Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (6 page)

“At last, a bed that doesn’t rock,” Mamma said as she stripped to her chemise. She sighed herself to sleep while I lay staring at the dim window. When I turned to curl against her as we’d always slept before, she moved away. “In America,” she mumbled, “people sleep alone.”
In America, In America,
the words rose like seagulls against the sky. What else was new here? And what of my old life? Was the countess standing by the high window now? Could she hear waves and feel the warm sea breeze? Did she think of me? Had Paolo already hired new servants, easier to manage?

In the morning
I hurried downstairs to look out the parlor window. American boys in woven caps and knickers hurried by. There were women in bright dresses, carts, and even an automobile. The sky was a flat, blank white. “Try to get used to it,” Roseanne said. “That’s the best way. You don’t want to be like Neapolitans, always going on about blue sea, our special sun, our mussels, our mozzarella, our special tomatoes.
Basta!
This is Cleveland! Let’s go shopping.” I studied the white lid of sky as Roseanne hurried us along.
Was
there blue overhead? Yes, a sliver, but I didn’t mention it. What else could I not speak of here?

We got secondhand American dresses, coats, and shoes at the Newcomer’s Aid Society so we wouldn’t look like greenhorns. Now we’d blend in and be treated better. Languages flew around us like angry birds. I couldn’t pull English from the flurry. Why hadn’t I studied on the ship? Between bouts of sickness, I’d seen clusters of people repeating strange words. How many did I know in Italian? Thousands after fourteen years. Would it take me another fourteen for English? Even Roseanne, I noticed, spoke haltingly to Americans and veered toward Italians as small boats seek calm waters. Why hadn’t I realized how useless my tongue would be in a new country?

“Come on,” Roseanne said, “you need school supplies.” At a marvelous store called a “five-and-dime” I selected a pencil, notebook, rubber eraser, pen, and ink bottle. I would have explored all the treasures there if Roseanne hadn’t hauled me to the street and pointed: “There’s the Lyceum Theater. Bigger than the San Carlo in Naples.”

Mamma’s eyes blazed. She walked slowly past the grand palazzo as I watched anxiously. If she accosted its maestro, she’d be taken as a lunatic foreigner.

My breath came easier when Mamma looked away. “Now we’ll get a streetcar to Erie, the great lake,” Roseanne announced. We took a northbound car to the edge of the city, where from the muddy shore a gray plate of water stretched out to a gray fringe of sky. Waves lapped listlessly at our feet, pushing up a slurry of old shoes, driftwood, scraps of nets, and canvas shreds. Rangy dogs fought over a dead gull. Nobody spoke. “This isn’t the prettiest part,” Roseanne admitted. “It’s nicer with a blue sky, or when the trees turn color. There’s a place over there”—she pointed—“where you can swim and sit on rocks, like in the bay.”

“No volcano,” Mamma observed.

“Which is good, right? Who needs volcanoes? They’re nothing but trouble.”

I took my mother’s arm as we made our way home. That night I wrote my first letter to Countess Elisabetta, saying that Cleveland was beautiful, with a gorgeous lake. Roseanne was very kind and sent Paolo her love. We would work hard and repay our passage soon. We would be happy here.

And if we weren’t? Suppose Mamma couldn’t find peace at work or rages overtook her and there was no calming, distant volcano? Suppose I couldn’t learn English and therefore failed in school? Suppose Mamma was injured like Totò? Clouds of worries filled the little room; I dug out my book of Leopardi and eased myself to sleep.

On Sunday, we washed our clothes and polished our shoes. Roseanne watched us work, constantly giving advice. “You should be
Theresa,
with an
h,
and Lucia can be
Lucy,
to blend in better.” We’d shed our last name. Wasn’t that enough?

“I don’t want to blend in,” Mamma said, giving the washing machine lever a jerk.

“You will, sooner or later. And Lucia, you’ll need a
fella
. That’s American for ‘a young man of your own.’ If he’s got a good enough job, you can stop working and have babies. Then Teresa can live with you.” I bent over my shoe, buffing it hard, feeling laced in by her plans. I had no idea how to talk to “fellas.”

“Tell me about chocolate dipping,” Mamma demanded.

“Well, Mr. Stingler pays well enough if you’re good at making swirls, but he likes his favorites.”

“He doesn’t have to like me, just pay me and keep his hands to himself.
I
don’t want a fella. I’m widowed, you know. My husband, Giacomo, trained horses at the royal stables. He was breaking a wild Arabian for the king when he got thrown and broke his neck and died.” I stared. What about Pietro? Roseanne knew that we’d worked at the villa for years and there was no husband, no Pietro or Giacomo. Did past lives not matter in America?

Roseanne pushed back a curl. “I see. I’m sorry, Teresa.”

“Mamma has a beautiful voice,” I interjected to pull our talk from fallen, imagined husbands.

“Stingler will like that. Good singers make the work go faster. Be sure you tell him you can sing.”

“I won’t be on my knees, that’s what’s important.”

The next day she left for work before seven with a light step and shoulders squared. Since we’d come to Cleveland, Mamma had not once raised her voice. Perhaps an angel did watch over us.

So it was with hope and good humor that I went with Roseanne to Central High School to be enrolled as Lucia D’Angelo in the ninth grade. A stubby clerk took me to a classroom hung with maps and set with rows of wooden desks. He handed me a document with English words all over, pointed me to the teacher, and left. The students stared, giggling a little when my shoes creaked. At least I was dressed as they were.
Please, let me blend in.

The teacher came gliding across the room, reaching for my document. Rigid as a soldier, I handed it to her. She had gray-blue eyes and a lace collar so high and stiff that it seemed her head swiveled on a white shaft. A brown-haired girl named Yolanda was summoned to translate the melodious voice. Her dress was like mine, but fitted better and was embellished with ribbons. “Her name is Miss Robinson and she is happy to have you. She’s sure you’ll work hard and learn English. If you speak Italian in this room or the halls of this school”—Yolanda indicated a slender wooden pointer—“she reminds you. Now go to your desk. We do history next.”

There was no danger of my speaking at all. The history lesson was a torrent of words I didn’t know. Drops of sweat ran down my face. Mortified, I wiped them away. When Yolanda turned to smile, I took heart and listened harder until, like rocks exposed by a retreating tide, I recognized the words
revolution, declaration, independence,
and
general
. Miss Robinson showed us a picture of General Washington standing in a tiny boat during a windy winter crossing. “Sit down, you idiot,” any Naples fisherman would have told him.

Finally I heard “mathematics” and was happy. Numbers were a familiar face in a crowd of strangers. When Miss Robinson put multiplication problems on the chalkboard, I wrote the answers quickly in my copybook. She smiled and said, “Excellent, Lucia.” Ah, she means
eccellente.
I basked in golden light, glancing in astonishment at yawning classmates. Were they bored? Had they ever spent mornings scrubbing on their knees?

After my lunch of pasta and beans came “recess,” a raucous swirl of students in the courtyard. I stood against a wall, watching them until my new friend found me. “I’ll take you to English class at Hiram House this afternoon,” Yolanda promised. “Then school will go better. But,” she added happily, “you can start working soon enough.” I’d worked my whole life, I might have responded. As soon as I could walk, I dusted, stirred pots, folded laundry, and beat rugs with little sticks. Perhaps I washed two steps to Mamma’s twenty, but I had no memories of “before working.” Yes, I told Yolanda, I wanted English classes.

We reached Hiram House by straight, wide streets meeting at perfect angles. Cleveland seemed a child’s city, ordered and easy to learn, but without the sweet tang of the sea. Not to seem like the Neapolitans Roseanne scorned, I didn’t mention blue skies or sea breezes. Factory chimneys shot up thick plumes of smoke that left their smells behind. Yolanda sniffed out scents for me: iron and steel works, slaughterhouses, glassworks, automobile factories, and factories for “machines that make machines.” Big-windowed garment workshops stood wedged between factories. “The windows are closed so soot won’t stain the cloth.”

Busy as it was with work, the city seemed dead. We passed no puppet shows or street singers, singing peddlers, fortune-tellers, gypsy dancers, or acrobats. Yolanda shrugged when I mentioned this. “It’s America,” she said. “You have fun inside.”

Finally we reached Hiram House, a somber brick building with turrets and a wide porch. “Come on,” Yolanda said, “the class just started.” My English teacher was a bright-cheeked young woman who wrote in sweeping letters:
Miss Miller
and then
Welcome Newcomers!
She made us understand that both children and wary, stiff adults must stand by our chairs for a game called Simon Says.

“Repeat: ‘Simon Says.’ ” We repeated. This much I could do, but how could we play in a language we didn’t know? Easily, I discovered. Miss Miller’s mobile face, boundless energy, and large gestures slipped meaning under words for Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Greeks, and Czechs. Some students knew more English than others and pulled the rest along. At Pentecost, our priest once told us, the Holy Spirit spoke to a crowd, each in his own tongue. Miss Miller had that power.

“Simon says, stand up. Simon says, touch your nose. Simon says, raise your hand. Touch your chest. I’m sorry, Niko and Ruth. Sit down, please.”

We played short rounds so many could win. We shaped our mouths to hers. Miss Miller’s good humor made even grown men laugh. I was understanding English! Pride shot through me, as when Mamma first took her hands from beneath my belly and I swam alone to the far flat rock, or when the countess opened a book, pointed to a line, and said, “Start here and read.”

A girl my age wrote our new words on the board:
arm, foot, head, leg, chest
,
his, her, your.
Soon, I vowed, I would be that girl, writing. “Now, Lucia, you’ll play with Henryk.” She pointed to a tall, slim boy near my age with wide dark eyes. I’d noticed him in the schoolyard standing with a crowd of laughing boys.

“Simon says, stand up, Henryk,” I managed. Astonishing: he stood. My first English sentence! My first words to an American boy! He smiled and brushed back a flop of hair. I’d play this game forever. “Tell Henryk to raise his hand.” I did. He did. “And touch his head.”

“Simon says, touch your head.” Again the magic: his hand on the glossy hair. “Now, Henryk, tell Lucia to lift her arm.”

“Lucia, Simon says lift your arm.” I did. At Miss Miller’s orders, he had me touch my shoulder, heart, and hand. “Good, now have Lucia sit and stand again.” When we had done this, Miss Miller clapped and the class obediently followed. The girl wrote “clap” and we repeated this word too.

“Excellent, Lucia and Henryk. Now, shake hands.” When she mimed this with the writing girl, I drew back. Henryk hesitated as well, looking down. In a stride, Miss Miller was next to him, offering her own hand and repeating firmly: “Shake hands.” He did. “Excellent. And now with Lucia.” He glanced at one of the boys, then reached toward me. I took the warm, firm grasp and quickly released. “See? It’s no tragedy.”
Tragedia,
she must mean.
Non è una
tragedia.
“Please sit down.” We did. I risked a glance at Henryk, who returned a furtive smile.

After our lesson, the class shattered like quicksilver. I was engulfed by Italians. Henryk was swarmed by boys who spoke languages I’d soon learn to spool apart: Polish and Yiddish. One looked sharply at me and whispered to Henryk:
“shiksa.”

“Yolanda, what does that mean?”

“Who knows? But it doesn’t matter. English is what you need. Are you coming to class tomorrow?” Yes, I said. I’d come every day.

D
IPPING
C
HOCOLATE

I raced home
and was there by seven, before Mamma arrived in good humor from Stingler’s. “Only eleven hours and not once on my knees! You pick up a caramel core, dip it in the vat, twist, drain, and put it on the rack. That’s all. Look.” She held up a little bag of chocolates rejected for their mangled shape but delicious. “Other girls are sick of them. I sang, and everybody said it made the time go faster.”

With the dignity of her new work and praise from the other dippers, she’d never been so ebullient. We passed a happy evening. If I couldn’t persuade Mamma to attend English classes, she at least agreed that Simon Says was a good game. We played in the parlor with Italian and the English words I’d learned. To Roseanne’s astonishment I lured Irena from her room, and she was happy to play with us.

“Yolanda will show me a garment shop,” I told Mamma that night. “I want to see how clothes get made.” The next day after school we went to Bank Street and stood on wooden crates to peer through a dusty window of the Printz-Biederman Company. Rows of women sat shoulder to shoulder, bent over machines, motionless except for their arms and hands. “That’s my cousin Giovanna, sewing cuffs,” said Yolanda, rapping on the glass and pointing to a girl who shared her wide mouth and slight build. Giovanna’s eyes turned up briefly before dropping back to work. “She’s afraid of needles. One girl got blood poisoning from a needle stick and lost her finger.” I closed my hands tightly. “See how fast she works? They’re paid by the piece.” Stitch, turn the cuff, another line, and snip. Repeat for the next cuff. The finished shirt was laid on a pile with the right hand as the left one reached for the next. “Buttonhole girls earn a little more.”