The Queen of the Big Time (3 page)

“Thank you, Elena,” I tell her sincerely.

“Girls, let me speak with Miss Stoddard alone.”

The look on Papa’s face tells me that I should not argue the point. Mama has not said a word, but she wouldn’t. Papa speaks on behalf of our family.

“Papa?” Assunta, who must have been eavesdropping from the stairs, comes into the room. “I’ll walk her into town.” Elena and I look at each other. Assunta has never done a thing for me, why would she want to walk me into town?

“Thank you,” Papa says to Assunta and then looks at me as if to say,
See, your sister really does care about you
. But I am certain there must be some underlying reason for Assunta to show this kind of generosity toward me. There must be something in it for her!

“I am starting a new job in town next month,” Assunta explains to Miss Stoddard. Elena and I look at each other again. This is the first we have heard of a job. “I am going to work at the Roseto Manufacturing Company. I have to be at work by seven o’clock in the morning.”

Elena nudges me. Assunta has been keeping secrets. We had no idea she was going to work in Roseto’s blouse mill.

“School begins at eight,” Miss Stoddard says.

“I’ll wait outside for them to open the school. I don’t mind!” Miss Stoddard smiles at me. “Really, I’ll stand in the snow. I don’t care!”

“Nella, let me speak to your teacher alone.” Papa’s tone tells me he means it this time, so I follow Elena up the stairs and into our room.

“Can you believe it? I’m going to school!” I straighten the coverlet on my bed so the lace on the hem just grazes the floorboards.

“You deserve it. You work so hard.”

“So do you!”

“Yes, but I’m not smart.” Elena says this without a trace of self-pity. “But you, you could be a teacher someday.”

“That’s what I want. I want to be just like Miss Stoddard. I want to teach little ones how to read. Every day we’ll have story hour. I’ll read
Aesop’s Fables
and
Tales from Shakespeare
aloud, just like she does. And on special days, like birthdays, I’ll make tea cakes and lemonade and have extra recess.”

Assunta pushes the door open.

“When did you decide to work at the mill?” Elena asks her.

“When I realized how small my dowry would be. Papa’s money is all tied up in cows. I don’t want Alessandro thinking he got stuck with a poor farm girl.” Assunta goes to the window and looks out over Delabole farm. “But he
is
getting stuck with a poor farm girl, so I have to do my part.”

I never thought about a dowry, but it makes sense. Of course we have to pay someone to take Assunta off of our hands. Who would take her for free?

“I’m sure Alessandro isn’t expecting—” Elena begins.

Assunta interrupts her. “How do you know what he expects?”

The funny thing is, I’ve read all of Alessandro’s letters to Assunta (she keeps them hidden in a tin box in the closet), and I don’t remember a single word about any expectations of a dowry. But now is not the time to point that out. If she knew I read her private mail, she’d do worse than scratch me.

“Alessandro is a lucky man.” Elena and Assunta look surprised. “You’re very kind.” I smile at Assunta. “You didn’t have to offer to walk me to school, but you did and I appreciate it.”

“You will have to work for the privilege.” Assunta crosses her arms over her chest like a general and looks down on me.

“The privilege?”

“I’m putting you to work for me. You will make all the linens for my hope chest. And when I pick my house in town, you will make all the draperies. And for the first year of my married life, or until I decide otherwise, you will be my maid. You will cook, do our laundry, and clean my house. Do you understand?”

So there it is: the catch. Assunta wants a maid. I’d like to tell her that I will never clean her house, or sew for her, or do anything she asks of me, because from as far back as I can remember, I have hated her. I pray every night that God will stop this hate, but the more I pray, the worse I feel. I cannot be cured. But I want to be a teacher, and no matter what I have to do to reach that goal, I will do it. I don’t want to stay on the farm my whole life. I want to visit the places I read about in books, and find them on maps that I have studied. I can’t do any of this without Assunta’s help. “It’s a deal,” I tell her. Assunta smirks and goes back downstairs.

“She should walk you to school just because she’s your sister. How dare she make you pay for that?” Elena is angry, but she knows as well as I do that in this house, Assunta is the queen, and we serve her. If I have to scrub a thousand floors to go to Columbus School, the exchange will be worth it.

Every year, Papa chooses the last Saturday in November for the hog killing. We’ve always been lucky with the weather; it’s not too cold and usually it’s sunny. Early this morning, the men killed the hogs by clubbing them, then scalded them in the large pots to get all the hair off. The afternoon was spent doing the hardest part, the butchering of the meat. Papa and the men will separate out the best parts, which will become smoked hams and roasts. Then they carve away the meat they cure into bacon. The rest will be made into sausage. No part of the hog is wasted, not even the feet, which Mama pickles and puts up in jars. When the work is done, everything is shared among the men who have come to help us. There is even some meat left over for Papa to sell to the butcher in town.

My sisters and I have worked hard preparing the smokehouse for Papa, and now we help Mama with the meal. The big supper, an outdoor picnic, is everyone’s reward for a hard day’s work. Mama has slow-cooked the tenderloin over an open pit for most of the day. The wives have made roasted sweet potatoes, a salad of fresh red peppers, corn pudding, and fresh bread. For dessert, the ladies made all kinds of pie, sweet raspberry, pumpkin, or tapioca cream with egg-white peaks. My favorite is rhubarb and Mama made two.

The children are in the barn playing hide-and-seek. I used to organize the bocci games after supper, but I’m too old now. It’s nice to have company on the farm, it fills up our house and fields with laughter, news, and conversation, which I can’t get enough of.

I look up and see that there are no clouds in the twilight sky as I set the table. Elena lights the oil torches. With darkness settling around us, she points to the sun as it sinks behind the slate hills like a deep pink peony. “Look at the sunset!”

“Someday I’ll have a hat that color.” I laugh and place the last of the tin plates on the table.

There is a definite nip in the air, but the heat from the open pit will keep us warm, along with our long wool stockings and sweaters.

“You should change your clothes for dinner.” Elena sizes me up in my work clothes. She already went inside and changed into her best skirt, a pale blue wool circle with a matching sweater Mama knit for her.

“Do I have to?”

“It would be nice. Go ahead. I can finish setting the table.”

I never used to get dressed for dinner. This is another sign that I’m now officially a young lady. On my way upstairs, I pass Mama and the ladies in the kitchen. They speak in Italian, and Mama throws her head back and laughs, something I rarely see her do. I wish Papa wanted to move to town, where Mama could have friends around her all the time. We are all so much happier when we have visitors; we feel a part of things.

I go up to my room and take my burgundy corduroy skirt out of the closet. I have a pretty pink calico blouse to wear with it. The sweater Mama knit for me is burgundy, so it’s a perfect match. I climb out of my overalls, covered with smudge from the open pit. I go to the washbasin and scrub my face and hands. I brush my hair, putting some powder on the ends to take out the smell of the smoke. I put on my slip and stockings, and then pull on the blouse, buttoning it carefully. The pink color looks nice against my skin.

The door pushes open. “What are you getting all dressed up for?” Assunta asks as I button my blouse and straighten the collar.

“Mama said we should look our best for dinner.”

“You better not spill anything on that skirt,” she barks. Assunta goes to the closet and pulls out her best dress, a simple green wool chemise with long sleeves. She takes her silk stockings out of the top drawer of the dresser. “And be careful with your blouse too,” she says without looking at me. I don’t know why she takes it upon herself to order us around; we already have one strong mother, we don’t need another. I look in the mirror, wishing I had rouge or powder. I look so plain.

“You’re not pretty at all,” Assunta says, practically reading my mind,
as she pulls on her stockings. “It’s not your fault. You got the worst features of Papa and Mama. That’s just the way it is.” Assunta steps into her dress. She motions for me to button up the back, so I do. “At least you’re not too thin or too fat, just medium. Of course, there’s nothing very memorable about that, either.”

As Assunta prattles on about what I don’t have, I feel my confidence melt around my shoes like hot candle wax. But instead of rallying my spirit and aspiring to the height of my own self-confidence, I crumble. Deep down I believe that Assunta is right: I am not pretty. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it, but it’s the first time it seems true. Maybe that’s because I’m not out in the field playing with the other kids; now I’m expected to be a proper young lady. It didn’t matter when I played bocci if I was pretty, it only mattered that I was good, that I could win. But proper young ladies are supposed to be pretty, and I’m not. I sit down on the bed.

“There’s no sense crying about it,” Assunta says flatly. “There’s nothing to be done. Some girls are pretty and some girls aren’t.” Assunta turns and looks at herself in the mirror.

“I know I’m not a beauty,” I tell her. She looks surprised that I would admit this. “But there are other things about a person to treasure. Like their wit. Their kindness. Their concern for others. Qualities you wouldn’t appreciate because they have lasting value.”

Instead of snapping at me and turning my observation into an argument, Assunta grabs her sweater and looks at me. “You’re strange,” she says. She takes her sweater off the shelf and goes. I hear her clop down the stairs in our mother’s old shoes, and remind myself that my sister only says terrible things because she wears Mama’s hand-me-downs and no one has ever found her special. Alessandro Pagano doesn’t count because she is being forced upon him, it’s not like he chose her. Part of me wants to tell her that even though she has fancy ideas about life in town, she’s just a farmer too, but if I got in a fight with her, Papa would make me stay in my room all night, and then I
would miss the chance to be with our company, something I wait for all year.

I lean into the mirror to look into my eyes, and instead of squinting at my image, I lift my chin a bit and smile. Yes, there are freckles and a nose with a bold tip, but my eyes are nice and my teeth are straight, and though my cheeks are full, my jawline is strong. I’m not so bad, I remind myself.
The most important element of being a lady is posture and carriage
, I hear Miss Stoddard say in my ear. I stand up straight and let my shoulders fall naturally. This instantly lengthens my neck and I look better.

When I walk down the stairs, I’m careful not to clomp stomp, but skim the wooden stairs silently, like a dancer. When Miss Stoddard walks between the school desks, you never hear her feet hit the floor; she swishes past and you get the clean scent of sweet peaches as she goes.

“Aren’t you pretty!” Elena claps her hands together when she sees me as I enter the kitchen. “Here.” Elena reaches into her hair and pulls out a pink satin ribbon. She arranges it in my hair, then points to my reflection in the glass of the pantry door. “You’re a beauty.”

“Thank you, Elena.”

“It’s the little things that make such a difference,” she says, fixing a curl over my ear.

Mama lines us up and gives each of us a quick kiss, then rattles off the instructions of how we will serve the meal. Besides pouring drinks and otherwise serving our guests, there’s a big buffet table near the table we set, and Mama wants us to replenish it whenever we see an empty platter. She hands Dianna the basket of hot bread. I grab a clean cloth to serve the rolls.

Papa comes from the barn with the men, a laughing army, pleased with themselves after a day of hard work well done. They gather around the table, filling the long benches on either side. Papa loves to have company, especially male company. It must be so hard for him,
surrounded by girls all the time. I know he wishes he had a son to take over the farm. We do our best to help him, but on days like this, it must be particularly difficult, as most of the men bring their sons along.

Papa stands at the head of the table, gives his guests a word of thanks for their help, and invites them to take their plates to the buffet table and fill them. The men make a line down either side of the table without breaking their conversation for a second. They return to the table and sit, chatting in Italian mixed with English. Dianna and I stand by to serve the bread.

Papa winks at us, our cue to serve, so we start with the first man to his right. The man is making Papa laugh; he has a handlebar mustache and big hands. Dianna holds the basket as I place the roll on the end of his plate.