When We Were Strangers

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

  When Father Anselmo came to inspect my work, he said he’d heard that Alfredo’s three cousins would join him soon in America. Two families from the next valley were going as well. Giovanni, the shoemaker’s son, had sent enough money from a place called Chicago to build a new house for his parents and buy back their fields. He said he’d be home in a year to court the landlord’s widow.

  “She wouldn’t refuse him now,” Zia muttered.

  “Perhaps Carlo will write from Cleveland,” I said. My father’s jaw twitched but he said nothing. We sat in silence as the fire spat.

  Father Anselmo watched me, my head bowed over the altar cloth. “Irma needs a husband.” He sighed. “But there’re hardly any young men left even in Pescasseroli with so many going to America. Did you hear? The mayor’s daughter is marrying Old Tommaso.” I gripped my needle. So what I heard at the well was true: no decent man wanted Anna now that her belly was swelling. If clubfooted Old Tommaso took her, the mayor would forgive his debts. Poor Anna, who was so beautiful that she might have had a doctor’s son.

  “Don’t worry,” said my father gruffly, “Irma’s fine.” Just then, I realized that since Carlo left, there had been no more talk of a husband for me. Could I not marry? Perhaps if the altar cloth was fine enough, Father Anselmo might recommend me to other priests in other towns. I pricked myself to keep from dreaming. What if my father died? I couldn’t sew and also keep sheep, and no single woman I knew, even in Pescasseroli, lived by her needle alone. But if I didn’t marry soon, who would want me when I was old and still wearing my mother’s clothes?

  “Keep sewing,” said Zia. “We’ll think of something.”

  I tried to imagine Carlo in America, but it was like searching out a sheep in a snowstorm. I could not picture my brother in a foreign land. Yet the word “America” tossed in my mind until it lost all sense and seemed merely strange, like the fruits that Father Anselmo said people ate far away: pineapple, coconuts and bananas.

  The winter crept on silently, my needle flying. At least we had light, but now candle flames glittered in my father’s eyes. When Carlo was with us, they both stared at the fire and smoked all evening. Now my father’s gaze fixed on me as I moved around the little room, dragging at my skirts like wet ferns in a forest. Carlo’s voice came drumming back: “You can’t stay here when I’m gone.”

  One night after dinner, my father lurched from his seat, as I lit the beeswax candles. He grabbed my wrist and snapped, “Rosa, get me Carlo’s wool shears.”

  “She’s not Rosa, old man, and it’s not shearing time,” Zia snapped.

  “Get them,” my father repeated.

  I went to our shelf. Carlo had been so proud of his shears, never trusting the journeyman knife sharpener, but honing them carefully and keeping them wrapped in soft wool. Carlo will come back—I had comforted myself all winter—if only for his shears. But I gave my father the woolen package and never saw the shears again. I heard he traded them at the tavern for half their worth in credit.

  One evening early in Lent, I had finished a piece of the altar cloth and was pressing it on our board while Zia Carmela dozed in her chair. My father came in from the tavern and stepped behind me. With a grunt, he pulled the warm cloth from the board and wrapped it around my shoulders. His rough hands grazed my breasts, then cupped them. “No!” I shouted. “Stop!” but stone walls swallowed my voice. He grabbed my dress. When I pulled back, the sleeve ripped like lightning sheering mountain air.

  “Come here, Rosa,” my father whispered hoarsely. “Show yourself off like a rich merchant’s wife.” I gripped a chair, burning with shame.

  Zia Carmela, groping, found the altar cloth and snatched it from my shoulders. “Ernesto! Go back in the tavern, you filthy goat. Leave Irma alone.”

  “Why can’t I see her in lace? She’s pretty.”

  “Stop it! The Lord’s watching you,” she shrieked.

  “Let Him watch!” My father hit the board so hard the iron fell, ringing on the stone hearth. Lunging, he yanked the altar cloth from Zia’s lap and wrapped it around me again, pushing into my breasts. He pulled me to our mirror hanging by the fire. “Look!” he commanded. “See? You’re pretty now!” My face in the cracked glass was white as frost on stone.

  “She’s ugly, Ernesto! Leave her alone!” Zia shouted, hitting my father with her walking stick. I twisted away and the altar cloth fell at my feet. Kicking it aside and dodging my father’s grasping hands, I shoved open our heavy plank door and stumbled into the street. Cold air burned my throat.

  Through the door I heard coughing, wood splintering and my father crying out, “What do you want from me, Carmela? You think I’m not a man?”

  “Irma!” Zia wailed, but I didn’t stop.

  I was running now, wood-soled shoes clattering on the stone streets: “Ugly, ugly,” and then: “You think I’m not a man?” My chest ached, my breasts burned. I stumbled to the stone bench outside the bakery, panting. For a blessed minute I felt only the slow easing of my chest and the gathering cold. Then words came spinning out like knives: Bread, how do I earn my bread? Ugly, how can I marry? Man, you think I’m not a man?

  Everyone in Opi knew of the woodcutter’s daughter who had lived with her father and lame mother. When the girl’s belly bulged and then flattened, people whispered that a babe had been smothered in birthing sheets and buried in secret, for it was an abomination. Why else was the girl found hanging from their roof beam, the weeping mother trying helplessly to pull her down and the father blind drunk, stumbling through the forest?

  Cold closed around me tighter than my cloak. Where could I go? If I knocked on any door, people would know my voice and take me in, welcoming yet curious, for no decent woman walked outside at night. But what would I say, what would they think and how would they look at me tomorrow? What would become of us all after I ruined my family’s name, and how could I face Zia if my own words tore bread from our mouths?

  I started back, dragging my fear like chains. I thought of my great-grandfather freezing in an enemy land. Before that Russian pitchfork nailed him to his death, he must have dreamed of home. Where else can one go for comfort? In the empty streets, wooden shutters rattled in the wind. Sounds leaked out: children crying, singing from some few houses, from others came moans and grunts of pleasure. I knew what happened at night and why young couples met in the thick bushes or dark streets, even in shadows behind the church. No, I vowed, not for me, never.

  Cold tore through my thin wool dress. If frostbite chewed my fingers, how could I sew? Outside our house I pressed my ear to the door. My father was snoring. I slipped into the house and then into the bed I shared with Zia. “Come close, Irma, you’re so cold,” she whispered, holding me like a child and stroking the ugly from my body.

  My father rose long before dawn, pulled on his cloak and ate his bread standing, his face turned away from us. When he had left the house and his steps faded into wind, Zia pulled me out of bed. “He needs a wife,” she announced.

  “Like old Tommaso? A girl half his age?”

  “No, not a girl, a woman. Assunta the baker’s widow is lonely. She and Ernesto used to go walking together, but then the baker spoke for her and Ernesto took up with your mother.” Nobody had ever told me this, not once in the long evenings. “Irma, you go buy some bread. I have to see Father Anselmo.” When I tried to protest that this was not our bread-buying day, she pressed a coin in my hand and pushed me firmly out the door.

  I went to the bakery. “Good morning, Signora Assunta,” I said, watching her sweep out crumbs for the birds that flocked our door each morning. “I’ll have one of your loaves with a light crust, please. My father says that with your fresh bread and his cheese, a prince himself could be content.” The Lord forgive this lie, my father never spoke of princes.

  “Ernesto said so? Here’s a nice one, Irma, warm from the oven. Give your father my regards.”

  “Thank you, Signora. I will.” Go on, I told myself. More. “He was saying just l
ast night what a good man your husband was, how hard it must have been to lose him.”

  “Yes, Matteo was good to us, God rest his soul.” We crossed ourselves.

  “And your daughters are gone too, Signora Assunta. Your house must feel so empty.” I gripped the loaf. “Ours too, since my mother died.” We crossed ourselves again. Assunta was not a bad woman, not grasping or sharp. She fed cripples and beggars with day-old bread, not stale crusts like the baker in Pescasseroli. She would be good for my father and good to Zia perhaps, but would she want another woman in her house? I pulled Carlo’s cloak around the loaf and held it to my chest. Customers were crowding in, calling impatiently for their loaves. I dropped my copper coin in the money box and slipped out the door.

  “Signora Assunta sends her regards,” I told my father at dinner. “She said she’s lonely now with her daughters gone.”

  “And that’s my affair?” my father snapped, but he chewed his bread more slowly. A week passed in silence. He still went to the tavern, but on Sunday afternoon he combed his hair, washed his face and hands, put on leather shoes and a good shirt and did not come home until evening. Our coins dwindled but at least we had peace.

  Father Anselmo came to our house to ask for an embroidered medallion on the cloth that would show altar boys where to set the communion chalice. I worked hard to make the circle perfect for this holy purpose. Then I started the border of leafy vines. As the days crept past, a catechism looped through my mind.

  Marry in Opi? No, for there are no men to wed.

  Marry in Pescasseroli? Who? Even if there was a man to wed me, for all my life I’d hear women whisper: “Opi mountain slut.”

  Stay with my father? And if he came after me again, if Zia wasn’t there?

  Live in Opi alone, unwed? How could I earn my bread? Who would help me in a hunger year?

  Call down death like the woodcutter’s daughter? I stared at the cross on our wall. Father Anselmo would not bury the girl in the churchyard, for by taking her own life she had damned her soul. The folds of the altar cloth ran over my legs like the hills around Opi. How could I live in these hills?

  Leave Opi? To die with strangers? The needle grooved a line in my thumb. “It is better to die alone than to live here like a beast,” Carlo once said. What of the two sisters from Calabria in Alfredo’s letter with the dry goods store and rooms to rent? But they had each other, they were not from Opi and did not bear the Vitale curse on those who leave our mountain.

  On the eighth night my father stood over me as I sewed, blocking my light. I worked in darkness until he left for the tavern. Then I pulled out my last stitches, for they were all ragged and wild. On the ninth morning Zia made me stay in bed. “What’s wrong with her?” my father demanded. “Why isn’t she up?”

  “Women’s sickness,” my Zia announced briskly. “You go buy the bread today.” He looked at us sharply. Only women bought the bread in our village. Besides, I was never sick. “It’s early, there’s nobody there yet,” Zia said quickly, handing my father his cloak.

  His eyes grazed the mirror as he ran a rough hand through his hair. “I’ll do it,” he said gruffly, “this once.”

  When my father came back with our loaf, larger than usual and very light, he and Zia ate in silence as I lay turned away to the wall. When he left for the fields I got up and set my chair in the doorway to finish the last bit of fringe. Zia’s knitting needles sat idle in her lap. “Are you sick, Zia?” I asked finally. “Do your eyes hurt?”

  “No, they’re just tired. Go on. You could finish today.” Early that afternoon I did finish. Together we cleaned our table carefully and laid the altar cloth across it. Father Anselmo would be pleased, but it seemed that I had made my own shroud. Zia Carmela stroked the cloth, grazing the medallion, the border and silky fringe. “Irma,” she said quietly, “light a candle, close the door and get me the iron box from under our bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Just get it.” She had never undressed in front of me, so I didn’t know that a tiny brass key hung inside her skirts. She had me open the box. “Look inside. What do you see?”

  “Nothing but old boots.” They were frothed with mildew and nibbled by mice, stiff as wood. Not even a goatherd would wear such boots. Then I saw the holes, close together and piercing the soles.

  “Is that—?”

  “Yes. Your great-grandfather, remember, was stabbed to death in Russia. He must have fought bravely, for the captain honored his dying wish and sent the boots home to his widow. She cleaned them and bought this box to keep them. Give me the boots, Irma, and watch.” I set them in her lap and pulled my stool beside her.

  She felt both heels, then cradled one boot and gently twisted the sole from the heel. A small chamois bag fell out. Bent fingers teased it open and I gasped at the glint of gold coins. “This was Luigi’s pay from Russia. It has been kept by the women in our family for the one who would truly need it.”

  “All this time? My mother said they sold their beds once in a hunger year. They ate boiled straw.”

  Zia Carmela closed the gold in my hand. “We knew those times would pass, but you must go to America, Irma. There’s no life for you here. Father Anselmo says that in America even decent girls can earn their own bread. Perhaps you’ll find Carlo in that place called Cleveland. If not, at least you can work. You can make beautiful things with your needle.” Her hands trembled.

  “But Zia, I can’t leave you.”

  “You know that I love you like my own soul, Irma. But you must go. You know your father. What will happen if he drinks again and comes after you?”

  “But to go so far. Why not an Italian city: Milan, Rome or Naples?” I suggested wildly.

  “We have no family there. People would think—Irma, you know what they would think."

  That I was a mountain slut. “We don’t know that Carlo reached America. He never wrote,” I reminded her.

  “No, he didn’t, but Alfredo did. He’s content. You’re clever and work hard. You’ll go to Naples, find a good ship and cross the ocean. You’ll find rich women in Cleveland and sew for them.”

  “Come with me, Zia.”

  “How? I can’t even walk down the mountain.” Her bent fingers stroked mine. “You go, make money, and come back like Giovanni the shoemaker’s son.”

  “And buy us a house?” I said slowly.

  She gripped my hand. “Perhaps. But first you must leave Opi. Father Anselmo has some papers for you. There’s a cold wind today. Take Carlo’s cloak.” She felt for it on the nail by our door and wrapped it around my shoulders. I put on my wooden shoes and hurried to the church.

  Father Anselmo was cleaning the communion chalice. He sat me near him as he worked. “Irma, you know I came to Opi from Milan,” he said quietly. “Your own people came from Greece, Carmela says. The world is full of adventurers, more than you think.”

  “But that was long ago. My mother said—”

  “Carmela told me what she said, that all who leave will die. But Irma, your mother died in her own bed and the baker died in his shop, kneading bread. Death finds us where it will, and every soul leaves this world alone. Is it the ship that frightens you?”

  Yes, that too. I had never seen a ship, an ocean or even a great lake. My heart rocked inside my chest. Cold seeped through my wooden shoes. “I don’t know anyone in America. And Carlo never wrote to us,” I added, my voice cracking.

  “Letters take a long time. Carmela told me what happened that night, what your father tried to do. If he marries Assunta, can you stay here even then, you and Carmela?” I said nothing. Assunta was kind, but perhaps not kind enough to keep two women in her small house. A mouse skimmed over the paving stones and disappeared beneath the baptismal font. “Irma, can you stay?” he repeated.

  I stared at my hands laid open on my lap. “Perhaps not, but I’m afraid of leaving, Father.”

  “Of course. But what can we give you in Opi, we who love you? Many find happiness in America. And if we have an
other hunger year, you can send money to help your family. It’s better that way, is it not, than to live here by charity? Or to marry a man who will use you badly?”

  I closed my eyes. No other way appeared.

  “The Lord will watch over you, my child, as the shepherd keeps his sheep. He will watch your going out and your coming forth,” the warm, familiar voice continued. Tears dotted my hands. “Here.” Father Anselmo pulled a soft cloth from his sleeve and dried my eyes. Outside the hour chimed. He cleared his throat. “Irma, look.” He pulled out a sheaf of folded papers. My birth certificate, he explained, and a letter to the ship’s captain and port officers in America that I was of good character from an honest family, skilled in fine needlecraft, that he had hired me himself and was pleased with my work. “And this is for you,” he said, holding up a rosary of tiny coral beads. “It weighs nothing but will comfort you on your journey. If Carlo writes, I will tell him to find you in Cleveland. I’ll have Ernesto release your dowry and see that he and Assunta keep Zia after they marry.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I managed. So it had all been arranged without me. When we culled ewes for market or slaughter, the others went on grazing, barely noting their sisters’ leaving. Once I was culled, Opi too would continue without me. My eyes ran over the windows and frescos of the church, the columns and oak pulpit I might never see again, and ended at Father Anselmo’s patient face. “Will you give Zia the altar-cloth money so she won’t go to Assunta a beggar?”

  He promised and walked me to the church door. “Addio, Irma,” he said, and kissed my two cheeks. “Write to us.”