by Ann Hood
Josephine was crying harder, pressing her face into Father Leone’s jacket. His collar was scratchy against her skin.
“But if you don’t tell me the truth . . .” he was saying.
“Fine, fine,” Josephine said, “it isn’t Vincenzo’s. I can’t keep this baby; it isn’t his.”
“This service,” the priest said. “There’s a fee.”
She looked up, surprised. “I don’t have money.”
“Hmmm,” he said. His eyes drifted from her face to her breasts, which had grown even fuller in pregnancy. “Perhaps we can arrange something,” he said. He met her eyes again. “Do you understand?”
Josephine stood up. “I can’t . . .”
“Of course you can,” he said harshly. “You gave yourself over to me so easily that day. Remember? I asked you and you did it.”
“For God,” she said, foolishly.
“Do you believe that I am a holy man?”
“Of course.”
“When you offer yourself to me, aren’t you giving yourself to God?”
Josephine hesitated. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t think I take such things for my own pleasure, do you?”
“No!” she said quickly, even though she didn’t know what she thought.
“I have dedicated my entire life to God, haven’t I?” he asked her. His voice was kind again.
Out of nowhere, Josephine found herself thinking of the war in Europe. The whole world had gone mad. Isn’t that what everyone was saying? Magdalena from down the hill said that soon they were all going to have to speak German, unless we won the war and killed all the Krauts.
Father Leone was waiting patiently, smiling his gentle priest smile. What was left to lose? Josephine wondered. She drank her wine and closed her eyes, but she was not yet to the place where the room was spinning, so she poured more into her glass.
Father Leone laughed. “You like wine, don’t you?” he said. “Enjoy it!”
“I do,” she said softly.
This glass did it. She lay back on the sofa and the room spun pleasantly. Josephine smiled. Young boys were getting killed every day over there, she thought. For all she knew, the Germans would come here and kill them too. She was going to hell. Father Leone was going to hell. The whole world was coming to an end.
“The war,” she said, but she was too drunk to put her thoughts into words.
“Remember that God is grateful to you for giving yourself to him, Josephine,” Father Leone whispered. “I just want you to unbutton your dress for me,” he said, his voice low and kind. “Like you did that day.”
Josephine felt her body fly up to the ceiling and watched herself from some distant spot, unbuttoning the dress, unclasping the bra so that her ample breasts fell free. She watched the way Father Leone’s eyes gobbled them first, before he bent to suckle them. This was all he had wanted? she found herself thinking. Just like that day in church. Again, newspaper images of the war in Europe filled her mind. All of those young boys had suckled at their mother’s breasts, had grown from their milk, grown into men about to die. Josephine wrapped the priest’s curls in her fingers and pulled him closer to her.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Give yourself to God.”
With one hand he unbuttoned his trousers and for an instant she froze. He had taken a vow of chastity. He couldn’t expect her to do that, could he? From her place high above the man and woman on the burgundy leather sofa, with the afternoon light streaming amber and cobalt through the stained-glass window, Josephine saw the priest take himself in his own hand, and smoothly slide his penis up and down in his firm grip, all the while sucking her breasts, all the while Josephine pushing him closer to her, nourishing him, until a spasm went through his body. He lifted his mouth from her then, and turned away.
“Father?” she said.
Father Leone took the clean white linen napkin he had placed beneath the wine bottle and cleaned himself with it. Quickly, Josephine clasped her bra and buttoned her dress, worried he might look back at her and see naked breasts. When he did face her again, his face was as serene and holy as always.
“God loves you,” he told her. “You are selfless, Josephine. He knows that. He is grateful.” Then he touched her forehead and blessed her.
She grabbed his hand and kissed it. “I feel closer to God, Father,” she whispered in a hoarse voice.
Later, as she walked home in the late afternoon light, Josephine thought of his mouth on her nipples. For a while on that sofa, she had forgotten he was a servant of God and she had thought of him as a man. Ashamed of herself for these impure thoughts, Josephine considered going back and confessing them to Father Leone. But hadn’t he blessed her? Hadn’t he told her God was grateful? “If you need anything else,” he had said to her, “come back.” Her head ached, like the sounds of cannons approaching.
ON VALENTINE’S DAY, a month earlier than she’d expected, Josephine gave birth alone at Saint Mary’s Hospital. The baby was a girl, with soft blond hair, different from any of the other babies Josephine had. So tiny, this beautiful baby girl; her last two babies had been so big they’d ripped her so that she couldn’t even pee without pain for weeks. But Valentina was small and calm. Worse, when Josephine held her, she felt a surge of love that she had not felt so immediately with any of her other children. She loved this baby with every cell in her body.
“Her name is Valentina,” Josephine told the nun. “Today is her day. The day of love.”
“Sure,” the nun said, “but the parents give them whatever name they want.”
“Who are they?” Josephine asked, her voice catching.
“Can’t tell you. Sorry. She’s going to Vermont, though.” The nun lowered her voice. “Very rich family. She’s a lucky one. You’re doing a selfless thing,” the nun said, handing Josephine her daughter wrapped in swaddling.
It was the only time she was allowed to hold her. Valentina opened her eyes and struggled to focus them. But she managed, and looked right up into Josephine’s. Josephine’s heart tumbled. “I love you,” she whispered.
That night, as the hospital slept, Josephine got out of bed and went into the long corridor. At the end, two nuns in white habits sat, sipping tea. The lights cast an odd and ugly green over everything, and the floors moved like the sea beneath it. Josephine had to hold on to the wall as she walked quietly down the hallway toward the nursery. She could see it, halfway between her and the nuns. Behind the long pane of glass, all the babies lay under heaters.
Josephine wanted her baby.
She felt the familiar tingle of her milk coming in, and she wanted to get her baby and bring her to her breast. She could not send this baby, her Valentina, away. That was clear to her. Let Vincenzo kill her. Let everyone whisper about this blond-haired girl. But Josephine was going to keep her. Maybe when she felt stronger—because now she was dizzy and her legs wobbled, but soon she would be strong, back to normal—maybe she would take Valentina and find Tommy. “Look,” she would tell him. “Our daughter.”
“Mrs. Rimaldi?” one of the nuns said, her head jerked upright so that her wimple looked like wings and Josephine half expected her to take flight, to swoop down the hallway and carry Josephine back to bed.
“I just want to see her,” Josephine said.
The two nuns looked at each other. The birdlike one stood. “That’s not possible.”
Josephine tried again. “I feel my milk coming in. She can nurse now.”
The birdlike one was moving toward her, not flying or soaring, but walking deliberately down the hall. “I’m afraid her parents have already come for her, Mrs. Rimaldi. They’ve taken her home with them. To Vermont.”
Where was Vermont? Josephine wondered.
Panic rose in her throat. “But she’s so little. She needs my milk.”
Look, she wanted to say to Tommy, look at our daughter.
The nun stood right in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“If I could
just look in the nursery,” Josephine begged her, “to be sure she’s not there.”
But the nun was shaking her head, and with a firm grip on Josephine’s arms, she was moving her back toward her room.
“If I could just look,” Josephine said, fighting the nun’s strong arms.
The second nun appeared, and the two of them wrestled Josephine to the ugly green floor. The second one had a syringe in her hand, and while the bird held Josephine down, struggling, fighting, calling her daughter’s name, the second one plunged the needle into Josephine’s thigh. Her mouth filled with the taste of metal. The strange green lights above her head pulsated. She felt spit drooling from her mouth. She felt suddenly very hot.
“Can you walk?” someone was asking her.
She was pulled to her feet and dragged along the hallway. Was she moving across the ocean? Josephine wondered. Were they taking her back to the Old Country? Was her mother waiting for her there?
“Almost there,” someone said. “Keep your eyes open until we get you into bed again.”
She had come so far on her own. It was taking forever to get back.
“Stay awake now, one more minute,” someone said firmly.
Across the ocean was home. Across the ocean was war. They lifted her under her arms, up, up, until she was flying now. Then cold all around her. White and cold as ice.
War Stories
AS SOON AS THE FIRST AMERICAN TROOPS ARRIVED in France, Chiara began to pray. She took the white rosary beads that all the little girls of the parish had received for their First Communion from their white satin pouch, kissed the fake silver crucifix that hung at one end, slipped the beads over her head, and prayed. Fingering each bead, silently reciting the Hail Marys, the Our Fathers, the Acts of Contrition, Chiara walked to school, her head bent so no one would see her lips move.
But Elisabetta saw. Four years older, Elisabetta was the tallest Rimaldi girl, the smartest, the most beautiful. And Elisabetta knew these things about herself. She had an air of disdain for everyone else in the family, but especially for Chiara, who was short and ordinary and homely. Elisabetta wanted to become a scientist like Madame Curie; Chiara wanted to be Elisabetta.
“What are you doing?” Elisabetta demanded right in the middle of an especially fervent Our Father.
Chiara kept her head bent, finished the prayer, said, “Nothing.” She could feel Elisabetta’s eyes on her.
Giulia, who was merely pretty but not smart or tall, said matter-of-factly, “We’re rolling gnocchi.”
“I know what we’re doing, you cretin. I asked what Clara was doing.”
This was yet another annoying habit of Elisabetta’s. She called them all by the Americanized versions of their names. We’re American, she would say haughtily, not a bunch of guineas right off the boat. So she called Concetta Connie; Isabella Belle; Giulia Julie; Chiara Clara; and she referred to herself as Betsy. She liked to tell them about all the famous Betsys in America. Betsy Williams, the wife of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. Betsy Ross, the woman who designed and sewed the American flag. Elisabetta knew so much information that Chiara wondered why her head didn’t explode, like Mount Vesuvius.
The problem was, Betsy was a cute name, the name of a girl people wanted to be friends with. Someone named Betsy could jump high, and smile easily. But Clara was an ugly name. No one would want to be friends with a Clara. At least Chiara sounded exotic, like a dancer or an opera singer.
“You’re praying again, aren’t you?” Elisabetta demanded.
Chiara sighed and looked at her sister. She had successfully finished a complete rosary so she could say honestly, “No, I am not praying.”
Elisabetta said, “Well, you were. You always move your lips when you pray. And when you read,” she added, disgusted.
“I hate reading,” Giulia said. “And arithmetic. I want to be famous, and when I am, I won’t have to read or do fractions ever again.”
“That,” Elisabetta said, flicking the tines of the fork off the pasta, leaving perfect ridges, “is idiotic.”
It must be hard to be Elisabetta, Chiara thought, having to do everything just right. Then Chiara bent her head again, and began another rosary.
WHEN THE SPANISH INFLUENZA swept their neighborhood, taking dozens of people with it, Chiara prayed even harder. Her brother was fighting in France, so she had to pray for him as well as for all the American soldiers. She prayed so much there was hardly time for anything else.
“Why don’t you run off and join the convent?” Elisabetta said. “Then you can pray all day and all night.”
She said it to be mean, of course, but Chiara thought it was a wonderful idea.
“How do you join?” Chiara asked her.
“How should I know?” Elisabetta said. She was doing complicated algebra problems at the kitchen table, smiling to herself as she solved each one. “Go ask Father Leone.”
“Sorry,” Chiara said, “I thought you knew everything.”
Elisabetta kept scribbling numbers and letters on a piece of paper. “I know everything that matters,” she said.
CHIARA, LIKE ALMOST everyone else, was terrified of Father Leone, despite his handsome face and thick, wavy hair. When she had told her mother this, her mother had said she should never be afraid of one of God’s servants. He is so holy, her mother had told her, that the pope writes him letters of admiration. This only made Chiara even more humbled and frightened of the priest.
But today, when she climbed the steep stone steps that led to his residence behind the church, she burned with pride instead of fear. Imagine telling the most respected priest in the entire world that you too wanted to become God’s servant.
She was surprised when Father Leone himself answered her knock. Usually, one of the parish nuns was in there cleaning or cooking for him. Right then, as the heavy door swung open and Father Leone appeared with dramatic light pouring in from the window behind him, Chiara decided that not only did she want to be a nun, but she wanted to be the nun who took care of Father Leone. What an honor that would be. To wash the floors he walked on and to simmer a rich ragu for him to eat. Even Elisabetta would never have such pleasure.
Father Leone was smiling down at her, waiting. “Yes?” he said finally. “Have you come to stand on my doorstep? Or do you have a problem?”
Chiara spoke in a rush of Italian. “Forgive me for the disturbance,” she said, “I’m God’s servant Chiara Rimaldi—”
“I know who you are,” he said. “Your mother is a selfless woman who gives everything to God.”
This shut Chiara up. She never thought of her mother this way. To Chiara, her mother was a woman in a faded cotton dress, always working. She never seemed to be at rest. Even when she sat, she sewed or knit or kneaded. She was not like Magdalena down the hill, who brought her children onto her lap and sang them silly songs. Or like Catalina next door who baked her children their own loaves of bread in animal shapes: cats and horses and rabbits.
She felt Father Leone waiting.
“I want to be a nun,” Chiara blurted.
The priest studied her face carefully, and nodded. “How old are you, Chiara?”
“Eleven,” she said. Then she added quickly, “And I’m ready to leave my family and become a bride of Jesus.”
“You must be twelve to become an initiate,” he said. “But I can arrange it for you if you are still serious about this next year.”
“Oh, I will be!” Chiara said. “Even more serious.”
He smiled down at her. She thought he must be the tallest man she’d ever seen.
“You will make a good nun,” he said, turning serious. “You are homely, although in God’s eyes everyone is beautiful. So taking Our Lord Jesus Christ as your husband is very wise.”
Chiara thought she might cry from joy. She fingered the rosary around her neck, praying in gratitude. She didn’t even care that the priest had told her how ugly she was; she knew this about herself. Her face was flat, as if God had p
unched her just before she was born, and her nose was like a pig’s snout. Even her hair was not silky like her sisters’. Instead, it grew in tight, kinky curls all over her head.
Father Leone kneeled at her side so that he could look in her eyes. “What are you praying for, child?” he asked her gently.
“For my brother, Carmine, who is fighting in France, and for all the American boys there, and for the people dying of the Spanish Influenza, and for my sister Elisabetta to somehow go to college, and for my sister Giulia to be famous, and for my sister Isabella to not be retarded, and for gratitude that next year you will send me to the convent.”
“Those are a lot of prayers.”
She nodded solemnly, crossing her fingers behind her back because there were more things she was praying for and leaving them out was a lie of omission.
“Why don’t you come here after school on Fridays and help Sister Alma clean my house?”
“Me?” Chiara said.
The priest touched her forehead and said a blessing before closing the door.
But Chiara did not move for a long time. She stood on the priest’s doorstep, praying and letting this new blessing fill her: she was special after all.
IN ONE SHORT MONTH, Betsy’s life changed. Her mother had always claimed things came in threes. When someone in the neighborhood died, she would warn that two more deaths were coming. When good news arrived, she would watch for two more pieces of luck. Betsy wanted to be a scientist. She didn’t believe in superstitions like those that dominated her family and their neighborhood. But in fact, in one week, three things happened that changed Betsy’s life.
The first was that the Spanish Influenza ripped through town for a second time and killed her father. She found her father disgusting. He was fat. He ate like a pig, grunting and spilling. He ignored all of his children. And he treated her mother like a servant. When her new baby sister died at birth in February, he’d only shrugged, even though her mother cried and moaned for weeks. So when he got sick, she hardly even paid attention. Her littlest sisters, Belle, the one everyone said was “off” or “not right in the head,” and Julie, who was next in age to Betsy, got it the week before. She had not wanted them to die, and had run over a mile to the doctor’s to find out what to do for them. No sooner did they pull through, emerging pale and exhausted, than their father got sick. Before she even had time to think about it, he died. More surprised than sad, and never having seen a dead person up close, Betsy went in to stare at his body. She was surprised at how blue his skin was, how his tongue jutted from his mouth, how contorted his face looked.