To Benedetta’s credit, she did watch, for a full minute in that elongated world. Mamma’s Big Ben tick-tick-ticked away. The old man’s did, too. Fairy lights played across the far wall, as they had when I first hung the curtain. Benedetta squinted. She jutted her head forward. “Is that a map?”
It was.
“Of the neighborhood?”
Yes.
“And what are all those circles? Isn’t that our house in the middle? Right where we live? What does it mean?”
Yes, yes, yes, and, “Those are the boundaries, day to day, of that . . . bubble I was telling you about.”
Meanwhile, the curtain did not refasten any flaps, did not flutter on the rod. I tugged on it. It stayed as it had been. Did not move. Did not adjust. Did not do a thing to prove itself to Benedetta.
Benedetta stretched her neck, moving it to one side, then the other. “Carlo is in my apartment, helping the boys roll pasta. Brush your hair, wash your face. Join us.”
“But—”
“But nothing. The Lattanzis were sick. They died. Lots of people have died from this sickness. You want to believe they lasted so long because of your . . . bubble, fine. I understand. I think they came so close to recovery because you took such good care of them.” She put up a hand. “Enough. I have ten loaves ready and another two in the oven. My back aches, my feet hurt. Two musketeers can’t do the work of three. So pull yourself together, Fiora Vicente, because Carlo and I can’t—”
A fairy light winked out. Then another. And another. The room darkened. Benedetta turned, gaze glued to Mamma’s curtain. One flap, then the next, covered over its grommet, moved by an unseen force. Electricity filled the air, the hairs lifted on the back of my neck. And the curtain again projected the market onto the ceiling slope.
I expected Benedetta to scream, or to cry, or maybe to do like I did the first time I saw the curtain show its bag of tricks and make a dash for the stairs. But all Benedetta did was point to the projection.
Two upside-down women crossed the market, one tall and thin, the other short and thick. Dressed in solemn suits and sensible shoes, they looked respectable enough to hand out Votes for Women pamphlets. They wore pins in their lapels and one carried a briefcase; the only item missing was a sign tacked to their foreheads, OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY.
They headed our way.
Benedetta’s hand flew to her chest. “I know these ladies. They’re from the Children’s Bureau. I—I saw them when they came to talk to the don about you, and—”
“Wait. How did you know that?”
“People talk, Fiora. My goodness, who needs a fortune-teller? Everybody knows everything about everybody. And one of them must have contacted the Children’s Bureau about the boys.” She grabbed my arm. “You said five minutes, correct?”
Yes. Five minutes. To move the boys, make up a reason why they weren’t here, and another to convince the bureau they didn’t need to return. Five minutes. Five elongated, bubble-length minutes.
I glanced to Mamma’s clock, tick-ticking away. Four minutes now.
Nineteen
“Carlo. Carlo, Carlo, Carlo.”
We pounded on Benedetta’s door. The boys were elbow deep in flour.
We dusted them off. “Quick. Hats and coats for the boys.” Rapid explanations.
And Carlo keeping an eye out the window. “How can you know the Children’s Bureau is coming when they are nowhere to be found?”
My every instinct grasped for some explanation that would be reasonable. And found none.
Benedetta wiped at jam on the edge of Etti’s mouth. “Carlo. She’s a fortune-teller.”
Bless her. “Take them to the park maybe. Anywhere.” I shoved bread into Carlo’s pocket. “In case they get hungry. Where’s the old man?”
“Gone for a walk.”
“The doctor told him to stay put.”
“He feels confined.” Carlo waved a hand. “Everything is so . . . compressed.”
“Like when Mamma keeps the lid on the soup.” Etti piped up from the depth of his scarf. “Do I have to wear this? It’s hot.”
Carlo rewrapped the scarf, a little looser. “Keep it around your mouth and nose, little man. Your mamma would want you to. We are going out in disguise. Do you know what a disguise is?”
Etti nodded. He looked around the room. “Can Mamma see us?”
Fipo wound his scarf so tight, it should have cut off his breath. But . . . no such luck. “Mamma can’t see us. She’s dead. So is Poppa. We have to leave, or we can’t stay with Signora Bruni.”
I thought Etti would cry. Thought he would crumble into a ball, wrap himself away from the rawness of Fipo’s truth. He didn’t. He took Fipo’s hand. “All right.”
Carlo headed for the door. “How long should I keep them?”
“An hour, maybe two. I don’t know.”
Benedetta shooed them down the stairs. “If the door is ajar, stay away. I’ll close and lock it after the ladies leave.” She peered across the market. “Go. Go.”
Carlo stepped off the stoop.
I put my hands on his shoulders and turned him around. “The other way.”
They were gone.
Benedetta and I closed the door after them. We locked it. We held hands, backing up one step, then another, the front door transformed to every monster we’d ever feared. We ticked down the seconds. Waiting.
Somebody knocked. A polite, but officious ratta-tat-tat, the kind of sound the Reverend Mother made when she wanted to get our attention.
I don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe a deep and ominous thud, one that echoed off the walls and resonated down my spine. A thud weighty enough to match the drama of the last five minutes.
I smacked my forehead. “Don’t answer. The boys’ things. What if they check the apartment?” I ducked into the Lattanzis’ and went through the boys’ clothes. Nightshirts, socks, shirts, and caps. Books and toys, and the rubber band–propelled airplane. Into a box.
The knock came again.
I left the apartment and scooted across the landing, box in hand.
The knock came a third time.
Benedetta gave me a hurry-up-hurry-up wave. I pulled open the door to the basement.
And kicked the box into its murky depths.
I turned . . .
. . . and caught the cuff of my shirtwaist, the cuff I hadn’t bothered to button while alone in my attic, the cuff that flapped as I moved, in the deadbolt.
I twisted, wrangling my wrist back and forth, up and down and around, keeping an ear for Benedetta.
“Hello, may I help you?” Muffled words from somebody on the outside. I imagined Benedetta holding the door open as had the landlord, so only the smallest rectangle showed, and doing her best to keep the sound of my efforts to liberate my sleeve from being heard. Then Benedetta spoke in Italian, fast and loud enough for me to hear. “Fiora Vicente? She left a few days ago. Our neighbor died and she was distraught.” She switched to English and repeated herself. I peeked from under the stairwell, as had the boys, the first day I met them, the day they left their airplane on the bottom tread of the stairs and told me they planned to fly their airplane to Oz.
Benedetta waved her hand behind her back, a silent and emphatic Go. Hide. I shrank back to the basement steps. Closed the door. And pressed my ear to the keyhole.
The latch clicked.
“Yes, of course. Please. Come in. I don’t understand, why would anybody make a report? Signorina Vicente has been doing well. Very busy in the neighborhood. People love her.”
One of the Children’s Bureau ladies spoke. I had no idea which, but I imagined it was the thin one, her voice high and tense, like a clothesline in the wind. I didn’t catch the words, but Benedetta’s answer, again loud enough for me to hear, filled in the blanks. “Oh no, the boy’s injury was not serious. He is already recovered, from what I understand. They went to live with their aunt. In Coatesville.”
More talking, this time I presumed from the sho
rt and thick one. Her voice was even quieter, with rounded syllables that made English sound smooth and refined.
Then Benedetta. “The boys will be fine. I plan to take them myself. I’m their cousin. We are all from the same village, but, as you can see I will be . . . how do you say? Indisposed. So just until things settle here. Then I will get them and fill out all the proper paperwork.”
“She’s in there. Go upstairs and search.” A fresh voice spoke from a farther distance, harsh and hateful. “Go on. Find the little witch and take her to the orphanage. She can help you there. Here, she is nothing but trouble. We will not—”
“Which of you called the Children’s Bureau?” Benedetta cut through the troublemaker. “Which of you has been so ungenerous toward a house of grief?”
Silence.
“I see how brave you are when you have to own up to your actions. Please, feel free to wait on our stoop. Don Sebastiano will be back later. Perhaps he will have questions, and perhaps you will not be so quick with your comments.”
I could see her in my mind’s eye, standing straight, and valiant, staring down the crowd, unafraid.
One of the Children’s Bureau ladies spoke. I think the tall, thin one, a long stream of which I understood nothing except, “. . . police.”
I clutched the stair rail, blind to the discussion not twenty feet away, wishing, when Benedetta waved me away, I’d gone up to my attic, instead of down to the basement. I could be watching from Mamma’s curtain, would already know what would happen five minutes hence. Maybe I could have entered the curtain world, made my way to the back edge of the crowd, deflected their attention, drawn them off.
I felt for the tread and sat.
And kicked the box, the box with the boys’ things, the box I’d tossed down the stairs seconds after the third knock on the door, the box which, I realized after I kicked it, I hadn’t tossed all the way down the stairs. Because when I kicked the box just that moment, there, in the dark, the box tumbled the rest of the way.
It bumped. It thumped. It rattled. It clattered. It shook and it shimmied. It clanged and it banged.
For what felt like forever.
I hung on to the rail, ready to run, ready to do battle, ready to go stand with Benedetta and dare the Children’s Bureau, dare the crowd to make me go anywhere, make me do anything, make me feel bad about my mother, my station, my life. I was Fiora Vicente, Rosina Vicente’s daughter. And I did not scare easily.
The door to the basement opened. A figure blocked the light. Maybe the short and thick Children’s Bureau lady with the melodious voice, and an official paper that would send me to an orphanage.
I screeched.
The figure blocking the light jumped, and I saw she wasn’t the short, thick lady from the orphanage. She was Benedetta, hand clapped over her heart. “What are you hollering for? What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? I’ve been here in the dark. I thought the Children’s Bureau lady said something about the police.”
“Oh. That.” She swept her hand downward. “I drew this for them.”
She pulled a paper from under her waistband, written over in Italian. Some kind of chart with boxes and arrows.
I examined the chart. “This says I’m your cousin on your mother’s mother’s side. And Signora Lattanzi’s niece on your father’s side.” I didn’t actually know anything about my ancestry, and this would explain even more Signora Lattanzi’s willingness to help me. “Am I? Related, I mean.”
She giggled. “Not at all. But the Children’s Bureau thinks you are. And that’s enough for them for now.”
“What if they come back?”
“They won’t. They think you’re in Coatesville with the boys. Good thing my aunt has a lot of bedrooms. It’s getting pretty crowded up there.”
“So now what? I walk around with my scarf wrapped around my head, too?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She took hold of my hand and crushed my fingers, every angle of her face crowding toward its center.
Pain, crampy and complete, took a direct route from her fist and clutched at my midsection. “Oh no. Oh no no no. You’re not. Not now, I mean.”
“Shut up. Be calm. We have to think. Because this baby is finally coming.”
Twenty
The booklet. The booklet. What did I do with the doctor’s booklet?
I upended boxes, shoved fabric piles aside, scrabbled in every corner of the old man’s attic.
Think. Think. What did it say? But all that came to me were the illustrations, exaggerated in panicked impossibleness—the woman, trussed up like a bird on the spit and the baby inside, expanded by my frenzy to the size of a six-year-old.
I hadn’t read the booklet. Not really, but for one set of words flashing past during the time I’d paged through it with the old man. “Be calm. Childbirth is a natural phenomenon and if you approach it in a rational manner, there is no reason to presume you or the baby will come to harm.”
Harm.
Harm.
I was so stupid to tell Benedetta about the bubble, stupid to think it’d be fine. Stupid to feel safe, to feel happy. My own rising spirits had brought this on. Relaxed the bubble enough to let the baby progress, started his outward path. I needed help, needed reassurance, needed somebody, anybody to tell me everything I did in the next seconds, and minutes, and hours, would be the right thing.
I dropped to my knees.
And looked under the bed.
The booklet. Covered in dust bunnies.
Thank you, Jesus.
I dragged the booklet out and paged through, reading by the light cast by the projection.
Another sentence surfaced. “While many women deliver healthy babies in the home, with modern scientific methods hospital delivery is safest and best.”
Relief took hold of my heartbeat and calmed it to a canter.
Hospital. Yes. Of course.
I’d do like the booklet said. I’d be calm. I’d . . . wait for the old man, maybe. Hope Carlo didn’t decide to keep the boys all day. Once the contraction passed, Benedetta had looked all right. She’d know if it were close. Know if anything were trying to come out . . . down there.
I stared at the map, hanging on the ceiling slope, the hospital still stubbornly situated outside the last red concentric border. How fast did babies come?
Something thudded downstairs, heavy and insistent and sounding like it wanted my attention. “Fiora.”
Okay. Pretty fast. Off the edge of the projection, the trolley rolled into view, heading toward its upside-down stop.
Five minutes.
I didn’t wait to see if I saw myself boarding, saw myself helping Benedetta board with me. I grabbed my coat, grabbed my scarf, and headed downstairs, near somersaulting through gravity that seemed to evaporate in my eagerness.
To get Benedetta going. Get myself going with her. Make sure that baby was born safely, and securely. And anywhere but there.
Benedetta held to the doorjamb, her face white, making little panting sounds. I put on my mask, then wrapped another around her head. She pulled at it. I took her hand away. “Stop. You have to wear it. They won’t let you board the trolley without it.”
She grabbed my collar, twining her finger through a buttonhole. “Trolley. Are you crazy? I can’t go on the trolley.”
“You have to. We must. Nobody is here. I don’t know how to help you.” I thought of her aunt, Don Sebastiano’s reasons for not wanting Benedetta to go there. “You can’t give birth here, not so close to a death.”
Her face went still, her lips grim. Her grip tightened, her knuckles pressing painfully on the front of my throat.
I swallowed. And did a mental countdown. “Now you listen to me, Benedetta. The trolley will be here in two minutes. We have to go.”
I’d only had my own cycle five times at that point. I barely understood how a baby got inside a woman, much less how I was supposed to get one out. I pulled the booklet from my pocket and held it up. �
�Unless you think you can talk me through this.”
She buttoned her coat, and we made a slow, lumbering progress to the trolley stop. The market was near empty, the excitement on our stoop, over. A lady sweeping her sidewalk made a harrumphing kind of sound. “I understand Coatesville is very nice this time of year.” Then she walked into her house and shut the door.
Did streets echo? Before the influenza, even in the hour before dawn, I’d have said no. Life takes up space. Even when bundled into its bed at night, it perfuses the air, its pulse loud in the silence, unheard, but not unsensed.
The trolley rumbled to its stop, the car crowded. We boarded, working our way to a space by a window, yet the trolley felt empty, the passengers sapped of hope, skin-wrapped skeletons caught up in a pestilence-riddled nightmare, waiting their turn to meet the reaper.
I let go of the handhold, shaky, my impression strong. We were weeks into this sickness, the rates of infection, of death, reported in the newspaper daily, but little advice given. Public buildings were closed; businesses struggled to keep working. The war churned toward its end, working out its last bloody battles, and the government was determined nothing would slow that final push, no army, no philosophy, and certainly no germ.
I stood protectively between Benedetta and the rest of the passengers.
The trolley slowed, the wheels dragging on the rails. The pressure gathered. We were close to the edge, close to the place on the old man’s map where the concentric circles grew thinner, compressed by a barrier exasperated by despair, and formidable enough to perhaps make supply trucks move a block onward, take a different route for their delivery, find a more convenient way around, a subtle circumscription, unnoticed in the chaos caused by the influenza.
Benedetta’s face grew red. Sweat broke on her brow. She clamped a handhold, eyes squeezed shut, and moaned. “I can’t.”
I stood straighter. Can’t? “Can’t what?”
Benedetta groped for the rope, signaled a stop. “Let me off. Move. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
The Infinite Now Page 16