influenza. Her talk was pocked by English words and hard to follow: “Now be careful here because of the . . . And don’t ever . . . because Americans will think you’re . . .” She spoke in solid certainties, her words like stakes driven into stone. I studied her wide-brimmed hat studded with silk flowers. “Made in Cleveland too,” she said proudly, stroking the brim. “Italian women did the flower work. It pays well for those with the knack. Almost as well as dipping chocolate.”

“I’ll dip,” Mamma announced. “I don’t have a knack for flowers.”

“So,” said Roseanne, as a half dozen weaving men from a tavern helped one another into the streetcar, “you left Naples suddenly, did you? Paolo wrote about you in his letters, but he never mentioned that you’d be emigrating. When I got his telegram I had an empty room that two Polacks wanted but I told them I had Italians coming, sent by my cousin.”

“Thank you, Roseanne,” I said quickly. “That was generous.”

“It was Lucia’s idea to come,” Mamma announced suddenly, pressing her foot against mine. “She begged and begged, so I said we’d try America. Countess Elisabetta was very upset. We came as a birthday present to Lucia.” I stared at Mamma.

“I see.” Roseanne studied our bags. “Well, a friend of mine works for Stingler’s Chocolates. She can help you get a job.” As we rattled toward Woodland Avenue, Roseanne pointed proudly to a tangle of wires overhead. “Electricity and telephones.” The air smelled acrid and slightly smoky.

“Is there a fire?” I asked.

“No, just lots of factories. There’s one for lightbulbs and further on we have Packard Motor Car and Mr. J. P. Morgan’s steel company. We have suit and dress factories; shoe, hat, button, and belt makers; and smaller shops doing piecework for the garment houses. Cleveland dresses America,” she announced proudly. “Over there is Stingler’s, where Teresa can work.” She pointed toward the Holy Rosary Church, Central High School for me, and Hiram House, where we’d take English lessons. So our new life was laid out for us, like a puzzle missing only two pieces. Already I felt cramped.

“I don’t need English, I’ll just work,” Mamma announced.

“Well, Lucia has to learn. Anyway, this is Friday night. Tomorrow we’ll get you proper clothes. Church on Sunday and I’ll show you around Cleveland. Monday you go to Stingler’s Chocolates. As a favor to Paolo, I’ll take Lucia to school. You have documents?”

“They were stolen on the train,” Mamma said blandly.

“I see. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, Lucia, you won’t have to stay in school long. Most Italian girls start working when they’re sixteen, some younger. They help their mammas with room and board.”

I bit my lip. A man on the ship had proudly shown his son’s diploma from an American high school. “
High
school,” the name had danced in my mind. Lucia in
high
school. “Don’t girls want to finish school?”

“What for? You don’t need a diploma for factory work. Anyway, here’s our stop.” We hauled our belongings to a gray wooden house with wooden steps. “I know it’s strange, so much wood. I guess they don’t need houses to last.”

Once inside, Roseanne dealt out her rules like playing cards. “There’s one bathtub, and you two take your baths on Tuesdays. Boarders here the longest get Saturdays. Next longest, Fridays, and so on. Do your own wash or pay the Irish woman. Hang your clothes in the yard. In winter, they freeze dry. It’s true, you’ll see. Breakfast at six, dinner at eight. Factory shifts end at seven; you’ll have time to get home. Latecomers don’t eat. Your room has no view, but you’ll be glad of that in winter. Front rooms get more light but they cost more and they’re colder in winter from Canadian air off Erie.”

“What’s Erie?” I asked.

“A lake bigger than the Bay of Naples. When it freezes, you can drive a team of horses over on the ice. Well, here’s your room.” It was narrow and dark as Ciro’s
basso,
with a bed only slightly wider than ours in Naples. A small window faced the next house, barely a stride away. “I could loan you a table for schoolwork,” Roseanne offered.

“Could we see a front room?” Mamma asked.

“Sure. When there’s a vacancy, you can move.” We were hustled down the hall where Roseanne threw open a door and announced, “This is Irena. She’s Polish, about sixteen years old. She makes buttons.” Irena had a wide, pale face, blond braids curled around her head, and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, as blue as our bay. She was sitting on her bed, curved against cushions, never ceasing her work. “Go see what she does, but you can’t talk to her. All she knows is Polish and a little English.”

Mamma didn’t move, but when I drew closer to the bed, Irena looked up and smiled. I’d never had a friend my age; her smile warmed me like a woolen shawl. She shook my hand briefly before plucking a tiny square of blue cloth from a stack, stretching it over a button form, forcing both into a mold, folding in the raw cloth edges, and affixing a button back. I looked around the room. Sacks filled the floor: cloth to be cut, button backs, and finished buttons in various sizes and colors. But the work would be constantly the same. No silver polishing or floor washing could be so tedious.

“How long does she do this?” I asked Roseanne.

“All day to make her quota. A Russian comes for the finished buttons and brings her new supplies. She can’t sit at a proper chair in a factory because of a streetcar accident, so she does home work. She pays more for the front room since she needs light to work. When her brother and his wife come from Poland, she’ll live with them.” Cloth squares were mounded by a calendar with dark lines drawn across each day.

“They’re coming soon?”

“They’d better. She’s behind in her rent. She might have to pawn some things.” What things? A crucifix and two prints of huts on green fields hung on the wall were the sole adornments in this prison of buttons. “Well, let her work. Come downstairs. I saved your dinner, just this once.”

We wished Irena good night and backed from the room. My limbs felt weighted, as if masses of buttons dragged me down. “She doesn’t have friends?”

“You mean other Poles? How? She doesn’t go out, and what would they talk about? Buttons? Here, you must be hungry.
Buon appetito.
” We ate minestrone and spongy American bread. Then we helped wash dishes, since the kitchen girl had gone to bed. Finally Mamma and I climbed the creaking stairs to our room. A crack of light shone under Irena’s door and I heard tiny pings of buttons dropping in a sack.