Elizabeth Street (4 page)

Maria Perrino groaned. Her mother absentmindedly patted her head and continued her diatribe. “L’America’s worse than a cheap whore, a
mala femmina
, who lures away our men.”

Giovanna and Signora Scalici tuned her out as they prepared the room for the birth. Giovanna had heard Maria’s mother give this speech before. Maria’s father was one of the first to go to America. Initially, he had sent the family a letter with money each month; now it was once a year at best. After Lorenzo emigrated, the Costas’ fish store had become one of the primary places for women who had already lost their husbands and sons to America to come and commiserate with one another. In their minds, the Statue of Liberty was not lifting her lamp, but her skirts. She was l’America’s Scylla, a beauty beckoning from a rock in the water. And she was going to devour them.

Not getting a reaction, Maria’s mother asked Giovanna a question. “Have you heard from Maestro Nunzio in Rome?”

Giovanna nodded. “Last week,” she said, and continued scrubbing her hands while Signora Scalici tended to the young woman. Giovanna no longer apprenticed; she delivered the firstborns and Signora Scalici delivered the children of women she had already helped birth. Today was different. Signora Scalici had asked her to come knowing it was going to be a difficult delivery.

“And what of Lorenzo? Has he married that girl he met in New York?” The mother interrogated Giovanna while she dried her hands.

“Next month they’ll marry.”

“Lorenzo Costa marrying a girl from Puglia.” The woman clucked her tongue. “L’America is diluting Calabrese blood.”

Giovanna wished the Signora would shut up and pay more attention to her laboring daughter.

“The head’s to heaven,” whispered Signora Scalici to Giovanna. “I’ve tried to turn the baby for weeks. We’ll have to deliver it breech.”

The mother fluttered around the room commanding her daughter, “You need to push more. Be strong.”

“Signora,” directed Signora Scalici, “we need more belladonna. Can you get it?”

“Sì, sì, of course.” Maria’s mother swept out on her mission, heading to the
farmacia
. The request for belladonna would be the pharmacist’s cue to keep the meddling mother occupied and out of the way for as long as possible.

The young woman calmed when her mother left. “Maria,” Signora Scalici spoke directly in her ear, “we must do this together. Lean on Giovanna and follow her directions.”

Giovanna braced her body against Maria’s back and held her beneath the arms. At the next contraction, Giovanna instructed, “A long push, make it long and slow.” Maria’s sweat-drenched hair was matted, and the veins in her neck and face looked as though they might break through her skin.

After a long hour of pushing, the baby’s culo emerged as Signora Scalici looped the cord around her finger to protect it from tangling. With Giovanna applying pressure to Maria’s lower pelvis, Signora Scalici reached in and unfolded the baby’s legs, drawing them out.

“Ah, as I thought, Maria, you have a girl.” Turning to Giovanna, she said, “We must quickly birth the head.”

Maria was exhausted. “Can’t we let her rest through the next contraction?” muttered Giovanna. Giovanna was still young and occasionally her empathy got the best of her.

“Clear the nose and mouth when you see them,” instructed Signora Scalici, ignoring Giovanna’s question. “
Forza
, Maria. We will soon see your child’s head.” Signora Scalici draped the baby’s body over her forearm and reached into Maria, putting her fingers into the baby’s mouth. The fingers of her other hand cradled the back of the baby’s neck.

“Push, Maria,” gently coaxed Giovanna. Maria no longer looked human; it was as if all the blood had drained from her face, into her eyes. The strain of pushing had broken all the blood vessels.

Signora Scalici lifted the lower half of the baby’s body upward. Maria pushed, the midwife pulled, and the nose and eyes emerged. Giovanna quickly wiped them.

“This is it, Maria, but a slow push this time.” Giovanna realized the cruelty of her words. This baby was only centimeters from being born, and the mother had to take it slow. But Maria listened, and in one slow, long push, the rest of her little girl’s head emerged.

“
Brava
, Maria!” exhorted Signora Scalici. Maria fell back on the pillows, panting and moaning.

Giovanna cleared the baby’s passages and laid her on her mother’s chest. All three women felt such relief that laughter accompanied their tears.

“Maria, they say that with a girl born backwards, the birth is the easiest part. She will be strong and stubborn. Look at Giovanna! When I delivered her, I was first introduced to her
culo
!”

They were soon quiet. Giovanna looked at Maria cradling her daughter. The baby was black and blue, Maria was covered in blood, and yet they looked beautiful. A peace descended in the room as the baby suckled for the first time. Giovanna’s thoughts turned to Nunzio. With his return imminent, she could not attend a birth without thinking of their children. Her faith in the future was strengthened as she imagined cradling Nunzio’s child. They would finally be inextricably bound and live forever in their generations.

Through scores of births, Giovanna would imagine birthing her own children, so when nearly a year had passed since marrying Nunzio and she had not become pregnant, Giovanna’s disappointment became all-consuming.

Nunzio and Giovanna sat on the edge of the cliff above the village and looked out at the moon-drenched sea. It was a night so clear and bright that it was timeless. This moment, too, was timeless. They were married adults in their late twenties, but two decades before, they had often sat in the exact same spot talking of their future while they devoured fresh cheese and bread that they had traded fish for. There was no longer cheese and bread, but they still dreamt.

While Nunzio wove fantastic plans that included wealth and status, Giovanna prayed that her self-diagnosis was wrong. She hadn’t menstruated in three months; she believed that this wasn’t because she was pregnant but because she was starving.

“You know, Giovanna, one day we will sit here and I will call you Doctor,” declared Nunzio.

This comment was so outrageous that it interrupted Giovanna’s thoughts, and she laughed.

“No, Giovanna, I mean it. When things change, I will work in the north for a few years while you go to school. We will come back to Scilla as a doctor and an engineer with our five little children.”

She almost laughed again, but she saw that Nunzio’s eyes had hardened, which meant he was serious, so she kept quiet. She loved planning the future with Nunzio, but this dream was impossible. She would be happy if their plans simply included no separations, food, and children.

“Giovanna, you will make the most wonderful doctor. When I was in school, I read about women who had done many things, and I even met a woman doctor. That’s when I thought my Giovanna could be a
dottore
. Why not?”

It was impossible for Giovanna to say anything, so she simply gazed at the sky. Were life not currently a contest for survival, it would have been unthinkable to hear a husband encouraging his wife to become a doctor. But in times of turmoil, tradition became a detail.

After their wedding, Nunzio was forced to travel to find work. He spent time in Reggio helping to build ships and went as far as Naples to oversee the construction of a dock. At first Nunzio and Giovanna considered moving to a city with more work, but it soon became clear that there wasn’t any city in the south with enough work to keep Nunzio employed more than a few days a month. In the north there were public works projects, but after five years in Rome he knew that, engineer or not, in the north he was still considered a southern peasant.

Within a few months there wasn’t even work in other cities. Nunzio would fish, but there was little to trade for the fish, and no one had the money to buy it in the store. To make matters worse, the sea’s bounty had diminished, and often they would return with barely a basket of fish to sell. Occasionally, the
glantuomini
—the gentry—walked into the fish store. Their felt hats set them apart from the villagers wearing worn wool caps. Giovanna cringed when they entered. Even though there would soon be coins in the coffers, she hated the manner in which she had to greet them, “
Vosia, sa benadica”—
“bless me, your honor.” She refused to kiss their hands as the others did. The gentry were in full control of the local government and the police. They made the laws, enforced the laws, and exempted themselves from them. Giovanna often heard the men in town end a story with, “
Chi ha denaro ed amicizia va nel culo della giustizia”
—“he who has money and friends fucks justice in the ass.”

Giovanna and Nunzio’s families survived on fish and the food and sundries that were given to Giovanna in exchange for delivering babies. But it was the money sent by Lorenzo from l’America that allowed them to keep their house and pay the taxes.

Giovanna knew they were better off than most. A year ago, she started to notice curious dents in the walls of houses she visited. The mystery was solved when she entered a home to check on a mother who had delivered a few days before and saw her scraping plaster from the wall and adding it to the little bit of flour on the table.

To keep them nourished, mothers breast-fed their children long after they would normally have been weaned. Giovanna watched as hungry people unconsciously stared at the breasts of nursing mothers, who would tug at their shawls to cover their chests as they walked quickly past.

“Giovanna, are you listening to me?” Nunzio took her chin in his hands and turned her face toward his own.

“Sì, sì,
scusa
, Nunzio, but before anything else, I want to have our children.”

Nunzio turned, dejected. “I know,” he whispered. This blow of reality changed his mood. They sat in silence for a long time. They could hear the water lapping up against the boats, could see the sea sparkle and smell the lemons in the air. They were being forced from the piece of heaven that their families had inhabited for generations.

“Giovanna, Scilla will always be our home and our children will marry here. I promise you this. Before we go to the north for your studies, I must get money to feed us and make things good again.”

Giovanna shivered. She knew where this conversation was going. The stars started to blur. The village where they traded food was totally empty. Immigration had started at the mountaintop and trickled down to the water. The fishermen were the last to go. Sometimes, Giovanna felt Scilla was hemorrhaging and would envision the town as her doomed friend, Francesca Marasculo. The blood had drained from the top to the bottom, and only a few were left behind clinging onto the dying village.

“It’s the twentieth century now, Giovanna. Things will change. They are changing all over the world; it is just coming more slowly to Scilla.”

Giovanna didn’t utter a sound.

“And engineers, the world needs engineers. I’ll come back to Scilla and build us a port.” Nunzio was using his big public voice.

At the words “come back,” a wail escaped from Giovanna. She pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock.

“Giovanna, I am sorry.” Tears streamed down Nunzio’s face. He tried to compose himself and reached into his pocket. “Look at this.” He pulled out a tattered piece of paper. It was an advertisement in English. “Lorenzo sent it.”

Giovanna’s eyes flashed anger at the betrayal. She knew Lorenzo thought he was helping, but how could he have done this?

Nunzio held the paper before her. He had learned some English in school, and he read it slowly to Giovanna.

“Giovanna, more than a dollar a day! That’s a wealth of lire! Lorenzo said he would help me. I’ll be back in no time with all the money we need.”

“Lorenzo also said he would be back.”

“Lorenzo’s wife is in l’America. Mine is here.” Nunzio kissed her.

They cried together for so long they were saturated in each other’s sorrow. When they could cry no longer, they tangled their long legs together and made love, adding sweat to their tears.

Giovanna prayed that Nunzio would leave her with a child. In the month before Nunzio left, Giovanna ate more than her share and uncharacteristically took all that was offered, hoping to make herself healthy enough to conceive. She focused all her energies on this project, which was a diversion from the constant pain and foreboding she was living with.

The preparations for Nunzio’s departure were similar to those for Lorenzo, except she was now the one packing the trunk instead of her mother. Giovanna made it a mechanical task. She gathered, sorted, and wrapped items as if she were leading a demonstration on how to pack for the New World. She especially wanted to be sure he had dried fruits and nuts. For years they had heard stories about the horrible passage to l’America. The immigrants considered it the penance they had to pay for leaving their villages. But penance or not, Giovanna was determined that Nunzio would not eat vermin-infested food.

The only time her emotions revealed themselves was when she was baking
mustasole,
the hard cookies that would keep for a year or more. She shaped three of the cookies: a swordfish for Scilla, one that resembled a pretzel but was really a
G
and an
N
intertwined, and a crucifix. Wrapping the special cookies separately in fabric torn from her wedding dress, she buried them in the bottom of the trunk.