Nothing. Except that I had chosen it, having chosen so little in my life.
“Irma’s brother’s there and the man she’ll marry,” Teresa said dryly.
“Oh,” said Gabriella, perplexed. “Then why isn’t she happy?”
“It’s late,” Teresa announced, bustling the child to our berth. “We’ll sleep well tonight. And Irma, here’s my husband’s address in New York. You can write to us, or come if you don’t like Cleveland.”
“We not think of America now,” Milenka advised. “We think of calm seas.” Soon we were all in our berths, the engine drone bearing us on. I woke once at a cry at the edge of the room and was drifting back to sleep as something in Gordana and Milenka’s muffled murmurs caught me. A pause, then a cautious creaking in their beds, silence and a creak again. In the dim light I saw Teresa’s eyes open, note mine, flicker up and close quickly. She turned away, cupping Gabriella to her body. The creaking sharpened, followed by a deep sigh, covering coughs and a sigh again. I had heard those sounds from my parents’ bed, but two women together, sighing? I lay very still. A chamber pot rattled nearby and a child whimpered. The engines throbbed; I squeezed my eyes to sleep and did not mention these things in the morning.
The long, calm days stretched on. Each day, for some new cause, the captain would not let steerage up on deck. “It’s not our place,” the matrons said flatly when we begged them to appeal for us. “It goes hard for everyone if he’s angry.”
So we lived below. We scrubbed clothes in salt water that left them stiff. We took turns emptying the chamber pots, cleaning the dormitory and dodging clothes that hung in moist mazes between our berths. Hours crawled in the flickering gloom. We found a sea gait, rocking as we walked, flattening ourselves against walls and posts to let one another pass. The air was thick with sweat, kerosene, garlic, wet wool, fouled linens and our stale breath. We spoke loudly, leaning close to slip our words beneath the boiler room’s steady growl, the cries of babes and children and the clamor of the sailors working just outside the thin walls of our chamber. We were always hungry, yet often could barely stomach the monotony of grease-slicked potage, beans, cabbage soup and dry bread. The ship’s stores of potatoes had spoiled in the storm; rats had gnawed the dried fruit and thieves among us had found private stores of salami, cheese and nuts. Even music from the first-class quarters was a torment, too faint for pleasure and too present to ignore.
When I could, I sewed. I sat on my bunk and learned to feel the stitches even when lamplight rocked away. Combining designs from my pattern book, I made borders, medallions, and “Irma” in five scripts. Tying off a line of fringe, I dreamed I was in Opi again, sitting in our doorway with cool air brushing my face, Zia beside me, the bright beat of the blacksmith down the street and a child running past us barefoot on packed earth. I made a church in cross-stitches, one for every soul in Opi.
On the third day after the storm, I found a shaft of light by a ladder to the upper deck. A locked wooden grid kept us below, but fresh sea air poured through it. Young couples crowded the breezy shaftway, laughing and talking, some dancing in a square of space barely large enough for a ram to lie in. I wedged into a corner to finish stitching a patch of golden meadow grass rolling like waves with bluebirds flying over.
“Beautiful,” said a voice close by. I looked up at the rusty-bearded sailor from the day we came aboard in Naples.
“It’s just a scrap for practice.”
“Practice or not, it reminds me of home. The grass blew like that in my father’s fields. Could I buy it, signorina?” he asked as my crane nipped off thread ends.
“The grass could be smoother here. And it needs more birds. It’s not my best.”
He smiled and his eyes sparkled, full of sun and air. “No one but me would see it, I promise. If you won’t sell, I’ll trade for a hunk of sheep cheese. Big as this.” He held out two bronzed fists.
Sheep cheese! I could almost taste the creamy tang; Gabriella cried for change from our weary meals. “We can trade,” I agreed.
As the young people clapped time for the dancers, the sailor leaned in and whispered. “At the end of the second dog watch, tonight, eight bells, that grate will be open. Come on deck. The captain and all the officers are at a banquet tonight in first class. I’ll bring you the cheese. Perhaps you’ve never seen the ocean on a clear night. It is the most beautiful sight on earth.”
From far away hissing voices curled in my ear: “You know what he wants. You know what kind of woman walks at night with strange men.” Even Zia whispered: “Remember Filomena.”
I could bring my scissors for defense, I reasoned. And if he had wanted the company of a beautiful woman, they were easily found in steerage. He spoke respectfully, did not touch me and back in Naples had comforted Gabriella for no advantage to himself. “I could bring you the cheese now if you want, signorina.”
“I’ve never seen an ocean at night,” I admitted.
“Then come. I am not—I only mean to show you something beautiful.”
People might talk, but for clean night air after the stench below, forgive me, Zia, I agreed. After dinner, as Teresa finished a dress for Gabriella to wear in New York and the Serbian girls played cards on their bed, I groped along the dark corridor and steep ladder, pushed open the grate that had always been locked and came on deck, gasping.
The Milky Way sprayed overhead. Cupped over the sea edge, a half-moon spilled glimmering silver over blue-black waves. Who could imagine such endless water, a vast smoothed satin skirt, its distant hem tucked under a dome of sky? Space to walk without twisting past bodies, cots, heaped baggage and the flap of dank clothing. The quiet was delicious, with only the distant engine’s gentle rumble, a waltz seeping up from the ballroom and close by, the soft paddle of waves against the ship. I felt—yes, joy despite the storm, despite loneliness and losing Opi and fears of America. As waves ruffled the moon path, I opened my mouth as I did as a child years ago on the meadows. Wind ran through me and my heart buoyed up.
“There’s nothing like it, is there?” asked a quiet voice behind me. I jumped, hot with embarrassment and gripping the billowing folds of my skirt. The sailor jumped nimbly over a coiled rope. “I remember my first moonlit night at sea. Every sailor does.”
“Thank you for opening the grate, sir.”
“My name is Gustavo Parodi. And yours, signorina?”
“Irma Vitale. Of Opi, in Abruzzo, in the mountains. It’s very small.”
He nodded. “But beautiful, I’m sure. Do you miss it?”
“Not here,” I said, astonished at my words. “But in steerage, yes. And you?”
“I left Genoa years ago.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I have nobody there. They all died of cholera in the same week and I went to sea as a cabin boy.” Gustavo leaned against the rail. Even at home, I had never spoken easily to men, not even Carlo. A sharp, curling wind nearly spun me backward. I gripped the rail, careful to avoid his hand. Remember Filomena. I looked out at the waves that buoyed the great ship like a feather.
“What are you thinking?” his voice asked, filled with wind.
“That—there are no birds here.”
“No, they don’t live so far out.” So we lived beyond birds, like the time of Noah’s flood. Gustavo pulled two cloth-wrapped packages from his shirt. “Here is your cheese and some dried figs. They’re very good.” In Opi no decent girl shared food with a man not her family or engaged to her, but at sea, here beyond birds, I took three figs, thrilled with their tough sweetness, warm from his shirt. I gave him the stitched square and he tucked it carefully where the cheese and figs had been.
“Thank you.” His eyes washed over me, glimmering in the pale light. My neck burned. He has a wife, maybe wives. Even in Opi we had heard of sailors’ ways.
“So you never go home?” I managed.
“I’m a sailor now. Storms or doldrums, I can’t leave the sea.”
“I thought I couldn’t leave Opi.”
He nodded, courteously saying nothing. Dark waves rippled the sparkling moon path. “But I had no work,” I said finally.
“Ah.” In the way he looked steadily out to the waves, I saw that he knew there were other reasons for my leaving. But how to speak of the altar cloth and my father’s hands that night? Gustavo nodded toward steerage. “A lot of them would be home now if they could, never mind all the gold in America.”
A sudden splash turned our eyes to the sea, where a fish as large as a man leaped free of the waves, arched up and dove—then another fish and another following the first in leaping loops. Gustavo pointed beyond the last splash. “Look there,” he said. “And—now.” As if he’d drawn them from the deep, the fish arched up again, then two more together. “Dolphins,” he explained. “Good omens for fair seas. The captain says we’ll make New York in eight days.” Eight more days in steerage under the grate that might not open again. “Look how we’re sailing, straight and true.” Gustavo pointed at the foamy white behind us.
“It looks like a trail plowed in the snow,” I said.
He laughed. “It’s so long since I’ve seen snow on land.” Leaning on the rail, he spoke of a winter spent with an uncle in the Alps. “I suppose mountains are like the sea,” he mused. “They get in your blood. My uncle wouldn’t leave, even when an avalanche took his family.”
“I know.” I spoke of Opi’s sunsets, spring flowers and bright blaze of autumn.
His smile was a warm bath. I watched the waves as he described his last trip through the terrible Straits of Magellan, up the spiny coast of South America and past the Spanish mission towns in California: San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. San Francisco, he said, was born when gold spewed out of the mountains. Fifty years ago there was no city and now new wooden houses crept up every hill. He had been to the Sandwich Islands, flecks in the Pacific where people drank milk from coconuts and flowers draped the trees, but it was San Francisco that amazed me.
“A city made in fifty years? It took longer to build our church.”
“Tell me about your church.” It was so new to me, this telling. Of course we told stories in Opi, but they were all so familiar that we listened only for vagaries of each version. Gustavo asked about my family, our sheep and the seasons on the mountain, how Carlo had left for Cleveland and how I hoped to find him there. He leaned on the rail smoking his pipe as if the whole night rolled out before us. When I stopped, embarrassed that my tales must seem so poor, he shook his head. “You know, Irma, we see cities and strange lands, but week after week our whole world is right here on a ship that’s smaller than your village.”
We spoke of the storm. It was bad, he agreed, but not the worst by far. “She’s a stout one, the Servia.” His hand grazed mine. “I wish I could show her to you.”
My chest tightened. “The captain would be angry.”
Gustavo sighed. “I know. But at least come up again at night, Irma. I’ll send you word and unlock the grate.”
“Gustavo!” someone called. “They need you aft.”
“Please come,” he asked again.
“Captain’s on deck!” said the rough voice.
“Thanks for the sewing,” he said quickly. “I’ll get word to you.” He vaulted the coiled rope and joined a tangle of shadows silhouetted against the foaming wake. I stood at the rail as long as I dared. Dolphins leaped by the sea edge. Close by, a crosswind rippled the waves and a new waltz drifted up from the ballroom.
If I could be here with the waves and stars again. If Gustavo sent word and no one saw us. “If,” my mother used to scoff at my dreams: “If we had if for bread.” I opened the grate slowly, careful of squeaking, and slipped downstairs to the hot bath of steerage: women at the wash basin and Greeks playing cards in the stairwell screaming their bets. Marina wailed. An Albanian boy coughed as women forced syrup down his throat. I would not dwell on these things, I would sew leaping dolphins.
But I did no sewing that night, for there was trouble by our berths. A knot of women had clustered around Gordana and Milenka, pressing them back against wet linens. Gabriella wormed toward me, sobbing. “Irma, they’re cursing the Serbian girls. Mamma’s at the washroom.”
I told her to get Teresa and wedged myself into the angry group. Gordana and Milenka’s proud faces had paled. The crowd looked at them now as townspeople looked at twisted beggars or monster children shown around markets for a few centesimi and easy sport. “What happened?” I demanded.
“Unnatural beasts,” hissed Simona, “I saw them under the ladder, talking.” She made a childish mimic of lovers’ murmuring, then worked her jaw and spat a foamy glob on Gordana’s breast. Milenka wiped it off.
“So what?” I demanded. “They weren’t talking to you.”
“Serbian pigs. They’ll disgrace us all.”
“How? You’ll never see them in America.”
“Irma, is not your problem,” said Gordana quietly.
“They’ve done nothing to you,” I persisted. “And they helped us all in the storm.”
“Irma’s right,” said a new voice, Teresa shouldering into the crowd.
Simona’s face darkened. She pointed to our four berths. “You’re all cozy here, eh? Do you all talk together?” And then she spun to me. “Ha, Irma, I saw you sneak up on deck tonight. What did that cost you?”
“Nothing,” I stammered. “It cost me nothing.”
In a whip of time, Teresa stepped between us.
“Get away!” Simona snapped.
Across the room the matrons called, “Half rations for everyone if you don’t back off.”
Pushing Teresa aside, Simona grabbed my arm and pulled me close, her onion breath steaming my face. “I’m not getting half rations for your dirty business, not yours or your Serbian sluts.”
I pushed her, the only time I ever pushed a woman. Simona fell against the next bunk, scrambled up and launched herself forward, howling. I tripped backward into a bedpost. Simona knocked me to the floor, scraping my face along the post. My cheek must have caught on a nail, tearing flesh. Gabriella shrieked. Touching my cheek, I felt the gash and yanked my hand away, red.
The matrons rushed over, dragging us apart as hunters do with dogs. “On the beds, all of you!” Men ran from card games, collecting their women, cursing the half rations, but then they saw my face and went silent.
The ship’s doctor would not come. Teresa washed my cheek with the little fresh water they allowed us, then salt water that stung like fire. An older woman we called Nonna, for she was like everyone’s grandmother, came with herbs, calendula and comfrey. “I could sew it closed,” she said doubtfully, “but my hand shakes. You don’t want my stitches.” She looked at Teresa, who shook her head. “Best we can do is hold it closed until it heals. Could be hours.”
“I’ll hold it for hours,” said Teresa quietly.
“Keep the edges right together and dab off the blood.” The old woman patted my shoulder. “It’s a pity, child. You were no beauty before, but now—well, you’ll live. Watch for fever,” she told Teresa. “I have to go. There’s men sick in the next dormitory.” She laughed. “Things turn strange at sea. Women fight and men cry over belly pains.”
Teresa held my wound closed all night. Milenka and Gordana wiped away blood with scraps of fresh linen that other women laid wordlessly on my bed. No fever came, but when they gave me a broken bit of mirror in the morning, I saw my face pale at the length of the gash.
“Good, no pus,” Nonna said when she came to inspect the wound. She sat on my bed and rambled on with news from all the decks: trysts at the ball, a theft in second class. “A sailor fell from the rigging last night. The doctor’s still drunk, so I set his leg.”
“Which sailor?” I whispered.
She looked at me sharply. “Which one do you know? Says he’s from Genoa. Brave enough. Bit on a wood stake while I set his leg. Never made a sound and thanked me afterwards.” She raised her wide hands. “They said he wasn’t paying attention. The
captain said he’ll lash the next man that’s distracted. The sailor’s washing pots in the first-class galley until he’s fit for deck work.”
Teresa watched me thoughtfully. “Should I find him?” she whispered as Nonna bustled away, but I shook my head. No one would let Teresa in the kitchen and if she did find Gustavo and if we could meet, suppose he turned away from a scar that even moonlight couldn’t hide?
The matrons reported that the captain was so furious to hear of the fight and what he called “unnatural indecencies” that no one from Dormitory A could go on deck until we reached New York. The next days brewed resentment. At meals, in the washroom and in the milling crowds around the blocked stairwells, no one spoke to Simona, Gordana or Milenka. They turned from my face and were curt with Teresa. Children squabbled in the narrow spaces between berths. Card games turned bitter. Gustavo’s cheese was delicious, sharp and rich, but I had little stomach for eating and lay in bed, covering my scar.
Teresa made me come to English lessons, at least to leave my bed. A young man on his third voyage to America taught bits of English, but our accents enflamed him. “Th . . . th . . . TH!” he repeated, rapping his pipe against long yellow teeth. “The tongue here, imbecile, not on the roof of your mouth. Why waste my time with you?” he demanded of a startled child.
“It’s an ugly language if people talk through their teeth,” someone observed.
“If you live in New York with us, Irma, you won’t need English,” Gabriella said, but I practiced silently, pressing my tongue to my teeth: the, three, think. The next day, when Gordana and Milenka joined the lesson a clot of women moved away.
I asked Nonna for news of Gustavo. “The one with the broken leg? Still washing pots I suppose.” He sent no word. Perhaps he had heard of my scar. Or our night had cost him too much. Or he had forgotten me.
“Forget him,” Teresa whispered. But she had not eaten figs by moonlight and her face was not gashed.
“We dock Tuesday morning,” the matron announced on a Sunday night, the sixteenth of our voyage. “Make sure you’re packed.” They passed out syrups for coughs, powders for lice, creams to hide rashes and drops for rheumy eyes. Even children took them willingly, for we had all heard about those who were turned away from America. Many died on the passage home.
When We Were Strangers Page 8