“So?”
“I went to church, Zia Rachela. I needed to go.”
“What? Church? You went to Saint Leonard’s to ask forgiveness for the fight with your cousin? That’s fast.”
“No. Not for forgiveness, and not to Saint Leonard’s either. Oh, Zia Rachela!” It was just too much. Innie felt her eyes fill, and she couldn’t stop the tears from pouring out. She put her head down on the table.
She felt her aunt’s hand rubbing her back gently. After a moment she sat up. “I did fight with Teresa, and I’m sorry. I picked the fight on purpose. I didn’t want her to come with me.”
“Why not?”
“I went over to Saint Francis’ Church, in Charlestown, where they wouldn’t know me. I had questions, and if I asked at Saint Leonard’s, everybody would find out. They’d laugh.”
“This sounds important.”
“Just to me,” Innie whispered. Then she stared at the rough tabletop and told her aunt about the promising, and what the priest had said. As Innie talked, Zia Rachela slid her chair closer and took hold of Innie’s hand.
“All this time, you worry about becoming a Sister?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t ask anybody?”
“Who could I ask? Nonna’s the one who promised me away. I know what she wants.”
“Nonna, your grandmother … she scares you sometimes?”
Innie nodded. “Sometimes.”
“That I understand. She scares me sometimes too. So strong. So sure.”
Innie turned and studied her aunt’s face. The kindness in her eyes made Innie sorry she’d caused trouble today.
“You could ask me your questions, bambina. I would find you answers. Good answers.”
Innie shrugged. “You’re busy. You have your own family.”
“And you are not my family? Innocenza Maria Moretti! You are not the child of my body, no. But bella mia—you are the child of my heart. My own girls and boys, I love them, yes. Each one is beautiful to me. But you—with your brave heart and all alone in the world—you I love in a special way.”
Zia Rachela’s arms came around Innie and held her tight. Innie didn’t even try to hold her tears inside. She just let go and let herself be surrounded by those warm, loving arms.
A few minutes later, after the crying stopped, Innie pulled away. “I need to talk to Teresa. To explain.”
“Yes, you do. But you don’t have to tell your secrets if you don’t want. Just say you needed to speak to the priest about some serious matters, and you didn’t know how to explain. She will understand. My Teresa, she has a good heart.”
Yes, she does, Innie thought. She smiled at her aunt. Just like you.
Friday, Innie felt tired, but a good kind of tired. Teresa had forgiven her and not asked nosy questions. Even better, she’d agreed to join Innie and Matela in the search for the thief.
In school, Innie worked her arithmetic carefully and rechecked each problem. One good thing at a time, she decided. That was hard enough. After school, she and Teresa hurried home to find out how Carmela’s citizen hearing had gone. Zia Rachela was smiling, and she put them to work right away in the kitchen.
That evening, the Morettis celebrated. There was so much food, Innie thought, it would take a week to eat it all. Zio Giovanni poured glasses of sweet vermouth for a toast.
Buona fortuna! Molta felicità! Per cent’anni! Happiness for a hundred years.
Wow! A hundred years. Innie couldn’t imagine such a long time. She and Teresa got half-glasses of vermouth, which they raised to honor Carmela. She looked even more beautiful than usual today, wearing her blue suit with a gardenia in her lapel. She looked as stylish as those Yankee ladies, Innie decided. And why not, now that she was American too?
“Thank you, thank you.” Carmela smiled at everybody, even Innie. She won’t be smiling when she hears they kicked me out of the settlement house, Innie thought. But maybe she won’t have to know. If we catch the thief tomorrow night …
“So the questions from the judge, are they hard?” Zio Giovanni asked as they began their soup. “You studied those books every night.”
“Yeah,” Antonio said. “You gonna stop stomping around the house and slamming doors now, Miss American Citizen?”
Carmela made a face at him. “We got three American citizens here now.” She waved three fingers at him. “All girls. When are you boys gonna catch up? I’ll give you lessons so you can be smart like us.” Carmela took Teresa’s and Innie’s hands in hers and squeezed.
“Sure, sure.”
Innie grinned. The laughter around the table warmed her as much as the rich chicken soup did, and she liked having Carmela brag about her for once. “Good times for the Moretti family,” she said. “Uncle finds a building and Carmela makes a citizen.”
The table went silent. Innie looked around. “What?” she asked. “What did I say wrong?”
Zio Giovanni cleared his throat. “The news on my building, it isn’t so good.”
“What happened? Did somebody else buy it?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s all the papers.” He stood and reached for a thick stack of papers from a shelf by the window. Zia Rachela took away the soup plates and brought pasta with meat sauce. Zio Giovanni tossed the papers into the middle of the table.
“Papers, papers,” her uncle complained. “In America a man can choke on papers.”
Zia Rachela explained. “All those pages. Laws about buying property. All in English. Your uncle and me, we don’t read English so good.”
Zio Giovanni interrupted. “How can I sign papers I don’t understand? I show the papers to Benito, to Mario. But it’s no good. So many long, complicated words, even my sons get mixed up. At the Italian Benevolent Society, the man says hire a Yankee lawyer, but I say no. I don’t trust my business to some stranger.”
Innie couldn’t believe her ears. Her dreams of a fancy house with a big white bathtub were stuck in a pile of papers. “There must be something we can do.”
“Oh, yeah,” Antonio interrupted. “Innie the big shot. She’s gonna read all those hundred-dollar words. She’s gonna fix Papà’s business.”
Innie sat up straighter and looked her uncle right in the eye. “I can’t fix your business. But somebody can.” She turned and pointed. “Carmela. She read all those books for her citizen hearing. And I saw the pages—full of hundred-dollar words. Carmela could read your papers.”
The table exploded in shouts. “What, a girl?” “Stupid!”
Nonna scowled at Innie. “You, hush. Little girls have no place in such talk.”
“That’s not true, Nonna,” Carmela said. She threw an arm around Innie. “She’s got a good idea. Papà, could I help? Anything I can’t understand, I can look up. I did plenty of that for the hearing.”
Zia Rachela smiled. “Giovanni, how about it? Will you let Carmela help? She’s American now, remember.”
“So what, now I got an American partner?” He frowned and pointed his finger at Carmela. “You read my papers, maybe. But you don’t run the business.”
“I don’t want to, Papà. I like painting pottery.”
“You run the business, Giovanni,” Zia Rachela said. “But when the business and the family grow so big we need to buy the building next door to that shop, I’m gonna be the next American partner. Starting tomorrow, Carmela’s gonna teach me to read English. If you’re smart, Giovanni, you’ll study too.”
“What, you want us all to be American, Mama?” Benito asked.
“We’re here, aren’t we? So, yes, we’ll be an American family.”
“Not me,” Nonna said in a firm voice. “I’m born Italian and I’ll die Italian.”
Zia Rachela smiled gently. “Yes, Mama. I understand. So we’ll be what then? An Italian family with an American business? We’ll make lots of American money. Is that good enough?”
“Good enough,” Nonna agreed.
Then Zia Rachela brought out a fancy cake decorated with fruit a
nd nuts, and she gave everyone double helpings of the sweet cassata.
Afterward, as the women and girls cleaned the kitchen, Zia Rachela took Innie aside. “You had a good idea, bambina. Your uncle may not come out and say the words, but I know he’s grateful. He’s bragged to all his friends about this building of his, and if he doesn’t buy it, he’ll lose face. Grazie.”
“All this American talk, though, it upsets Nonna,” Innie said.
Zia Rachela nodded. “Most of her life, she lived in Italy, and her memories are there. Change is a struggle. But we’ll be kind to her. Besides, the North End is full of old people from the old country. She has many friends to remember the old days with.”
“How about you, Zia Rachela? Will it be hard for you?”
“The studying, sure. But I’m ready. Too long, I’ve felt like some bridge. Nonna in the old country, my children in the new, me in the middle, not belonging to either place. So now it’s decided. I’m going to belong to America.”
“I’ll help you study,” Innie promised. “I’ll bring home books, lots of books, and read out loud to you.”
Then Innie remembered—she couldn’t borrow those books unless the ladies let her back into the library club. She had to find the thief to prove her innocence. If she didn’t, she couldn’t help her aunt.
Tonight had been a celebration, but now Innie was feeling sour. Oh, why did everything have to be so complicated, she wondered. Why couldn’t life be as sweet as Zia Rachela’s fruit-covered cassata?
CHAPTER 13
MIDNIGHT
The streets were nearly deserted on Saturday night as Innie and Teresa crept up the sidewalk toward the Old North Church.
As they neared the church, the steeple clock slowly began to chime the hour. Bong. Bong. Bong. Innie and Teresa hurried past the church and the wall of the burying ground. At the stroke of midnight, they stood at the tall iron gates and peered in. After the tolling of the bell, a hush fell on the graveyard. The skin on Innie’s arms tingled.
“Matela? Matela, are you here?”
No answer.
“Innie, should we go home? It’s so dark and so cold.”
Innie breathed in the chill salt air and wrestled with her conscience. Here she was trying to be good, and at the very same time starting another something bad. But the sooner they caught the thief, the sooner she could be all-the-time good. What was a night’s worth of mischief compared to that?
“Button your coat, Teresa. Feel how quiet the night is. We’ve never been out so late except for Christmas Eve.”
Innie felt Teresa shiver beside her.
“Shh. Footsteps.” Innie ducked inside the gates of the burying ground, pulling Teresa along. They peered out, watching the sidewalk. Across the street, the settlement house looked quiet and dark except for a faint glow from the basement windows. The light seemed dimmer than before, so pale that if a person weren’t looking for it, she might not notice. But Innie was looking. The thief was inside.
“Someone’s coming,” Teresa whispered. “Looks like Matela.”
Innie and Teresa crept out to the sidewalk, and Matela rushed toward them. “Good. You come already. No waiting.”
“The thief’s already there. Look, lights.” Innie pointed to the basement windows. Matela nodded.
As silent as shadows, the three girls made their way across the burying ground toward the harbor, keeping to the grass so their shoes wouldn’t make noise on the path. They crested the hill and carefully climbed down the other side and over the stone wall. Edging along the damp, slippery stones of the pier, they soon saw the pair of rotting wood posts that marked the tunnel entrance.
“Ready?” Innie scratched one of Nonna’s kitchen matches on the stone wall. Its flare cast a glimmer on the dark, lapping water. Innie lit her candle and held it out so the others could light theirs. Then they stepped between the posts into the tunnel.
As before, Matela led the search party, with Teresa safely in the middle and Innie at the end. Inside the tunnel, it shouldn’t have made a difference that night had come, but somehow it did. Noises seemed to echo; their footsteps sounded like giants’ instead of girls’. And the rotting smell grew worse the farther into the tunnel they crept.
Innie had to force herself to keep going, to keep walking into the darkness. They’d gone perhaps a third of the way when she had to slow down and duck to keep from bumping her head on a low part of the dirt ceiling. She thought she heard a faint sound, like a dropped stone, somewhere behind her. “Shh,” she warned the others. “Walk quieter.”
She turned and held up her candle, but saw nothing in the shadowy darkness. She tried to shake off her unease and hurry along.
At a curve in the tunnel, Innie stood silent for a moment. They had to be under the burying ground now. Innie felt her heart beat faster just thinking about it. But she didn’t dare lose courage. She kept walking, staying close to Teresa. Nobody spoke.
When the tunnel straightened again, Innie put her hand out to touch Teresa’s arm. They had to be under the street now, nearing the house. If the tunnel door was open, their lights would soon show. They took several more steps, then Matela stopped.
“Now,” Matela whispered.
Innie blew out her candle. Matela did the same and then Teresa. They stood in blackness, trying to let their eyes adjust. Innie’s heartbeat drummed in her ears. She inched forward, feeling along the damp dirt wall with her left hand. She felt rather than heard Matela stop. Crowding close to the others, she reached out, and her fingers brushed lightly against wood. The old door.
Matela’s counting was more a breath than a whisper—“One, two, three …” She twisted the knob and pulled. The door swung open.
The kiln room stood in darkness. The only light came from the basement hallway. Innie blinked. At first she saw nothing unusual. Then, as she looked more closely, she spotted a dark shape on the floor next to the kiln. Could it be the thief?
The three girls tiptoed forward until they stood in a circle around a sleeping form. Innie’s breath whooshed out of her chest. It was a girl after all. And she had to be the thief because she was wrapped up in a nice-looking shawl, while the rest of her clothes were tattered and filthy. Her light brown hair hadn’t been brushed in a long time, and what Innie could see of her face was smudged.
“What do we do now?” Teresa was staring so hard at the girl, it made Innie want to step back.
“We wake her up maybe?” Matela whispered.
“I guess so.” Innie made no move toward the sleeping girl. It didn’t seem right, somehow, even if she was the thief, to sneak up on her while she was sleeping.
Matela reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder, shaking it gently. “Hello, you.”
The girl jumped and sat up right away. “What? Who? Oh dear heavens!” She pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Matela stepped toward the doorway and switched on the electric bulb. With better light, Innie studied the girl’s face—thin, with a pointed chin, and hair more red than brown.
“Who—who are you?” The girl’s voice was high and soft, and scared.
Well, she ought to be scared, Innie decided. She’s a thief. She took a step forward. “I’m Innie Moretti. Who are you?”
“Why do you come here?” Matela asked sternly.
The girl by the kiln wouldn’t look at them. She hid her face in her hands, and Innie could see her shoulders shaking. Judging by the girl’s size, Innie guessed she wasn’t much older than they were.
“Please don’t cry. Maybe we can help.” Teresa knelt next to the strange girl.
“Who are you?” Innie repeated. “What’s your name?”
The girl sniffed. “I’m Katie—Kathleen Mulrooney.”
“You’ve been staying here, haven’t you? Taking things?”
The girl looked at them for a long moment. “Aye, I had no place else to go.” She looked down. “I only took what I needed to live—a bit of food, a couple of dishes. A … a few coins. I mean
to pay it all back soon, truly I do.”
“Why do you come here?” Matela asked. “How do you find this tunnel?”
“Please tell us, Katie,” Teresa added.
Innie didn’t understand how Teresa could be so polite to this thief who had caused them so much trouble. But it seemed to work. Katie’s shoulders relaxed a bit.
“It’s a long story, it is,” she said softly. “I came to America three months past. I had a fine job too, didn’t I? Maid in a fancy house, and I was earning good wages. Good enough so I’d put some by to bring me sisters and me mum to America one day. Then that terrible fire started …”
Innie stiffened. “The Chelsea fire?” For a moment, she saw again the smoke billowing over the harbor, heard the booming explosions.
Katie nodded.
“What happened?” Teresa asked softly.
“The grand house burned, didn’t it? Right down to the stones. Everybody ran off with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Thousands of people there were, all over Chelsea, running from the fire. I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find the missus or the mister anywhere. I searched for two days and two nights. Finally, I came here.”
“How do you know about the tunnel?” Matela asked.
“Ah, our cook, she was one for the stories. She liked to scare us is what, always talking about dark places and spiderwebs. When she was a child, she lived here, in the North End. She and her friends used to play in the tunnel, she said. Liked to hide from folks. Once on my half day, I persuaded her to show me.”
Teresa leaned closer. “So when the fire burned down the house …”
“I came to the tunnel, aye. I knew I’d be dry at least. And then I found that the tunnel led here, to this fancy cooker.” She reached out and touched the brick kiln lightly. “When it’s turned on, it’s warmer than the outside. So sure, I stayed.”
“But you must not take things here,” Matela added. “Other people, they get in trouble.” She glanced at Innie.
Katie turned to Innie, then looked down. “I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble. But I was so cold, and so hungry. I’ve done wrong, I know, but I am sorry …”
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